The Jordanian monarch is a master at knowing how to tiptoe through the raindrops.

When his own country – and in fact, the entire region – is a tinderbox, King Abdullah II knows the only safe route is to start yelling at Israel. And so he has.

After a week in which daily violence by Islamic ‘worshipers’ at the Temple Mount forced Israel Police to close Judaism’s holiest site to nearly everyone, Jordan had the temerity Monday to scold Israel for the bad behavior of Arab Muslims.

Only Muslim men over age 50 – and women of any age — with Israeli identity cards were allowed to enter the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. This, after days of rioting in which ‘worshipers’ at the Al Aqsa mosque hurled rocks stockpiled in the building at visitors and police in the area.

Officials at Jordan’s Foreign Ministry called Israeli Ambassador to Amman Daniel Nevo on Monday – the seventh and final holy day of the Jewish holiday of Passover – to condemn Sunday’s arrests of 24 rioters, the official Petra news agency reported.

Jordan called the violence on the Temple Mount a ‘violation of international law’ and ‘of Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel.’

Jordanian officials scolded Ambassador Nevo about the arrests, conveniently ignoring the fact that the violence was perpetrated by Muslim Arabs. Jordan turned a blind eye to the fact that the rioters are being egged on by Islamic imams under the auspices of the Waqf – the religious Islamic Authority the administers the site. (The Waqf has a direct connection to the Jordanian government.)

Instead, Jordan accused Israel of “the entry of radical Jews, hurting the sanctity of the Al Aqsa mosque, attacks on worshipers and employees of the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf.”

Part of the job requirement to be an Israeli ambassador in Amman is that one possess the patience of Job. (Excuse the pun.) Ambassador Nevo replied that he would pass the message on to Jerusalem, according to the report by Petra.

What is not mentioned in the report is that Jordan may be attempting to absolve itself from having to deal with the issue of the Temple Mount in any future brouhaha with the Palestinian Authority or with Arab nations.

Jordan is now officially on record of having protected the sanctity of the Jerusalem site.

Lots of noise and disapproving imagery.

But the bottom line remains that the rioters were wrong, are still wrong, and will continue to be wrong in their desecration of a holy site. The Hashemite monarch – an observant Muslim of Bedouin descent – knows this. He would never tolerate such garbage. These people would have been in jail months ago.

No Arab leader would tolerate such behavior. Most would have removed them permanently.

But it serves their purpose to incite the rioters at Al Aqsa and to encourage them to continue their violence, to keep the pot simmering in Jerusalem and elsewhere throughout Israel.

Just as they did prior to every war they launched against the Jewish nation in the past.

Each time, their manipulated Arab brethren were stupid enough to swallow the bait – hook, line and sinker. They paid a heavy price for that and so did we, with rivers of blood and years of pain. Those who realized what was happening watched in complete frustration, totally helpless to do anything about it.

And it looks like it’s about to happen again.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is reaching the end of his productive political career, and he knows it. As corrupt, avaricious and vindictive as he has been, he has nevertheless minimized violence when he could. He knows there will be no two-state solution. It was never a viable option in any case. Nor was anyone allowed to come up with a better one, given the vicious creatures bent on terror who held power over the majority of the PA government.

Israel Police closed access to the Temple Mount to Jews and other non-Muslims on Thursday due to Arab violence a day earlier, and a resulting threat to safety that might follow.

This, on the day that tens of thousands of Jews gathered below at the Western Wall plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem for the traditional Birkat Kohanim – the priestly blessing from Jerusalem. The benediction is pronounced during the morning service on the festivals of Passover and Sukkot.

The decision to close the site was made by security personnel following Arab violence at the Temple Mount on Wednesday. One police officer was wounded, as were 24 others. One of the wounded was listed in serious condition, and 15 sustained moderate injuries.

Nearly 100 young Arab rioters clashed with police in fierce battles at the holy site, hurling large rocks they have stockpiled in large caches at the Al Aqsa Mosque, where they barricaded themselves for protection.

