WASHINGTON — The US ambassador to Israel clarified Wednesday that the Trump administration does not seek to impose a change to the status quo at Jerusalem’s ultra-sensitive Temple Mount that would allow Jews to pray there. The plan does not “impose any alteration of the status quo that is not subject to agreement of all the parties,” David Friedman told reporters in a telephone briefing.
At the same time, Friedman indicated that the administration would hope to see Jews being able to pray at the holiest place in Judaism, by agreement, within the framework of an eventual accord, as part of a new openness “to religious observance everywhere, including on the Temple Mount.”
Friedman was responding to an apparent
contradiction in the terminology of the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan that was published Tuesday after President Donald Trump had unveiled his proposal at a White House gathering together with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.