Israeli, Jordanian foreign ministers meet, with plenty of issues on their agenda
Israel's normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and Israel’s apparent rapprochement with Saudi Arabia worry Jordan, especially when it comes to its special custodian status in Jerusalem.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi met Dec. 3 with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi at the Allenby Bridge border crossing.
The Jordanians are said to have asked for the meeting in order to discuss some practical matters. The list of issues that came up in the meeting was quite long. A statement issued by the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said the two men talked about "a number of pending concerns, including water, lifting restrictions on Jordanian exports to the West Bank, Jordanian provision of additional electricity to the Palestinian Authority and organizing movement through border crossings in light of their closure due to the coronavirus pandemic."
The Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed the meeting, but refused to give any more details. Still, reports claimed that Safadi raised the possibility of Israel renewing talks with the Palestinians under the auspices of the new American administration.
Reports further said that Safadi asked Ashkenazi for the Israeli take on the latest Palestinian initiative for a regional peace summit with Jordan and with Egypt. Some see this as a sort of a Palestinian counterreaction to Israel’s rapprochement with Gulf states. This issue of a regional summit was raised by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas two days earlier, when he visited Amman and met with King Abdullah II.
