TEL AVIV: Israeli authorities released a Jordanian lawmaker to his home country on Sunday, Israel’s domestic security agency said, after he allegedly tried smuggling dozens of rifles and handguns through an Israeli-controlled border crossing.
Legislator Imad Al-Adwan’s arrest threatened to further strain ties between Israel and neighboring Jordan, which have had tense relations recently despite a nearly three-decade-old peace treaty. Israel viewed the incident as serious, but Al-Adwan’s release signaled it was hoping to put the potentially combustible affair behind it.
Al-Adwan was arrested on Apr. 22 with bags full of more than 200 guns, the Shin Bet agency said in a statement. It said its investigation revealed that Al-Adwan carried out 12 separate smuggling attempts since early 2022, using his diplomatic passport to bring in anything from electronic cigarettes to gold to birds.
The Shin Bet said that since the start of the year, he made numerous successful attempts to smuggle in arms. The smuggling was done in exchange for unspecified amounts of money, the Shin Bet said. The agency said he was released for “further investigation and pursuit of justice” by Jordanian authorities.
Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, as well as a brother of Al-Adwan, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The West Bank has seen a surge in violence over the past year. Israel says the area has been flooded with illegal weapons, including guns smuggled from neighboring Jordan.
Since Israel’s hard-line government took office late last year, relations with Jordan have deteriorated over Israeli settlement construction, violence in the West Bank and policies over holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The ties were at a nadir in 2017, when a security guard at the Israeli embassy in Jordan shot and killed two Jordanians, alleging one attacked him with a screw driver. The Israeli guard and Israel’s then-ambassador were given a hero’s welcome by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, infuriating Jordan.
Jordan controlled the West Bank and east Jerusalem before Israel captured the areas in the 1967 Mideast war, but the kingdom retains custodianship of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Muslim holy sites in the Old City.
Israel releases Jordan lawmaker said to have smuggled guns
https://arab.news/6qtnc
Israel releases Jordan lawmaker said to have smuggled guns
- Legislator Imad Al-Adwan’s arrest threatened to further strain ties between Israel and neighboring Jordan
- Investigation revealed that Al-Adwan carried out 12 separate smuggling attempts since early 2022
Hamas proposes weapons ‘freeze’ in return for long-term truce: leader to Al Jazeera
- Under that phase Israeli troops would further withdraw from their positions in Gaza and be replaced by an international stabilization force (ISF), while Hamas would lay down its weapons
DOHA: A top Hamas leader told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the militant group is open to a weapons “freeze,” but rejects the demand for disarmament put forward in the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza.
“The idea of total disarmament is unacceptable to the resistance (Hamas). What is being proposed is a freeze, or storage (of weapons)... to provide guarantees against any military escalation from Gaza with the Israeli occupation,” said Khaled Meshaal in an interview aired Wednesday.
“This is the idea we’re discussing with the mediators, and I believe that with pragmatic American thinking... such a vision could be agreed upon with the US administration,” he said.
The US-sponsored ceasefire deal, in effect since October 10, halted the war that began after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. But it remains fragile as Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of breaches.
The agreement is composed of three phases. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently indicated that it was about to enter the second phase.
Under that phase Israeli troops would further withdraw from their positions in Gaza and be replaced by an international stabilization force (ISF), while Hamas would lay down its weapons.
Netanyahu is expected to meet with US President Donald Trump in the US later this month to discuss the steps forward in the truce.
But the Palestinian militant group has indicated it would not agree to giving up its arsenal.
“Disarmament for a Palestinian means stripping away his very soul. Let’s achieve that goal another way,” Meshaal added.
In the first phase of the deal Palestinian militants committed to releasing the remaining 48 living and dead captives held in the territory. All of the hostages have so far been released except for one body.
In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in its custody and returned the bodies of hundreds of dead Palestinians.
As for the international peacekeeping force, Meshaal said the group was open to its deployment along Gaza’s border with Israel, but would not agree to it operating inside the Palestinian territory, calling such a plan an “occupation.”
“We have no objection to international forces or international stabilization forces being deployed along the border, like UNIFIL,” he said, referring to the UN peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border.
“They would separate Gaza from the occupation,” he added, referring to Israel.
“As for the presence of international forces inside Gaza, in Palestinian culture and consciousness that means an occupying force.”
Mediators as well as Arab and Islamic nations, he said, could act as “guarantors” that there would be no escalation originating from inside Gaza.
“The danger comes from the Zionist entity, not from Gaza,” he added, referring to Israel.