The rioters also hurled firecrackers at the police from inside the Islamic house of worship, as security personnel used stun grenades and tear gas to force the mob further into the mosque.

The Arab strategy – designed to prevent Jews from ascending to the Temple Mount for any length of time — is very smart, taking advantage of the Israeli government policy of not allowing police to enter the mosque. The site itself is administered by the Islamic Waqf Authority; at this point, Israel has essentially ceded control to Arab Muslim officials.

Six Arab youths were reportedly arrested during the night and early Thursday morning in connection with the disturbances.

Ultimately, Israeli security officials told Channel 2 news on Wednesday they will have to force their way into the mosque to take away the caches of stone weapons, which are just as lethal as any bullet when properly aimed and hurled.

It is important to realize that the huge piles of rocks and slabs of stone with which the young terrorists are attacking Israeli security personnel, tourists and other visitors to the site, are being stockpiled with the  knowledge and consent of the Islamic clerics in charge of the mosque. Those clerics — and their actions — are fully backed and supported by the Arab leaders in the region, including King Abdullah II, the Hashemite monarch of Jordan.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pushed the emergency ejection button on his Paris talks with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov over the crisis in Ukraine and flew into Israel to try and force a last-minute agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for the release of more Arab terrorists.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has stated no more concessions will be taken unless it is “clear” what Israel will receive in return, but it is anyone’s guess what Israel could gain except for Brownie points in the White House and another dinner with Kerry, for what it’s worth.

And motorists are being smacked with the occasional closing of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 pm. Israeli time and during Tuesday morning’s rush hour, 8-10 a.m., so Kerry can have all the of the road it himself.

The Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Quds quoted Kerry as saying he told PA officials he will free the terrorists with his own hands if he has to.

Most Israelis, from Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to even the dovish media with the exception of Haaretz, would not mind if Kerry would take a walk, a very long walk and even better off a short pier.

The Palestinian Authority also is not so thrilled with him. Its officials have created a cold air mass before his arrival, saying that they really are not interested in extending the talks that Kerry initiated last July, but that can be discounted as playing hard to get.

Kerry will meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu Monday evening and then travel to Ramallah for a discussion with Mahmoud Abbas.

“Secretary Kerry decided it would be productive to return to the region,” State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
Translation: Kerry is roaring into town with ammunition on both shoulders and will tell both sides that they will bear the wrath of Obama himself if they don’t agree to help the president make a fool out of himself.

No one really knows who is on first anymore. Kerry and his media groupies have created the fiction that Israel agreed last July to free several Arab terrorists who are card-carrying Israeli citizens.

Netanyahu was quoted this past December 31 saying he never agreed to free them as part of the fourth and final batch of terrorists, but the truth really doesn’t matter anymore. Freeing them has been accepted as a fact by Kerry, the Palestinian Authority, and the media, so the truth really does not matter anymore.

Israel reportedly has offered to free more than the last group of 26 terrorists, which is not likely to happen unless he card-carrying Israelis will remain in jail. The Palestinian Authority supposedly has demanded that Israel free several hundred terrorists, and all of this, of course, for the grand prize of a few more months of charades masked as negotiations” over when to end the follies.

Kerry said Monday afternoon, “I think it’d be inappropriate to get into any kind of judgments about what may or may not occur or happen because it’s really a question between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and what Prime Minister Netanyahu is prepared to do. So he has – he is working diligently, I know. I just literally talked to him 15 minutes ago. And he’s working at it.”

Kerry and Netanyahu spoke Sunday night and again Monday morning, and they obviously were not just chewing the fat.

Not by coincidence, Opposition leader Yitzchak Herzog is meeting in Amman Monday with Jordanian King Abdullah, the first official Israeli visit since Israeli soldiers killed a Jordanian judge at the Allenby Bridge crossing when he allegedly attacked a soldier and tried to grab his weapon.

Kerry is banking on the usual gambit of threatening Abba and Netanyahu that whoever says “no” will be blamed for the collapse of his stage show. At some point, and that point is not far down the road and may already have been reached, the Palestinian Authority will say, “Blame us all you want. We have the United Nations in our pockets.”

