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Jordan's Move on Leased Border Land Spells Internal Weakness

(Israel Hayom) Prof. Eyal Zisser - King Abdullah II of Jordan announced that he would not renew one of the annexes his father signed 24 years ago, leasing agricultural borderlands to Israel. These are Jordanian lands and it stands to reason that Jordan would have reimposed its sovereignty over them at some point. The problem is in the manner and timing in which the Jordanians chose to declare they were essentially disavowing the spirit of the 1994 peace agreement. Regrettably, the Jordanian regime does not even try to deal with domestic hostility toward Israel, preferring to allow public opinion to lash out at Israel and hoping this will soften the criticism leveled at the government. At the same time, no Arab country is as dependent on Israel as Jordan in terms of energy, water resources, and on questions of national security. Moreover, no Arab state maintains such tight - albeit clandestine - strategic cooperation with Israel. The importance of this cooperation is immeasurably greater than the acres of agricultural land over which Jordan now seeks to regain control. The writer is a lecturer in the Middle East History Department at Tel Aviv University.
2018-10-23 00:00:00
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