AMMAN: Jordan reopened a border crossing with the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Tuesday, two days after a truck driver shot dead three Israeli guards in a rare attack.
The Jordanian national carried out his attack at the Allenby Crossing on Sunday nearly a year into the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, which has also seen a spike in violence in the West Bank.
Israel’s military shot dead the attacker, saying that he had killed three Israelis working as “security guards” who were not in the army or police.
Jordan’s authorities closed the crossing, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, after the attack.
The shooting was the first such incident in the area since the 1990s.
The crossing, in the Jordan Valley, is the only international gateway for Palestinians from the West Bank that does not require entering Israel, which has occupied the territory since 1967.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Jordanian security source said Jordan had reopened the crossing to passengers, but that it would remain closed to freight traffic.
The reopening came as Jordan held a parliamentary election Tuesday, with the Israel-Hamas war weighing heavily on voters’ minds.
Analysts predicted a high abstention rate, with Islamist candidates struggling to harness public anger over the devastating war sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.
Following the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the assailant as a “despicable terrorist” inspired by “a murderous ideology” which he said was fueled by Israel’s regional arch-foe Iran.
Hamas praised the attack but did not claim responsibility for it, adding it “affirms the Arab peoples’ rejection of the occupation, its crimes, and its ambitions in Palestine and Jordan.”