When Jerusalem fell to the Muslims in 638 CE, Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab famously declined Patriarch Sophronius’s invitation to pray inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As the story goes, he chose instead to pray nearby to avoid setting a precedent that might endanger the church’s Christian status. In this early period of Islamic rule over Jerusalem, agreements attributed to the caliph—known as the Covenant of Umar—were established outlining the status and protections of Christian communities under Muslim rule.

By contrast, Israel’s 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem saw a marked departure from this historical precedent of pluralism and diplomacy. Following the occupation of the Old City, Israeli paratroopers immediately asserted a claim of sovereignty over al-Aqsa Mosque by raising the Israeli flag atop the Dome of the Rock—a provocative act that led Moshe Dayan to remove the flag in order to maintain the tenuous Status Quo agreement. Nonetheless, Israel’s military occupation of the city and subsequent measures to transform it—including the destruction of the Moroccan Quarter to build the prayer plaza at al-Buraq Wall (known by Jews as the Wailing Wall) (see The Destruction of Jerusalem’s Moroccan Quarter: From Centuries-Old Maghrebi Community to Western Wall Prayer Plaza)—represented a fundamental shift toward the assertion of Jewish control over Jerusalem, deviating from the long-standing Islamic framework of preserving the religious identity of established sanctuaries through strategic restraint.

Recent years have seen an escalation in Israeli violations of the historic Status Quo at al-Aqsa Mosque (see Experts Warn: Israel Is Changing the Long-Standing Status Quo at al-Aqsa Mosque), especially in the form of granting extremist Jews entry into the sacred grounds with armed security escorts while simultaneously restricting Muslim worshippers access to the site (see Ramadan Ends, al-Aqsa Mosque Remains Empty and Palestinians Take to the Streets in Silent Protest). A record 65,000 extremist Jewish settlers and politicians were granted access by Israeli authorities to al-Aqsa Mosque in 2025—a 22 percent increase from the previous year.1 

Concurrently, the Islamic Waqf Department, the Jordanian-run body historically responsible for the site’s management, has been increasingly hindered by Israel from executing its day-to-day maintenance and administrative duties. Recent reports highlight instances where Israeli authorities have prevented Waqf Department staff from installing routine infrastructure, such as shade structures and temporary medical clinics, and have issued banishment orders against numerous employees, custodians, and imams.

Furthermore, Palestinian access to the compound has been heavily curtailed through the imposition of arbitrary and strict demographic quotas and age limits, such as limiting entry to men and women from the West Bank to those aged over 55 and 50, respectively, during key religious periods like Ramadan.2 This comes in addition to Israel’s issuance of hundreds of bans that bar individual Muslim worshippers from the site entirely for varying lengths of time.

These aggressive measures are systematically enforced on the ground by Israeli forces, but their legitimacy is underpinned by a series of judicial decisions since 1967 that have established a dangerous legal trajectory. This Backgrounder first analyzes pivotal rulings by the Israeli Supreme Court since 1967 to understand their ongoing implications. Then, it uses the cases to scrutinize increasingly restrictive Israeli policies at al-Aqsa Mosque through the binding framework of international law—specifically, the historic Status Quo governing Jerusalem’s holy sites and the mandates of international humanitarian law.

An examination of select Israeli Supreme Court rulings spanning several decades illustrates the manipulated legal framework behind Israel’s illegal governance of access, worship, and security at the al-Aqsa Mosque.3 This framework began taking shape in early rulings such as the 1968 HCJ 222/68.4 In this case, petitioners sought to allow Jews to pray at the site without police interference. The court dismissed the petition, determining that it lacked jurisdiction to intervene in matters concerning the holy places, and ruled that the management of the site fell strictly under the purview of the executive branch. The court reached this conclusion using the Palestine (Holy Places) Order-in-Council of 1924, a Colonial British Mandate-era decree that explicitly withdrew all disputes regarding the rights and claims to holy sites from the jurisdiction of civil courts. By invoking this foundational legal framework, the court affirmed that the administration of the sites remains an exclusively political and executive prerogative.

