DoubleTake: Title Dispute

**Les Sillers** (0:07)
From World Radio, this is Double Take. I'm Les Sillers.
It's a Wednesday morning in September, and a Jewish yeshiva, a religious school, is holding an outdoor class in Jerusalem's old city.

**Eliyahu Katz** (0:21)
They're discussing the position of the altar, where the altar should be. And they are renewing the study and discussion around things that Jewish people have studied in theory for 2,000 years.

**Les Sillers** (0:33)
That's 28-year-old Eliyahu Katz, an observant Jew from New York, whose family immigrated to Israel when he was a child. Katz is giving World's Travis Kircher a tour. Travis, Eliyahu, and a handful of others are surrounded by at least a half dozen armed Israeli police. Suddenly, four of the Jewish men stoop to do something that's pretty controversial. They pray.
Concealed behind a wall on the eastern side of the site, the men lie face down on the stone ground. Some of them are in business suits. It's not the praying itself that's provocative. It's where they're doing it.
Today on Double Take, Travis is going to take us to Israel for a behind-the-scenes look at the most contested piece of real estate in the world.
The Jews call it Har Habayit, the Temple Mount, the former site of Solomon's Temple as well as the second Jewish temple. You know, the one where 12-year-old Christ confounded the religious teachers and later rode in on a donkey. It's the place where Abraham grabbed hold of his knife to offer up Isaac, but God said, do not lay your hand on the boy.
Muslims call it something else. Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. For the past 1300 years, it's been the site of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Muslims consider it the third holiest site after two other mosques, the Sacred Mosque in Mecca and the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina. So it's way more than just a contested patch of ground. More than half of today's population find meaning and identity in things that have happened on this spot. And especially for Christians and Jews, the barrier between heaven and earth seems thinner here. It's where the past, the present, and the future swirl through the streets and echo across the stone walls. On this mount, God has spoken, dreams have been dreamed, and blood has flowed like a river.

**Travis Kircher** (2:58)
Mustaphu Abu Sui is a Palestinian scholar and the deputy head of the Islamic Waf Council, the group that oversees the Al Aqsa Mosque. He says the mosque has special properties.

**Mustaphu Abu Sui** (3:11)
These three mosques are, they have, they are extra-miritorious in the Islamic worldview and Islamic creed, which means that a prayer there is multiplied.

**Travis Kircher** (3:24)
Officially, only Muslim prayers are allowed on the Temple Mount. Christian and Jewish prayers, spoken or unspoken, are prohibited. Those are strict rules from the Islamic Waf Council, but the Waf doesn't actually get to enforce the rules.
Israel has had custody of all of Jerusalem since 1967, so that task falls to Israeli police, Katz tells me.

**Eliyahu Katz** (3:47)
The police has done a great job of separating us, separating the Jews and Muslims and allowing the Jews some semblance of a right to religion on the site.

**Travis Kircher** (3:58)
Katz agreed to show me around the Temple Mount with a small group. Later today, we're going again with a much larger group. They'll be honoring the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, so they plan to be a bit more vocal.
I ask Eliyahu if he thinks this will cause problems with Muslim worshipers.

**Eliyahu Katz** (4:17)
It's hopefully going to be a normal day, hopefully. The question around it, I don't know, it depends on them.

**Travis Kircher** (4:28)
Much blood has been spilled on this mountain, and not just in AD 70, when the Romans sacked Jerusalem, or during the murderous crusades of the Middle Ages. The conflict has continued, even to the modern era.
In 2017, dozens were injured during mass riots on the Mount, after Israeli police installed metal detectors at the entrance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Audio here from Euronews.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:55)
For several days, there have been clashes, as tensions remain high. After Tuesday's evening prayers, as many as 50 people were reportedly injured, including a senior Muslim cleric.
Friday shooting of two Israeli police officers by three Arab Israeli gunmen, and in turn their deaths at the hands of Israeli security forces, was one of the most serious incidents in the area in years.

**Travis Kircher** (5:19)
The Israeli government later reversed that decision and removed the metal detectors.
But why 3,000 years of strife and conflict over only about 35 acres in Jerusalem's old city? To answer that, we'll need a quick history lesson. First, a look at the Jewish claim.