America holds the key to ending the war in Gaza
THE killing of three Israeli civilians near the Allenby (King Hussein) Bridge border crossing in the occupied West Bank on September 8 by Maher Ziab Hussein al-Jazi, a former Jordanian soldier, has added a new dimension to the Israel-Hamas war by directly involving Jordan in the conflict.
The Allenby Bridge was originally a World War I crossing point for the British forces from the East to the West Bank. It was named after Field Marshal Edmund Allenby, who had led the Palestine campaign. The recent incident has revealed different dimensions of the Israel-Jordan relationship in terms of security, diplomacy and trade.
During the late 1980s, I was taken on a conducted tour of the Allenby Bridge, 5 km east of Jericho city in the West Bank, for the showcasing of Israel’s preventive security measures to track terrorists and drug traffickers crossing over from Jordan to Israel. We did not have diplomatic relations with Israel then. Apart from video tracking, the bridge had a facility to track border crossings on foot through a study of sand footprints by expert Bedouin trackers. I also met members of the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) Bedouin Tracker Unit.
According to the IDF, on September 8, Maher Ziab drove a truck from Jordan, “exited the truck and opened fire,” killing three Israeli civilian employees. Why didn’t the IDF, with their most modern, AI-driven mass facial-recognition tools like Red Wolf, Blue Wolf and Wolf Pack, detect him while he was on the Allenby Bridge? Also, the bridge is a high-security zone in which all persons crossing get searched at least three times. That the Jordanian could travel with a weapon means that it is a serious security breach.
The IDF had shot dead a Jordanian judge, Raed Zeiter, in 2014 on the bridge merely on the basis of suspicion, something that Israel had to publicly apologise for. Inquiries later revealed that Raed was going to his hometown, Nablus, in the West Bank. The killing had led to strong protests in Jordan and the West Bank. The Arab media had also reported that there were large-scale protests in Jordan after he was killed.
Notably, Maher Ziab, who was shot dead by the IDF, belonged to the influential Huwaitat tribe among the Bedouins. He was a resident of the Husseiniya area in Jordan’s southern Ma’an Governorate. Huwaitat traces its origin to Fatima, daughter of the prophet Muhammad. Some of them were part of the historical ‘Great Arab Revolt’, described by Lawrence of Arabia in his ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’.
The involvement of a Bedouin in violence against Israel might fly in the face of Tel Aviv’s claims that the Bedouins living within Israel have been victims of Hamas, as they were supporting the regime. It may be recalled that Kaid Farhan Elkadi, a Bedouin hostage who was found by the IDF in a Gaza tunnel on August 27, was given a rapturous welcome. However, in the wake of Elkadi’s rescue, international media outlets that visited his village in Negev found strong resentment against the Benjamin Netanyahu regime.
Originally from Saudi Arabia, the Huwaitat had migrated to Jordan, Syria and Egypt (Sinai Peninsula), where they are found in large numbers. In 2020, Huwaitat leader Suleiman Mohammed al-Taqique al-Hwaiti had started an agitation against a new Saudi project called Neom, a planned mega-city, that could result in the displacement of 20,000 Huwaitat tribe members. This resulted in violence and brutal suppression by Saudi Arabia. If the Huwaitat decide, they could open another front against Israel.
Diplomatically, Jordan — which has been highly critical of Netanyahu’s handling of the Gaza war — has a peace accord with Israel that was signed in 1994 by King Hussein and then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the presence of US President Bill Clinton. Annexe III deals with the details of cooperation on crime. This is under strain, as revealed by the joint statement issued by Jordan, Qatar, Palestine and Kuwait on September 3 condemning PM Netanyahu’s accusations that weapons were being smuggled to the Hamas through the Egyptian border.
West Asia observers now feel that Netanyahu’s prolonged war in Gaza, aimed at keeping him in power, is going to affect Jordan adversely. David Hearst, Editor-in-Chief of the Middle East Eye, had observed on August 23 that Jordan’s “balancing act is at risk of crashing down” with the latest Israeli intrusion into the West Bank, reviving the old Zionist policy to consider Jordan as the ‘only Palestinian state’, combined with Donald Trump’s latest idea of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation. He has stated: “The crudest version of this plan entails direct threats to the Palestinian villages and towns of the occupied West Bank to leave or be burnt out by settlers.”
At the same time, prominent US Democrats like Senator Chris Van Hollen have criticised President Joe Biden’s policy on Israel on the ground that it violates American law. In March, Hollen said Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza preventing US humanitarian aid had violated Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 — also known as the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act — and stated that no arms should have been given to Israel.
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian’s former foreign affairs correspondent, reminds us how the Secretary of State in President HW Bush’s Cabinet, James Baker, had dealt with Netanyahu in 1989 by banning him from entering the US State Department. He says that Baker was furious with Netanyahu, who was then Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister under Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, for describing American policies as a ‘distortion and lies’.
Bush and Baker had refused US assistance of $10 billion until Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem ended. Consequently, Shamir faced a defeat in the June 1992 elections.
Steele concludes: “US pressure on Israel has worked to bring positive change in the past. It needs to be applied to do so again.”
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