Jordan pulls out of energy-for-water deal with Israel

Jordan’s foreign minister Ayman Safadi has said Amman will not proceed with an agreement to provide Israel with energy in exchange for water. Speaking to Al-Jazeera, Mr Safadi said: “Can you imagine a Jordanian minister sitting next to an Israeli minister to sign a water and electricity agreement, all while Israel continues to kill children in Gaza?”

He said Jordan became the only Arab country after Egypt to sign a peace treaty with Israel “as part of a wider Arab effort to establish a two-state solution” for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. “That has not been achieved,” he continued. “Instead, Israel has not upheld its part of the agreement. So, the peace deal will remain on the back burner gathering dust.”

He said Jordan would focus on ending the “retaliatory barbarism carried out by Israel” which, according to Gaza’s Hama-run health ministry, has killed 11,500 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children.

Israel mounted its offensive after the October 7th Hamas raid into southern Israel.

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Israel has said 1,200 people were killed during the attack, and about 240 hostages were taken by Hamas.

Amman’s decision to scrap the deal followed an Israeli strike on Jordan’s Gaza field hospital in Rafah, which wounded seven staff. Mr Safadi told Amman’s Al-Mamlaka television the strike was a war crime and said Israel was obliged to protect the hospital and not obstruct its operations. He said Jordan would “take necessary legal, diplomatic and political measures” once the incident is investigated.

Jordan is setting up field hospitals in Jenin, Nablus and Hebron in the West Bank, where Palestinian officials report the Israeli army has been conducting 40 raids a day on Palestinian communities, killing more than 200 people since October 7th.

Israel’s Gaza war has created existential challenges for Jordan, which ruled the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Israel’s war of establishment in 1948 until 1967, when the territories were occupied by Israel. During both wars, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled to Jordan, where an estimated half of the population is of Palestinian origin. Last week, prime minister Bisher Al-Khasawneh said Israeli attempts to drive people from the West Bank into Jordan would be “a declaration of war”.

Having recalled its ambassador from Tel Aviv, Amman is under pressure from daily protests to cut all relations, cancel the peace treaty, and initiate mandatory conscription to bolster the kingdom’s 100,000 strong professional army.

Water-poor Jordan is certain to suffer from cancellation of the deal with Israel. Some 1.3 million Syrian and 500,000 Iraqi refugees have contributed to water scarcity for the kingdom’s 11.2 million inhabitants.

Israel’s Gaza war and West Bank instability have reduced tourism, a main source of Jordanian revenue. Arrivals could shrink further as most visitors cross from Jordan to the restive West Bank.

Bethlehem – where the economy depends on pilgrims – has cancelled next month’s Christmas festivities. Last year, Bethlehem marked a strong recovery from a Covid slump to welcome 120,000 pilgrims over the Christmas season.