There is no neutral way to write the first sentence about this place.
Har ha-Bayit, the Temple Mount, is the Jewish name. It asserts that the defining fact about the platform is the Temple that stood on it, and by extension a claim of prior and continuing attachment.
Al-Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, is the Muslim name. It asserts that the defining fact is the sanctuary that has stood here for thirteen centuries, and by extension a claim of long and unbroken possession.
Neither name is a lie and neither is merely descriptive. Israeli official usage says Temple Mount; Palestinian official usage says al-Haram al-Sharif or simply al-Aqsa; international bodies pick one, use both, or invent a third formulation, and each choice is read by somebody as a declaration. When UNESCO resolutions in 2016 referred to the site principally by its Arabic name, Israel suspended cooperation with the organisation over it. The dispute over the noun is not a proxy for the real dispute. It is a part of it.
This atlas uses both names, in the order that puts neither permanently first across the collection, and attributes each to the people who use it.
Who actually controls what
The arrangement dates from 1967 and is called the status quo, a term that implies more stability than it has ever had.
- The Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, funded and staffed under Jordanian authority, administers the platform day to day: the buildings, the grounds, the religious staff.
- Israel controls security and every one of the gates. Nobody enters the platform without passing an Israeli police post, including the Waqf.
- Jordan holds a recognised role in the Muslim holy places of Jerusalem. The 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty states that Israel "respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem" and will give that role high priority in any permanent-status negotiation. The wording is narrower than the sovereignty claim sometimes read into it.
- Non-Muslim prayer on the platform is prohibited under the arrangement. Visits by non-Muslims are permitted through one gate at set hours.
Every one of these lines has been tested repeatedly, and the question of whether the status quo is being eroded, and by whom, is itself one of the disputes.
Why many Jews will not go up at all
The restriction that keeps most religious Jews off the platform is not an Israeli or Muslim rule. It is a rabbinic one, and it is stricter than anything the police enforce.
The reasoning runs like this. Entering the Temple precinct in a state of ritual impurity contracted from contact with the dead was a grave transgression, and the purification required the ashes of a red heifer, a rite that has not been performed in nearly two thousand years. Everyone alive is therefore presumed impure with no available remedy. Compounding this, the precise location of the Holy of Holies, which none but the high priest might enter, and he only on one day a year, is not known with certainty, so a person walking on the platform cannot be sure they are not standing in it.
The Chief Rabbinate of Israel has maintained since 1967 that Jews may not ascend, and signs at the entrances say so. Most Haredi authorities agree and treat the matter as closed.
A religious-Zionist minority disagrees, holding that the permitted and forbidden zones can be mapped adequately, that immersion in a mikveh suffices for the parts that may be entered, and that ascending is a positive obligation rather than a transgression. The number of Jews visiting the platform on that reasoning has risen substantially, and organised ascents are treated by Palestinians as an attempt to establish a Jewish prayer presence by increments, which some of the participants openly say is the intention.
So there are at least three distinct Jewish positions here (do not ascend, may ascend, should ascend), and describing "the Jewish position" on the Temple Mount without saying which one is describing nothing.