Saudi Arabia’s new king Salam has fits of dementia, which means that although he is very popular and known for doing wonders for Riyadh, he might not be sitting on the throne for very long.

“He can perform quite well for a few minutes, but then he gets muddled and goes off message,” according to Simon Henderson, an authority on Saudi Arabia at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, quoted by The Washington Post

King Salam is a half-brother to King Abdullah, who died late Thursday night. Salam ruled Riyadh for 48 years and is credited for making peace in the royal family and for turning the capital into a modern metropolis.

There are more secrets locked up in the royal palace than there is factual information, but all sources agree that King Salam suffers from dementia.

Considering that Saudi Arabia is the heavyweight in the Sunni Muslim world and in oil markets, that could be a big problem when it comes to determining the price of oil and the strategies to defeat the Islamic State and block Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon on its way to turning the entire Middle East into a fanatic Shia Islamic Caliphate.

If he can’t remember what the price of oil was yesterday, or which victim the ISIS beheaded today, there is bound to be a frenzy of back-palace politicking over who will take charge.

If the new king can remember that he has dementia, he might remove himself and clear the way for a new king from a younger generation of princes.

The issue of whether or not to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount is bound to come up for heated discussion before the elections March 17, but a rarely shown photograph proves that Jews once managed to pray there with a minyan, the minimum of 10 men needed for public prayer.

Jewish Home Knesset Member Uri Ariel and Likud MK Moshe Feiglin have been the most prominent legislators insisting that Israel change the “status quo” and allow Jews to pray at the holy site.

The official status quo, as reported here several weeks ago, has been replaced by a new status quo in which Jews still are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount but also are restricted in their visits, even without praying.

The police implemented the new and unofficial status quo by limiting the number of Jews at the site and often closing it to Jews for reasons of “security,” meaning they don’t want to deal with Muslim rioters.

The 1995 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan not only does not specifically prohibit prayer by non-Muslims but also leaves it open as a possibility.

Paragraph 3 of the treaty states:

The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.

Regardless, the government policy not long after the Six-Day War in 1967 was to ban Jews form praying there. However, visiting was common.

Amos A., now in his 60s, told The Jewish Press that his father took him to all of the holy sites where Jordan had barred Jews. ”We went to the Patriarchs Cave in Hevron, Rachel’s Tomb at Bethlehem and the Temple Mount. No one said a word.”

He added that he and his father did not pray on the Temple Mount.

At that time, the Chief Rabbinate ruled that it is forbidden for Jews even to visit the Temple Mount, because of all kinds of issues of impurity and prohibitions of any Jew to walk on the ruins over the area where the High Priest entered only once a year, on Yom Kippur.

Very few rabbis were willing to question the opinion of the Rabbinate at the time, but that has changed in recent years. There now is an increasing number of prominent national religious rabbis who permit walking in certain areas of the holy site. Some also permit praying on condition of immersion in a ritual bath beforehand

Around 1980, give or take year, a group of 10 Jewish men, some posing as tourists, formed a minyan and prayed on the Temple Mount, as seen in the photograph above.

Yisrael Medad, a resident of Samaria, a former activist and now a blogger whose writing also appears on The Jewish Press, was one of the 10 men who formed a minyan.

The prayer service took place between 1979 and 1981, as he recalls. The picture shows nine men, with Medad on the far right. The 10th men was the photographer.

“It was one of the very, very few times that Jews have prayed on the Temple Mount,” Medad told The Jewish Press. “The group sneaked in and was able to pray until a Muslim guard was getting very upset and told us to stop. We motioned to him to wait because we were in the middle of the Amidah prayer,” the silent prayer in which interruptions are not allowed.

Medad said the guard “may have simply thought we were just looking around and not praying, but when he realized what was happening, he called the police, who hauled the men away.”

Israeli intelligence believes Jordan’s government will be replaced within a generation, the Yesha Council’s Danny Dayan has said.

Speaking to the Knesset channel, Dayan revealed that the “most senior” members of Israel’s intelligence agencies believe Jordan’s King Abdullah will not pass the monarchy on to his son.

He quoted his sources as saying, “It’s too bad, it’s not what we would have wanted, but Abdullah is apparently the last Hashemite king.”

Dayan said it is too soon to tell what Jordan’s next government will look like, but suggested that the country could serve as a national homeland for the Arab population of Judea and Samaria.

Even Shimon Peres, who is known for his dovish positions, used to view Jordan as the natural “Palestinian Arab” country, Dayan noted. “That was in the 70s, before he converted to Oslo-ism,” he joked.

He firmly rejected the suggestion that Arabs in Judea and Samaria be given Israeli citizenship, or create an Arab state west of the Jordan River.

Jordan has ordered the addition of 75 new Arab guards to be deployed at the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency reported.

Omar al-Kiswani, director of the mosque site, told the news agency that the orders came from King Abdullah. Ten of the new guards are women, and six firefighters, five electricians and an engineer also have been employed.

King Abdullah’s order also follows the recent production of a Knesset bill to outlaw the “Mourabitoun” Muslim guards who often have participated in riots against Jews. The “Mourabitoun” are funded by Islamists and their job as “guards” is to keep the Temple Mount free of Jews.

