Islamic
endowments minister says Israel wants to partition the Temple Mount
By Elhanan Miller January 3, 2013, 10:08 am
Muslim worshipers on the Temple
Mount during the festival of Eid Al-Adha, October 26, 2012 (photo credit:
Sleiman Khader/Flash90)
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A Jordanian minister accused Israel
on Wednesday of planning to partition the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem
and the Temple Mount plaza surrounding it in order to erect the third Temple.
Islamic Endowments Minister Abdul
Salam Abadi told a visiting clerical delegation from Australia that
he received instructions from the “Hashemite leadership” to safeguard the Arab
and Islamic identity of Jerusalem, Jordanian media reported.
Abadi said Israel was planning to
divide the mosque from its courtyards with a 144-dunam structure.
Jordan, which extended its
sovereignty to East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1950, continues to
administer the Islamic holy sites on the Temple Mount. Abadi told the
Australian delegation that his ministry employs 600 civil servants in Jerusalem
and oversees 40 Jerusalem schools.
According to the independent
Jordanian daily Al-Ghad, Abadi stressed the need to support the residents of
Jerusalem “in their steadfastness in the face of the repeated Israeli attacks
on the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem.”
He did not expand on what he meant.
Jordan and Israel signed a peace
agreement in 1994.
Jews are banned from praying on the
Temple Mount by the Jordanian department of endowments, known as the Waqf, which
administers the plaza surrounding the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.
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