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Experts Downplay Significance of Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty Changes

(JNS) Israel Kasnett - Jordanian King Abdullah II announced his country would reassert control over two agricultural enclaves leased from Jordan by Israel for 25 years under the 1994 peace agreement. Joshua Krasna, an expert at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies [JISS], said: "Regarding the Naharaim site, as former [Jordanian] Prime Minister Abdul Salam Majali noted, Israeli citizens have 'ownership rights' that date back to 1926, when Russian Jewish engineer Pinhas Rutenberg...obtained a concession for production and distribution of electric power." "That there are Israeli property rights in the northern disputed area is not widely known in Jordan. So the discussion of this area may well be protracted, and require compensation and even legal processes." Eran Lerman, vice president of JISS, said: "The arrangement was for 25 years, and it will expire next year. It would have been surprising if the king did not claim what is his [and perhaps leave open the option of higher remuneration for these plots]." Uzi Rabi, director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University, said: "This is not more than a PR exercise [by King Abdullah] to his own people, as he wishes to please some trade unions and other unsatisfied sectors in Jordan. We have a year to work this out and Israel has the tools to make this all work out." Abdullah Swalha, founder and director of the Center for Israel Studies in Jordan, said: "During the last two years, there has been an ongoing campaign in Jordan asking the government to cancel this agreement. Just last week, over 80 members of Jordan's parliament signed a petition asking the king not to renew the agreement. So the king is responding to public opinion." At the end of the day, he said, Jordan will not destroy its peace agreement with Israel over two small tracts of land.
2018-10-24 00:00:00
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