Israeli Energy Minister Karin Elharar criticized Oct. 17 the attack last week by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the new water deal signed between Israel and Jordan. Interviewed by the army radio station, Elharar accused Netanyahu of attempting to damage relations between the two countries. “The leader of the opposition is creating fake news and claiming that we are giving the water for free, which didn’t happen. There are no free gifts, but relations that need to be developed. This is a strategic asset to Israel,” noted Elharar.

Two days before the interview with Elharar, a senior official at the Israeli Foreign Ministry addressed the same issue. Head of the Jordan-Syria-Lebanon department at the Foreign Ministry Liron Zaslansky wrote on Twitter, “We do not give Jordan water for free. The Jordanians pay full price for it. Stability and peace are strategic interests of Israel."

Elharar and Zaslansky were referring to an Oct. 12 tweet by Netanyahu, posted shortly after the signing of a deal that would see the amount of water provided by Israel to Jordan doubled. “Just while Jordan is tightening relations with Iran, [Prime Minister Naftali] Bennett doubled the amount of water that Israel is transferring to Jordan — without Israel getting anything diplomatic in return,” he wrote.

Emphasizing his point on Amman allegedly playing out Jerusalem while strengthening relations with Tehran, Netanyahu accompanied his post by a photo of an article that had just appeared in the Israel Hayom newspaper, which is affiliated with the Israeli right, featuring a photo of Jordanian King Abdullah, with the headline “Double Game?” The article argued that while the Israeli energy minister signed with her Jordanian counterpart the new water deal, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi spoke on the phone with his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, discussing means of developing bilateral ties and a number of regional issues allegedly of common interest.