Prime Minister Netanyahu was in direct contact with Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman (MBS) concerning direct flights from Ben-Gurion International Airport to Jeddah Airport for Israeli Muslims to make the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, Israeli media reported on Tuesday.
Netanyahu and Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen spoke with MBS and Saudi Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani on Monday. Cohen announced earlier this month that Israel had formally requested direct flights from the Saudi government. Currently, Muslim pilgrims from Israel must travel through third countries such as Jordan, incurring increased expenses.
In 2018, Saudi Arabia began allowing flights from non-Israeli carriers to pass over their airspace on flights to and from Israel. This was expanded to include Israeli carriers in 2022. In an interview with Channel 12’s Meet the Press on Saturday, Cohen stated that Israel and Saudi Arabia may normalize relations within six months.
The direct flights may begin as soon as June as Muslim pilgrims are already starting to arrive in Mecca after two years of COVID-pandemic restrictions limiting the Hajj. Hajj is an annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest city for Sunnis, and, as one of the Five Pillars of Islam, it is a mandatory religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by all adult Muslims. Since Islam operates according to a solar calendar, the date changes yearly. This year, the Hajj period extends from June 16 to July 1.
Hajj is similar to the Hebrew word chag, referring to the three Biblical feasts in which Jews were required to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.
According to the official published statistics between 2000 and 2019, the average number of attendees is 2,269,145 per year, of which 1,564,710 come from outside Saudi Arabia, and 671,983 are local. Maariv reported that 2,700 Israelis made the pilgrimage in 2022. This number is expected to almost double to 4,500 for the 2023 Hajj.
Hajj is associated with Jerusalem and the conflict over the Temple Mount. Many people mistakenly claim that the al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount is the third holiest site for Muslims, but this is inaccurate. Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University, explained that while some Sunnis consider Jerusalem the third holiest city, this is not true for Saudis.
“Saudi scholars and journalists have recently been disputing this claim publicly,” Kedar said. “Palestinians make Hajj to Mecca while claiming that Jerusalem, as the fake replacement for Messa, is holy.”
Kedar refers to the myth that the Aqsa Mosque described in the Koran is located in Jerusalem.
“Fifty years after the death of Muhammad in 682 CE, Abd Allah Ibn al-Zubayr revolted against the Umayyad Dynasty that ruled in Damascus,” Kedar explained. “He closed the roads and prevented Damascus residents from making the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Having no other choice, the Umayyads chose Jerusalem as an alternative Hajj destination. To entrench their choice of Jerusalem, they invented the story that the al-Aqsa Mosque mentioned in the Quran wasn’t in Ju’ranah but in Jerusalem. They linked the story to the Quran myth about Muhammad’s night flight to al-Aqsa Mosque by inventing a number of hadiths that are essentially rewritten history.
“Today, this narrative describing Mohammad’s Night Journey as culminating in Jerusalem has been revived, advanced by the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey’s President Erdogan, Qatar, and other Islamist movements seeking to unite Muslims and/or Arabs under a caliphate who seek to take over Jerusalem and use it like a crown,” Kedar told Israel365 News.
“To claim that Jerusalem is holy and to make Hajj to Mecca is contradictory and makes no sense,” Kedar said. “But they don’t know or don’t think about it. And beliefs are unarguable.”
Kedar explained that al-Aqsa is mentioned once in the Koran, and Jerusalem is never named. He cited the notable exceptions of Islamic interest in Jerusalem were the periods in which the Muslims identified a risk that other religions would rule in Jerusalem, such as during the Crusades, the First World War, and of course, the period of Zionism.
“Shia Islam, mercilessly persecuted by the Umayya Caliphate, did not accept the holy Jerusalem canard, which is the reason the second holiest city to Shiites is Najif in Iraq, the burial place of Shiite founder Ali bin Abi Talib. Many Shiite elders – Iranian and Hezbollah – only began to call Jerusalem holy after the Khomeini rebellion in 1979 to keep the Sunnis from accusing them of being soft on Zionism.”
The Temple Mount is already a source of conflict between Palestinians and Arabs visiting from other Gulf states.
“The Palestinian interest in the Temple Mount is political and not religious,” Kedar told Israel365 News. “So they treat it politically. We have already seen that dignitaries who visit from the UAE are spat upon and cursed at by the Palestinians at the site. They treat them worse than they treat the Jews because Jews are just the enemy. The UAE and Bahrain are traitors. When Suadi Arabians begin to come and argue that Al Aqsa is in Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians will see it as even worse.”
“For the time being, Saudi Arabia is not openly disputing the al-Aqsa-Jerusalem connection because they don’t want to anger Iran,” he said.
If Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel, it would conform to the prophecy of a pre-Messiah reconciliation between Isaac and Ishmael based on the verse in Genesis in which Ishmael and Isaac come together at Abraham’s funeral.
And Yitzchak and Ishmael, his sons, buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron, the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre. Genesis 25:9
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, the preeminent medieval French commentator on the Torah known by the acronym Rashi, interprets this verse to mean that Ishmael made peace with Isaac, allowing his younger half-brother to precede him at the funeral.
The Talmud in Baba Batra (16b) predicts this will have implications for the end of days. The Talmud relates that Ishmael and Yitzchak will have a tenuous relationship. Still, at the end of days, they will come together as ‘banav’ (his sons). Saudi Arabians consider themselves to be the Sons of Ishmael, and the prophecy can very well be speaking about them.
