Acts that only alienate moderate Arabs

This week, Amman witnessed a flurry of activities by envoys of the Vatican stressing the need to finalise the tentative plan for the Holy See’s visit to Jordan and Israel, scheduled within weeks.

Two Jordanians used their high-ranking positions in the Catholic Church, as patriarch and bishop, to influence Jordan to give the Catholic Church more privileges while executing its role as custodian of the holy places in Jerusalem for both Arab Christians and Muslims.

This issue became more intricate since Saudi Arabia has been invited by the United States Secretary of State John Kerry to have key position in administering the post-peace Jerusalem, in spite of objections by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Iranian Shiite ayatollahs.

But whatever arrangements are concluded, Jerusalem will remain a spark for more bloodshed between Muslims and Jews.

Only during the last few months, and since Kerry announced his mission to achieve a framework for peace in the region, Israel started to provoke the Arabs on daily basis. Rabbis and their followers go to Al Aqsa Mosque and chant their prayers, while making the usual rounds.

And at the same feverish pace, Palestinians in greater Jerusalem, with a population of nearly one million, are being coerced, through devilish means, to leave their country in order to make room for more settlers since the 300,000 are not putting the required pressure to make Palestinians leave voluntarily.

The legitimate mayor of Jerusalem, Haj Zaki Al Ghoul, better known as Abu Fawwaz, deported to Amman in 1967, warned this week of a master plan to cleanse the holy city of its Arab component through administrative, economic, financial and political pressure.

And as the direct and indirect players involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continue to argue back and forth, the Netanyahu-Lieberman government has been pressing ahead with its campaign to get rid of Palestinians from occupied Arab Jerusalem and change the demographic features of the city to suit its interests.

If only for technical purposes, the question has to be raised why Israel granted only “residence” permit to the Palestinians of Arab East Jerusalem, although it declared that it was “annexing” the eastern half of the holy city after occupying it through the use of military force in 1967.

In April 2012, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared, again, all settlement activity, including in East Jerusalem, illegal.

With Iran sending to Beirut and Gaza aboard Khalosi C ship great shipments of long-range missiles with capabilities to reach all densely populated Israeli centres, it is high time to stop provoking all Muslims through violations of the sanctity of mosques and desecration of holy sites in Palestine.

Only Al Qaeda and Iran are the beneficiaries of such Israeli acts, which will eventually lead to alienating all moderate Arabs in the region.