On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Jordan-Israel peace treaty, relations between the neighboring states are frostier than ever. Neither is planning to hold events to mark the occasion on Oct. 26.

Instead of celebrating, Israel will be preparing to hand over Baqura and Ghumar, two tracks of land in the Jordan Valley. The transfer takes place on Nov. 10, a year after Jordan's King Abdullah II declined to renew the relevant treaty annexes leasing the land to the Israelis. On Oct. 10, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry dismissed Israeli reports claiming that Jordan had agreed to extend the leases on the border territories, which are being farmed by Israelis. “Final and irreversible” is how ministry spokesperson Sufian Qudah was quoted as describing the termination of the annexes.

A series of recent and more distant provocations by Israel is viewed as having driven the Jordanian decision to abrogate the annex agreements. These include the almost daily incursions by Jewish zealots on the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount); the failure by Israel to prosecute an Israeli diplomat accused of killing two Jordanians at the Israeli Embassy in Amman in 2017; and the gunning down of a Palestinian-Jordanian judge by an Israeli soldier at a border crossing in 2014. Another source of tension is said to be Israel’s hesitation to comply with constructing a joint water canal project between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea.

Abdullah’s distrust of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the king's distaste of Israel's antagonistic policies toward Jordan and the Palestinians over almost a decade lie at the heart of the growing gap between the two countries. This stands in contrast to the personal chemistry that King Hussein and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin developed in the early 1990s and that lasted until the latter’s assassination in 1995. Both men had a remarkably optimistic vision of their countries' bilateral ties as well as peace between Israel and the Palestinians and by extension the rest of the Arab world.