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| Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri and Saeb Erekat, PLO’s executive committee’s secretary and chief Palestinian negotiator, during a press conference in Amman on Sunday [Image Source] |
Over at Ynet, there’s a report [“Responding to Netanyahu, Jordan says stance against terrorism ‘clear to everyone’“, Roi Kais, May 14, 2017] from last night that’s hard for us to ignore.
It quotes the foreign minister of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan attempting to explain, in the wake of bitter criticism from Israel a day earlier, that when it comes to defeating the terrorists, Jordan is on the right side:
After Israel and Jordan trade accusations and condemnations over Saturday’s stabbing attack which resulted in the killing of a Jordanian citizen, Jordan announces, ‘Our positions against violence and terrorism are clear to everyone,’ adding that they are invested in ‘establishing security, peace and freedom for the Palestinians… Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi made his response at a press conference in Amman with his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shukri and Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee… “Jordan is and was a voice of reason and peace… ” Safadi said, adding that King Abdullah II is “invested in establishing security, peace and freedom for the Palestinians.”
Jordan came in from criticism from many quarters, including via a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, in the wake of the events we described on Saturday [“13-May-17: In Jerusalem’s Old City, a Jordanian stabs an Israeli and the Jordanians are outraged (so are we, for different reasons)”] Essentially, the Jordanians reacted to the killing of a Jordanian attacker who was stopped while in the act of an unprovoked stabbing attack on an Israeli Druze police officer by condemning Israel.
We are going to try to get a message to Mr Safadi of Jordan tonight.
In it, we plan to ask him whether holding “positions against violence and terrorism” is consistent with harboring a self-confessed Jordanian mass-murderer who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list and, in effect, telling the American Justice Department to go take a hike.
We will also ask him whether Jordan being “a voice of reason and peace” fits with its repudiating on transparent and specious grounds the Extradition Treaty it signed in 1995 with the United States and which the United States (we believe) regards as fully effective and valid.
Like the Jordan foreign minister, we want Jordan’s “positions” to be “clear to everyone“. As clear as they can possibly be.
The background is here.
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