A survey conducted by the Direct Polls Institute last week revealed that in Israel’s religious Zionist communities, there is an across-the-board consensus regarding the Temple Mount reports Makor Rishon. The survey was backed by entrepreneur Shlomo Ben-Zvi and included 569 Religious Zionist (Israeli) participants. 77.6% of those surveyed support or strongly supports (25.4% support and 52.2% strongly support) allowing freedom of worship to Jews in the Temple Mount area as opposed to only  9.7% who oppose or strongly oppose it (6.2% oppose it and 3.5% strongly oppose it). The Religious Zionists are Israelis who try to observe the commandments of the Torah but also believe in the spiritual significance of the state of Israel and therefore believe strongly in serving in the IDF.

Religious Zionists compose approximately 50 percent of the candidates in the combat officer’s training course, especially in the ground forces. Growing numbers of Religious Zionist officers are making their way to the upper echelons of command, getting promoted to commanders of combat regiments as well as brigades. This lies in stark contrast to the late 1980s when the IDF’s entire high command and its elite combat units were virtually entirely composed of secular troops.

An additional question that was asked related to the Jordanian Waqf, the observers hired by the Jordanian government and often harass Jewish (and Christian) worshippers. The survey asked whether or not the Religious Zionist public believes that the Temple Mount should be under Israeli rule exclusively. Here too, a wide majority of religious Zionism – 81.1% support full Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, while 6.7% oppose it.

The survey also explored a hypothetical peace deal, such as Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’, the national religious would agree to defer sovereignty over the Temple Mount to Saudi Arabia. Again, an almost wall-to-wall agreement showed: 78.6% oppose it, while 8.3% support these measures.