BY LUKE BAKER

(Reuters) – Every morning at 7.30, Murad Hamad sets up a flimsy plastic chair in the shade of the Moroccans’ Gate entrance to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and waits for the tourists to arrive.

Hamad’s job is to help keep the peace at one of the world’s holiest places, a site sacred to both Muslims, who call the compound the Noble Sanctuary, and to Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because of the building that once stood there. The guard is not much concerned with the sun-creamed tourists. But he pays close attention to the groups of devout Jews and Israeli nationalists who try most days to enter the site and pray.

Those groups are at the center of a creeping shift in Jerusalem: After 900 years, Jews are chipping away at Muslims’ exclusive control of the site, the third holiest in Islam. The shift, which has provoked violence in the past, threatens to open a dangerous new front in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, adding religious enmity to a political struggle in the very heart of the disputed city.

Al-Aqsa has banned non-Muslim prayer since 1187. Like Muslims across the region, Hamad and the other 70 or so guards employed by the Waqf, the Islamic trust that oversees the mosque, see Jews praying there as a serious insult.

The risk of confrontation remained small as long as the groups pushing for the right to pray remained at the fringes of Judaism. A decade or so ago, a handful of Jewish faithful would enter the compound each day. Attempts at prayer were rare. The Chief Rabbinate of Israel declared in 2007 that Jews should not visit the site because it was too holy.

But in recent years the radical fringe has become increasingly mainstream, drawing in nationalist, secular supporters and backing from high-profile politicians. A hundred or more Jews can arrive at the mosque some days, in large, organized groups. Last year Yossi Farenti, then Jerusalem District Police Chief, told the Israeli parliament’s Internal Affairs committee that the number of Jews visiting the site had increased 27 percent in the first half of 2014. “There is indeed a worsening in the past few years as to what happens at Temple Mount,” he said. “This is a fact. No one disagrees. You can see it in the numbers.”

A growing number of rabbis have contradicted the Chief Rabbinate, saying visits should be encouraged precisely because the Temple Mount is divine. Jewish visitors mumble prayers under their breath and walk barefoot on the ancient stones in a sign of obeisance.

A range of groups, some of them well financed by the Jewish diaspora, are campaigning for open access to Temple Mount, which Jews believe is the point from where God created the world and was the site of the second Jewish temple until 70 AD (see “Disputed land”). They want the right for Jews to pray alongside Muslims. Some even want to build a new temple and have crafted sacred gold-and-silver vessels and hand-stitched priestly vestments ready for the day it is sanctified. Other supporters are breeding red heifers, hoping for one without a white blemish that can be sacrificially slaughtered at the temple, as described in the Book of Numbers.

Palestinian Muslims and others across the region fear their control is slipping.

“They want to change the rules,” said Hamad, the Waqf guard.

Read more: Special Report: Prayers inflame tensions over Jerusalem holy site

Source: Reuters