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| On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right stormed the area. Photograph: Ilia Yefimovich/AFP/Getty Images |
Jerusalem’s most important Muslim religious site facing ‘imminent’ threat of Israeli takeover, says Jordan
Country convenes emergency meeting of ministers from Arab and Islamic world, fearing such a move could ‘trigger a religious conflict’
Jordan is convening an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the Arab and Islamic world over what it says is an “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover of the most important Muslim site in Jerusalem, with the potential to “trigger a religious conflict”.
The meeting on Wednesday – and the Jordanian warning – follow an escalating pattern of government-backed incursions by Jewish religious extremists on the compound around al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, in violation of a status quo treaty overseen by Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, by which only Muslims can pray at the site.
On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right – mostly settlers led by the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir – stormed the area, known to Jews as the Temple Mount. They prayed and performed rituals all around the compound in what Jordanian officials said was the worst violation in modern history.
Amman has also been alarmed at a recent recruitment drive for religious Jews for a special Temple Mount police unit, and is braced for more direct challenges to traditional Jordanian custodianship by extremist Israeli leaders in the major Jewish holidays in September. This year, those holidays will come amid an intense election campaign, in which the far-right coalition of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be fighting for survival.
“This is a constant threat, a dangerous threat that we’re trying to counter in every tool that we have possible,” Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told the Guardian. “We warn that tampering with the status quo … could trigger a religious conflict that will reverberate beyond Palestine and Jordan into the whole Muslim world.”
Safadi, who will host Wednesday’s emergency meeting, bringing together his counterparts from Arab League countries, as well as Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, said it was “something that the whole international community should be aware of. Jerusalem is a tinderbox.
“We’re trying to explain the danger. We’re protesting legally. We are trying to create awareness of the imminent danger in the continuation of those Israeli measures.”
Jordan’s custodianship of al-Aqsa compound dates back to Ottoman times, and the status quo encompassing the city’s religious sites was enshrined in the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. The Hashemite kingdom’s oversight in Jerusalem was expanded to cover Christian holy sites in the 20th century, and its custodianship was reaffirmed after the 1967 war, and in the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.
Infringement by Jewish extremists... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/04/jordan-convenes-emergency-meeting-israel-religious-conflict-jerusalem