By the 1990s, however, the court changed its position and accepted jurisdiction over cases related to al-Aqsa Mosque. In the first of these instances in 1990, a case was filed against a number of Israeli authorities claiming that they were not enforcing Israeli law over the site. In its decision, the judicial panel ruled that the court did indeed possess judicial review over administrative and governmental actions concerning the site, effectively overriding the mandate-era jurisdictional block and setting a dangerous precedent for the court’s involvement in matters relating to al-Aqsa Mosque.5

For example, in the 1993 cases HCJ 2725/936 and HCJ 4044/93,7 the police refused to allow a Jewish petitioner to gain access to the compound on “Jerusalem Day” (see Jerusalem Day 2025 Is Openly Genocidal, but Also Echoes Years Past) and Tisha B’Av, respectively. In both instances, the court ruled that while the right to enter and pray is part of religious freedom, it is a relative right that can be restricted if there is a “near certainty” of real damage to the public interest. The court thus upheld the police decisions due to the high probability that granting the petitioner access to the site would trigger confrontations.

This “near certainty” standard was repeatedly invoked during periods of heightened security in the following decades. In the 2001 HCJ 530/018 case, filed in the second year of the Second Intifada, a Jewish petitioner sought permission to enter al-Aqsa Mosque. The court accepted the police’s assessment that allowing entry would severely risk human lives and public order, emphasizing again that the right to religious freedom is not absolute and can be restricted due to the “near certainty” of violence. Similarly, in the 2010 HCJ 2189/109 case, when petitioners requested to perform the Passover sacrifice within the compound, the court upheld the police decision to prevent the ritual. The judges reasoned that there was a “near certainty” that such an action would cause severe confrontations and bloodshed, thereby legally prioritizing public safety over the exercise of specific religious practices.

As the years progressed, the Supreme Court continued to back police enforcement of regulations. In the 2017 HCJ 8871/1710 case, petitioners were distanced from al-Aqsa Mosque for attempting to bring the Four Kinds (four ritualistic plants used during Sukkot) into the site, which was contrary to established police regulations. The court affirmed the police’s authority to issue temporary distancing orders, viewing them as a permitted and proportionate limitation on entry to prevent severe threats to public security. The following year, in HCJ 6013/18,11 a petition sought the removal of a sign at the Bab al-Maghariba (the Moroccan Gate) that lists rules for visiting the compound, including the explicit prohibition of Jewish religious activity. The court rejected this challenge, ruling that the sign reflects long-standing government policy aimed at preventing violence, maintaining public order, and managing international relations.

The court has also addressed attempts to bypass prayer prohibitions through organized protests or the introduction of ritual items. In 2020, petitioners sought to hold a protest within al-Aqsa Mosque during Sukkot against the ban on Jewish prayer. The court rejected the petition in the HCJ 6766/2012 ruling, determining that the underlying rationale for prohibiting prayer also applies to holding protests against that prohibition, as both activities pose a high risk of igniting widespread violence. Two years later, in HCJ 6031/22,13 a petition aimed to allow Jewish ritual objects—specifically, a tallit, tefillin, and shofar—into the compound. The court dismissed the petition, citing both the petitioners’ failure to exhaust administrative remedies and a fundamental lack of grounds for judicial intervention in the executive branch’s security-based decisions.

Most recently in 2024, the Supreme Court maintained its deference to police and executive management of the site. In HCJ 4897/24,14 a petition challenged the distancing of a Jewish invader from al-Aqsa Mosque and questioned the broader police policy regarding Jewish religious activities at the location. Consistent with its decades-long precedent, the court summarily rejected the petition. The ruling reiterated the foundational Israeli legal principle governing the site: while the right to pray is recognized as a fundamental human right, its exercise at this specific location is ultimately superseded by the paramount executive responsibility to maintain public safety and prevent severe harm to human life.

A critical examination of this decades-long judicial record reveals a glaring structural reality about how the Israeli Supreme Court approaches al-Aqsa Mosque as a fundamentally internal Israeli dialogue. In every case reviewed, the parties involved are exclusively Jewish Israeli. The petitioners are invariably Jewish religious or nationalist groups seeking expanded access and worship rights, while the respondents are the Israeli police, the minister of national security, or the prime minister. There is a stark absence of Muslim representation in these courtrooms, despite the site being a historically Muslim site primarily visited and revered by Muslim worshippers.

