Jordan on Thursday accused Israel of "state terrorism" after it closed Jerusalem's Temple Mount to Muslim and Jewish visitors alike, following the attempted assassination of a prominent Jewish rights activist. Israel said its closure of the site - the holiest in Judaism and also home to the Al Aqsa mosque compound - was temporary and aimed at calming tempers as tensions continue to simmer after the prime suspect in the shooting of Rabbi Yehuda Glick died in a shootout with police. Jordan's Islamic affairs minister, Hayel Daoud, denounced the Jewish state for "closing the gates of Al-Aqsa mosque and preventing the faithful from entering", state news agency Petra reported. He urged the international community to help Jordan put pressure on Israel "to raise the terrorist blockade" imposed on the compound. "This is a dangerous escalation by the authorities of the occupation and state terrorism that we can neither accept nor keep silent about," Daoud said. The shooting and wounding late Wednesday of Yehuda Glick, who is a leading advocate for lifting a ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, and the subsequent killing of suspected gunman Mu'taz Hijazi sent tensions soaring to a new high. Thursday's closure of the compound came after months of near daily clashes between Arab rioters and Israeli police on and around the site Earlier Thursday, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas called the closure tantamount to a "declaration of war". Abbas himself has been accused of fanning the violence engulfing Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount in particular. He recently called on Palestinians to prevent Jews from visiting the site using "all means necessary" - comments which were followed by a deadly attack which saw a Palestinian terrorist plow his car into a group of Israeli pedestrians, murdering a three-month-old baby and 22-year-old student . Jordan's Islamic Waqf, which has administrative control over Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, claimed it was the first time the Mount had been closed since Israel liberated it in 1967. Despite it being the holiest site in Judaism, Jews are forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount in what activists - including Glick - have roundly condemned as capitulation by the Israeli government to Islamist threats. Glick was apparently targeted specifically for his activism on the issue; Islamist websites had been inciting extremists to harm him in the run up to the conference he addressed Wednesday night at Jerusalem's Begin Heritage Center. Glick's father has claimed police ignored five separate complaints over threats to his son's life. AFP contributed to this report.
