Yitzhak Reiter

Before embarking on an academic career, Reiter served in a senior advisory role within the Israeli government. Sources agree that his service began in 1978 but give the concluding year as either 1986 or 1987. During that period he served as deputy adviser on Arab affairs to the governments of Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, and Shimon Peres; one biography also says he served at times as acting adviser.[4][5]

Reiter later taught Political Science and conflict-resolution subjects at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[4] In 2006 he advised the Israel Council for National Security on a policy plan concerning the integration of Israel's Arab minority, continuing his involvement with the policy questions that also became subjects of his scholarship.[5]

Reiter built his academic career across several institutions, with the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research serving as a principal research home for three decades.[2] He headed the Research Authority at Ashkelon Academic College and chaired its Department of Israel Studies, also described in another biographical source as the Department of Land-of-Israel Studies.[1][5] He was concurrently a research fellow at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[1]

His international appointments included visiting-scholar residencies at Oxford University's St Antony's College in 2001, the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., in 2003, and Sydney University in 2003–2004.[7] During the 2008–2009 academic year he taught Political Science at the University of Minnesota; another biography says he taught both Political Science and Jewish Studies there as a Schusterman Fellow.[7][5] He participated in track-two diplomacy meetings addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and was active in back-channel discussions concerning Jerusalem and holy sites.[7][8]

Reiter contributed to discussions among Israeli and Palestinian experts on proposed arrangements for Jerusalem's Old City holy places, held from 2006 to 2008 in Rome, Israel, and areas under the Palestinian Authority.[9] A 2019 INSS conference program lists his presentation on Jordan's role at the Temple Mount from 1967 to the present, identifying him at that time with Ashkelon Academic College and the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research.[10]

Later sources identify Reiter as a professor at Reichman University and Al-Qasemi Academic College and as president of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Association of Israel.[3][11] The Jerusalem Institute's 2019 retirement symposium included sessions on lessons from negotiating Jerusalem and on control struggles at holy sites, reflecting two central subjects of his thirty years of research there.[2]

Reiter's earliest book-length scholarship addressed the Islamic endowment system in Jerusalem. His 1991 study is listed as The Waqf in Jerusalem, 1948–1990 and as Islamic Awqaf in Jerusalem in different English-language references.[1][6]

His 2005 study From Jerusalem to Mecca and Back: The Islamic Consolidation of Jerusalem drew on sixty-two academic and semi-academic books, Arabic-language publications from nine countries, Islamic websites, legal opinions, and the press.[12] The study examines changes in Islamic perspectives on Jerusalem and political mobilization surrounding the "Al-Aqsa is in Danger" campaign. Reiter argues that a new Islamic ethos of Jerusalem developed over time, including heightened emphasis on the city's sacredness, denial of Jewish affiliation to its holy places, and construction of a new account of the city's ancient past.[12] In a JNS interview, he argued that traditions associating pilgrimage with the three mosques in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem were developed during the Umayyad period to serve the dynasty, while cautioning that "You can't challenge a 1,300-year-old belief."[13]

His 2008 Hebrew-language study The Holy Places in the Old City of Jerusalem: Options for Their Management within a Political Settlement examined governance options for Jerusalem's holy places under a possible political arrangement.[14] He also co-authored a chapter titled "1917 to the Present: Al-Haram al-Sharif / Temple Mount (Har ha-Bayit) and the Western Wall" in Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade. The chapter addresses historical, religious, political, administrative, archaeological, and conservation disputes concerning the sites.[15]

The most sustained focus of Reiter's career has been the arrangements governing the Temple Mount/Al-Haram al-Sharif, a 144-dunam compound that is among the world's most politically and religiously charged holy sites.[1] His 2016 Hebrew-language book Status Quo in Change: The Struggles for Control on the Temple Mount documents the post-1967 status quo from June 1967 until what its publisher describes as a collapse in September 1996 following the opening of the northern exit of the Hasmonean Tunnel. It then traces later developments, including events in 2014–2015 and understandings reached between Israel and Jordan with United States mediation.[16]

His 2017 English-language study The Eroding Status-Quo: Power Struggles on the Temple Mount, published by the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research and MultiEducator, Inc., extended the analysis for an international readership.[1] Reiter describes the post-1967 arrangement as an informal modus vivendi rather than a written agreement: Israeli authorities held security and policing responsibilities while the Muslim Waqf managed religious affairs and internal administration; non-Muslims could visit the compound, while Jewish prayer was prohibited in practice.[1] The study argues that this arrangement began to erode in 1996 and deteriorated further after Ariel Sharon's September 2000 visit to the Temple Mount. The compound was then closed to non-Muslim visitors for nearly three years before Israel reopened it unilaterally in August 2003. Reiter identifies disputes over visitation, prayer, construction, and administration, as well as actions by both Israeli and Muslim actors, as contributing to subsequent crises.[1]

The study's stated purpose is practical as well as analytical: to help policymakers manage conflict and prevent violence while taking account of Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian perceptions.[1] It warns that changes to components of the status quo can become incendiary triggers for violence and retaliation. The cover quotes former minister Shlomo Ben-Ami: "More than we are sovereigns over the Temple Mount, today we are its hostages."[1]

Reiter has also applied this framework to contemporary events. In a 2023 N12 interview he attributed changes in Temple Mount arrangements to a gradual erosion of the status quo, noting that coordination between Israeli police and the Waqf had diminished after 1996.[17] During a period of heightened tension in April 2023, he recommended publicly opposing provocations and changes to the status quo, responding to misinformation, and avoiding police entry into al-Aqsa Mosque during confrontations.[11] He also recalled proposing a practical friction-reduction measure: a transparent fishing net raised on hydraulic poles above the Western Wall plaza during periods of tension, while acknowledging concern that such a barrier might be interpreted as indicating that Israel lacked sovereignty over the compound.[11]

