In first, police let Jewish visitors take printed prayers onto Temple Mount |
Police allowed Jewish worshipers to ascend the Temple Mount with printed prayer sheets Wednesday, in a further challenge to regulations barring non-Muslim prayer at the flashpoint Old City of Jerusalem site.
Early Wednesday, students at the Temple Mount Yeshiva handed out liturgical material printed on flyers to Jewish visitors waiting to go up to the Temple Mount. The sheets included religious guidelines for visiting the holy site, a prayer to recite before ascending and the Amidah (standing) prayer, said thrice-daily in Jewish tradition.
Police said they acceded to a request from the Temple Mount Yeshiva — which encourages Jews to ascend and pray at the site — that visitors be allowed to carry “guidance sheets” with them to the complex.
“In order to maintain the existing order, it was determined that the use of these sheets would be limited solely to specific areas defined by the police,” police added.
Non-Muslim prayer has until recently been forbidden forbidden atop the Temple Mount — known by Muslims as the Al-Aqsa Compound — due to a string of agreements known as the status quo between Israel and Jordan, which administers the site through the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf.
The hotly disputed site, the holiest site in Judaism and third-holiest in Islam, was the........