The Hashemite Custodianship of Jerusalem's Holy Sites

Jordan's king holds a unique religious role formalized in Article 9 of the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty and further specified in a 2013 agreement with the Palestinian Authority, recognizing the Hashemite monarch as custodian of the Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, a role administered practically through the Jordanian-funded Waqf that oversees the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa Mosque compound and, more informally, extends patronage over the city's Christian churches and their clergy appointments. This custodianship gives Jordan a direct stake in the status quo governing the Temple Mount, and Jordanian officials have repeatedly protested Israeli policy changes there as violations of the arrangement, including periodic recalls of Jordan's ambassador to Israel over access disputes.

Jordan absorbed a very large Palestinian refugee population after 1948 and again after 1967, a demographic shift that has shaped the kingdom's religious and political life considerably given the large Christian and Muslim Palestinian communities involved, and the 1970 Black September conflict between the Jordanian army and Palestinian armed factions remains a defining, still-sensitive episode in the kingdom's modern history.