Regarding construction near the Mughrabi Gate, Reiter argued that Israel should weigh the broader diplomatic effects of its timing rather than considering only the immediate local arena. He noted that earlier episodes, including the Western Wall Tunnel opening and Sharon's visit, had resonated across the Muslim world.[18]

A significant strand of Reiter's research examines what early and medieval Islamic sources say about Jewish historical connections to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. His 2020 co-authored study with Dvir Dimant, Islam, Jews and the Temple Mount: The Rock of Our/Their Existence, is described by the Jerusalem Institute as a comprehensive survey of early Islamic sources recognizing a historical Jewish bond to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem.[19] The study considers those sources alongside the positions of contemporary Muslim religious scholars and writers who, in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, deny Jewish ties to the site and argue that no Jewish Temple stood there.[19]

Israel Hayom reports the book's argument that early and medieval Muslim historical works described the Jewish Temples and Jewish connections to Jerusalem, while modern denial of those connections developed in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict.[20] Reiter recalled that when he shared such historical sources with Arab intellectuals, some privately called Yasser Arafat's claim that there had never been a Temple in Jerusalem "nonsense," while saying that they could not publicly endorse the academic narrative while the conflict continued.[20] This account is Reiter's recollection of private conversations rather than independently documented testimony.

Reiter also recalled that Menachem Begin once asked him for the Quranic verse promising the Land of Israel to Moses. They found a Quran commentator who connected the Jewish people to the Holy Land but argued that they did not merit it because of the sin of the Golden Calf.[20]

Reiter's 2017 book Contested Holy Places in Israel-Palestine: Sharing and Conflict Resolution examines how the religious, emotional, and identity-related significance of holy sites distinguishes conflicts over them from ordinary territorial disputes. Its National Library of Israel catalog description says the book analyzes fourteen cases in Palestine/Israel, including the Temple Mount/Al-Haram al-Sharif, the Western Wall, and the Cave of the Patriarchs/Al-Ibrahimi Mosque, and compares them with cases elsewhere to assess tools for mitigating and resolving conflict.[21]

At Emory University in fall 2018, Reiter taught a course on contested holy places in Israel and historical Palestine through the university's Institute for the Study of Modern Israel.[22] The syllabus framed holy places as national and political symbols where religious and political identities intersect and posed questions concerning the causes of violence, conflict management, tolerance, and coexistence.[22]

Reiter's scholarly range extends to Islamic jurisprudence on war and peace and to the status of the Arab minority within Israel. His book War, Peace and International Relations in Contemporary Islam: Fatwas on Peace with Israel analyzes Muslim jurists' interpretations of sharia and their positions on peace agreements with Israel, grouping the jurists into a rejectionist current and a pragmatic current that supports peace.[23] An Arabic translation appeared in October 2014, published by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and the Shasha Center for Strategic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[23] Its case studies include the Egypt-Israel peace process, the Oslo Accords, a proposed Hamas hudna, and the Second Lebanon War.[23]

Reiter authored National Minority, Regional Majority: Palestinian Arabs versus Jews in Israel in 2009, along with several related articles.[24] His 2009 Jewish Virtual Library article frames Israel's Arab minority as occupying a distinctive position: part of the regional Arab-Muslim majority while living within a Jewish-majority state. The article discusses tensions between Palestinian national and Israeli civic identities and between Israel's Jewish character and democratic principles. It also describes simultaneous processes of what Reiter, citing scholar Sammy Smooha, calls "Palestinization" and "Israelization."[24] His 2005 work in this field analyzes how divergent Jewish and Arab historical perspectives, including different views of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish nation-state, influenced the political behavior of both communities.[24]

Reiter's scholarly legacy rests on an unusually broad body of work connecting Islamic law and history with the practical study of Jerusalem, Jewish-Arab relations, and conflict management at holy places. His thirty years at the Jerusalem Institute combined academic publication with policy-oriented research and participation in track-two discussions.[7][2] A 2022 publication list records fourteen authored books and five edited or co-edited volumes.[6]

His principal works include:

• The Waqf in Jerusalem, 1948–1990 (also listed as Islamic Awqaf in Jerusalem), 1991.[1][6]
• From Jerusalem to Mecca and Back: The Islamic Consolidation of Jerusalem, 2005.[12]
• The Holy Places in the Old City of Jerusalem: Options for Their Management within a Political Settlement, 2008.[14]
• War, Peace and International Relations in Contemporary Islam: Fatwas on Peace with Israel; Arabic translation published in 2014.[23]
• Status Quo in Change: The Struggles for Control on the Temple Mount (Hebrew), 2016.[16]
• Contested Holy Places in Israel-Palestine: Sharing and Conflict Resolution, 2017.[21]
• The Eroding Status-Quo: Power Struggles on the Temple Mount, 2017.[1]
• Islam, Jews and the Temple Mount: The Rock of Our/Their Existence, co-authored with Dvir Dimant, 2020.[19]

Much of Reiter's scholarship concerns politically and religiously contested questions rather than settled historical consensus. His interpretations of the development of Islamic traditions concerning Jerusalem, the erosion of the Temple Mount status quo, and modern Muslim denial of Jewish ties to the site are presented in his works as scholarly arguments grounded in his reading of Islamic sources and political developments.[1][12]

A JNS report discussing the history of Al-Aqsa traditions noted that no consensus exists among Israeli scholars about how historical criticism of religious narratives should be applied to contemporary political claims. Reiter himself cautioned in that discussion that a belief sustained for roughly 1,300 years could not simply be displaced by historical debate.[13]