Dubai: The majority of the 150-member Lower House of Jordan’s parliament voted in favour of a motion to expel the Israeli ambassador to Amman on Wednesday. They also demanded that the government recall the Kingdom’s ambassador to Tel Aviv.

The vote came a day after the Israeli Knesset, the regime’s parliament, began a debate on plans for the Israelis to extend their occupation of Jerusalem to the Al Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. Al Aqsa mosque currently falls under the purview of the Jordanian Waqf, or religious endowment. Jordanian MPs had called for the 1994 peace treaty with the Israelis to be scrapped after the debate.

The government-owned Al Rai newspaper said 47 out of 150 members of the lower house signed a motion late on Tuesday that the treaty be annulled.

“The motion came in response to Israel’s actions in Jerusalem and to the Knesset debate of a law that seeks to impose Israel’s sovereignty over Al Aqsa,” Al Rai quoted MPs as saying in the motion.

Under the peace treaty, Jordan is the custodian of Muslim holy sites in occupied Jerusalem.

“Israel’s actions clearly violate the peace treaty...it is aggression against Jordanian custodianship,” the motion said.

Al Rai said the lower house will discuss “the repercussions of the debate later on Wednesday”.

On Tuesday evening, the Knesset held the first part of a debate called by rightwingers demanding that the Israeli regime end its practice of forbidding Jewish prayer at the compound.

In a motion that was not put to a vote, MP Moshe Feiglin, a hardline member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said Israeli fear of igniting Muslim rage amounted to discrimination against Jews.

The Jordanian government has so far not commented.

But Jordan’s opposition Islamic Action Front (IAF), the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, urged the government on Tuesday to freeze the peace deal.

“The custodianship is a Jordanian national interest and a sacred religious duty,” said the IAF, the main opposition party.

Israeli police on Tuesday entered the compound to disperse stone-throwing Palestinian protesters, with an Israeli police spokesman speaking of “high tension”.

The Al Aqsa compound, which lies in Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem’s Old City, is a flashpoint because of its significance to both Muslims and Jews.

The compound houses the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosques.

It is also Judaism’s holiest place, believed to be the site of the first and second Jewish temples.

— With inputs from AFP