On March 13, 1997, less than three years after Israel and Jordan signed a peace agreement, a Jordanian soldier opened fire on a group of high-school girls from Beit Shemesh visiting the “Island of Peace” at Naharayim on the Israel-Jordan border. Seven girls were killed.
Jordan's monarch at the time, King Hussein, quickly decried the murder and responded with a memorable display of empathy and reconciliation.
Hussein went to Beit Shemesh and visited the grieving parents as they were sitting shiva. At one home, he said, “Your daughter is like my daughter. Your loss is my loss,” and expressed deep shame for the crime.
He visited the wounded in the attack at the hospital. He also stood by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was the prime minister at the time and delivered a heartfelt apology.
Hussein’s son, King Abdullah, has not followed his father’s example.
A day after a Jordanian terrorist, Maher Dhiab Hussein al-Jazi, killed three Israelis working at the Allenby (King Hussein) Bridge - Adrian Podmeser, Yohanan Shchori, and Yuri Birnbaum - Abdullah had not denounced the murders as of Monday evening.
Jordanian Foreign Minister spokesman Sufian Quday said the attack was an “individual act,” and - according to the Jordan Times - said that Jordan rejects targeting civilians for “whatsoever reasons.”
Peace strained as attacks and tensions escalate
At the same time, and somewhat contradictorily, Quday “also called for addressing all reasons of escalation that lead to violence and the targeting of civilians.”
That’s code for: it's Israel’s fault that a Jordanian terrorist killed Israeli citizens.
The murder of the seven Beit Shemesh schoolgirls, The Washington Post reported at the time, “threatened to transform Jordan’s image among Israelis from their only friendly neighbor to just another dangerous Arab foe.” Hussein’s actions, the paper reported, were designed partly to prevent that from happening.
In the interim 27 years, much of the original promise of the Jordanian-Israeli peace agreement has faded.
Abdullah, whose ministers and wife, Queen Rania, regularly lash into Israel with vicious tirades, couldn’t care less about Israeli public opinion. This is especially true now, with the country on Tuesday going to parliamentary elections in which the Islamic faction is expected to ride a wave of anger toward Israel because of its war with Hamas into electoral gains. The last thing Abdullah wants to do right now, in this atmosphere, is to show empathy toward Israel.
The Israeli public, for its part, harbors few illusions about the king, the Jordanian public, or the prospects of peace with the Hashemite kingdom. This is a cold, functional peace - mainly between the countries' security apparatuses - that serves each side’s security interests.
Israel benefits from close security cooperation with Amman and - for the last 30 years - having had a mostly quiet eastern border. This, however, is changing, as Sunday’s attack demonstrated.
Even before that attack, there have been a number of incidents - including the arrest of two Gazans in March who crossed over from Jordan and were arrested in the Jordan Valley on their way to carrying out a terrorist attack, and the arrest a month later of a Jordanian parliamentarian smuggling arms and gold into the West Bank - indicating that this border is not what it used to be.
Plans to build a multibillion-dollar fence from the Kinneret to just north of Eilat have stalled because of budgetary reasons, so the army is forced to deploy more troops to the area to prevent smuggling and terrorism. Iran is actively trying to smuggle arms, technological know-how, and money across the Jordanian border to ignite the West Bank as another active front in its proxy war against Israel.
Notwithstanding any of that, the security benefits of the peace with Jordan - and Jordan’s concomitant agreements with the US - were visible for all to see in April when the Jordanians played a role in downing Iranian drones, rockets, and missiles on the way to Israel, not a move enormously popular with large parts of the Jordanian public that are openly hostile to Israel.
Those are some of the benefits accruing to Israel from the peace treaty. Jordan benefits as much, enjoying close security and intelligence cooperation with Israel, critical as Amman struggles with its own Islamist radicals as well as those from Iraq and hegemonic designs from Iran.
It also gets $1.45 billion a year in US aid thanks in no small part to the treaty with Israel and has access to cheap Israeli water and natural gas as a result of the accord.
Former IDF spokesperson Ruth Yaron, who at one time headed the Foreign Ministry’s Jordan desk, wrote in October that regarding the threat of ISIS and other radical elements, Abdullah has admitted that it was reassuring to know that Israel “has Jordan’s back.”
Since this relationship serves the security interests of both countries, Sunday’s attack is unlikely to have any long-term impact. Netanyahu, in his reaction to the murders at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, placed none of the blame on the Jordanian government or military for not doing enough to stop terror, speaking instead in general terms about the attack being part of the murderous ideological struggle Iran is leading against Israel.
The attack, moreover, should concern Abdullah as much as it does Israel. The terrorist, a truck driver, comes from a Bedouin tribe in the southern part of the country loyal to Abdullah and the Hashemites.
The Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic fundamentalists inside Jordan, as well as the Iranians, are interested in undermining the king and calling into question his rule. If this sentiment has now penetrated into areas and tribes traditionally loyal to the Hashemite rulers, then that is something that needs to trigger alarm bells in Amman - not only in Jerusalem.
Israel needs to learn from Sunday’s attacks, as well as from the string of incidents in recent months along the border, that it must change tactics and policies along the border. The Jordanians also need to adjust their tactics to better deal with these incidents because the elements behind these attacks against Israel today threaten Abdullah and his regime tomorrow.