AMMAN, Jordan — A Jordanian lawmaker has been indicted on fees that he illegally smuggled scores of rifles and handguns into the occupied West Bank by way of an Israeli-controlled crossing, his lawyer stated Wednesday.
The alleged gun-running scandal that gripped headlines final month has threatened to additional pressure ties between Israel and its Arab neighbor to the east regardless of their almost three-decade-old peace treaty.
The obvious effort by a Jordanian parliament member to sneak weapons right into a restive West Bank – the place younger Palestinians are more and more getting their arms on rifles and opening hearth at Israeli safety forces – has raised fears of Jordanian help for Palestinian militancy that undercuts the nation’s average, pro-Western monarchy.
The Jordanian lawmaker, Imad al-Adwan, was charged in a state safety courtroom in Amman final week, his lawyer Ali Mubaideen instructed The Associated Press. After being interrogated, al-Adwan, 35, was charged with 4 counts of illegally exporting weapons and “carrying out actions that breach security and threaten community peace,” Mubaideen added.
Israel‘s Shin Bet safety service has stated al-Adwan efficiently managed to smuggle arms, gold and different objects like digital cigarettes into the West Bank no less than a dozen occasions since early 2022 in change for unspecified sums of cash. He was caught on April 22 at an Israeli-controlled crossing with no less than 200 weapons. Israel handed him over to Jordanian authorities final month.
Al-Adwan, a member of certainly one of Jordan‘s biggest tribes, has served for the past three years as a legislator in a newly formed political party called Irada, which aims to modernize the country’s political system.
Violence within the occupied West Bank has surged to heights unseen in some twenty years. The territory has been awash with unlawful weapons, Israeli army officers say, together with arms smuggled from Jordan.
At least 112 Palestinians and 20 Israelis have been killed within the West Bank and east Jerusalem this yr, in line with a tally by The Associated Press. At least half of the Palestinians have been affiliated with militant teams.
After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right authorities took workplace late final yr, tensions between the neighbors have spiked over Israeli settlement development, the lengthy deadlock within the Israeli-Palestinian peace course of and disputes over the dealing with of safety on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a hotly contested holy web site over which Jordan has official custodianship.
Jordan managed the West Bank and east Jerusalem earlier than Israel captured the areas within the 1967 Mideast struggle.
Content Source: www.washingtontimes.com