Amman hosted an emergency ministerial meeting on Wednesday to rally support behind Jordan’s custodianship of Jerusalem’s holy sites, as Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warned that Israeli measures risk igniting a wider religious conflict.
Speaking at the meeting, Safadi said Israel was entrenching its illegal occupation of East Jerusalem by expanding settlements, annexing land, confiscating property and imposing restrictions designed to isolate the city from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.
He accused Israeli authorities of "violating the sanctity of Islamic and Christian holy places and curbing freedom of worship for both communities".
Quoted by the Jordan Times, he said: “Christian clergy are suffering from the savagery of extremism, and churches are confronting attempts to seize their assets and lands through illegal legislation enacted by Israel."
He added that such moves flouted international law, which denies an occupying power sovereignty over occupied land.
He said Israel’s “provocative policies” were targeting the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound through systematic attacks aimed at undermining its Islamic identity and altering the long‑standing status quo.
'Not religious'
Safadi said that the Arab‑Israeli conflict was "not religious" in origin but rooted in Israel’s occupation and denial of Palestinian statehood.
Yet he cautioned that repeated violations at Al‑Aqsa could fuel a religious narrative and "trigger calls for a global jihad" to defend one of Islam’s three holiest sites, with consequences “uncontrollable if it erupts".
“We sound the alarm and urge the international community to take decisive action to stop Israeli violations in Jerusalem, end policies that entrench the occupation, restore hope for peace, and end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza,” he said, calling on the world to “act before it is too late”.
'Jerusalem is a tinderbox'
The Amman meeting brought together foreign ministers of the Arab Ministerial Committee, an initiative of Saudi Arabia, tasked with countering Israeli actions in occupied Jerusalem, the Arab League secretary‑general, and counterparts from Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia.
Jordan framed the gathering as urgent amid what it described as an “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover of the Al‑Aqsa compound, with the potential to “trigger a religious conflict” extending far beyond Palestine.
Safadi told the Guardian newspaper that “Jerusalem is a tinderbox” and that tampering with the status quo could reverberate across the Muslim world.
Amman’s alarm follows a string of government‑backed incursions by Jewish religious extremists on to the Al‑Aqsa/Dome of the Rock compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right, led by national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, stormed the site, praying and performing rituals around the compound in what Jordanian officials called "the worst violation in modern history".
(with newswires)
