US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that he had never heard of reports claiming Washington and Israel are working to end Jordan’s Al Aqsa custodianship, and he openly questioned whether the outlet behind them was credible. The denial answers a story that Middle East Eye, a UK-based news website, and several other publications have laid out in detail over the past week, citing unnamed officials.
A Senate hearing cannot settle this question on its own. Jordan’s role over the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem rests on a century-old dynastic claim, a 1994 treaty and the cooperation of Arab governments, four of which have already been briefed on a proposal, according to the same reporting.
What Rubio Told the Senate Committee
Asked to confirm reports that the United States is helping Israel take away Jordan’s role at the site, Rubio kept his answers short and dismissive. “I am not even aware of these reports. I’ve never heard of that,” he said. Pressed further, he turned to the messenger: “I have never heard of such report. Is that a credible website?”
He went further, insisting the matter had never come up in his circles at all. “I’ve never heard that discussed by anybody,” Rubio said, adding that Jordan’s custodianship “had never been a matter in dispute.” He also took a moment to praise the bilateral relationship, telling senators, “We have a great relationship with Jordan.”
The State Department’s posture matches that line. After the original reporting appeared, a US official separately rejected the allegations, describing claims that Washington wanted to end Jordan’s role over the mosque as totally false. So the public US position is consistent: no such plan, no such conversation, nothing to confirm.
That leaves a plain gap. The man at the top of US diplomacy says he has not heard of the matter, while reporters say named figures inside the administration’s orbit have been pushing it. Both cannot be fully right, and a denial offered under oath does not, by itself, prove the underlying account wrong.
What the Reported Plan Describes
The account Rubio waved off is specific. According to Middle East Eye, the US and Israel are “actively working” to remove the Jordanian-backed Islamic Waqf, the endowment that has run the compound for generations, and to replace it with a new body created by the Israeli government. That body would then declare the site a multi-faith centre open to all three Abrahamic religions.
The reporting attributes the push to two figures: Jared Kushner, the former Trump senior adviser and son-in-law who holds no current government post, and Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, who is said to have repeatedly urged Washington to follow through since taking up his post last year. Israel first floated the idea nearly a decade ago, the sources said.
The plan reportedly handed to regional capitals includes several distinct changes to how the site is run:
- Rotational oversight of the compound shared among Arab states rather than held by Jordan alone
- An end to the Jerusalem Waqf’s day-to-day authority over the mosque and its grounds
- Formal Jewish access and large-group prayer rights at a site where only Muslim worship is currently permitted
- Israeli authority over the appointment of imams and the content of sermons
- Repositioning the compound as a shared religious and tourist landmark
On the diplomatic side, the proposal was reportedly presented to four Arab states: Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. That detail matters, because briefing four governments is hard to square with a plan that nobody in Washington has heard discussed.
The Legal Architecture Behind Jordan’s Role
Whatever any official intends, the custodianship is not a courtesy that can be canceled with a memo. It sits on a stack of agreements built over a hundred years, and each one raises the cost of unwinding it. The ruling Hashemite family traces its guardianship of Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian holy sites to 1924, when the territory was under British Mandate rule, a lineage the Jordanian monarchy still treats as a defining part of its identity, as set out on King Abdullah II’s official record of the Hashemite custodianship of Jerusalem holy sites.
The modern anchor is the 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel. Its ninth article commits Israel to respect “the present special role” of Jordan over the Muslim shrines and to give that role “high priority” in any future permanent-status talks. A 2013 agreement signed in Amman by King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reaffirmed the king’s authority over the sites and his right to defend them. Legal analysts have argued that this web of commitments leaves little room for a quiet handover, a point examined at length in an Arab Center study of Jordan’s legal role in Jerusalem.
| Instrument | What it establishes |
|---|---|
| 1924 dynastic claim | Origin of the Hashemite guardianship over Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem under British Mandate rule |
| 1994 Jordan-Israel treaty, Article 9 | Israel’s binding commitment to respect Jordan’s “special role” at the Muslim shrines |
| 2013 Amman agreement with Abbas | Palestinian reaffirmation of the king’s custodianship and his right to defend the compound |
For Amman, the stakes run deeper than diplomacy. The custodianship is woven into the legitimacy of the monarchy itself, which is why Jordanian officials treat any challenge to it as a threat to the state, not a negotiable file.
Why Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians Are Watching
The reaction across the region tells its own story. Saudi Arabia, a close ally of Jordan, opposed the proposal, according to the reporting. The Palestinian Authority warned against what it called a dangerous attempt to alter the status of the compound, a concern detailed in coverage of how Palestinian officials framed the threat to Jordan’s Al-Aqsa role. For Palestinians, Jordanian guardianship functions as a shield against unilateral Israeli changes at the site.
Mustafa Abu Sway, deputy head of the Waqf council, put the warning in stark terms.
The Hashemite Custodianship is a cornerstone for stability in the region; undermining it is tantamount to undermining the very principles for peace.
Advocacy groups abroad pushed back too. The Council on American-Islamic Relations called the reported plan dangerous and illegal in a public statement condemning any move on the mosque’s custodianship. The pattern fits a wider season of US-brokered bargaining over the region’s future, the same backdrop that has shaped Gaza disarmament talks and postwar governance proposals. Jordan, for its part, said its position on Jerusalem and the holy sites stands where it has always stood.
A Denial That Settles Little
So where does Rubio’s testimony leave things? It puts the United States on record as denying the plan, which carries real weight when the denial comes from the secretary of state and a second official calling the claims false. It does not erase the corroboration. Multiple outlets have described the same proposal, named the same officials and listed the same four governments said to have been briefed.
The status quo at the compound has held for decades because changing it requires Israel to act on the ground, Arab states to consent, and Jordan to acquiesce, and none of those conditions is in place today. A hearing-room dismissal does not move any of them. Jordan’s stated position has not changed, the treaty language is still on the books, and the Waqf still runs the site.
For now, the practical reality is unchanged and the reporting is unretracted. Until one of those two facts gives way, the file stays open.
