AMMAN (Reuters) – Jordan’s King Abdullah hosted Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid for talks on Thursday about coordinating ways of securing calm in Jerusalem, a frequent flashpoint of Palestinian protests, officials on both sides said.
The visit came “ahead of the (Muslim fast month) of Ramadan and in light of reports of growing tension in Jerusalem”, the Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement.
A royal palace statement said Abdullah told Lapid that Israel’s “unilateral steps” in the holy city from accelerated Jewish settlement building to its attempts to change the legal status quo of the city undermined a two-state solution.
Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its “eternal and indivisible capital”. It annexed East Jerusalem, which includes the Old City, after the 1967 conflict, in a move that has not won international recognition.
Abdullah pushed for a resumption of stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to resolve the decades old conflict with the goal of setting up an independent Palestinian state that co-exists alongside Israel, the palace statement said
Israeli police confrontations with Palestinians during Ramadan last year helped stoke a May war in Gaza.
Ramadan next month coincides with Judaism’s Passover festival and Christian Easter. Jerusalem is holy to all three faiths. Jordan is the custodian of al Aqsa, a major mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The Israeli foreign ministry quoted Lapid as saying that he and Abdullah “agreed that we must work together to calm tension and promote understandings.”
Jordan’s Hashemite ruling family is the custodian of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in East Jerusalem.
(Writing by Dan Williams; Additonal reporting by Suleiman al Khalidi; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Ed Osmond)
