Top Arab, Muslim diplomats launch plan to protect Jerusalem religious sites 

Arab and Muslim foreign ministers have agreed to establish a permanent mechanism to document and expose Israeli violations in occupied East Jerusalem and at its Islamic and Christian holy sites.

A joint declaration adopted at a meeting in Jordan on Wednesday said plans include a media platform to broadcast Israeli violations against holy sites and worshippers and bring them to the attention of international organisations and the global public.

Participants, including members of the Arab ministerial committee on Jerusalem, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit, and representatives of Turkiye, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia – called for immediate international action to halt Israeli measures in Jerusalem and at its holy sites.

The joint declaration condemned Israeli policies aimed at altering Jerusalem’s Arab, Islamic and Christian identity as well as its legal and demographic status and called them illegal.

“Jerusalem is in escalating danger, and its Islamic and Christian sanctuaries are threatened as never before,” the statement said. “Israel is entrenching its illegitimate occupation of East Jerusalem. It is building settlements, annexing lands, confiscating properties, squeezing the Jerusalemites, and severing Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied Palestinian land.”

Ministers denounced Israeli actions at religious sites, including attempts to alter their historical and legal status quo and impose temporal and spatial divisions.

“Provocative Israeli policies are targeting the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque/Noble Sanctuary, with systematic and unprecedented assaults that are increasing in quantity and quality, and with arrogant insolence, attempting to undermine its Islamic identity and change the historical and legal status quo in the Blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which in all its area is a place of pure worship for Muslims,” the declaration said.

The mechanism aims to bring global attention to increased incursions by Israeli settlers and officials, restrictions on worshippers, interference in the work of the Jerusalem Awqaf and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs Department, and continued excavations beneath and around the site.

The participants also condemned Israeli violations targeting Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, including restrictions on access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, interference in church affairs, restrictions targeting church institutions and properties, and attacks on clergy, worshippers and religious symbols.

“Christian clergy are suffering from the brutality of extremists, and churches are confronting attempts to seize their funds and lands through illegitimate laws enacted by Israel,” the statement said.

They called for a joint ministerial meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the League of Arab States during the United Nations General Assembly’s high-level leaders week in New York in September to discuss developments in Jerusalem and at its holy sites.