Daily Times

The UN Security Council will meet on Tuesday over violence around a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site that wounded 170 people at the weekend, diplomatic sources told AFP. The meeting, called by China, France, the United Arab Emirates, Norway and Ireland, will be held behind closed doors, and comes after days of violence in and around Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, sacred to both Muslims and Jews. The clashes — at a tense time when the Jewish Passover festival coincides with the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan — also follow deadly violence in Israel and the occupied West Bank starting in late March, in which 36 people have been killed. Jews are allowed to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, but not to pray at the site, the holiest place in Judaism and third-holiest in Islam. King Abdullah II of Jordan on Sunday called on Israel to “stop all illegal and provocative measures” that drive “further aggravation.” The kingdom serves as custodian of holy places in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognised by most of the international community. Weeks of mounting tensions have seen two recent deadly attacks by Palestinians in or near the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv, alongside mass arrests by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank.