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Israeli MK: Israel must reaffirm sovereignty over Jerusalem

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Knesset member Orit Strock blames the government for not clarifying long ago its stance concerning control of the Temple Mount, saying that this indecisiveness permitted the attack on rightist activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick.
Yehuda Glick, an activist of the "temple mount faithful" group, poses for a photo in Jerusalem June 30, 2011. Glick was shot and severely wounded in Jerusalem on October 29, 2014 as he left a conference promoting a Jewish campaign to permit praying at a compound in the Old City that that has become a flashpoint as both Jews and Muslims regard it as a holy site, Israeli officials said. Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian on Thursday after he fired at them resisting arrest in East Jerusalem hours after the
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Knesset member Orit Strock of the HaBayit HaYehudi Party was at home in the Avraham Avinu (Abraham the patriarch) neighborhood of Hebron the night of Oct. 29 when she first heard the news about the assassination attempt against Yehuda Glick, a leading advocate of the right of Jews to ascend to the Temple Mount. The person to break the story to her was from her party, Knesset member Shuli Mualem. Mualem had been participating in a right-wing conference at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. Glick was shot at close range at the end of the conference titled “Israel Returns to the Temple Mount.” Mualem then called Strock to tell her the news.

Like all Knesset members on the right, the two women know Glick personally and were intimately familiar with his struggle to allow Jews to visit the Temple Mount. They spent the first few moments of their conversation sharing their shock and personal pain, instead of just focusing on the potentially volatile incident’s immediate political and security implications. Glick was the person most closely identified with the Jewish struggle over the controversial compound. It was his life’s work, and the activist from the settlement of Othniel in southern Mount Hebron was a familiar figure in the corridors of the Knesset.

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