Activists Seize Religious Sites on Jordan Border
Israel Defense Forces scrambled to the otherwise calm border with Jordan on Monday, after several right-wing activists took control of structures located near the border with Israel’s neighbor to the east.
The incident began when about 25-30 activists reportedly seized abandoned churches near the Qasr al-Yahud holy site, the believed site of Jesus’ baptism, in a deliberate provocation meant to signal to the Jordanian authorities to keep out of matters concerning the Temple Mount.
The activists, who were escorted to the site by a television crew, reportedly cut their way through a fence that used to protect a surround a minefield surrounding the area, before it was cleared by Israeli security forces.
Israeli and Jordanian security forces arrived at the scene, with IDF soldiers attempting to remove the infiltrators.
Images released by Channel 10 television showed the activists dancing near the structures, and hanging the image of Revisionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who advocated the creation of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River.
For more, go to Haaretz.com
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
