Last week, in a meeting between Foreign Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid with his Jordanian counterpart, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, it was agreed that Israel would sell Jordan an additional 50 million cubic meters of water this year due to the severe water shortage hitting the kingdom, and would also help facilitate Jordan’s exports to the West Bank.
In addition, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett secretly met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Amman, the first meeting between the Jordanian monarch and an Israeli prime minister in more than four years. And on Saturday night, Abdullah called President Isaac Herzog to congratulate him on his inauguration. The king “expressed satisfaction with the recent return of diplomatic relations between the two countries to their proper track,” according to a statement by the president’s spokesman.
Clearly, the new Bennett-Lapid government is interested in improving ties with Jordan, the country with which Israel shares its longest border, some 300 kilometers, stretching along most of Israel’s length. And it seems that Jordan also wants to repair the relationship.
In sad contrast to the high hopes that existed when the two countries signed a peace treaty in 1994, there has been little progress in trade, tourism or diplomatic cooperation.
A new low was reached in March, under Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, when Jordan’s Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah had planned to visit al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem but was not permitted to make the trip with his own armed guards.
In an apparent response, Jordan rescinded its permission for Netanyahu’s plane to pass through Jordanian airspace on its way to the United Arab Emirates, where he was scheduled to meet the UAE leader in a historic first visit since the signing of the Abraham Accords. As a result, Netanyahu had to cancel that trip and meeting, as traveling to the Gulf without flying above Jordan would have taken him too long.
It was a reminder that Israel and Jordan depend on each other in many ways. It also demonstrated the fact that peace must be regional, and the agreements with the UAE and Bahrain cannot exist independently.
Despite the diplomatic tensions, Israel and Jordan have continued to maintain good, ongoing security cooperation due to the common threats to both countries and the long, shared border.
Israel has a strategic interest in making sure that Jordan remains secure and stable. That the Jordanian border has remained quiet for the last few decades has been an essential tenet in Israel’s defense strategy. Jordan serves as a buffer between Israel and the threats emanating from Iraq and even further afield. The Hashemite Kingdom, whose population includes a Palestinian majority, is also concerned by the threat of terrorism emanating from the Palestinian Authority areas. Israel and Jordan therefore have several important mutual interests.
Israel’s eastern neighbor is not in good shape. Its economy has been badly hit by the repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic. In addition, 10 years after the start of the so-called Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war, an estimated one million migrants have sought refuge in Jordan, increasing the burden on the economy and resources, including water.
Under the terms of the peace treaty, Israel already provides some 50 million cubic meters of water to Jordan annually. Israel, unlike Jordan, is able to meet most of its water needs through desalination projects along the Mediterranean coast. The lack of progress in plans to jointly build a canal between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea that could help ease Jordan’s severe water shortage is one of the causes of tension.
Abdullah is scheduled to meet with US President Joe Biden in Washington next week, and Bennett is expected to meet the president later this summer. It would be good news if the Jordanian monarch were willing to meet the Israeli premier out in the open, to send a message of normalization to his people.
Israel is obviously interested in extending a helping hand to its neighbor. Jordan, for its part, should accept the hand in friendship. Good ties between the two countries benefit both – and the region.