The United Arab Emirates and China have called for a UN Security Council meeting after Israel\u2019s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in a widely denounced move.
\nAccording to international media reports, the Council is expected to convene on Thursday.
\nBen-Gvir\u2019s actions drew fierce condemnation across the world, with Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE joining the Palestinians in condemning him. The Palestinian leadership called the intrusion \u201can unprecedented provocation\u201d.
\nThe Palestinian foreign ministry said it \u201cstrongly condemns the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by the extremist minister Ben-Gvir and views it as an unprecedented provocation and a dangerous escalation of the conflict\u201d.
\nMeanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Ben-Gvir of staging the trip as part of a bid to turn the shrine \u201cinto a Jewish temple\u201d, a goal of many within Israel\u2019s far right.
\nIsraeli\u00a0Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement late on Tuesday claiming that he was \u201ccommitted to strictly maintaining the status quo, without changes, on the Temple Mount [Al-Aqsa Mosque compound]\u201d.
\nOn Tuesday, Israeli media reported that Netanyahu\u2019s planned visit to the UAE next week has been postponed until February, although sources close to the Israeli leader denied it had anything to do with the Al-Aqsa incident.
\nIsrael\u2019s opposition leader and former prime minister Yair Lapid had warned on Monday that Ben-Gvir\u2019s planned entrance to the compound would lead to violence, and called it a \u201cdeliberate provocation that will put lives in danger\u201d.
\nMeanwhile, the US, Israel\u2019s closest ally, expressed deep concern over the developments.
\n\u201dWe\u2019re deeply concerned by any unilateral actions that have the potential to exacerbate tensions precisely because we want to see the opposite happen,\u201d Department of State spokesman Ned Price said.
\n\u201dThe United States stands firmly for the preservation of the historic status quo with respect to the holy sites in Jerusalem.\u201d He added that any unilateral actions undercutting the status quo were \u201dunacceptable.\u201d
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Arab Emirates and China have called for a UN Security Council meeting after Israel\u2019s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir entered the Al-Aqsa…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4036,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}