Netanyahu so far has been too chicken to be blamed because the only thing he has in his picket is the Book of Psalms, but he hasn’t used it very much.

Jordan’s State Minister for Media Affairs warned on Monday that Israel’s allowing Jews to pray on the Temple Mount and “allowing extremist settlers to violate the sanctity of Al Aqsa Mosque under the protection of the Israeli police and army, will ignite violence and religious extremism in the region.”

Jordan’s official Petra News Agency reported that the minister, Mohammed Momani, pointed “to the religious importance of Al Aqsa Mosque to 1.7 billion Muslims as it is one of Islam’s three holiest sites and Islam’s first Qiblah.”

No mention was made that the Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, and the Jordan Times stated, “By law, Jews are not allowed to pray at the site and although non-Muslim visitors are permitted, such high-profile visits by right-wing government figures are very rare and tend to stoke tensions.”

The statement referred to Housing Minister Uri Ariel, who frequently visits the Temple Mount and did so on Sunday, prompting Arabs to riot and throw rocks at policemen.

“Jordan rejects Israeli escalation in Al-Aqsa as well as measures that allow radicals to violate Al-Aqsa under protection of police and occupation forces,” Momani said.

Contrary to the Jordanian report, there is no law barring Jews from praying at the Temple Mount. The Chief Rabbinate, citing Jewish laws, forbids Jews from ascending to the location where the First and Holy Temples once stood. An increasing number of national religious rabbis allow and often encourage Jews to ascend to certain parts of the Temple Mount, after immersing in a mikveh (ritual bath).

The “law” against praying on the Temple Mount is imposed by the Muslim authorities on the Temple Mount, whose a ”custodianship” was granted by Israel to Jordan, the same Jordan that closed all holy sites to Jews and Christians during its occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria from 1949 to 1967.

The question remains why the Arabs are so afraid that a Jew will pray on the Temple Mount? The standard answer is that they are afraid that Jews will eventually build a synagogue there. The Arab world loves to be paranoia that the Jews in Israel secretly want to undermine the Al Aqsa mosque and cause its collapse, making way for the building of the Third Temple.

That idea is ridiculous, if for no other reason than 99 percent of the construction workers in Israel are Arabs. Can you see Arabs going to work to build the Third Temple in place of the Al Aqsa mosque?

But there is another reason the Arabs don’t want Jews praying there, or anywhere else for that matter. God might listen to the Jews’ prayers.

The Muslims are big on making themselves heard. The loudspeakers at every mosque in the world, especially in liberal Israel, produce enough noise pollution to put a Madonna concert to shame.

The loudspeakers routinely drown out Jewish prayers at the Patriarchs’ Cave in Hebron and often at the Western Wall. It brings to mind the shouts of the idol worshippers whom the Prophet Elijah challenged to offer sacrifices and bring rain to break a drought.

When the rain did not come, he asked them, “Wha’ happened? Maybe your gods are asleep? Yell a bit louder and wake them up.”

When the idol worshippers gave up, Elijah offered sacrifices, doused the altar with water and prayed to God, Who responded with a holy message – rain.

The Muslim idiots don’t realize that the essence of Jewish prayers are the Shema, recited out loud with the second verse said in a faint whisper that no one except the worshipper and God can hear, and the Silent Prayer, known as the Amidah, which is recited three times day.

God responds to prayers, not noise, and the more noise Jordan makes, the more God is going to hear the whispered prayers of Jews, even those prayers that cannot be said on the Temple Mount because of Islamic paranoia, which is the real incitement to violence.

The video below shows one of those Muslims on the Temple Mount cursing Rabbi Yehuda Glick, who was ushered by policemen off the Temple Mount lest his presence “incite violence.”

President Shimon Peres made a special apology on Monday for the death of a Jordanian judge last week even though the IDF has not yet changed its original preliminary conclusion that he assaulted an IDF soldier and tried to grab his rifle.

The incident has fanned the anti-Israeli flames in the monarchy. Since it was discovered that the suspect was not your ordinary terrorist suspect but was a judge, the Netanyahu government has been falling over itself to make amends.

