Jordan has decided to halt the installation of surveillance cameras inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah al-Nsoor said on Monday.
The decision was reached after “some of our people in Palestine complained and expressed reservations toward the process,” Jordan’s official news agency Petra quoted al-Nsoor as saying.
The initial aim of installing the cameras, he added, was to help counter regular Israeli violations in the Al-Aqsa compound.
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“Israel has always succeeded in acquitting itself of such charges because the violations were not being documented, and we thought the surveillance cameras would help us document them,” he said.
Al-Nsoor pointed out that the Jordanians wanted the cameras only in the courtyards and not inside the mosques.
“Because we respect the points of view of our brothers in Palestine, and in Jerusalem in particular, we reached the conclusion that the project could be controversial and so we decided to halt it,” al-Nsoor said.
Surveillance cameras in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound had been the subject of tense discussions between Israel and Jordan, the official custodian of Muslim holy sites in occupied East Jerusalem, for months.
(MAAN)
