How Israel's Al-Aqsa reopening plan quietly dismantles decades of international law

For 40 consecutive days, one of Islam's holiest sites was locked shut. 

Since the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran on February 28, Palestinian Muslims were barred entirely from entering Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem’s Old City.

During Ramadan, when the compound is normally filled with worshippers, Israeli forces restricted access, set up checkpoints and used force against people trying to pray, including in areas surrounding the site. 

After 40 days of silence, Al-Aqsa's gates opened again for Muslims on Thursday. The plan, however, is drawing sharp alarm from Palestinian and Islamic bodies because of what it tries to normalise in the process.

Israeli police, backed by far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have drawn up a framework to reopen ‘the Temple Mount’ to visitors in groups capped at 150 people at a time, an Israeli broadcaster reported on Sunday.

A day later, Ben-Gvir stormed the mosque compound, pressing for adoption of the new plan. 

The new plan, he argued, was consistent with the High Court's recent decision to allow anti-war protests of up to 150 people in Tel Aviv. "There cannot be one rule for demonstrators and another for the Temple Mount," he said.

The court, however, offered little comfort to those hoping it might serve as a check on the broader erosion of Al-Aqsa's status.

“When Ben-Gvir took his case to the Israeli High Court, citing its decision to allow 600 demonstrators at Tel Aviv's Rabin Square as justification for admitting 150 settlers, the court rejected his request,” according to Professor Mustafa Abu Sway, scholar of Philosophy and Islamic Studies at Al-Quds University.

“But the court's reasoning is more troubling than its ruling. The decision referred to the site exclusively as the ‘Temple Mount,’ making no mention of Al-Aqsa Mosque at all,” Abu Sway, a senior member of the Islamic Waqf in occupied East Jerusalem governing the Al Aqsa Mosque, tells TRT World.

“Contrary to what the 'equal access' framing might suggest, this narrative does not put Jewish settlers on equal footing with Muslims. It is worse! Al-Aqsa Mosque and Muslims became invisible," he adds.

Haram Al-Sharif, home to Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, has been under continuous Islamic administration through the Jerusalem Waqf since the seventh century.

"Temple Mount" is the term used by Israel and increasingly by Western governments and media, rooting the site's identity in a Jewish historical claim while erasing fourteen centuries of uninterrupted Islamic presence and jurisdiction.

Al-Aqsa belongs to Muslims

The legal problem with the plan, even in its neutral-sounding wartime packaging, is significant. 

Al-Aqsa Mosque is not a shared site under international law. 

The framework governing the compound goes back to 1967, when then-Israeli defence minister Moshe Dayan reached an agreement with the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the Jordanian-appointed body that administers the site, stipulating that its holy shrines "belong to Islam" and would remain under Islamic administration. 

That arrangement became the foundation of the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, which committed Israel in writing to respect Jordan's custodianship of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. 

In 2015, a four-way accord between Israel, Palestine, Jordan and the US reaffirmed it once more.

But the new plan deems Palestinians invisible, who have no administrative standing at Al-Aqsa at all.

It is a status change, achieved without touching a single treaty on paper.

"The attempts to change the historical status quo are ongoing," Professor Abu Sway says.

"They began in 2003 when Israeli police began unilaterally allowing Jewish settlers to enter the courtyards all the way to the eastern part of the mosque compound." 

“Since then, Ben-Gvir has deepened that encroachment; settlers now pray inside the compound, bring religious texts, and are permanently accompanied by Israeli security forces,” Abu Sway explains.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said the closure of the mosque and the tightening of restrictions around Jerusalem’s Old City violated the long-standing historical and legal status quo at the site and risked inflaming tensions among Palestinians and worshippers worldwide.

“This incursion is part of a systematic policy pursued at the level of the Israeli government to impose a new reality by force and undermine the status quo in East Jerusalem, particularly at Al Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,” the ministry said. 

“These measures fall within a broader colonial project aimed at Judaising Jerusalem and its holy sites, displacing the indigenous Palestinian population and altering the city’s legal, historical and cultural character.”

The ministry also reiterated that Al Aqsa Mosque “in its full area of 144 dunums is a place of worship exclusively for Muslims,” adding that Israel holds no sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem or its holy sites. 

Normalising occupation

The push to normalise Israeli control over Al-Aqsa did not begin with Ben-Gvir's new plan. For years, far-right Israeli politicians have stormed the compound, incrementally expanded illegal settler visiting hours, and lobbied to allow Jewish prayer at a site where it is explicitly prohibited under every agreement Israel has signed. 

That pressure has found willing allies in Washington. In October 2025, Republican Congresswoman Claudia Tenney introduced House Resolution 852, claiming that Israel maintains sovereignty over the Temple Mount.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Rep. Clay Higgins and endorsed by the Zionist Organisation of America and other far-right groups. 

“‘Israel-first’ extremists in Congress continue to push legislation that treats the Holy Land as a stage for prophecy rather than a place of peace. This is nothing more than a dangerous publicity stunt designed to pander to genocide supporters and religious extremists,”  according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Government Affairs Director Robert S. McCaw.

“When combined with these documented incursions by illegal Israeli settlers, this undermines internationally-recognised treaties and the fragile status quo at one of the world’s most sensitive religious sites.”

The numbers expose the full scale of what is being proposed. The Al-Aqsa compound covers 144,000 square metres and can hold over 400,000 worshippers. The Qibli Mosque prayer hall alone fits 5,000. Al-Quds International Institution noted that 150 people would not fill even the first row of that hall. 

Before the war, thousands of Palestinians prayed across five daily prayers; on Fridays, the courtyards overflowed. A capacity of 150 consequently reduces access by more than 99 percent; while settler groups would resume visits at numbers higher than any previously recorded.

Other details sharpen the picture further. Palestinian and Islamic groups have reported multiple attempts by extremist Israeli groups to smuggle animals into the compound during Passover for ritual sacrifices.

Throughout the 40-day closure, Israelis continued to pray in tunnels beneath the compound. Palestinian worshippers, meanwhile, have been photographed kneeling on pavements outside the Old City walls, turned away from their mosque by Israeli police standing at its gates.

Palestinian organisations warned that the plan, if implemented, would hand Ben Gvir control over the mosque's daily affairs, pushing Palestinians to the margins of a site it has administered for generations. 

Jordan, Qatar, Türkiye and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation were among those who condemned the trajectory. 

Washington, as a signatory to the 2015 status quo agreement, has offered nothing in response.

Israeli authorities dressed the closure in the language of public safety, Abu Sway debunks this false justification.

“The affairs of Al-Aqsa fall strictly under the jurisdiction of the Hashemite custodian of the Holy Places in Jerusalem, HM King Abdullah II.”

“The closure constitutes a violation of international law, and the argument of safety does not hold, Al-Aqsa Mosque has subterranean halls such as Al-Marwani hall in the southeast corner of the mosque compound that can accommodate 9,000 Muslim worshippers,” Abu Sway says.

“Whenever the Israeli PM Netanyahu is pressed about the historical status quo, he always pays lip service,” he adds.