The Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood has condemned Jordan's decision to warn Israel before last Thursday's terror attacks.
by Gavriel Queenann
Published: 21/08/11, 9:16 PM
Hamza Mansour
WikimediaCommons
Hamza Mansour, secretary general of the Islamic Action Front Party - the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan - condemned Jordan for giving Israel advance warning to Israel's securityforces of last Thursday's terror attacks that killed 8 Israelis and left 33 wounded.
According to reports, Israel deployed additional army patrols and the elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit in the area when 'tangible threats' were reported, but not in time to find the terrorists and prevent the attack. Nonetheless, because of the additional deployments, IDF and Yamam personnel were in the vicinity and therefore able to race to the scene of the attack and avert greater tragedy.
Not all reports agree Jordan was the source of the warning, however. Others have attributed the warning to Egyptian security officials - and to officers of the Israel Security Agency (ISA) itself.
Mansour said the Jordanian warning was an "obscene case of security cooperation with the enemy, a threat to Jordan, and the Arab and Islamic nation." He demanded Jordan's government punish those responsible and remove them from the securityforces and the diplomatic corps.
Moreover, in addition to the riots in front of Israel's embassy in Cairo after Israeli retaliatory strikes for the now-three-day long series of terror attacks on Israel's south, demonstrations were also staged outside the Israeli embassy in Amman, and there were disturbances at the Jordanian embassy in Israel.
Demonstrators - waving the flags of the PA, Jordan, and Egypt - demanded King Adbullah II cancel the 1994 peace agreement between the Hashemite Kingdom and Israel. They also called for the Israeli embassy in Amman to be closed and set fire to the Israeli flag chanting "death to Israel."
Backchannel contacts between Israeli leaders and Jordan's monarchs have a long-history dating not only to before the 1994 treaty, but before the foundation of the Jewishstate as well.
While relations between Israel and Jordan have appaeared strained in recent years, economic and security cooperation has remained strong. Jordan's government has not only had to contend with 'Arab spring' protests of late - largely backed by Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood - but tangible threats on the life of King Abdullah II from those same groups as well.
Nor has the attempt by then-PLO leader Yassir Arafat to assassinate then-King Hussein and set up a 'state within a state' on the east bank of the Jordan in September of 1970 - the infamous Black September - been forgotten in Amman.
Mansour's bellicose declarations are likely to put King Abdullah II in a difficult position. While the Jordanian alliance with Israel is bitterly unpopular with the opposition groups he seeks to appease, Israel's continued existence - and crackdown on 'Palestinian' terrorists backed by the same Islamic groups who pose a threat to his life and regime - remains clearly in his interests.
