Amman has stepped up its military presence along its border with the Israeli-occupied West Bank amid fears that the Jewish state may try to expel Palestinians into Jordan’s territory.
“Any displacement [of Palestinians into Jordan] … will be viewed as a declaration of war [by Israel] and a material breach of the peace treaty,” Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh said on Nov. 21.
Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, becoming the second Arab country to do so after Egypt.
Egypt, which shares a 7.5-mile border with the Gaza Strip, signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
Both Arab countries have long been regarded as key U.S. allies in the Middle East.
In remarks carried by state media, Mr. Khasawneh warned that Amman would employ “all means in its power” to prevent Israel from expelling West Bank Palestinians into Jordan.
Such a move, he said, would “spell the end of the Palestinian [national] cause and adversely affect Jordan’s national security.”
Jordan is home to millions of Palestinian refugees—or their descendants—who fled their homes after Israel’s establishment in 1948 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The 1994 peace treaty states that “involuntary movements of persons in such a way as to adversely prejudice the security of either party should not be permitted.”
Nevertheless, some members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government have espoused the idea of pushing West Bank Palestinians into Jordan.
According to Mr. Khasawneh, the 1994 peace treaty would be reduced to “a piece of paper … gathering dust if Israel fails to respect its obligations.”
Any perceived threat to Jordan’s national security, he added, would lead to “all options being put on the table.”
Since the peace treaty was signed almost three decades ago, Jordan—encouraged by Washington—has developed significant security ties with Israel.
Relations, however, have come under strain since Mr. Netanyahu’s return to power in December of 2022.
The Israeli prime minister currently leads one of the most hardline governments in the country’s 75-year history.
Israel-Jordan relations have deteriorated further since Oct. 7, when Gaza-based faction Hamas carried out a cross-border raid that left more than 1,400 Israelis dead.
Since then, Israeli warplanes have relentlessly pounded the Gaza Strip in the hunt for Hamas terrorists and their network of tunnels, reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble and killing thousands of Palestinians.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, more than 14,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed.
Coupled with an Israeli ground offensive, the airstrikes have served to displace an estimated 1.7 million people in Gaza, which is home to 2.3 million Palestinians.
Hamas, which has governed the Gaza Strip since 2006, is viewed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
But like a number of other Middle Eastern states, Jordan does not consider Hamas a terrorist group.
In 2021, when the UK added Hamas to its terrorist list, 75 Jordanian lawmakers issued a statement describing the move as “further aggression against the Palestinian people and the Arab nation.”
The decision by London, the lawmakers claimed, represented a “reward for the Zionist [Israeli] occupation, which kills Palestinians … and besieges the people of Gaza.”
Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has remained subject to a crippling blockade by Israel and Egypt, both of which share borders with the Palestinian enclave.
Critics of the longstanding containment policy have described the densely-populated Gaza Strip as the “world’s largest open-air prison.”
Mounting West Bank Violence
Along with continued airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, Israel has also conducted frequent airstrikes in the occupied West Bank since Hamas’ deadly raid on Oct. 7.According to the United Nations, more than 185 West Bank Palestinians, including dozens of children, have been killed by Israel in the latest round of Mideast violence.
Another eight Palestinians in the West Bank were killed by armed Jewish settlers, while four Israelis were killed by Palestinians, the world body said.
Over the same period, hundreds of West Bank Palestinians have been rounded up by Israeli security forces.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel to take “affirmative steps” to curb mounting settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
In a phone call with Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, Mr. Blinken stressed the “urgent need for affirmative steps to deescalate tensions in the West Bank, including by confronting rising levels of settler extremist violence,” according to a State Department spokesman.
On Nov. 18, an Israeli airstrike left five West Bank Palestinians dead, according to both Israeli and Palestinian sources.
In a statement, the Israeli military said that its warplanes had killed “a number of terrorists” near the city of Nablus “and prevented terror attacks against Israeli civilians.”
For his part, Mr. Khasawneh, Jordan’s prime minister, warned that Israeli actions in the West Bank—by both Israel’s military and Jewish settlers—risked triggering wider violence.
“Israel should avoid further escalation in the West Bank,” he said. “This is a red line that Jordan won’t accept.”
Home to some 2.7 million Palestinians and about 670,000 Jewish settlers, the Israeli-occupied West Bank also includes East Jerusalem, which has long been a flashpoint for violence between the two sides.
A landlocked Palestinian enclave, the West Bank is partially run—along with Israel—by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
In 1967, Israel captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan.
In 2005, Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza, where Hamas came to power the following year, while the West Bank remains under Israeli occupation.
