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 religious site in Jerusalem, with the potential to "trigger a religious conflict". This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
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 triggered riots in the British Mandate period between the world wars, and a 2000 visit to the compound by the rightwing leader Ariel Sharon, soon to become the Israeli prime minister, ignited more than four years of violence in the second intifada.
Jordan is uniquely vulnerable to the impact of Israel's broader ethnic cleansing campaign in the West Bank, which Amman fears may also escalate dramatically as the October elections loom. There is anxiety over what the Israeli government might do in the three months before the vote, as radical elements seek to change the geography of the region in ways which could be difficult to reverse.
For Amman, the worst-case scenario is an attempt at the mass deportation of Palestinians from the West Bank, which would destabilise Jordan in several ways, including economic costs, the political impact of an influx of an angry, dispossessed population, and threats to the country's delicate demographic balance.
"Our position that this is a red line that we will not allow to be crossed. We have made that known to everybody that we will do whatever it takes to prevent any attempt at Israeli displacement of Palestinians into Jordan," Safadi said. "Not only will that be a violation of international law and of the right of the Palestinians to stay on their land, but that will also be a tremendous escalation."
Jordanians descended from previous waves of Palestinian refugees already represent more than half of Jordan's 11.5-million population, and the country's original residents, the "East Bankers", are wary of what they see as a further dilution of national identity.
Israel has already refused to renew a 2021 water agreement under which it shared 100m cubic metres a year to its parched neighbour, one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. It reverted to the 50m cubic metres originally agreed in the 1994 treaty, which falls far short of the needs of a much bigger population than the Jordan of 32 years ago.
The Israeli government reportedly halved the water supply in retaliation for criticism from the Jordanian government of the mass killing of Palestinian civilians by Israel in the Gaza war, and officials have hinted that the taps could be turned back on if the criticism ended.
The Israeli government's provocative actions in Jerusalem and the West Bank and over water raise the political cost to the monarchy of maintaining normal relations with its western neighbour.
"Anti-normalisation sentiment here has grown even larger than before due to the Zionist state's plans of annexation of the West Bank."