Importantly, the Waqf Department has maintained a position against the Israeli courts’ jurisdiction over al-Aqsa Mosque. As the historical administrator of the holy compound, the Waqf Department systematically refrains from acting as either a petitioner or a respondent in any Israeli legal proceedings regarding the mosque. This boycott is rooted in international law, asserting that Israel, as an occupying power, lacks legal sovereignty in occupied territory, and therefore, its courts hold no legitimate jurisdiction over the holy site. This principled stance is maintained under the authority of the century-old Hashemite Custodianship (see Hashemite Custodianship of the Holy Sites of Jerusalem: A Century of Dynastic Authority and Protection), which asserts that only the Waqf Department holds legitimate administrative authority over the site. Consequently, the court’s jurisprudence develops within a highly constricted legal vacuum.

Another striking observation upon reading these rulings is the flagrant absence of reference to international law or the binding legal frameworks of the historic Status Quo. Instead, the Israeli Supreme Court frames the entire legal dispute as a localized balancing act between two competing considerations: the claimed right of Jews to worship at the site, and the executive branch’s security considerations. This is to say that since the Israeli police serve as the primary respondent, the state’s defense is entirely securitized. The police do not argue against Jewish prayer on the basis of protecting Muslim religious rights or the long-standing Status Quo but, rather, solely on the basis of threat assessments and crowd control.

This framing is evident in the language used in successive rulings, where the court repeatedly affirmed that while Jewish prayer is a “fundamental right,” it must yield only when there is a “near certainty of real damage to the public interest” or a “near certainty that [the action] would cause severe riots and bloodshed,” as articulated in HCJ 2725/93 and HCJ 2189/10. Even in more recent rulings, such as HCJ 4897/24, the court explicitly reiterated that the “right to pray is a fundamental right” that is only superseded by “the need to maintain public safety at the site.”

By reducing the legal question to a clash between Jewish religious rights and Israeli security logistics, the court effectively erases the indigenous Palestinian and global Muslim connection to the sanctuary from the legal calculus. The rulings do not measure the petitioners’ demands against the freedom of worship of Muslim attendees, nor do they acknowledge Hashemite authority or the rights of the global Muslim community to preserve the sanctity and exclusivity of their holy site. Ultimately, al-Aqsa Mosque is treated in these legal texts not as a protected Islamic sanctuary but as a volatile security zone where the sovereign Jewish state must temporarily pause Jewish worship to prevent outbreaks of violence.

These rulings do not exist in a vacuum; their real-world implications are very dangerous. By setting a legal precedent that strips the site of its status as a protected Islamic sanctuary under international law and reduces it to a volatile public order zone, the judiciary has granted near-absolute deference to the executive branch and its police forces. The inherent danger in this framework is that the rights of Muslim worshippers and the historical Status Quo of the site are left with no legal protection in the Israeli system. Instead, the governance of the site is entirely dependent on the political and ideological inclinations of the state and its security apparatus.

The consequences of this securitized legal framing have become acutely visible under the leadership of the extremist nationalist Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir. Because the courts defer to the police’s “security assessments” regarding who can enter and pray at the compound, controlling police leadership translates directly to controlling the physical reality at the site.

Recent events have laid this dynamic bare. Investigative reports and media coverage have explicitly documented how Ben-Gvir has engineered leadership changes within the police force to serve his ideological goals for the site. Most notably, he successfully pressured the Jerusalem district police commander out of his position and replaced him with a loyal confidant, specifically because the outgoing commander had pushed back against the minister’s aggressive attempts to relax restrictions on Jewish prayer at al-Aqsa Mosque.15

Empowered by his authority over the police force and shielded by a judiciary that refuses to intervene in executive security decisions, Ben-Gvir frequently and brazenly acts on his stated claims to a “right to worship” at the compound. He regularly storms the site accompanied by heavy security detail, issuing provocative statements that challenge the historic Status Quo. This violent and incendiary policy reached a critical point during Ramadan 2026, when Ben-Gvir entered the compound while simultaneously banning tens of thousands of Palestinian Muslim worshippers from accessing their holy site through sweeping security closures, age restrictions, and military checkpoints.16

When the judiciary abdicates its role in protecting fundamental human rights and international legal norms, deferring instead to a “security” framework controlled by an extreme ethno-nationalist agenda, the outcome is predictably skewed. It strongly indicates that Israeli breaches, incursions, and the structural erosion of Muslim access to al-Aqsa Mosque will not only continue but are poised to systematically expand.

