P.A. and Jordan sign farcical agreement to ‘defend Jerusalem holy sites’

Over the weekend, PA President Mahmoud Abbas and King Abdullah of Jordan signed an agreement to protect Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, citing the ‘historical Jordanian role in protecting the holy sites in Jerusalem.’  Of course the Jewish holy sites in Judaism’s holiest city were not mentioned, perhaps because of the precedent set by Jordan in ‘protecting’ holy sites during its occupation of the Old City, following the pan-Arab war of ethnic cleansing against the Jews in the 1940’s:

…the Jewish Quarter of the Old City was destroyed and its residents expelled. Fifty-eight synagogues–some hundreds of years old–were destroyed, their contents looted and desecrated. Some Jewish religious sites were turned into chicken coops or animal stalls. The Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, where Jews had been burying their dead for over 2500 years, was ransacked; graves were desecrated; thousands of tombstones were smashed and used as building material, paving stones or for latrines in Arab Legion army camps. The Intercontinental Hotel was built on top of the cemetery and graves were demolished to make way for a highway to the hotel. The Western Wall became a slum area.

The parties also intend to ‘exert joint efforts to protect the city and holy sites from Israeli Judaisation attempts.’  This is in line with the vision of a future Palestinian state completely cleansed of Jews, or Judenrein.  The racist and supremacist connotations of this precondition to statehood have somehow been overlooked by the Western press and political establishment.  In fact, official Western institutions have aided the Palestinian factions in delegitimizing any Jewish presence in Jerusalem–and the ancient Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria–by labeling the residents ‘illegal settlers’ and ‘neo-colonialists.’

The truth is that since the Israeli liberation of the whole of Jerusalem in 1967, the city has been more accessible to Muslim, Christian and Jewish pilgrimage than ever before.  A Lebanese newspaper reporting on the new agreement, notes offhandedly at the end of their article that ‘Jordan, which has a 1994 peace treaty with Israeli (sic), administers the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem through its ministry of Awqaf and religious affairs.’

That’s right.  Under Israeli sovereignty, Muslim authorities already exercise religious control over their holy sites in Jerusalem.  Therefore, the goal of the Palestinian/Jordanian agreement regarding Jerusalem is not about religious freedom, but political control over the city.  It is not about equal access.  It is about Islamic conquest.