Relations with Jordan are important to Israeli security, and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu destroyed them, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday in the Knesset.
Bennett spoke in response to an accusation by Netanyahu that by moving to repair ties with Amman, the new government is indirectly empowering Iran.
“Knesset member Bibi Netanyahu, explain it to me. I really wonder,” Bennett said, emphasizing Netanyahu’s new title. “You say a leader of Israel must sometimes confront other nations for Israel’s interest. What is the Israeli interest for which MK Bibi Netanyahu destroyed our relationship with Jordan?”
“We are fixing the relationship,” he added.
Bennett said Netanyahu “gave up parts of the Land of Israel,” referring to the end of Israel’s lease from Jordan of land in Moshav Tzofar and Naharayim. The lease was part of the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, and Jordan declined to renew it last year.
Jordan is in between Israel and Iran, Bennett said, and as such, “a good relationship with the Kingdom of Jordan is a national security interest of Israel.”
Bennett met with Jordanian King Abdullah less than two weeks ago, and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid met with his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi. Israel agreed to double the amount of water it sells to Jordan and to allow Jordan to increase its exports to the Palestinian Authority.
Bennett “didn’t understand that when he gives him water, Abdullah is giving gas to Iran,” Netanyahu said earlier Monday.
“Abdullah, unfortunately, agreed to a pipeline through [Jordan] from Iraq, which is dominated by Iran, to Egypt, and thus giving Iran great economic power to develop its economy and, mainly, its nuclear program, its conquest program and its acts of terror,” he said.
Under Bennett, the government is not standing up to Iran, and “everyone understands it,” Netanyahu said.
Jordan and Egypt have had close economic ties with Iraq since the 1980s, and they were among the first Arab states to build relations with the new Iraqi government after the US invaded in 2003.
Last month’s talks between the three countries on the pipeline and the possibility of connecting Iraq to Jordanian and Egyptian power grids could reduce Iraqi dependence on Iran, which imports much of Iraq’s electricity and gas.
A statement by Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi that his country would not be the third Gulf state to normalize ties with Israel indicated the new government’s weakness against Iran, Netanyahu said.
“Oman believes in the principle of achieving a just, comprehensive and lasting peace on the basis of the two-state solution,” Busaidi told the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper on Saturday.
“It’s no wonder that Oman is also moving in Iran’s direction,” Netanyahu said, adding that it is canceling the normalization process with Israel.
“I remind you that I was in an official meeting with the previous Sultan” in 2018, he said. “Now, everything is moving in the other direction because of the weakness.”
In February, when Netanyahu was still prime minister, Busaidi said Oman was “content so far with the level of our current relations and dialogue, which involves the appropriate channels of communication.”
In February, he said Oman would wait for the establishment of a Palestinian state before forging ties with Israel.
Oman values its neutrality in the Middle East, and maintains ties with Iran as well as countries that oppose the Islamic Republic, Busaidi said.