AMMAN — The ongoing crisis engendered by Israel’s latest decision to allow Jewish
extremists to visit the
Al-Aqsa Mosque complex during Jewish Passover while
preventing Muslim worshippers from accessing the Muslim site has cast a dark
shadow over the 28-year-old Jordanian-Israeli relationship.
اضافة اعلان
For years Israel has tried to alter the historical
status quo at the Al-Aqsa complex, which includes dozens of
Muslim sites, in
clear violation of the 1994 Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty. In the past decade, and
under the governments of Benyamin Netanyahu, His Majesty King Abdullah had to
intervene personally on more than one occasion to stop Israel from altering the
situation of the holy Muslim site.
Now, political analysts believe that Jordan has to
be ready to adopt a different approach and prepare for the worst, instead of
using the same traditional pressure tools and language of condemnation.
King Abdullah met with Israeli Defense Minister
Benny Gantz, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog on
separate occasions in Amman in March, to ensure that calm in maintained in the
occupied territories, East Jerusalem and at Al-Aqsa in particular, in order to
avoid a repetition of what happened last May. Unfortunately, the Israeli
government had other plans.
Jordanian officials are now warning that Israel is
trying to enforce spatial and temporal division of Al-Aqsa, which is under the
Hashemite Custodianship.
Former foreign minister and the first Jordanian
ambassador to Israel Marwan Muasher told
Jordan News that Jordan should
seriously review its relationship with Israel and reconsider all its options,
adding that the current Jordanian position is not sustainable since adhering to
a two-state solution is not achieving any results.
“We are trying to strike an impossible balance
between severely criticizing Israel on the political security front while
maintaining strong economic ties with them. It is a contradictory relation,”
Muasher said.
He added that measures like expelling the Israeli
ambassador from Amman are not enough to solve the issue of violations at
Al-Aqsa Mosque, “not to mention the whole issue of occupation”.
Political Analyst
Labib Kamhawi told
Jordan News that the relationship has passed the boiling point and is ready for an
explosion. He also believes that Jordan should change its traditional ways of
trying to resolve this issue, and “decide if its position will be a publicity
campaign that will not have an effect on the ground or to resort to all
possible options, including canceling the 1994 peace treaty”.
“The goal is to prevent dividing Al-Aqsa and prevent
violating our authority over it, not to protest after the situation escalates.
If the Jordanian position is to pay lip service, then things will get much
worse, and that will inflame people’s emotions,” Kamhawi said.
He added that he is not optimistic that Jordan will
speak a different language, which would only allow the situation to escalate
“since Jordan has a fragile economy and cannot bear American pressure”.
“I am more optimistic about what the
Palestinians inside the occupied territories will achieve. The current stage is closer to an
explosion because forthcoming violations at Al-Aqsa mean that the Arab identity
of Jerusalem has ended,” Kamhawi said.
He added that the Hashemite Custodianship over the
holy sites has slowly eroded due to Israeli violations over the years, and
stressed that religious custody and political sovereignty should not be
confused; the latter is the remit of the
Palestinian Authority, since it is not
a religious issue.
Former deputy prime minister and foreign affairs
minister Jawad Anani told
Jordan News that the Kingdom does not have new
tools to deal with Israeli violations, besides the traditional ways, which
include using its leverage with the US and Europe to apply pressure on Israel.
Now even that will not work, what with the West occupied with the
Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Anani said that one reason for the provocations at
Al-Aqsa Mosque is the weakness of the Israeli government, which could fall if
it does not appease the extremist Israeli right wing.
“They are trying to play a game to please the
extremists because they know that without them, they cannot stay in power,”
Anani said, adding that the relationship with Israel now is not different from
that during Netanyahu’s tenure, “which was troubled for years”.
Political analyst and columnist
Amer Al-Sabaileh
told
Jordan News that the political and diplomatic relationship between
Jordan and Israel is back at a critical point.
“That is not bizarre, since Jordan uses the same old
tools and language to deal with the conflict,” he said.
Israel is pushing Jordan toward an unsustainable
political and diplomatic relationship, “so if Jordan, today, wants to influence
and make a change, it should do more than engage through formal meetings and
invitations”, he said.
He does not agree that the relationship is reaching the
boiling point; instead, he believes that Israel is “going forward with whatever
it wants”, and the tie with Jordan “currently has no real value since Israel
has stable relations with other
Arab countries, like the Gulf”.
Read more National news
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
