Jordan is intensifying its pressure on Israel to bring back what it calls “the historic status quo of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque” in order to avoid violent confrontations and an even broader conflict, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing Jordanian officials and Western diplomats.
According to Reuters, Jordan told Washington that after the end of Ramadan they should discuss with Israel the steps it should take to return to the status quo on the Temple Mount 22 years ago. Almost 22 years ago, on September 28, 2000, then-candidate for the prime minister’s post Ariel Sharon paid a well-covered visit to the Temple Mount and declared that “every Jew has the right to visit the Temple Mount.” The visit and the statement provoked riots on the Temple Mount and were presented by the Arabs as the reason for the outbreak of the second intifada. Sharon was elected, and since then, a succession of Israeli governments have gradually eased the access of Jewish visitors to the holiest site for Jews.
On April 18, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi discussed how important it was for Israelis and PA Arabs to work together to end the violence and refrain from escalations. Yes, dear reader, Antony Blinken can be infuriating.
On the same day, King Abdullah II of Jordan accused Israel of “unilateral” moves against Muslims on the Temple Mount which “seriously undermined the prospects for peace in the region.” He was referring to Israeli police removing 400 Arab rioters armed with stones, metal rods, and whatever else they could throw at Jews from behind their barricades inside the Al Aqsa Mosque. Abdullah, whose Bedouin Legionnaires regularly beat, arrest, and kill the PA Arabs on their side of the Jordan River, blamed Israel for “provocative acts” in the holy compounds that violated “the legal and historic status quo” of the Muslims.
Yes, King Abdullah can also be infuriating, especially considering the number of assassinations he has escaped due to Israeli support. Also, the water he and millions of Arabs drink in his mostly desert country comes from Israel. And you thought Chutzpah was a Jewish trait…
Jordan seeks to significantly increase the number of unarmed Jordanian guards in the Temple Mount compound in a way that would bolster the Jordanian waqf’s position and allow it to prevent riots, thus removing the need for the police to take aggressive action. Of course, the hundreds of Jordanian guards on the mountaintop are often engaged in inciting the rioters.
Religious Zionism Chairman MK Bezalel Smotrich blamed the Jordanian insolent demands on the coalition crisis with Ra’am: “Mansour Abbas travels to Jordan and immediately afterward the Jordanians submit a document with delusional demands to the Americans regarding the Temple Mount. This is not a Jordanian document of demands, but a document of demands from Mansour Abbas to the Israeli government, and Bennett understands this well. The continued existence of the government depends, as usual, on the dangerous whims of Mansour Abbas. Every day that this government continues to exist poses a danger to the State of Israel. The good news is that the days of this evil left-wing government are numbered.”
Perhaps. But Mansour Abbas is by far not the only enemy of Jewish aspirations to visit the site of our Holy Temple – there are plenty of ministers and MKs who would be happy to curb the religious rights of Jews on the Temple Mount. Deputy Minister of the Economy Yair Golan (Meretz), said on Wednesday that the government takes into account the wishes of the party led by MK Mansour Abbas regarding the formulation of policy around the Al-Aqsa Mosque. “Our goal is first and foremost that the Temple Mount not explode and also that the status quo will be maintained,” Golan told Ynet. “When we formulate a policy, it reflects the wishes and needs of the members of the coalition, so it is clear that we take into account the wishes of Ra’am, and that is fine with me,” Golan concluded.
MK Nir Orbach (Yamina) tweeted in response: “Yair, let me understand, are you forcibly trying to dismantle the government?”
Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amos Gilad, former head of the Defense Ministry’s Political Security Division, told 103FM Thursday morning that “Fire rising on the Temple Mount immediately threatens Jordan and this is the background to all the Jordanian Prime Minister’s outbursts (Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh praised the Arab rioters on the Temple Mount – DI).”
Gilad argued that Israel can’t remove its police from the Temple Mount because without it, who would keep the rioters at bay? “Imagine there are 200,000 people on a mountain and Israel is not there, then who is there? After all, the Jordanians are not ready to send the Jordanian army, so who is there?”
I was tempted to say Tony Blinken and a battalion of US Marines, but you know, after the hurried exit from Afghanistan I’d stick with the Jerusalem cops…
