Netanyahu meets King Abdullah II of Jordan in First Public Meeting Since 2014
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Amman on Monday, the prime minister’s office said.
Netanyahu and the king spoke about regional developments, advancing the peace process and the economic ties between the two countries. According to sources in Jerusalem, the meeting is further confirmation that the relationship between the two leaders has stabilized after a diplomatic crisis over the shooting of an Israeli security guard at the Israeli embassy in Amman in 2017.
Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s commitment to maintaining the status quo regarding the holy sites in Jerusalem. Jordan is the custodian of the Islamic sites in the city.
Netanyahu took a secret flight to Amman Monday afternoon.
The last public meeting between the two heads of state took place in November 2014. Netanyahu took part in a secret peace summit in Aqaba in 2016 led by then U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry where the king and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi were present.
Mossad Director Yossi Cohen, Military Secretary to the Prime Minister Eliezer Toledano, Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff Yoav Horowitz, Cabinet Secretary Tzachi Braverman, a representative from the National Security Council, and the head of the National Economic Council Professor Avi Simhon participated in the meeting in Amman.
Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and Jason Greenblatt, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East peace process, will arrive in the region later this week.
The two senior advisers to Trump met Friday with the UN secretary-general to discuss the situation in Gaza and the U.S. administration’s plan for peace in the Middle East. They discussed those issues with António Guterres in New York ahead of the two Americans’ five-country Middle East trip next week.
The White House announced Friday night that the trip would include stops in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This will be Kushner and Greenblatt’s second visit to the region in a month after they briefly visited Israel last month to attend the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
Source: Haaretz Md. Irfan Ansari The Kootneeti Middle East Monitor
