A six-decade agreement governing Muslim and Jewish prayer at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site has “collapsed” under pressure from Jewish extremists backed by the Israeli government, experts have warned.

A series of arrests of Muslim caretaker staff, bans on access for hundreds of Muslims, and escalating incursions by radical Jewish groups culminated this week in the arrest of an imam of al-Aqsa mosque and an Israeli police raid during evening prayers on the first night of Ramadan.

The actions by the Jerusalem police and the Shin Bet internal security force, both now under far-right leadership, represent a rupture in the status quo agreement dating back to the aftermath of the 1967 war, which stipulates that only Muslims are permitted to pray in the sacred compound around the mosque, known as the al-Haram al-Sharif to Muslims, which also encompasses the seventh-century Dome of the Rock shrine. To Jews it is the Temple Mount, the site of the 10th-century BC first temple and second temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

Changes in the status quo have historically shown the potential to ignite unrest and conflict in Jerusalem and the Palestinian occupied territories with repercussions across the world. A visit by the then Israeli opposition leader, Ariel Sharon, in 2000 ignited the second Palestinian intifada, which lasted five years, and Hamas gave the name al-Aqsa Flood to its attack on Israel in October 2023 which killed 1,200 Israelis and triggered the Gaza war, claiming it was provoked by Israeli violations at the Jerusalem mosque.

“Al-Aqsa is a detonator,” said Daniel Seidemann, a Jerusalem lawyer who has regularly advised Israeli, Palestinian and foreign governments on legal and historical issues in the city. “It’s usually around the same thing – a real or perceived threat to the integrity of sacred space. And that’s what we’re witnessing. There have been provocations frequently during Ramadan, but things are exponentially more sensitive now. The West Bank is a tinderbox.”

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