Early Monday morning (4:59 AM), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted: “I spoke twice with Israel’s ambassador to Jordan, Einat Shlain, and with the security officer, and I was assured that she was managing things well. I promised the security guard we would take him back to Israel.”
Later, around 1 PM Monday, Netanyahu tweeted a series of connected messages saying, “I told both of them that we are in constant contact with security and government officials in Amman at all levels, in order to bring the incident to an end as quickly as possible. […] The Jordanian ambassador to Israel arrived this morning for a talk at the Foreign Ministry and was asked to help. […] We also conduct contacts along other and varied paths with one goal: to end the episode, to bring our people to Israel. And we do it with determination and responsibility. […] The same applies to the proper way to ensure security and quiet on the Temple Mount, in the Old City and in Jerusalem as a whole. For this purpose the Cabinet will reconvene on the subject, later today.”
The Jordanian news agency Ammon News, reported that Netanyahu was expected to speak by phone with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Monday in an attempt to ease tense relations between their two countries after the attack at the Israeli embassy in Amman.
According to the report, several diplomatic officials have been in constant contact with their Jordanian counterparts as part of efforts to defuse the crisis that came amid increased tensions surrounding the Temple Mount.
According to Ammon News, while the security guard—who enjoys diplomatic immunity, and the Israeli government claim self-defense, Jordan has refused to allow the guard or any of the Israeli embassy staff to leave the premises until the guard is questioned, as some Jordanian witnesses have claimed the guard did not shoot in self-defense.
Zakaria Jawada, the father of the carpenter who attacked the Israeli security official with a screwdriver and was consequently shot dead, owns the Arslan furniture store from which the bedroom set the carpenters were installing had been purchased.
“I refer to my son as a martyr, who was shot to death by the hostile Zionist entity, and we demand that the Israeli security officer be put on trial and sentenced to death,” Jawada Jordanian media. He was surrounded by excited youths who were yelling the customary, “Allahu Akbar.”
“A man bought a bedroom set from our furniture store, and we did not know that he was Israeli, otherwise we would not have sold him,” Jawada related.
“We demand a commission of inquiry to prosecute the Israeli,” Jawada insisted. “The criminal must be executed, and the embassy in Amman must be closed immediately.”