JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s defense minister met with King Abdullah II of Jordan in Amman on Tuesday in what both sides said was an effort to maintain calm in Jerusalem ahead of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s meeting with Abdullah was his second this year and is part of a broader effort by Israel’s new government to cultivate closer relations with its neighbor after years of neglect.
It came a day after the King of Jordan visited the West Bank and met with Palestinian leaders while Israeli and Arab diplomats held a summit with the visiting US Secretary of State in southern Israel. Israel.
The king’s high-profile visit – his first in nearly five years – and Jordan’s absence from the ministers’ meeting served as a reminder that the Palestinian issue has not disappeared from the regional agenda.
Tensions between Palestinians and Israeli security forces in Jerusalem during Ramadan last year contributed to the eruption of the 11-day war between militant group Hamas and Israel in May.
Gantz’s office said the two men discussed “steps Israel plans to take to allow freedom of prayer in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria,” referring to the West Bank by its biblical names, as well as ” additional civil measures that will benefit the Palestinians”. .”
The royal palace said the king “stressed that maintaining global calm requires respecting the right of Muslims to perform their religious rites in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. The mosque is built on a hill revered by Jews as the Temple Mount. The contested complex is a frequent hotbed of violence.
During Gantz’s visit to Jordan, Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s office said he would make a state visit to Amman on Wednesday to meet Abdullah and discuss “deepening Israeli-Jordanian relations.”
Although Herzog made a clandestine visit last year after taking office, his trip to Amman would be the first official state visit by an Israeli president since the two countries signed a historic peace treaty in 1994. The Israeli presidency is a largely ceremonial post.
Israel and Jordan enjoy close security ties and maintain diplomatic relations, but relations have deteriorated in recent years due to tensions around the holy site of Jerusalem, Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank and the lack of progress in the long moribund peace process with the Palestinians.
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