Arab and Muslim officials meeting in Amman on Wednesday condemned what they described as an Israeli “escalation” in “the occupied city of Jerusalem,” including what they called the “inflammatory” statements and actions of extremist settlers and Israeli government ministers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Christian holy sites, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said.
Foreign ministers and representatives from Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, the Palestinian Authority (PA), Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Malaysia, Egypt, and Morocco, together with the secretary-general of the League of Arab States, agreed to condemn recent Israeli policies and measures that they claimed were intended to alter the “Arab, Islamic, and Christian identity” of Jerusalem.
The participants alleged that Israeli violations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which sits atop the Temple Mount – holy to Judaism as the site of the First and Second Temples – included attempts to “alter its historic and legal status quo and impose temporal and spatial division.” They also accused Israel of facilitating what they described as escalating incursions by extremist settlers, Israeli ministers and officials; restricting worshippers’ access to the mosque; assaulting worshippers; obstructing the work of the Jerusalem Awqaf and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs Department; and conducting illegal excavations beneath the mosque and in its vicinity.
Thousands of Jews, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, ascended the Temple Mount in recent weeks to mark the fast of Tisha B’Av, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Under the longstanding status quo, Jews and Christians are permitted to visit the Temple Mount but are generally prohibited from praying there, while Muslims are permitted to worship. Israeli police detained dozens of Jewish visitors on Tisha B’Av after they allegedly violated restrictions on prayer by reciting the Shema. (Read More)
