Free Republic

Israel's Annexation Plan of the Jordan Valley European thinking, Abdullah’s reaction, and Israel’s rights. Thu May 28, 2020 Joseph Puder The new Israeli government is considering extending Israeli law and sovereignty to the Jordan Valley, which is within area C of the Oslo Accords. The Accords, which gave Israel both military and administrative control in the area, also contains a large bloc of Jewish-Israeli communities. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on a short visit to Israel (April 22, 2020) told reporters: “As for annexation of the (Jordan Valley) West Bank, the Israelis will ultimately make those decisions.” He added,...

As head of state at the Vatican, not to mention the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, protocol requires visitors to bow to him when they meet him at the Holy See. But Francis, who has made the forgetting of formalities a trademark of his papacy, bowed when he met a smiling Rania as she visited the Vatican with her husband King Abdullah II on Thursday. "Up until the 19th century visitors would kiss the pope's shoes, and the tradition is still that all visitors, women included, bow to him, but Francis behaves as he did before he became...

Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood has given King Abdullah II notice that he has until October to bow to their demand to transform the Hashemite Kingdom into a constitutional monarchy or face "Arab Spring" style street pressure for his abdication. Middle East sources report that Israeli and Saudi intelligence watchers are becoming increasingly concerned about the approaching climax of the conflict in Amman between Islamists and the throne. For Israel, an upheaval in Jordan bodes the tightening of the Islamist noose around its borders – Egypt and Libya to the south and Syria to the north, with unpredictable consequences with regard to...