A little more than 14 years after the State of Israel signed a formal peace treaty with Jordan and 10 years after the death of Jordan’s King Hussein, with whom Israel signed the peace treaty, senior Jordanian government officials have urged senior Israeli officials not to visit their kingdom for the next few weeks.

These Israeli officials include Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter and Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi.

This recommendation was made against the backdrop of a formal suit that the Jordanian parliament in Amman plans to file to the International Criminal Court at The Hague tomorrow against Israel. The suit alleges Israel committed war crimes in the course of its recent incursion into Gaza.

The chairman of the Jordanian Parliament Legal Committee, Mubarak Abu Yamin, has already left for The Hague and tomorrow is scheduled to meet with the prosecutor general of the International Criminal Court. He plans to give him the suit against the aforementioned list of Israelis who allegedly are “senior responsible parties for the committing of a series of war crimes in the war against the residents of Gaza.”

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This marks the first time since the peace treaty was signed between the two countries 14 years ago that Jordan has filed a legal suit to an international court against Israel.

This suit was approved by the Jordanian parliament, the National Committee for Human Rights and the legal committees of the public organizations in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

An Israeli official who has been monitoring these developments told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot: “From our experience, had the suit not received the tacit support of the most senior officials in the kingdom it would never have been submitted.”

The Israeli official said that some of the people whose names appear on the list of prospective defendants – Ministers Barak and Dichter, Deputy Minister Vilnai and Prime Minister Olmert – “are responsible for the discreet strategic relations between Amman and Tel Aviv.”

Most of the ministers whose names appear on the suit were invited prior to the Gaza operation to the Davos economic conference, slated to be held in Jordan in May.

“We’re waiting for the new government to be formed in Jerusalem,” a senior Jordanian government official told Yediot Ahronot last night. “We will adjust the invitations depending on need and circumstances.”

David Bedein can be reached at dbedein@israelbehindthenews.com

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David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

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