JERUSALEM (JTA) — Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick said the Palestinian gunman who shot him apologized before firing.

“He told me, ‘I’m very sorry, you are the enemy of Al-Aksa,’ ” Glick told Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau, who was visiting Glick in his hospital room on Monday, Israeli media reported. The gunman was referring to the mosque on the Temple Mount.

Glick has been hospitalized at Shaarey Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem since the Oct. 29 attack outside a conference center in the Israeli capital. He began breathing on his own without a respirator nearly a week ago.

The assailant shot Glick at close range in the chest and abdomen before fleeing on a motorcycle.

Hours later the alleged assailant, a member of Islamic Jihad who worked in the center’s kitchen, was killed in a shootout outside his eastern Jerusalem home.

Immediately before he was shot, Glick had spoken at the center on the Jewish right to pray on the Temple Mount.

“I am praying with you that God willing, both of us will stand there in order to give thanks,” Lau said of the Temple Mount, referring to the messianic age.

Israel’s Chief Rabbinate has ruled that Jews should not visit the site because of its holiness.