To fully comprehend the illegality of the Israeli judicial and executive actions regarding al-Aqsa Mosque, they must be analyzed through the lens of international law. The legal regime governing the holy sites in Jerusalem is not subject to the domestic laws or the internal security assessments of the occupying power. Rather, it is governed by a distinct set of widely recognized customary international law principles collectively known as the Status Quo (see What Is the “Status Quo”?). This custom is not merely a political understanding but a binding legal framework. It originated in an 1852 Ottoman firman and was subsequently enshrined in binding international treaties that crystallized into customary international law over the course of the last century.17 Its binding nature, reinforced by widespread state practice and opinio juris, is repeatedly affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly, UNESCO, the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and various other international bodies.

Regarding al-Aqsa Mosque, the mandate of the Status Quo is unambiguous. Under this historical and legal framework, the compound is recognized as an exclusively Muslim holy site. Consequently, it is solely the Islamic administration of the mosque—the Jerusalem Waqf Department under the authority of the Jordanian Ministry of Awqaf—that possesses the legal authority to manage the site and regulate the access of worshippers and visitors. Since 1924, this role of protecting and managing the holy sites of Jerusalem has been assigned to and held by the Hashemite family, which today governs Jordan.

Crucially, as highlighted in comprehensive research by the Balasan Initiative,18 and as the author clarified in a 2023 interview with Al Jazeera,19 the Status Quo is immutable by force. Any new measures, access restrictions, or temporal and spatial divisions imposed by Israel through military or police power do not legally alter the Status Quo; they are simply ongoing breaches of it. Therefore, the decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court, which attempt to legitimize these breaches under the guise of domestic security, hold no legal weight in the international arena and do not change the site’s sovereign or historical reality.

Furthermore, Israel’s actions at al-Aqsa Mosque must be scrutinized under international humanitarian law, which strictly regulates the conduct of a military occupier. A foundational principle of international humanitarian law is that military occupation is inherently temporary and does not confer sovereignty upon the occupying power. Under this framework, the occupying power is strictly prohibited from altering the legal and institutional status of the occupied territory. This includes a prohibition on unilaterally changing local laws and an explicit bar against extending the jurisdiction of the occupying power’s domestic courts over the occupied population and its institutions.

Because Israel lacks sovereign legal authority in East Jerusalem (including the Old City), its domestic courts have no legitimate jurisdiction over al-Aqsa Mosque. Consequently, as the International Court of Justice20 and the UN Security Council21 have frequently and definitively concluded, all Israeli legislative, administrative, and judicial measures aimed at altering the character, demographic composition, and status of the holy city of Jerusalem are entirely null and void. This unequivocal international legal consensus extends directly to al-Aqsa Mosque, rendering the Israeli legal framework surrounding the site not only practically dangerous but fundamentally illegitimate under international law.

Lastly, the invocation of the principle of freedom of worship by Israeli state institutions, including the Supreme Court, is fundamentally irrelevant in relation to al-Aqsa Mosque. Under international human rights law, the principle of freedom of worship involves the right of members of a religious group to worship, assemble, and maintain places for these purposes within their own designated holy sites. However, this legal framework does not guarantee the right to manifest a religion through active prayer in spaces that are legally, historically, or administratively designated to another faith community. Applying the freedom of worship to justify non-Muslim prayer at al-Aqsa Mosque thus disregards the established limits on religious manifestation.

International law heavily relies on limitation clauses to protect the custodial rights, property rights, and religious autonomy of faith groups from outside infringement. When the Israeli Supreme Court adjudicates petitions demanding Jewish prayer rights at al-Aqsa Mosque—often treating it as a theoretical right merely delayed by police for public order—it thus misapplies the core concept of religious freedom. The right to worship inherently ceases where the property and autonomy of another religion begins; that is, external appeals to freedom of worship remain legally inapplicable within the boundaries of another community’s sacred space.