By the 19th century, it was the most important Jewish site of pilgrimage and worship, but for the Zionist movement, it represented an ideological conundrum. After the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, Israeli officials were in direct control of the holy sites. In that context, the holy sites – now under Israeli control – assumed a new meaning, and became a new frontier. In the 1980s, there were two attempts by Jewish militant groups to blow up the Islamic sites on the Haram. Yair Wallach is a senior lecturer in Israeli studies and head of the Centre for Jewish Studies at SOAS, the University of London

Source: The Guardian May 13, 2021 16:07 UTC