Israel's latest move to enable Jewish settlement and land ownership in the occupied West Bank has caused alarm in neighbouring Jordan, which observers say has been bracing for the worst since the Gaza war.
Decisions made by the Israeli security cabinet on Sunday will alter existing West Bank property laws that helped Palestinians to hold on to what was left of their land. One, enacted when Jordan was in control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem before the 1967 Middle East war, prohibited land sales to Israelis.
Jordan also sought to keep secret details of land records to prevent any Israeli attempts to buy land. However, the Israeli security cabinet's decision to lift secrecy over West Bank land registration makes it easier for Israelis to find and approach Palestinian property owners with offers. It could also identify people who have already sold or helped sales to Israelis, which is a sensitive issue in the West Bank and Jordan.
In the first direct Jordanian response to the Israeli measures, government spokesman Mohammad Al Momani warned on Tuesday that “messing” with West Bank laws will result in a more “vicious” Israeli settlement activity.
Expansion of Israeli land holdings in the West Bank, which has had a surge in military raids, settlement building and settler attacks since the Gaza war began, would put more pressure on Palestinians to leave. Jordan was the main destination of the past two major Palestinian displacements after the creation of Israel in 1948 and its seizure of East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967.
A social contract, overseen by the Hashemite monarchy since the 1970 civil war, created a balance between Jordanians of Palestinian origin and the members of tribes who were inhabiting what became the British Protectorate of Transjordan in 1921. King Abdullah II has made it clear that maintaining stability requires that the kingdom be spared another refugee influx.
“We are seeing the repercussions of the Gaza war. Israel is throwing a combustible mixture into the kingdom,” Saud Al Sharafat, a Jordanian security specialist and former intelligence brigadier general, told The National.
Mr Al Sharafat, who leads the Shorufat ِCentre for Globalisation and Terrorism Studies, said Jordan was still “boiling” from the destruction Israel inflicted on Gaza.
The Israeli decisions are aimed at “destroying the two-state solution” and testing stability in the kingdom, in retribution for the "solid" diplomatic stance Jordan has taken against Israeli transgressions during the Gaza war, he said.
Mr Al Sharafat also pointed to Jordan's success in asserting its custodianship over Al Aqsa Mosque, which has irked Israel, particularly its far right.
Jordan had secured US backing against annexation of the West Bank. Mr Al Sharafat said Washington was keen to help maintain Jordan as a bastion of stability in the Middle East, which means that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could come under pressure to temper the expansion when he meets US President Donald Trump in Washington this week.
On Monday, the White House repeated Mr Trump’s “clear" position against annexation, saying that a stable West Bank serves wider regional peace.
However, Jordan is dependent on US aid and has a defence pact with Washington. It also has security co-operation with Israel, as part of the 1994 peace treaty between the two countries.
Except for the kingdom's channels with Mr Trump, "the options for Jordan are limited", Mr Al Sharafat said.
A diplomat based in Amman said that Jordan is doubtful about how far Mr Trump can halt an Israeli takeover, given that Israel has been getting away with unofficial takeovers that fall short of formal annexation. Jordan, the diplomat said, was hoping that Mr Trump would widen US reconstruction plans for Gaza to the West Bank, which would take pressure off the kingdom.
A well-connected Jordanian source said that Israel has been directly pressuring the kingdom by hindering supplies of water and the movement of goods and people from the West Bank across the Jordan River to the kingdom.
"Netanyahu has been hinting that things would be easier if the king agrees to meet him,” the source said.
But such a meeting would go against Jordan's policy in recent years of decreasing ties and not rewarding Israel for its transgressions, the source said.
“It will not happen."
