Jordan protests Israeli work near Jerusalem church

AMMAN - The Jordanian government has protested what it called “unilateral Israeli works” at the outside wall of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in East Jerusalem, which the Jewish state seized from Jordan in the 1967 Middle-East war.

A memorandum of protest, which was handed to the Israeli ambassador in Amman after summoning him to the foreign ministry, expressed the Jordanian government’s “concerns” over the Israeli move and demanded the works be “halted immediately,” according to a foreign ministry statement Thursday.

The Jordanian foreign ministry described the Israeli works as “illegal and a violation of international law as well as Israel’s obligations as an occupation power”.

It warned against attempts “to change the status quo of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which is already approved by all Christian sects”.

Under the peace treaty which was concluded by the two countries in 1994, Israel acknowledged Jordan’s right to look after all Islamic and Christian holy places in East Jerusalem which the UN still considers as an occupied territory.