With the Middle East the scene of so many conflicts over the last quarter-century, it’s a minor miracle that the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty has held together so well.
While the peace agreement, signed 25 years ago this week has not led to close relations between the two states, there is little doubt that it remains stable. There seems no genuine reason to worry that Israeli-Jordanian peace is imminently falling apart.
It was surprising, then, to see Agency France-Presse, better known as AFP, take the opportunity to run a dismal and woefully unbalanced piece suggesting that the future is bleak, based on very little substance beyond a brief ten-year old quote from Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
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AFP is a French wire outlet which provides news articles to countless websites and newspapers around the world. The article, by Mussa Hattar, cites no fewer than five Jordanians: a civil servant; an Amman-based political analyst; Jordan’s King Abdullah II; the director of a Jordanian think tank; and a white collar worker. No tangible changes in either country’s policies are mentioned, and while the headline derives from a statement from the King himself, it’s one that was made fully a decade ago. The vast majority of the rest of the piece is held together by basic background information and quotes from people, some of them totally unimportant individuals, rather than the thoughts and deeds of policy-makers.
With so much space dedicated to Jordanian perspectives, it’s strange that only a single Israeli is quoted in the article. Even then, the person quoted, Israeli ambassador Amir Weissbrod, is restricted to a mere 25 words. Moreover, his brief quotes are buried deep down only a few sentences before the end.
Related reading: Defining Bias: Unbalanced Reporting
The tone of the entire piece paints the picture that while some limited progress has been made, not all is as it seems. Not once does it cite an occasion on which Israeli policy has caused Jordan concern, instead relying on vague claims from various pessimistic voices who suggest that “Israel shows no respect”, that it “attempts to Judaise Jerusalem”, and that “Israel has displaced millions” and “killed thousands.” None of these claims point to any single event or a specific policy.
A balanced article would include the fact that Israel has allowed Jordan to retain the right to administer the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa mosque compound since 1967 to this day, even though Jordan renounced its claims to the West Bank and east Jerusalem decades ago.
Similarly, a fair report would note that the peace treaty forged by Israel and Jordanian has seen the two establish embassies in one another’s countries, build Qualified Industrial Zones in which tens of thousands of Jordanians are employed, come together in 2016 for a $10 billion natural gas deal in which Israel supplies its eastern neighbor with 45 billion cubic meters of gas from Israel’s Leviathan offshore gas field, two years after a the two countries signed a separate deal for the supply of $500 million worth of gas from the Israeli-controlled Tamar natural gas field in the Mediterranean sea to the Hashemite Kingdom.
And if that wasn’t enough, since 2013, Israel has also helped facilitate Jordanian trade with Iraq and Turkey which had faced severe disruption after the disturbance of an overland route through Syria. Instead, Jordanian exports have been permitted to pass through Haifa port in order to guarantee Jordan access to a stable shipping lane.
All of the above were either not mentioned or only briefly referred to in the AFP piece.
While there’s plenty of room for individual and expert opinion, actions speak louder than words – and beyond the bombast of politicians and talking heads, the Israeli-Jordanian relationship continues to bear fruit for both nations. Any article detailing the status of the peace negotiated by the two simply cannot avoid that basic reality.
For many reasons, the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty is a genuine landmark in the Middle East. It’s a sign that even when two countries don’t see eye to eye, the countries seek to work together for their mutual benefit. While the Jordanian-Israeli relationship clearly isn’t warm and totally open, any honest conversation on the issue would take into account the perspectives of both sides rather than making do with superficial observations taken almost exclusively from one party only, save for a brief fig leaf of a comment from an Israeli representative.
Photo: PM Rabin, Pres. Clinton and King Hussein after signing the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty
Credit: Israeli GPO / OHAYON AVI
