Itamar Ben Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount, the most sacred site to Jews, was his first since the October 7 attack. It came as Ireland, Norway and Spain announced they would recognise a Palestinian state.

“The countries that have today recognised a Palestinian state are rewarding murderers and aggressors, and I say this: we will not even allow the declaration of a Palestinian state,” he said in a video taken at the site, which is known as the Al-Aqsa mosque compound to Muslims.

Sacred to both Jews and Muslims, the site in the Old City of Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem has long been a lightning rod in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Under a status quo decreed after Israel’s conquest of east Jerusalem in 1967, non-Muslims are allowed to visit the compound at specific times, without praying, a rule that is less and less followed by some nationalist Jews.

The site is administered by Jordan, but access is controlled by Israeli security forces.Ben Gvir, a regular visitor to the site, reaffirmed during his visit on Wednesday that “the holiest site of the Jewish people belongs only to the State of Israel”.His visits to the site have been cited by Hamas leaders as one of the reasons behind the October 7 attack, which they called “Al-Aqsa Flood”.

The leader of the far-right Jewish Force party, Ben Gvir was charged more than 50 times in his youth with incitement to violence or hate speech, and was convicted in 2007 of supporting a terrorist group and inciting racism.

The city of Jerusalem has been largely spared violence since Hamas’s attack on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The militants also took 252 hostages, 124 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,709 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

mib-mca/jd/dv