Why this Likud MK presents unique challenge to Netanyahu

Member of Knesset Yehuda Glick, a representative of the Judea and Samaria (West Bank) region in the Likud, accepts with equanimity the cold shoulder he has received from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ever since he entered the Knesset in May 2016 to replace former Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon, who resigned. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Glick said that as of now all of his requests to meet with Netanyahu, even for a few minutes, have been automatically brushed off.

“Ever since I became a member of Knesset, Netanyahu refuses to meet with me, but I’m planted deep in the Likud. When I entered the Knesset, he didn’t want an association with me because ‘I ignite the Middle East,’ and now because I’m a leftist.”

This sentence expresses precisely the inherent complexity of the worldview of Glick, who attached his fate to the Temple Mount in his struggle to realize the rights of Jews to pray at the holy and volatile site. He stood at the head of the Fund for Temple Mount Heritage, and for many years caused a rather big headache for the police and security forces when he insisted on ascending the Temple Mount on different occasions, not necessarily in accordance with the status quo of the visiting schedule.

Glick almost paid with his life for this struggle when he was shot by an activist from Palestinian Islamic Jihad when exiting an annual conference of Temple Mount activists in Jerusalem in 2014. Glick was severely wounded but recovered and returned to public life and to his struggle to realize the right to pray at the Temple Mount. After he was sworn in as a member of Knesset, he was forced to refrain from praying in the site close to his heart due to the prohibition the prime minister placed last October on members of Knesset ascending to the Temple Mount, for fear of a conflagration.