Jordan Recalls Ambassador to Israel as Tensions Rise in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM — Amid heightened tensions over an important holy site, two drivers, in separate incidents, plowed their cars into Israelis on Wednesday, and Jordan recalled its ambassador from Israel.

Israeli police said at least one of the crashes, in which a Palestinian drove into pedestrians in Jerusalem, killing one and injuring a dozen, was “a terrorist attack.” In the second incident, in the West Bank, a driver who has yet to be identified ran over three soldiers, injuring them in what the military suspected was another deliberate attack.

If it was, the crash would be the third such assault on pedestrians in recent weeks, raising fears of a possible new Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Israel has been struggling to manage a volatile situation both at home and with Jordan, a crucial ally, driven in good part by disagreements over the holy site in Jerusalem; Jordan is the official custodian there while Israel handles security. Friction has been increasing in recent months as some Israelis have been pushing to be allowed to pray at the site, which is revered by Muslims and Jews.

In the vehicle attack in Jerusalem on Wednesday, an Israeli police spokesman said the driver was shot dead by police officers at the scene after he got out of his vehicle and tried to attack officers and bystanders with an iron bar.

Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, identified the Israeli man who was killed as Jidaan Asad, 38, a border police officer from the Druse village of Beit Jann in northern Israel. Police said the attacker had connections with Hamas.

In the similar attack late last month, a Palestinian man, a resident of East Jerusalem, drove into pedestrians, killing a 3-month-old baby and a young woman from Ecuador.

The driver of the car that hit the soldiers escaped.

Simmering tensions over the holy site — known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary — boiled over last week when Israel closed it for one day for the first time in years saying it feared violence.

The temporary closing came after an Israeli counterterrorism unit killed a Palestinian suspected in the assassination attempt of a prominent American-born Israeli activist. The activist, Yehuda Glick, has been at the forefront of the growing movement of nationalist Jews who are challenging the ban on Jewish prayer at the sacred compound.

The Jordanian news agency, Petra, said the ambassador was being recalled in protest against what it called “the unprecedented and escalated Israeli aggressions” at the holy site and “repeated violations in the holy city.”

Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judeh, was to meet in Paris on Wednesday with Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss the crisis over the holy site, according to Jordanian foreign ministry officials. Jordan said it would also file a complaint to the United Nations Security Council.

The events have set off clashes at the sacred plateau, which is revered by Jews as the place where ancient Jewish temples once stood, and by Muslims as the site of Al Aksa Mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock.

On Wednesday, Palestinians hurled rocks and firecrackers at the police from inside Al Aksa Mosque, in an apparent effort to prevent Jewish visitors and tourists from entering the compound.

The police kept the rioters inside the mosque and later reopened the compound to visitors. Supporters of Mr. Glick, who was severely wounded in the assassination attempt, called for Jews to pray for his recovery at the holy site on Wednesday.

Israeli security officials identified the driver of Wednesday’s attack in Jerusalem as Ibrahim Akari, a married father of five and a low-level Hamas activist who had never been jailed by Israel. Mr. Akari’s brother, Musa Akari, was convicted of involvement in the capture and killing of an Israeli border policeman in the 1990s by a Hamas squad; he was released as part of a prisoner exchange in 2011 and deported to Turkey, according to the officials.

Leaders of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates Gaza, praised the attack on Wednesday in Jerusalem without taking responsibility for it.

“We send our congratulations to those who carried out the attack,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said in a telephone interview. “We believe it is a natural reaction to Israel’s crimes. Israel is violating international law and Judaizing Al Aksa mosque. We don’t have any other choice but to defend our holy land by all means of force.”

Israel has also accused the more moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank of inciting violence in Jerusalem after President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority recently called on Palestinians to defend their holy sites “by all means.”

Israel seized the compound in the 1967 war from Jordan along with the rest of East Jerusalem and the West Bank but has allowed the Islamic authorities known as the waqf to administer daily affairs there, only retaining responsibility for security. Under the decades-old arrangements, non-Muslims are allowed to visit but not to pray inside the compound.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly emphasized that he will not allow any change of the status quo at the site.

Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have strongly condemned Mr. Abbas for sending a letter of condolence to the family of Mu’atez Hijazi, the man suspected of attacking Mr. Glick. The letter, which was delivered to the family on Sunday, described Mr. Hijazi as a “martyr who defended the rights of our Palestinian people” and described the Israeli counterterrorism police who killed him as “terrorist gangs.”

The police said Mr. Hijazi was shot after he opened fire on the forces who came to arrest him.

At a ceremony in Jerusalem commemorating the 19th anniversary of the assassination of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by a right-wing Israeli Jew, Mr. Netanyahu referred to the condolence letter and said that Wednesday’s attack in Jerusalem was “a direct result of the incitement of Abu Mazen and his partners in Hamas.” He was referring to the Palestinian leader Mr. Abbas by his nickname and to the unity government he recently formed with the backing of the Islamic group.

As more clashes broke out on Wednesday evening between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli police in several areas of East Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu said restoring calm to Jerusalem could take time.

Hours before Wednesday’s attack, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli justice minister and a strong advocate of trying to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians, said that the tensions focused on the Jerusalem holy site could quickly turn the national conflict into a religious one. That, she said in an interview on Israel Radio, could turn the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians into one “between us and the entire Arab and Muslim world, including countries with which we have peace agreements that are important to us strategically.”

“I’m talking about Jordan, I’m talking about Egypt,” she added.

Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994 but relations between the two countries have remained low profile and focused on security issues, and have suffered crises in the past. In 1997, Israel’s Mossad spy agency attempted to poison Khaled Meshal, the exiled political leader of Hamas, in Jordan, bringing diplomatic relations to the point of collapse until Israel provided an antidote.

Against the background of the current tensions, King Abdullah II of Jordan said in a speech on Sunday, “The Palestinian cause remains our principal cause and is a higher national interest. Jerusalem, whose soil is watered by the blood and sacrifices of our martyrs, is a responsibility that lies in the depth of our conscience.”

Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian political columnist and founder of AmmanNet, the first community radio in the Arab world, said in an interview that the decision to summon the ambassador was meant “to send a clear message not only to the Israeli government but to the Israeli public and right wing extremist groups that for the Jordanian government and the king himself, Al Aksa is the red line.”

“The Israeli government says they don’t want any changes in the status quo in Jerusalem but it’s changing,” Mr. Kuttab said. “It’s changing every day.”

Efraim Halevy, a former chief of the Mossad agency who, as the deputy chief, served as a secret envoy of successive Israeli prime ministers to King Abdullah’s father, King Hussein, said the summoning of the ambassador was “an undesirable development, to put it mildly.”

“The pressure in Jordan concerning Al Aksa must be rising,” he said in an interview, adding, “Everything is symbolic in this part of the world and this is a very sensitive moment in the history of the Middle East.”