Jerusalem Tensions Affect Relations Between Israel, Jordan, Palestinians

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Two days ago four Israelis were murdered, and eight injured, in an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue.

The two Palestinian perpetrators were shot by police. It was the worst loss of life in a single day in the city since 2008.

The Gaza War between Hamas and Israel last summer may not have extended to the West Bank, but it has unleashed a wave of urban violence in Jerusalem, affecting its transportation system and dividing its Arab and Jewish segments even further apart.

Jerusalem has been on edge for months, with almost nightly clashes in the Arab neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem since the summer murder of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists.

Prior to this latest incident, at least ten people have been killed in the city since July, and dozens injured. There have been running battles between Palestinian youths and Israeli police forces.

Israelis and Palestinians both claim the city as their capital. Of its 800,000 residents, a third are Palestinians who refuse to acknowledge the Israeli annexation of east Jerusalem after 1967 and resist becoming citizens of Israel.

Tension at the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City known to Jews as the Temple Mount (Har Habayit) and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary (Haram al Sharif), has inflamed passions.

On Oct. 30, Israel temporarily barred all access to the site to Muslims for the first time in many years.

This followed the Israeli killing of a Palestinian man suspected of trying to assassinate a right-wing Israeli rabbi, Yehuda Glick, who for years has advocated for Jews to gain more prayer rights on the Temple Mount.

Israeli authorities also added concrete barriers around the 24 stops along Jerusalem’s 14-kilometre light railway, two of which were the sites of deadly vehicular attacks the past few weeks, with Palestinian drivers crashing into Israeli pedestrians.

The sabotaging of the Jerusalem light rail system in the Arab parts of the city is occurring because the Palestinians see it as an attempt by Israel to connect all of Jerusalem in order to strengthen Israeli sovereignty over the entire city.

Palestinians are angered by settlement expansion in east Jerusalem, where Israel has just approved plans to build 200 homes in the Ramot neighbourhood.

The unrest has also strained Israel’s ties with neighboring Jordan, which ruled the Old City between 1948 and 1967. Jordan’s King Abdullah II is al-Aqsa’s official custodian, which includes paying the salaries of about 500 employees of the trust, the Islamic Waqf, which runs the shrine.

The Jordanian minister of Islamic Affairs, Hayel Daoud, called the closing “state terrorism by the Israeli authorities.”

Jordan recalled its ambassador, saying the move was to protest Israeli “violations” at the site. Jordan’s special role there is enshrined in the peace treaty signed with Israel in 1994.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reassured King Abdullah in a phone call that he was committed to maintaining the status quo at the contested holy site, and that Israel would make every effort to restore calm there.

 “If anything happens to al-Aqsa,” warned Oraib al-Rantawi, director of Al Quds Center for Political Studies, a Jordanian research institute, “then we will be entering a religious war between Muslims and Jews.”

To calm the situation, U.S. Secretary of State visited the Jordanian capital, Amman, and met with both King Abdullah and Netanyahu on Nov. 13. Nasser Judeh, Jordan’s foreign minister, said the king had impressed upon Kerry how important the issue was for Jordan.

As part of a deal reached at the meeting in Amman, Israel lifted restrictions on Muslims praying at the mosque.

Is all of this leading to a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising? President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority has denied it. But he did state, on Nov. 11, that “The Muslim and Christian worlds will never accept Israel’s claims that Jerusalem belongs to them.”

Meanwhile, Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement’s radical northern Israel branch, on Nov. 7 gave a sermon in Nazareth about conquering Jerusalem and making it the capital of a Sunni Islamic caliphate.

Events in a pressure cooker and contested city like Jerusalem can quickly spin out of control.