An extremist Israeli Cabinet minister visited a sensitive Jerusalem holy site on Sunday at a time of heightened tensions with the Palestinians.
The visit by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, his second known visit since becoming a member of Israel’s most right-leaning government ever, drew condemnations from the Palestinians and Israel's neighbor Jordan, which acts as the custodian of the site.
The visit comes days after Israelis marked Jerusalem Day, which celebrates Israel’s capturing of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. Flag-waving nationalists marched through the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem’s Old City, some singing racist anti-Arab chants, while hundreds of Jews visited the sensitive hilltop shrine, including a low-level minister from Ben-Gvir's party, but not Ben-Gvir himself.
The ultranationalist Ben-Gvir, along with a growing movement of activists, has long called for greater Jewish access to the holy site. Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem, with its sites holy to three monotheistic faiths, along with the rest of east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for a future independent state, with east Jerusalem as capital. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move unrecognized by most of the international community and considers the city its undivided, eternal capital.
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