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The Village Idiot In The Middle East
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Robert Spencer : Jordan’s Waqf has the power to manage Islamic buildings and Muslim
visitors on the Temple Mount only because Israel allows it. Just after
the Six-Day War, when Israel came into possession of the Old City, it
allowed the Jordanian Waqf to continue to exercise such power, as it had
before the war. Israel might have withheld its approval; it might have
entrusted the management of the Islamic buildings and visitors on the
Temple Mount to other Muslim states. Both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have
in the past expressed an interest in having a greater role in the
management of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Compound. Israel might even have
assigned the management of the Islamic sites on Temple Mount to Israeli
Arabs. Instead, it continued to privilege Jordan’s Waqf in that role.
What’s more, Moshe Dayan set down a rule that was most regrettable: to
placate the defeated Arabs, Dayan ruled that Jews could not say prayers,
either aloud or silently, on the Temple Mount. And King Abdullah, far
from being grateful for that and other Israeli concessions — including
allowing new mosques to be built on and under the Al-Aqsa Compound — is
now attempting to increase Jordan’s power on the Temple Mount at
Israel’s expense. That is deplorable but predictable. What is
deplorable, but not predictable, has been Joe Biden’s apparent approval
of Abdullah’s attempted power grab.
Last week [on May 10],
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi brazenly declared that “Israel
has no sovereignty over the holy sites in Jerusalem! It is a Muslim
place of worship, and only the Jordanian Waqf has full authority over
the management of the compound,” he avowed. And with additional chutzpah, he added “This is occupied Palestinian land.”
Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi is declaring the Temple Mount, the
holiest site in Judaism, where both the First Temple, destroyed by the
Babylonians in 586 B.C., and the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans
in 70 A.D., had stood, as “occupied Palestinian land.” Jews were in
Jerusalem, and praying at the First Temple, more than 2000 years before a
single Muslim showed up in Jerusalem, or indeed, before a single Muslim
even existed. Yet Safadi wants us to believe that Israel has “no right
to sovereignty over the holy sites in Jerusalem” for it is solely “a
Muslim place of worship.” No First Temple, no Second Temple, no 3500
years of an uninterrupted Jewish presence in the Old City. Three
thousand years of Jewish history on the Mount are to be erased by
Jordanian fiat.
And “only the Jordanian Waqf has full authority over the management
of the compound.” Nonsense on stilts, of course. The Jordanian Waqf does
not now, and never will, be allowed to regulate the visits of Jewish
visitors to the holiest site in Judaism. Nor does the Waqf prevent
Jewish visitors from bringing prayer shawls, prayer books, and tefillin
to the Mount. It is not the Waqf that prevents Jewish visitors from
praying aloud or silently mouthing prayers on the Mount. All of those
tasks are undertaken by the Israeli police alone, and have been ever
since Israel took possession of the Temple Mount in June, 1967. If Ayman
Safadi is not careful, Israel may start negotiating with the Saudis, or
the Turks, to take over, or at least share, management of the Muslim
sites on, and Muslim visitors to, the Temple Mount. Does Jordan think it
has more support in the Muslim world than Saudi Arabia, or Turkey?
In 2017 Raed Daana, a key religious authority in Jerusalem
and former Director of Preaching and Guidance at the Al-Aqsa Mosque
Directorate, told Al-Monitor that Saudi efforts to take over the sites’ administration were “serious and real.”
The London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper revealed that there were
behind-the-scenes differences in 2018 between the Jordanian and Saudi
delegations during the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union, which took place
in Morocco. Saudi Arabia rejected Jordan’s assertion of its guardianship
of Jerusalem’s holy sites, the paper said. Four months later, Saudi
Arabia announced a donation of $150 million in support of Jerusalem’s
Islamic holy sites. The Saudis know the power of money; they’ve been in
the business of buying support practically since the first oil well in
the Eastern Province started to gush.
Although decision-makers in Saudi Arabia have not publicly announced
their desire to manage the holy sites in Jerusalem, several Saudi media
circles have called for such a scenario. Abdul Hamid al-Hakim, a
Saudi media figure close to the Saudi ruling family, called during the
BBC’s “Talking Point” program in 2019 for the Muslim holy sites in
Jerusalem to be under Saudi administration.
As for Turkey, it has been buying property in east Jerusalem staffed
with Turks, and spending money on Palestinian projects in east
Jerusalem, in an attempt to expand its influence among the local Arabs.
Erdogan apparently hopes to pressure Jordan into sharing with Turkey the
management over the Muslim holy sites on Temple Mount.
Israel could threaten Jordan by encouraging both the Saudis and the
Turks to claim a larger role in the management of the Muslim holy sites
on Temple Mount, unless Jordan stops insisting that Israel “has no
sovereignty over the holy sites in Jerusalem.” Israel annexed east
Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, in 1980. It allows the Jordanian
Waqf to manage the Muslim sites on Temple Mount, as they did before
1967, but that is all.
Amman now claims
“custodianship” of all Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem, a
claim that it invented out of thin air! Israel never has recognized
Jordanian “custodianship” over any holy sites in Jerusalem.
The Jordanian Waqf is entrusted only with the management of the
Islamic sites on, and Muslim visitors to, the Temple Mount. “Management”
of a site does not imply the larger power contained in “custodianship.”
The Saudis are the “custodians” of the Two Holy Mosques. This means the
Kingdom not only sees to the management of both the Great Mosque in
Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, but also has total control
over who can visit, in what numbers, at what times, and allowed to do
what. The Jordanian Waqf never had that power over the Temple Mount that
King Abdullah now claims. The Israeli police are also the guarantors of
security on the Temple Mount. When Arab rioters on the Temple Mount
hurl rocks and Molotov cocktails at Jews worshipping at the Western Wall
far below, it is the Israeli police who pursue and arrest them, not
members of the Waqf. It is the Israeli government that decides when to
limit visitors, both Jewish and Muslim, in times of great tension. For
example, when the Palestinians declared a “day of rage” on July 21,2017,
Israel allowed only Muslim worshippers over the age of 50 to visit the
Temple Mount, as experience has shown that they are much less likely to
riot.
And here are a few questions one would like to ask our president about his meeting with Abdullah:
Did you tell the King that he should make sure that neither his
Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi, nor any other Jordanian official, ever
again claims that Israel has no rights on the Temple Mount, which is the
holiest site in Judaism?
Did you ask the King to publicly denounce the Arab rioters who so
often hurl rocks and Molotov cocktails at Jews worshipping at the
Western Wall far below?
Did you explain to the King that of course Jews have as much right as
Muslims, even if they have not yet exercised that right, to say prayers
on the Temple Mount?
Our harum-scarum leader will reply, alas, unaware that he is channeling molly-bloom-in-reverse: No I said No I mean No.
