In newly-surfaced remarks from a 2018 conference, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense Pete Hegseth said there was “no reason” a third temple could not be established on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Speaking at the Arutz Sheva conference in the Israeli capital’s King David Hotel, Hegseth said the re-establishment of a Jewish temple on the site would be a “miracle,” adding, “I don’t know how it would happen. You don’t know how it would happen, but I know that it could happen.”
He also appeared to endorse extending Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria, which the president-elect once floated as part of his peace plan with the Palestinians but which was never realized.
“A step in that process, a step in every process, is a recognition that facts and activities on the ground truly matter,” said Hegseth.
“That’s why going and visiting Judea and Samaria and understanding that sovereignty—the very sovereignty of Israeli soil, Israeli cities, locations—is a critical next step to showing the world that this is the land for Jews and the Land of Israel,” he added.
He rejected the “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying, “If you walk the ground today, you understand that there is no such thing as the outcome of a two-state solution. There is one state.”
The 2018 visit was Hegseth’s second to Israel. In a speech to National Young Israel, which took him on a tour of Hamas tunnels found in Israel, he said that “Zionism and Americanism are the front lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today.”
