AMMAN: Jordan’s King Abdallah on Wednesday demanded the international community take firm action to stop Israel’s actions in Jerusalem, saying the holy city is a “red line.”
“Jerusalem is a red line and the world should not be silent about Israel’s attempts to get rid of Jerusalem’s Arabs residents, Muslims or Christians,” the king told Catherine Ashton, visiting EU foreign policy chief, according to a palace statement.
Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, “demands the international community take a firm, swift, direct and effective action to stop Israel’s provocative measures in Jerusalem, that seek to change its identity and threaten holy sites there,” he said.
Israel, however, on Wednesday dismissed mounting pressure to stop building homes for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman saying the demands were “unreasonable.”
“This demand to forbid Jews from building in east Jerusalem is totally unreasonable,” Lieberman said at a joint news conference with Ashton.
“I think that this demand, it comes, in many ways, as an opportunity for the international community to jump on Israel and apply pressure to Israel and to demand things that are unreasonable,” the right-wing minister said.
Earlier, Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser
Judeh announced Wednesday that he had sent an “urgent” message to the members of the Middle East Quartet urging immediate intervention to stop unilateral Israeli measures in East Jerusalem. Judeh made the announcement during a press conference with Ashton.
“I have today sent urgent messages to the Quartet members — the US, the EU, Russia and the UN — urging the world community’s immediate intervention to put an end to Israel’s unilateral measures in East Jerusalem and elsewhere because they may cause the derailment of the peace process,” he said.
Ashton said that the EU was considering enhancing its support to the Palestinian Authority in terms of “institutional building.” Ashton said that she was “very encouraged” by her talks with Judeh from whom she “heard directly of the issues and concerns which we share.” Judeh praised Ashton’s earlier remarks in Cairo where she dismissed the Israeli settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as an obstacle to peace. The Quartet is due to hold a meeting in Moscow on Friday.
The EU’s top diplomat said that she was hopeful about the meeting of the Quartet in Moscow for removing obstacles in the US-brokered indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
“I am on my way to the Quartet meeting in Moscow where there will be an opportunity to do more and to try to give support to the move to proximity talks which will be leading to formal negotiations and a solution to the issues,” said Ashton.
Meanwhile, the Arab League chief said on Wednesday that a renewal of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks would be “pointless” in the present climate, following the worst riots to shake Jerusalem in years. “Negotiations with Israel at this time are pointless,” Amr Moussa told reporters in Beirut, adding that Arab states would address the rising tension in Jerusalem at their March 27-28 summit in Libya.
In a separate development, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry summoned Israel’s charge d’affaires on Wednesday in protest at its “provocative measures” in East Jerusalem. Egypt delivered “a clear message to the effect that Israel must immediately stop all provocative and illegal measures that feed the cycle of conflict,” the ministry said in a statement.
Israel, meanwhile, lifted its tight restrictions on Palestinian access to Jerusalem’s holiest shrine on Wednesday and called off an extended West Bank closure but it also kept thousands of police officers on alert as an uneasy calm settled over the holy city.
Also, Netanyahu immediately distanced himself from his brother-in-law’s characterization of US President Barack Obama as “anti-Semitic” because of the US leader’s objection to Israeli construction in East Jerusalem.
— With input from agencies