Several dozen guards, or rioters, currently are stationed 24 hours day at the mosque site, and the addition of 75 is  huge number, possibly double the current staff.

The beefing up of the number of guards comes weeks after almost daily riots and attempted attacks on Jews visiting the Temple Mount, an act that is enshrined in the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty.

If the addition of 75 guards is to replace the “Mourabitoun,” then the Temple Mount might be a lot more peaceful place.

If not, then Israeli police will have their hands full the next time Muslims riot on the Temple Mount.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sat down with King Abdullah last month in an effort to  end the violent by fanatic Muslims who go berserk when they see Jews on the Temple Mount.

With oil prices going down, Saudis may begin selling even to Israel. Or it may not.

Saudi Petroleum Minister Ali Al-Naimi was supposedly quoted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Kuna news that the Kingdom is willing to sell oil to any country that wants to buy it, including Israel.

“We do not hold a grudge against any nation and our leaders promote peace, religious tolerance and co-existence,” Al-Naimi was quoted as saying by the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA.

“His Majesty King Abdullah has always been a model for good relations between Saudi Arabia and other states – and the Jewish state is no exception.”

The Oil Minister was reported to have made the statement at a press conference held in Vienna on Sunday, Nov. 30. It was reported by several Arab and Israeli media outlets, but it may have been a hoax.

Even so, if it sent more shivers down the spine of Vladmir Putin, who is watching the ruble collapse and the Russian economy dive in a tailspin because of plunging oil prices on top of American economic sanctions, the false report was worth it.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry talked for three hours with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Jordan’s King Abdullah Thursday night in Amman to show everyone that the United States wants to believe in the fantasy that it is the master of emotions in the Middle East at large and on the Temple Mount specifically.

After displaying his usual corny country-bumpkin sense of humor with an inane comment about the royal palace’s portraits on the wall of the longest-serving foreign ministers, he got down to the business of lying.

“President Abbas and I this morning discussed constructive steps, real steps – not rhetoric, but real steps that people can take in order to de-escalate the situation and create a climate where we can move forward in a positive and constructive way. President Abbas strongly restated his firm commitment to nonviolence, and he made it clear that he will do everything possible to restore calm and to prevent the incitement of violence and to try to change the climate.”

Abbas for years has repeatedly said in diplomatic offices that he is committed to non-violence and back in Ramallah consistently has preached martyrdom for all of the murdered who shoot, stab and drive their cars and tractors into Jews.

“President Abbas and I this morning discussed constructive steps, real steps – not rhetoric, but real steps that people can take “We discussed, as Nasser has explained to you, specific and practical actions that both sides can take to restore calm…

Now, I know that the first question will be: ‘So exactly what are those steps?’ And the answer is we’re not going to lay out each practical step. It is more important that they be done in a quiet and effective way, but they will be noticeable and they will be effective.”

Everyone has his own cause and effect theory about why there has been an escalation of violence on the Temple Mount, but no one outside of Israel has thought that maybe, just maybe, the cause of the violence is people who are hell-bent on violence. Finding an excuse to riot turns the excuse into a “reason” for the logical Secretary of State and his logical advisers, whose understanding of Middle East culture can be wrapped up in stale pita and hold the hot peppers, please.

A Jew visits the Temple Mount and the Arabs riot. Therefore, the Jew on the Temple Mount is the cause of the riot. It is as if “Thursday” is the cause for “Friday” because one follows the other

“The United States stands ready to be engaged.”

Kerry meant, “Don’t you guys do anything constructive or positive without giving the United States credit.”

President Barack Obama will fly to Saudi Arabia next month in an effort to repair a deteriorating relationship following his failure to significantly improve ties in his 2011 trip to Riyadh and in the wake of differences over relations with Egypt, Iran and Syria.

Obama will visit the Vatican on the same junket, as well as the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy.

The White House did not specifically include the Palestinian Authority as being on the agenda of issues the president will discuss with King Abdullah.

White House press secretary Jay Carney tried to make the scheduled visit seem like a routine trip, a “part of regular consultations.” He added, “The president looks forward to discussing with King Abdullah the enduring and strategic ties between the United States and Saudi Arabia as well as ongoing cooperation to advance a range of common interests related to Gulf and regional security, peace in the Middle East, countering violent extremism, and other issues of prosperity and security.”

“Peace in the Middle East” probably refers to much more violent situations than the Palestinian Authority-Israel argument, The Wall Street Journal reported. For starters, there is the Muslim civil war in Syria, with the Sunni sect, backed by Saudi Arabia, against the Iranian-backed Shi’ites.

There is not lack of work for the Obama administration if it wants to get along better with Saudi Arabia, which was extremely unhappy with President Barack Obama’s backing the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, who was replaced by a violent military regime that was succeeded by a violent Muslim Brotherhood regime, which was in turn succeeded by another violent military regime.

Saudi Arabia was upset at Obama’s appeasement of Iran and his about-face on the idea of using military force to help Syrian rebels.

The Obama administration also has lost some influence in Egypt, where Saudi Arabia has stepped in to help the current military regime deal with the crippled economy.

Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia in 2011 did little to calm the monarchy anger over the American support to get rid of Mubarak, implicitly backing Arab Spring unrest.

Obama called for changes in attitudes in the Middle East, and that is the last thing Saudi officials want to see in its own country.