(May 21, 2023 / JNS) During a visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Sunday, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that despite Hamas threats, Israel remains sovereign of the holy site.

“I’m happy to go up to the Temple Mount, the most important place for the people of Israel,” the Otzma Yehudit Party head said in a statement. “It should be said that the police are doing a wonderful job here and once again prove who owns the [the Temple Mount] in Jerusalem. All the threats from Hamas will not help, we are the owners of Jerusalem and the whole Land of Israel,” he continued.

Rabbi Shimshon Elbaum, head of the Temple Mount Administration, said Ben-Gvir’s visit “gives meaning to the slogan ‘The Temple Mount is in our hands’ which recently turned 56 years old.” Elbaum was referring to the message broadcast from Israel Defense Forces commander Mordechai Gur after his brigade captured the Old City from the Jordanians in 1967.

Around 1,200 Jews visited the Temple Mount on Thursday ahead of Jerusalem Day, which began on Thursday evening. The annual flag march through the Old City marks the reunification of Jerusalem under Israeli control during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Among those who visited the site on Thursday were several Knesset members, including Development of the Periphery, the Negev and the Galilee Minister Yitzhak Shimon Wasserlauf of Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party.

In his statement on Sunday, Ben-Gvir also addressed the Knesset vote on Wednesday boycotted by his party in protest against budget cuts to programs for the Galilee and the Negev.

“We must remember our brothers in the Negev and the Galilee. In the upcoming budget we must invest in the Negev and the Galilee. Jerusalem is our soul, the Negev and the Galilee is our soul, we must invest, we must act there, we must be the owners of the Negev, also of the Galilee, and the basis is the budget,” he said.