Jordan’s King Abdullah has called on Israel to respect Muslim rights at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in a meeting with Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz.
The meeting on Tuesday appeared to be a joint effort to lower Israeli-Palestinian tensions as the holy month of Ramadan approaches.
Jordan has said that the king “stressed maintaining the comprehensive calm requires respecting the right of Muslims to perform their religious rites in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque”.
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The meeting followed a two-day summit in Israel attended by the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Egypt, as well as US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
The Palestinians were not invited to the summit, despite the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories being a central feature of Arab-Israeli relations for the last 50 years.
While the Arab ministers convened in Israel, King Abdullah paid a rare visit on Monday to the occupied West Bank, where he held talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog is expected to hold talks with King Abdullah in Jordan on Wednesday, official sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
Israel and Jordan maintain close security ties and have diplomatic relations, but relations have soured in recent years because of tensions over Jerusalem’s holy sites, Israel’s expansion of West Bank settlements and the lack of any progress in the long-moribund peace process with the Palestinians.
The site of Al-Aqsa Mosque is a friction point where confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli forces trigger most.
