Row over mosque visit brings Jordanian-Israeli relations to low ebb

Jordanian-Israeli relations are at their lowest point since the two countries signed a peace treaty in 1994. Already-strained relations morphed into a full-blown row when Jordanian crown prince Hussein cancelled a trip to the mosque compound in Jerusalem on a Muslim holy day after Israel altered arrangements for the visit.

Jordan retaliated by refusing Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu overflight rights for a journey to the Emirates where he was scheduled to meet Abu Dhabi's crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed. To win votes in next week's election, Netanyahu had touted that encounter as a major advance in Israel's drive to normalise relations with the Arabs.

The Emirates on Wednesday called off Netanyahu’s trip to avoid any claims of interference in Israel’s election.

Known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), and to Jews as the Temple Mount, the compound in Jerusalem contains al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the third-holiest in Islam, and the 7th-century Dome of the Rock. They are located on Mount Moriah on the traditional site of the second Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70.

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Photo opportunity

Jordan benefited from the controversy by standing up to Israel while Netanyahu lost a grand photo opportunity and an appeal to Israeli right-wingers.

While his office admitted there was “a dispute over security and safety arrangements at the site”, Israeli media reported that Prince Hussein turned back at an Israeli-operated West Bank crossing due to disagreement over the large number of armed guards in his party.

On the security front, the prince could not turn up surrounded by Israeli guards. This would echo the September 2000 incursion into the compound by Ariel Sharon, the Israeli politician most hated by Palestinians, with scores of armed soldiers. His presence provoked the second Palestinian intifada.

The prince also objected to Israeli limitations on Palestinians who could enter the compound for prayers on an auspicious day, and interference in his visits to churches.

On the political front, the visit was meant to reassert the 90-year custodianship of Jordan’s ruling family of Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian holy sites. Early in the 20th century Sharif Hussein bin Ali, progenitor of Jordan’s monarchs, assumed this role.

Responsibilities

Jordan’s responsibilities have increased since the 1948 emergence of Israel and the 1967 occupation of East Jerusalem.

The custodianship was reaffirmed in the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, the second by an Arab country, but Israeli religious extremists have violated treaty terms by praying in the compound and calling for replacing the mosques with a Jewish temple. Netanyahu has not suppressed their activities, since he has relied on their support to retain power.

Netanyahu has also alienated Jordan by dismissing the “two-state solution” for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, stepping up illegal settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and calling for Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley.