The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf is an Islamic religious trust organization, controlling and managing the current religious governing issues on and around the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. It was instituted by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan after its conquest of the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the War of Independence in 1948. The King of Jordan is still supplying all of the funding needed to operate the Waqf. After winning the Six Day War in 1967, Israel has political and military sovereignty of the Temple Mount but allows the Waqf to retain the civil administration and religious authority for the Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount.
What is status quo on the Temple Mount?
In the 18th century, the land of Israel (then called Palestine) was occupied by the Muslim Turkish Ottoman Empire. The leader Sultan Osman III decreed that the status quo be established to preserve the division of ownership and responsibilities of the holy sites in the Holy Land between the various sites important to Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
This status quo for Jerusalem meant that certain statuses for the holy sites would be kept and were recognized as being permanent or at least the way things should be. The city was divided into four quarters. The Temple Mount became a Muslim holy place, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as well as other various Christian sites were recognized as belonging to the Christian world. Despite the arguments over who would control what aspects of these sites, the status quo has remained largely intact from the 17th century to the present and for the most part has not been changed.
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the status quo was not respected by Jordan who took control of the Old City of Jerusalem and expelled Jews prohibiting them from visiting their Holy Places in the city.
Now that God has given the Temple Mount, Western Wall and Judea and Samaria back to Israel, the enemy of God and Israel is working very hard to take them away from Israel and he is using the Muslim Arabs.
Even before Israel became a nation, at the time that Jews started to come back to the land as pioneers, the Arabs objected to their coming back and especially going up to Jerusalem to worship the Lord. From the beginning, Jews were accused of attempting to take the Temple Mount from the Muslims.
On June 17, 1967, a meeting was held at the al-Aqsa Mosque between Moshe Dayan (Israeli Chief of Staff at that time) and Muslim religious authorities of Jerusalem reformulating the status quo. Dayan offered that the Jews be given the right to visit the Temple Mount unobstructed and free of charge if they respected Muslims’ religious feelings and acted decently, without being allowed to pray. ‘Religious sovereignty’ was to remain with the Muslims while Israel retained ‘overall sovereignty’.
The Muslims rejected Dayan’s offer, as well as totally rejecting the Israeli conquest of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. The Military Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren and a group of other Jews also objected to the proposal, claiming that praying on the Mount symbolizes freedom and the return of the Jewish people to their homeland.
The High Court of Israel suggested that even though it is the right, as part of the freedom of expression, for Jews to enter the Temple Mount, to pray there and to have communion with their God, if it will most certainly cause injury to the public “it is possible to limit the rights of the person in order to uphold the public interest.”
Israeli police continued to forbid Jews praying on the Temple Mount. Several prime ministers have attempted to change the status quo but failed.