After 25 years of peace, humiliation and disappointment, Jordan fears Israel's next moves will constitute an existential threat to the kingdom

by Ori Nir 

Dec 08, 2019

Crossing the Allenby Bridge back into Israel, after visiting Jordan just after the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, an occasion that was not celebrated either in Israel or in Jordan, I felt despondent. Jordan’s monarch recently depicted his country's relationship with Israel as being "at an all-time low."

Senior Jordanian officials haven't yet entirely given up hoping Israel will wake up to the need to preserve relations with Jordan, rather than undermining them. But they also know that widely-flagged future moves by a right-wing Israeli government - not least, West Bank annexation – could be critically destabilizing for Jordan, and a lethal blow for bilateral relations.

Statement from the Progressive Israel Network:

As leading progressive pro-Israel organizations in the American Jewish community, we commend the House of Representatives for passing House Resolution 326. This landmark resolution, which reaffirms support for a two-state solution, marks the first time the House has formally opposed unilateral Israeli annexation of the West Bank and asserted longstanding US opposition to settlements.

The passage of this legislation comes at a critical moment. The resolution sends an urgent message to the region just days after President Trump reportedly spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu about the latter’s plan to annex the Jordan Valley. It is a repudiation of the Trump administration’s attempts last month to legitimize Israeli settlements on occupied territory by declaring that the US no longer views them as a violation of international law, a reversal of decades of bipartisan foreign policy. 

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Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

Had Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined me and my APN colleagues on our West Bank study tour last week, we would have shown him how fraught with illegality and illegitimacy West Bank settlements are.

As American Jewish organizations deeply concerned about the future of Israel’s democracy, we are disturbed and saddened by the decision of the Israeli Supreme Court to uphold the Israeli government’s order to deport Omar Shakir, Human Rights Watch’s Israel and Palestine Director.

Human Rights Watch plays an integral role in documenting and opposing human rights abuses wherever they take place around the world. Allowing human rights organizations like HRW to engage in this work is crucial for any democratic society. The Supreme Court’s decision helps fuel the Israeli right’s widening campaign of incitement and suppression against those who research and oppose the injustices of the occupation. It sets an unacceptable precedent for all groups and activists engaged in this essential work — whether Israeli citizens or non-citizens, Jewish or non-Jewish. As 23 Israeli civil society organizations wrote, the decision to allow for the deportation of Omar Shakir “severely harmed us all.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today announced the Trump administration’s latest assault on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. In renouncing a 1978 letter by the State Department’s legal advisor and stating that “settlements are not per se illegal under international law,” the Trump administration is giving a green light to further settlement expansion and even to formal Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

Already, the effective endorsement of settlements by Trump’s “peace” team (including by former Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt who has referred to settlements as “neighborhoods and cities”) has led to a surge in settlement activity, as documented by APN’s Israeli sister-organization Peace Now.