Jordan's King Abdullah II refuses to meet Netanyahu

According to reports by a Kuwaiti daily made on Wednesday, July 27, King Abdullah II of Jordan recently declined a secret meeting with Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

‘Well informed’ anonymous sources told Al-Jareeda newspaper that Netanyahu had sent a special emissary to Amman to request a secret meeting with Abdullah in Aqaba. However, the King refused saying that his schedule was overloaded.

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According to the paper, Jordan’s King is “angry with the Israeli Prime Minister over his government’s position on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations; over statements made by figures close to Netanyahu asserting that ‘Jordan is Palestine’; and over Netanyahu’s position on the Jordan Valley and his insistence that it remains under Israeli sovereignty.”

During a meeting with a delegation of Kuwaiti journalists on Tuesday, King Abdullah asserted that he was not optimistic about the future of the settlement process in the region. He expressed a lack of trust in the Israeli government and his particular worry that Jordan’s gates could be forced wide open to Arab newcomers whose countries are witnessing political change.