Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Saturday praised his country’s handling of the Temple Mount crisis in Jerusalem in recent weeks and said Jordan would continue to fulfill its “historic role” of protecting “Islamic and Christian holy sites” in the city and preventing their “Judaization” while ensuring the maintenance of the status quo at the sensitive compound.Speaking to a group of local journalists, the Jordanian monarch said Amman worked continuously to “contain
the ramifications” of Israel’s imposed security measures at entrances to the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif which houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock sanctuary, and to pressure Israel to roll back the installations and “through our common stand with our Palestinian brethren.”Israel took the rare step of briefly shutting down the Temple Mount in the wake of a July 14 terror attack in which three Israeli Arab gunmen killed two Israeli police officers with weapons they had smuggled onto the holy site, and reopened it two days later with metal detectors and cameras in place. READ MORE
