Jordan's Prime Minister recognizes the obvious: 'We need Israel'
Responding to protesters calling for cutting his country's ties with Israel, Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Nsur stated the obvious: Jordan needs Israel.
According to Kol Yisrael radio, Prime Minister Abdullah Nsur
explained that the peace treaty with Israel was important for Jordan’s
national security. He further said, according to the report, that the
two countries share interests including water issues, borders, the
so-called “Palestinian refugees” and Jerusalem.
Nsur’s comments came after around 1,000 people demonstrated on Friday
near the Israeli embassy in Amman to protest the killing of a Jordanian
judge by Israeli soldiers.
AFP reported that the protesters demanded that the 1994 peace deal between the countries be annulled.
IDF soldiers shot and killed
38-year-old Raed Zeiter, a Palestinian-Jordanian, at the Allenby border
crossing on Monday, after he attacked a soldier and tried to grab his
weapon.
Incredibly, Prime Minister Netanyahu has apologized for Zeiter's death.
After all-night meeting with Netanyahu, Kerry going to Ramallah
After an all-night meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen on Sunday morning. Let's put the geography in perspective, I can walk up the block and see Ramallah, so the issue here isn't the travel. It's the length of the meetings and whether something is actually going on.
US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday morning in Ramallah before leaving
the region later in the afternoon, Israel Radio reported.
The
sit-down with Abbas, which would be Kerry's third meeting with the
Palestinian leader in the last three days, follows a late-night, hours
long meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. There had been
reports on Saturday that Kerry was on the verge of announcing a four-way
peace summit in Amman, though this was denied by an Israeli official.
Sources told Israel Radio that military officials, legal experts, and
political advisers sat in on the meeting between Kerry and Netanyahu,
perhaps suggesting that the session was not routine.
Kerry is expected
to convene a news conference later Sunday before his departure to
Brunei.
While there were reports in the Jordanian media on
Saturday that Kerry succeeded in securing an agreement for an
Israel-Palestinian-American-Jordanian summit later in the week in
Jordan, Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan, a member of the
security cabinet, denied that such a meeting was imminent.
"To the
best of my understanding, Abu Mazen (Abbas) is still demanding the same
preconditions, which we have no intention of meeting," Erdan said.
Abbas
has consistently demanded a complete cessation of new construction in
east Jerusalem and in the settlements, a release of Palestinian
prisoners incarcerated before the Oslo accords, and an Israeli agreement
to use the 1967 lines as the baseline of the talks.
I am sure that after all this effort, Netanyahu is not going to willingly send Kerry away empty-handed. But since Netanyahu is the one who has shown flexibility, it is deeply disturbing that Kerry continues to try to press him, and is spending comparatively less time pressuring Abu Bluff. Netanyahu's coalition is unlikely to go along with the preconditions demanded by Abu Mazen, nor should they. It's long past time that the 'Palestinians' learned to compromise. If they can't it will prove once again that Naftali Bennett was right: The 'two-state solution' is dead.
What if they held a 'million man march' and only a few hundred came
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
The 'million man march' outside the Israeli embassy in Amman on Thursday night turned out to be a big flop.
An al-Jazeera reported on the scene reported that the number of demonstrators was much lower than the organizers expects, even though the crowd increased after a group of Islamic protesters joined the rally following the evening prayer at a nearby mosque.
...
For the past week, a Facebook page has been calling Jordanians to attend a "million-man march" towards the Israeli embassy in Amman. Jordan's seven opposition groups announced that they will join the protest, and so did the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood branch.
I went to a wedding tonight, and someone came up to me and told me he'd read on the blog that I'd be there.
I got on a bus this morning and someone came up to me and told me that he'd spent Shabbat in my house because his mother read my old humor and Matzav lists and now he reads my blog.
I met someone else this morning who told me that he and his family spent Shabbos in my house when they made aliya. Unfortunately, they're back living here now, but he reads my blog.
This doesn't happen in Israel, where most of the people who would come up to me and say that are fellow bloggers. Occasionally, yes. But not as often as here.
Oh and at the wedding tonight, the groom's sister, who interned at the JPost a couple of summers ago (where she told me she was instructed to read my blog and one other - I won't tell you all which one so as not to insult the rest of my friends) asked me how the blog was going....
But the jet lag caught up during the wedding and I have to drive someplace else tomorrow (later today) so just one post for the next couple of hours.
After last weekend's debacle in Cairo, the Israeli government has decided to shut down its embassy in Amman for the weekend, where a 'million man march' against Israel is planned.
Israel evacuated its embassy in Jordan Wednesday evening, hours before a Facebook organized march under the banner (in Arabic) of "No Zionist embassy on Jordanian territory."
Unlike in Egypt, where diplomats lived with their families, in Amman the Israeli delegation serves without their families, and comes home for weekends.
The decision came just days after the 13-hour rampage at the Israeli embassy in Cairo, during which six security guards locked themselves behind a steel door while mobs ransacked the embassy.
Here's some video.
Let's go to the videotape.
About five years ago, I was at a Shabbat table with an Israeli diplomat who had just been transferred to Africa (where she had to fly to Europe at least once a month to buy Kosher food) from Jordan. She said Jordan was considered a plum assignment because you went home every weekend. Between last year's attack on the Israelis going home and Wednesday's story, it may not be such a plum assignment anymore.
Amman, Jordan was the scene of violent demonstrations on Friday, as the Arab spring spreads to yet another Arab autocracy.
One man died and scores were injured in clashes that erupted between pro-government and pro-reform protesters at the Interior Ministry Circle in Amman on Friday.
Prime Minister Marouf Bakhit blamed the Islamists for the violent developments as police chief said his forces did their best to separate the two groups of protesters but were overwhelmed by the great numbers.
As the events escalated police chief lieutenant-general Hussein Majali said his force had to disperse protesters and to end the sit-in.
Meanwhile, 15 members of the recently formed National Dialogue Committee announced their resignation in protest at the way the authorities handled the situation.
The pro-reform protesters blamed the government for the violence that took place on the second day of a sit-in organized by youth belonging to several opposition groups at the circle area, one of the major intersections of Amman.
But the prime minister later in the evening blamed the Muslim Brotherhood for the clashes and accused the group of creating chaos in the country, adding that the government would not allow any gatherings that would disrupt normal life in Jordan.
“Still we will continue to respect freedom of expression that does not harm the others and which does not disrupt everyday life,” Bakhit told Jordan Television’s Sixty Minutes programme.
It sounds like the government sent in plain-clothed thugs to stir up trouble. Wouldn't that be shocking? Note that the story mentions "Islamist, leftist, liberal and tribal figures." Do you mean to tell me that there are no 'Palestinians' among the protesters? I don't believe that for a minute.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
