Secretary of Defense nominee suggested Third Temple could be built on Temple Mount

Pete Hegseth celebrates Independence Day on ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ on July 4, 2021 in New York City. Photo by James Devaney/GC Images.

(JNS) — 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.”