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No one who has visited Jerusalem over the past few years will be surprised by the preponderance of red Turkish flags with their crescent and star, fluttering over the city’s eastern Palestinian neighborhoods. These flags are just one visible manifestation of a major effort by the Turkish government to establish a presence in the Israeli capital. Investigative reports in the press, conducted over the last few years, have revealed the scope of Turkish activity in Jerusalem, which includes the renovation of homes, restoration of mosques and efforts to expose the residents of East Jerusalem to Turkish culture, including cooking workshops and Turkish-language classes. These efforts also include increasing involvement in the affairs of Al-Aqsa Mosque, as described by Ben Caspit in July 2018.

Turks have renovated Mamluk buildings, which they then pass off as Ottoman. “Apart from the city walls, built by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, there aren’t many Ottoman sites in Jerusalem. In contrast, the Mamluks invested quite a bit on construction in Jerusalem, and that’s good enough for Erdogan,” he told Al-Monitor. “It demonstrates his desire to flood Jerusalem with ties to the Ottoman Empire.”

Israel intends to revoke the head of TIKA’s diplomatic status in Jerusalem, effectively making his presence in Israel illegal. “The era of the Ottoman Empire is over. Turkey has no reason to be in Jerusalem,” said the Foreign Ministry in an especially bellicose statement. “[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s declarations that Jerusalem belongs to all Muslims are absolutely baseless and ridiculous. Israel maintains sovereignty in Jerusalem, while ensuring freedom of worship for all religions. We will not allow anyone to interrupt this sovereignty.”

Israeli police officers clashed Sunday with stone-throwing Palestinians at a site sacred to Muslims and Jews, in the latest sign of tension in this volatile city.

The police said that their forces had entered the Temple Mount compound twice after Palestinians hurled rocks at officers patrolling there, and that they dispersed rioters with stun grenades.

The compound sits in contested territory that Israel took from Jordan in the 1967 war.

Israel's foreign minister has said there is no chance of an early solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and told people to "learn to live with it".

In a radio interview, Mr Lieberman said people who thought Israel and the Palestinians could reach a deal "do not understand reality and are sowing illusions".

"We have to be realistic - we will not be able to reach agreement on core and emotional subjects like Jerusalem and the right of return (of Palestinian refugees0," he said.

Tensions have run high in Jerusalem since Sunday after authorites closed the al-Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City, claiming people were inciting violence. Clashes broke out, with seven Palestinian  protesters injured and three arrested.

On Tuesday, some 2,000 police officers deployed in strength across Jerusalem as an annual Jewish march took place. But no incidents have been reported.

Silvan Shalom, the Israeli deputy prime minister, told public radio that "the battle is under way for sovereignty over Jerusalem and particularly over the Temple Mount".

Bolton is surely realistic in stating the end of the two-state solution. Though his solution to the Israel Palestine conflict is not. It is for pieces of the West Bank to be deeded to Jordan and Gaza to be deeded to Egypt, on the theory that Palestine is “bits and pieces” of the former Ottoman Empire. Neither Egypt or Jordan has accepted such a proposal; and of course Palestinians have said such an outcome is out of the question.

Once it becomes clear the two-state solution is finally dead, Jordan should again be asked to exercise control over suitably delineated portions of the West Bank and have the monarchy’s religious role for holy sites like the Temple Mount reaffirmed. Accepting Jordan’s sovereignty would actually benefit Palestinians, as would Egyptian sovereignty over Gaza, by tying these areas into viable, functioning states, not to the illusion of “Palestine.”

“Just as a matter of empirical reality, the two-state solution is dead,” Bolton told far-right Breitbart News Radio at the time. “That’s about the only thing John Kerry came close to getting right.”

In the early 1920s, Pinhas Rutenberg bought land in the Naharayim region from King Abdullah to build a hydroelectric power plant. The mandatory border established in 1922 ran west of this land, effectively making it part of Transjordan, which obtained full independence in 1946. After Israel’s War of Independence (1948) and the ensuing Armistice Agreement (1949) signed on Rhodes, kibbutzim in the region began growing crops in the Naharayim area. The peace agreement signed October 26, 1994, by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordanian King Hussein determined that the official border between their two countries would be based on the mandatory border. This posed a problem for Moshav Tzofar, in the Arava region, and two kibbutzim, Ashdot Yaakov (Ichud) and Ashdot Yaakov (Meuhad), in the Jordan Valley, because their fields and orchards are located east of the mandatory line, within Jordanian territory. As a gesture of goodwill, Jordan agreed to allow Israeli farmers there to continue to work the lands for a period of 25 years.

Having given up on the Israeli government due to its apparent inactivity on the matter, on Oct. 10 local residents sent a personal letter to Abdullah signed by Idan Greenbaum, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, requesting a meeting with the king to try to reach a new arrangement to allow the farmers to continue to access their lands.

All in all, we have an excellent relationship and plenty of instances of cooperation with our neighbors across the border. We fight against agricultural pests and brush fires together, and much more