By Dan Williams and Suleiman Al-Khalidi
JERUSALEM / AMMAN (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s announcement that he has postponed a visit to the United Arab Emirates on Thursday because Jordan has delayed the allocation of overflight rights has attracted a rare reprimand from Amman over a dispute holy ground in Jerusalem.
A well-known first visit to Abu Dhabi during the build-up to an Israeli election on March 23 would have enabled Netanyahu to place his imprimatur on the normalization ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that were formalized last year.
A suspension of permission for Netanyahu’s plane to fly over Jordan “apparently” stems from the cancellation of a visit by Jordanian Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah to the Al Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem over a dispute over security arrangements on the site, according to a statement issued by Netanyahu’s office.
Permission was finally passed too late for Netanyahu’s travel plan, which the visit of Hungary and Czech counterparts met later in Jerusalem later Thursday, the statement said.
The UAE did not formally confirm the planned visit, which was leaked to Israeli media on Wednesday.
Netanyahu later said he and Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi have since spoken out and agreed to reschedule and work together in the fight against the coronavirus and on major investment projects.
The United Arab Emirates, Netanyahu told a news conference, was planning to “invest a whopping $ 10 billion … in various projects … and we are already discussing these specific projects.”
Netanyahu did not elaborate on the nature of such projects or mentioned a timetable for their financing and implementation.
He said he would visit the United Arab Emirates “very soon” and that Israel and the Gulf state wanted to create a “green passport” between the two countries, citing a program to vaccinate those vaccinated against the coronavirus facilitated.
On the friction with Jordan, Netanyahu said there was a “misunderstanding, problems coordinating (my) flights (to the UAE) due to an incident yesterday” related to the planned Jordanian visit to the Al Aqsa mosque.
“It took us a few hours to put things right … I can fly over Jordan now, but until this coordination was reached, it was not possible to visit today (the UAE),” he said.
Jordanian officials were not immediately available for comment on the overflight issue. But Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi confirmed the crown prince’s canceled visit to Al Aqsa – which would have been the first by the future king of Jordan.
ISRAELI “RESTRICTIONS”
State TV quoted Safadi as saying that the Israeli authorities were trying to change a program agreed with Amman in a way that it considered harmful to Palestinian and Muslim rights of worship.
“The crown prince did not want to allow Israel to impose restrictions on Muslims,” Safadi said.
Jordan’s ruling Hashemite dynasty is the guardian of the Al Aqsa compound, an icon of the Palestinian state struggle and the third holiest site in Islam. Israel, which made peace with Jordan in 1994, maintains security controls around the site, honoring Jews as the remains of their two ancient temples.
Jordan says Israel, which conquered East Jerusalem, including the walled Old City where all of Aqsa is located, in the 1967 Middle East war, has no sovereign rights over the building and has long organized during organized visits there by religious Jews.
Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital and annexed its eastern sector after the 1967 conflict, in a move that did not gain international recognition.
(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Stephen Farrell and Mark Heinrich)