“Israel’s policy of maintaining the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed and will not change,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement from Washington, a few hours before he was due to address the US Congress.

Earlier on Wednesday, the pro-settler right-wing national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told parliament: “I am the political echelon, and the political echelon allows Jewish prayer at Temple Mount.”

The compound, in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, houses Islam’s third-holiest shrine, Al-Aqsa mosque, and is also revered in Judaism as the Temple Mount, a vestige of two ancient temples.

Under a delicate decades-old “status quo” arrangement with Muslim authorities, Israel allows Jews to visit but refrain from prayer. The site is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and suggestions that Israel would alter rules about religious observance there have led to violence in the past.

Defence minister Yoav Gallant, responding to Ben-Gvir on X, said: “There’s a pyromaniac sitting in the Israeli government and trying to ignite the Middle East.”

Since bringing Ben-Gvir into government in 2022, Netanyahu has overruled many of his ideas. Since the Oct 7 attack on Israeli towns that triggered the war in Gaza, Ben-Gvir has been excluded from Netanyahu’s decision-making war cabinet.

Gallant said he objected to giving Ben-Gvir a seat. Ben-Gvir, in response, said Gallant was pushing for an irresponsible deal that would end the Gaza war without vanquishing Hamas.

The US, Qatar, and Egypt are mediating a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that would include a hostage release.

Over the past few months, Ben-Gvir has voiced objection to a ceasefire, called for Israel to permanently occupy and settle the Palestinian enclave and has issued threats to bring down Netanyahu’s government if it ends the war.