Jordan King says Jerusalem for Hashemite family a personal matter, not a political one

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said, “Jerusalem for the Kingdom of Jordan and for his Hashemite family has never been a political matter, but rather it is linked to them personally”.

This came in the keynote address delivered by the King at the 71st National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on Thursday.

“More than 100 years ago, we carried the Hashemite Custodianship Trust over Islamic and Christian holy places in Jerusalem,” he said, recalling the martyrdom of his grandfather, Abdullah bin Al-Hussein I, on the threshold of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the survival of his late father, Al-Hussein, from that incident, and the impact of that day on him which made him devote his entire life to working to achieve peace, “even during his struggle with cancer”.

He pointed to “Jordan’s continued insistence on working for peace,” stressing that “there is always an opportunity for peace”.

“The truth is that the various peoples of the Middle East have lived throughout their history in harmony for much longer periods than they spent in rivalry,” he said, referring to “spaces for constructive dialogue, such as the National Prayer Breakfast, which brings together intellectual and political leaders of different religions and beliefs, as one of the important initiatives to achieve this, by promoting mutual respect and human dignity”.

On 26 October, 1994, Jordan and Israel signed the Wadi Araba Treaty.

In March 2013, King Abdullah II and Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, signed an agreement giving Jordan the right to “guardianship and defence of Jerusalem and Muslim and Christian sanctities” in Palestine.

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