The worst possible scenario is that the soldiers made a mistake and that the military’s first conclusions were wrong, but so far, there has been nothing to indicate otherwise.

Peres, said,  “I wish to express my deepest condolences to the people of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for the death of Judge Raed Zeiter at the King Hussein Bridge on March 10th. As the President of the State of Israel I would like to express compassion to the bereaved family, I share in their grief.

“Earlier today I conducted an important conversation with His Majesty King Abdullah II and expressed our deep regret to him.”

Of course, Peres brought up his peace mantra again – no day in the life of President Peres can pass without it. “We discussed the importance of achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians based on two states for two peoples,” President Peres said. “We further discussed the urgent need to bring an end to the bloodshed in the Middle East and advance a future of stability and prosperity for all the people of our region.”

He praised King Abdullah II as “a leader of vision” and that “under his leadership Jordan plays a key role in the search for peace and stability in the Middle East. Israel agreed to the Jordanian request to establish a joint Israeli-Jordanian team to complete the investigation and their work has begun.”

Israel medicine has trumped politics again, this time in order to perform a kidney transplant for the desperate Jordanian parents of a seven-year-old boy, making the diplomatic row between Jordan and Israel over the killing of a Jordanian judge just another whiff of Arab hot air.

“Y” received a new life at the hands of Israeli doctors at Rambam Health Care Campus, where doctors only one month ago began performing pediatric kidney transplants. News of availability of this surgery traveled quickly and within a few days Rambam received a request from the Jordanian parents of “Y,” “Please help us by doing a kidney transplantation on our son.” A few days ago it happened.

The little boy, “Y,” suffered from acute kidney failure and needed a new kidney to survive. However, the procedure is not available in Jordan. After checking all possible options, his parents felt that Rambam was the best place to go. They turned to Dalia Bessa, the Israeli Civil Administration Health Services Coordinator, to help bring their son to Rambam.

For Rambam this came as quite a surprise—the procedure had only been available for a few weeks there. Prior to that, Rambam only offered kidney transplants for adults. Once Rambam received approval for performing this surgery in children, the hospital became the second in Israel able to provide this service, and the only one in northern Israel.

Due to the immediate danger to “Y”’s life, approvals were processed quickly. He came to Rambam shortly before surgery to undergo pre-surgical examinations and tests. Since he needed to undergo daily dialysis, and tissue matches had determined that his mother was a suitable donor, he stayed at Rambam. Even though his parents had seven other children, both parents stayed with “Y” to see him through this life-saving surgery.

When the day came, it was literally a day of surgery. First, the little boy’s mother underwent a three-hour procedure performed by a multidisciplinary team to remove one of her kidneys. Then a different multidisciplinary team brought “Y” into a separate surgical suite where the three-hour transplantation was performed.

The surgeries were successful and two days later “Y” and his mother were able to see each other. “Y” is now in a regular pediatric room becoming acclimated to his new life, no longer dependent on machines to stay alive. Soon he and his parents will return to Jordan.
Last year, 600 children and adults from the Palestinian Authority were brought to Rambam for a variety of simple to complex medical problems.

On Monday morning, a Palestinian Authority Arab tried to grab a gun from an IDF soldier, while yelling “Alahu Ahkbar”, near the terminal at the Allenby Bridge. IDF soldiers, from the Engineering corps, shot and killed the terrorist, according to Galei Tzahal.

The crossing has been temporarily closed following the attack.

The terrorist was identified as Raed Za’eiter (38), formerly of Shechem (Nablus). The Palestinian Authority Prime Minister said that Za’eiter worked as a civil court judge in Jordan.

The Allenby Bridge is the primary land-crossing point between Israel and Jordan. It was first built in 1885 by the Ottomans, rebuilt in 1918, destroyed in 1946, rebuilt again in 1968 (the wood bridge pictured above), and then finally a modern bridge was built adjacent to the wood bridge in the 1990s.

The bridge is also called the King Hussein Bridge.