AMMAN: Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Monday restrictions imposed by Israel on Muslim worshippers’ access to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan was pushing the situation toward an “explosion.”
In remarks on state media, Safadi said his country, which overviews the holy site, rejected Israel’s announced move to limit access during Ramadan, citing security needs with war raging in Gaza.
“We warn that desecrating the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque is playing with fire,” Safadi said in a joint news conference with the Vatican’s foreign minister Archbishop Paul Gallagher.
The compound, the third holiest shrine in Islam, is also the site of the most sacred place for Jews who know it as Temple Mount. It has been a longstanding flashpoint for trouble.
Jordan echoes the Palestinian view that such restrictions on Muslim worshippers, already facing war and hunger in Gaza, were an attack on freedom of worship.
After hard-right Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said recently he wanted tougher restrictions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the numbers admitted would be similar to last year.
“Not allowing worshippers to perform their religious duties and their rituals in this holy month and restricting freedom to enter the Aqsa mosque, all that pushes torwards an explosive situation which is what we are warning about,” Safadi added.
Israel was also risking wider violence in the Israeli occupied West Bank by what Safadi said were unilateral Israeli measures to change the status quo citing accelerated Jewish settlement building on Arab land and what he termed as stepped up “terror attacks by armed settlers on Palestinian villagers.
“The West Bank is boiling,” Safadi added.
The Israeli-occupied West Bank has since the Gaza war seen a surge of confrontations, with around 400 Palestinians killed in clashes with security forces or Jewish settlers.
Most world powers view as illegal settlements Israel has built on land it captured in a 1967 war with Arab powers.
The holy month of Ramadan came at a time when Palestinians in the enclave were dying of hunger with Israel using food as a weapon of war, Safadi said.
“Ramadan comes with Gaza bombed by Israel and women unable to find food for their children and five months that have passed with the world failing to preserve human digintiy,” Safadi said.
Israel’s relentless campaign in Gaza has caused increasing alarm across the world as the growing risk of famine threatens to add to a death toll that has already passed 31,000.
Israel denies it is responsible for the wider hunger or waging war on civilians.
Jordan says Israel’s Al-Aqsa mosque restrictions in Ramadan pushing toward ‘explosion’
https://arab.news/vwzey
Jordan says Israel’s Al-Aqsa mosque restrictions in Ramadan pushing toward ‘explosion’
- Jordanian FM says his country rejects Israel’s announced move to limit access to holy mosque during Ramadan
- The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is also the site of the most sacred place for Jews, who know it as Temple Mount
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
