The Muslim council of clerics in Jerusalem has issued a call to entirely ban all Jewish presence from the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

The announcement specifically called to return the situation at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount to as it was before the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel liberated the holy site from Jordanian occupation that had lasted from the 1948 War of Independence.

Ironically, the announcement read: “the Muslims want Al-Aqsa Mosque to be returned to the situation before 1967, when it was liberated from all occupation and under the rule of the Arabs and the Muslims, since it belongs only to the Muslims.”

“The Islamic department of holy sites is the one that determined who was allowed to enter and exit from among the non-Muslim visitors,” wrote the council in apparent nostalgia to the days of completely unmitigated discrimination when Jews were forbidden from the site.

“The Muslims demand to have the key of the Mughrabi Gate returned to them, after it was seized by the occupation army and currently serves for aggressive invasions,” they added, in reference to the sole gate to the Temple Mount where non-Muslims are currently allowed to enter from.

Currently the Jordanian Waqf remains in de facto control of the Temple Mount, banning Jewish prayer despite Israeli laws stipulating freedom of religion, and allowing Muslim rioters to use Al-Aqsa Mosque as a terror base to launch rock and firebomb attacks on police.

But this is a step up for the Waqf, which first demanded three weeks ago that it be given full supervision of the Mount – including whether or not Jewish visitors could ascend at all – according to a pre-2000 agreement which had been modified by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. 

In lieu of this, and in response to the current wave of terror, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently agreed to set up security cameras to help ban Jewish prayer, in a move supported by his coalition partner Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett.

Jews are not the only ones negatively impacted by the Muslim de facto control over the site; last month a Danish Christian pro-Israel activist was kicked off the Mount by Waqf officers after being told that “religious Christians” can’t be at the site.