(Economist-UK) John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, has suggested that Israeli forces could remain for at least ten years in the Jordan Valley. "If we're in control of the area, there's no reason for the [Jewish] settlements to leave," said Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN. The settlements, he said, could provide staging posts for rushing Israeli troops to the border in the event of attack, and would help safeguard Israel against any infiltration of weapons by hostile outsiders. Meanwhile, Jordan's King Abdullah seems determined to link a Jordanian industrial park to a new Israeli one straddling the Jordan River. This "Jordan Gateway" park is to include an electricity plant fueled by Israeli gas piped under the Jordan River and a storage area for goods traffic heading from Israel's port of Haifa via Jordan into the Arab world. Shlomi Fogel, one of the park's Israeli architects, says that in July alone, 6,000 trucks full of grain, steel and marble crossed from Israel to Jordan, much of it bound for Iraq.
2013-12-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive