IN OLD JERUSALEM, PRAYER CAN BE AN INCENDIARY ACT

By DAVID K. SHIPLER, Special to the New York Times

Published: October 20, 1981

JERUSALEM, Oct. 19— Shortly after noon last Thursday, a group of about 30 Jews walked briskly up a long, curved ramp to the Gate of the Mughrebins, which opens onto Jerusalem's Temple Mount.

There, through the narrow opening, lay the land on which the temples of Solomon and Herod had stood, and where two Moslem mosques now mark the third holiest place of Islam.

All morning, tourists had been going onto the Temple Mount through this gate. But when the Jews approached, they were met by a row of six policemen - some Arabs, some Jews - who blocked their way.

A few of the young men in yarmulkes tried to push past the officers, but were roughly shoved back. The rest stood and sang Israeli songs. They were denied entrance because of the incendiary act they wanted to perform there: They wanted to pray. Prayers Can Be an Act of Politics

At the focal point of the Holy Land, where religious intensity reaches an angry pitch, prayers can be an act of politics, even of war. There is no more highly disputed or emotional place for Jews and Moslems to play out their religious conflict, and they have been doing it in this way every week or so for the last 14 years, ever since Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War.

Israeli policy was to leave Moslem and Christian holy sites in Moslem and Christian hands. This meant that the Temple Mount - a flat, 35-acre trapezoid of elevated ground just inside the Old City walls - would remain under Moslem control despite the return of Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem. As a place for prayer, Jews had the Wailing Wall, which is the western retaining wall of the mount.

The Jews had not possessed the Temple Mount since their Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D. In the seventh century, the Moslems built the Mosque of Omar, or Dome of the Rock, there, enshrining an outcropping of rock from which Mohammed was believed to have left the earth on his journey to heaven. In the eighth century, a second mosque, Al Aksa, was completed. The Crusaders captured both in the 11th century, but were driven out by the Moslems in the 12th century.

No Israeli Government has felt willing to withstand the political - and probably military - reprecussions of dislodging them and, as a few fervent believers would like, building a third temple. But every attempt at Jewish prayer, or even archeological excavation, alarms the Moslem hierarchy. Every move is taken as a precursor to expulsion. Bricking Up a Tunnel

The Moslem sensitivity was seen last month, when Orthodox Jews excavating along the Wailing Wall, called the Western Wall by Israelis, found the mouth of a cistern and tunnel leading under the Temple Mount. Arabs quickly came down from the mount, through the tunnel and bricked it up, fearing that the Jews would encroach on Moslem territory. The Israeli Government backed the Moslems and sent policemen to prevent the Jews from advancing.

Since 1967, small groups of Jews, led by Gershon Solomon, a former Jerusalem Councilman in Prime Minister Menachem Begin's Herut Party, have rushed, bluffed, negotiated and sneaked their way through one gate or another onto the Temple Mount to get in a few moments of prayer before being expelled by the police or assaulted by the Arabs.

In mid-June, the police allowed a small group up under the condition that they did not open their prayer books. ''The police walked around with us, escorted us, then told us to leave,'' said Wayne Perlmutter, a 23-year-old immigrant from Woodmere, L.I.

''Eventually we were allowed to sit down, with no books, and learn,'' he said. ''The Arabs would stand three feet from us listening, and if they thought they heard anything like a prayer, they'd go to the cops and have us kicked out. It was really degrading.'' 300 Chanting Arabs

In subsequent weeks, Mr. Perlmutter said, the small groups of worshippers would sit and study Torah. ''Arabs would come and pray right next to us -and it's not easy to learn with 300 Arabs sitting next to you chanting, 'God is great.' ''

On the Ninth of Av, the date in the Jewish calendar marking the destruction of the Second Temple, 15 to 20 Jews went onto the mount to read the Book of Lamentations. Arabs attacked them with sticks and fists, Mr. Perlmutter said. Since the Ninth of Av, which fell on Aug. 9 this year, groups of Jews have been locked out completely. Only individuals, covering their yarmulkes with caps, manage to get onto the mount as tourists to pray quietly, unnoticed.

At the end of Yom Kippur, on Oct. 8, Mr. Perlmutter said he and a friend, Nahum Tuchman, ran through a gate onto the mount and blew shofars, the ram's horns that are sounded on Rosh ha-Shana and at the end of Yom Kippur. Policemen and Arabs grabbed him, hit him and choked him, he said, but there was some satisfaction in having sounded the shofar from the Temple Mount, for the first time in many centuries.

Last week's plan was to get about 150 prospective worshipers at the Gate of the Mughrebins, while a small band slipped in through a less obvious gate. Only 30 or so showed up, and as they were stopped, Mr. Perlmutter and about seven other young men tried their luck elsewhere, unsuccessfully. 'My Heart Is Broken'

After Thursday's failure, Mr. Solomon said simply: ''My heart is broken. I feel very bad. The Temple Mount is the heart of Eretz Israel. Here, when it was was built, Israel was built also. When it was destroyed, Israel was destroyed also.''

''Israel is submitting to Moslem bigotry,'' Mr. Perlmutter declared. ''We don't tell a Moslem he can't walk to the wall, so why should the Moslems tell us we can't walk to the mount? The Government guarantees free access by all religions to their holy sites. The only religion denied free access is Judaism. The Moslems are denying Jews access to our holy site.''

''The Temple Mount Faithful,'' as those trying to pray on the mount call themselves, have various goals. Some want to rebuild the Jewish temple and expel the Moslems. Some want to build a synagogue adjacent to the mosques in a vision of coexistence. They have filed a suit in the Supreme Court accusing the Government of denying them the free access provided by law.

Mr. Solomon is hopeful. He finds some in the Government ''very sympathetic.'' He contends that Mr. Begin was a sympathizer before being elected Prime Minister.

''We will not stop this until we change the mind of the Government,'' he said. ''We will not stop it until we change the minds of all the Jewish people.''

Illustrations: photo of Moslems in prayer map of Jerusalem