Are Israeli-Jordanian security ties at risk?

King Abdullah has warned of a major clash with the Hashemite Kingdom

It’s been 25 years since Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty. But relations are at their lowest point since 1995 amid growing concern over security ties along Israel’s longest border.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Jordan’s King Abdullah – whose father, King Hussein, signed the historic peace treaty with Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 – warned that if Israel annexes settlement blocs, not only could it cause an increase in regional extremism, it could lead to a clash with the kingdom.

“Leaders who advocate a one-state solution do not understand what that would mean,” he said. “What would happen if the Palestinian National Authority collapsed? There would be more chaos and extremism in the region. If Israel really annexes the West Bank in July, it would lead to a massive conflict with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.”

If one wants to pinpoint when ties between the Jewish state and the Hashemite Kingdom started to falter, you would have to go back to July 2017, when an Israeli Embassy guard killed two Jordanian civilians in Amman after being attacked by one of them wielding a screwdriver.

The guard, who was first held by Jordanian security

laws in the West Bank, especially the Jordan Valley, and has said if Israel does so, it could imperil the peace treaty with Jordan.

Israeli annexation plans have generated immense international opposition, including from Jordan. • forces, was later allowed to be extradited back to Israel despite public outcry against King Abdullah. The guard received a hero’s welcome by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Three years later, the acrimonious relationship between the two leaders remains clear to see.

While Netanyahu has met with Abdullah several times since he became prime minister, in recent years he’s only met with the king once. According to reports, an anxious Amman requested that no cameras or media be present at the meeting.

Abdullah also does not take phone calls from Netanyahu and last August refused to meet him, with a Jordanian official saying the rebuff was made “in light of the difficult relations between Jordan and Israel.”

The two countries didn’t even mark the peace treaty signed between the two on October 26, 1995.

It’s that bad.

The diplomatic strains have only deepened as Israel seems to be rolling full steam ahead on Netanyahu’s plan to annex the Jordan Valley and West Bank settlements in July, a move Abdullah told Der Speigel his government continues to review.

“I do not want to jump to statements and threats, and I will not prepare the ground for confrontation, but we are studying all the options and formulating understandings with many European countries and the international community,” he said.

But despite the threats coming from Amman and the seeming lack of concern coming from Jerusalem, both governments and militaries agree on the need to keep security relations close.

Israel’s defense establishment understands the need to prevent a collapse of such ties, as the two countries have robust security coordination and intelligence sharing regarding their common threats. According to foreign reports, Jordan has allowed Israeli jets to use its airspace for its war-between-wars campaign in Syria.

The strategic depth provided by Jordan, which has not entered into any alliance with neighboring countries hostile to Israel, has kept Israel’s eastern and longest border the quietest and safest for 25 years.

Both Jordan and Israel understand that should security ties fail, not only will King Abdullah face instability at home, but the violence could spill over the border to Israel.

With a majority of Jordan’s citizens of Palestinian descent, Palestinian self-determination and maintaining the status quo of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem are key aspects of public discourse in Amman and contribute to the cooling relationship between the neighboring countries.

In March, Jordanian Prime Minister Omar Razzaz told CNN: “Today, we are at the lowest level in the relationship that has been since signing the peace treaty,” and he warned that the peace treaty was at risk.

Razzaz also denounced Israel’s alleged “violations of the sanctity of Muslim and Christian endowments in Jerusalem.”

While Netanyahu and Abdullah both recognize the need to keep the peace, domestic pressures in Jordan might make it difficult for the king to continue it at the low-profile level it currently stands.

That would not be good for either side. • upcoming strategic meeting, but the issue has yet to be formally discussed.

Grotto and Sadetsky sounded pessimistic about the return of flights in the near future, according to officials attending the tour, Ynet reported.

Sadetsky said that it was from abroad that “the bad entered the country. We need to keep a close eye so this does not happen again.”

In mid-April, the Health Ministry reported that there are three main ways that Israelis got sick from the novel coronavirus: contact with another infected person in Israel (49%), exposure abroad (19%) or from visiting a public place in Israel (15%).

Strikingly, Israelis brought the virus back to Israel from 67 different countries. However, most Israelis who tested positive for coronavirus after returning from abroad contracted the disease in North America or Europe, the Health Ministry said.

Last week, a scientist from Tel Aviv University revealed research that showed more than 70% of coronavirus patients in Israel were infected by a strain that originated in the United States, meaning that “those who returned from the US created transmission chains,” according to Dr. Adi Stern of the School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology at TAU’s George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences.

One of the reasons for this, she said, is that flights from Europe and other parts of the world began to be halted between February 26 and March 4 – but not from the US. Only beginning on March 9 did Israel block its borders to anyone who came from abroad who couldn’t complete 14 days of quarantine in Israel.

“There was this gap in policy, and this gap allowed people to return from the US who thought that they could go wherever they wanted, so they probably spread the virus that way,” Stern said.

Zakai told Ynet that one avenue the country is exploring is allowing people to travel to and from “green states” – those with low or no level of infection – without a 14-day quarantine requirement.

“If I travel to a country with a low morbidity rate, there is really no difference between traveling to Eilat or [the Cypriot port city of] Larnaka,” Zakai said.

Israeli airline El Al announced on Monday that it will renew flights to the United States after Shavuot, which runs from Thursday night to Friday this week. The company stopped flying to America two months ago as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. •

“expected to create friction in economic activity.”

Unemployment is expected to reach 8.5% in the second half of 2020, and decline to approximately 5.5% toward the end of 2021. •