AMMAN - Ten Jordanian MPs, including six Islamists, have presented a bill to the lower house of parliament seeking to scrap the 1994 peace treaty with Israel, one of the lawmakers said.
| Because Jordan doesn't have any other problems to address ... |
“We submitted the draft law to Lower House Speaker Abdul Hadi Majali on Wednesday,” Islamist MP Hamza Mansur, who heads the six-member parliamentary bloc of the Islamic Action Front (IAF) told AFP on Thursday.
The IAF has frequently called for the treaty to be abrogated but this is the first time it has put a formal request to the 110-member lower house. The draft gave several reasons for scrapping the treaty, including that Israel “does not honour the agreement and is still a threat to Jordan.”
It said the Jewish state “has committed premeditated crimes in Jordan, and genocide in Palestine.”
In 1997, Jordan saved the life of Hamas supremo Khaled Meshaal after IsraelÂ’s Mossad foreign intelligence service carried out a botched attempt to poison him in Amman. Then-king Hussein secured the antidote from Israel with a threat to sever the peace treaty.
“We know that the Jordanian people want to cancel the agreement, but it is not up to them,” said Mansur, a senior member of the IAF, the country’s main opposition party and the political arm of the tolerated Muslim Brotherhood. “According to the law, the legal committee at the lower house is now going to examine the bill before the MPs vote to approve or reject the proposal.”
Jordan, a US ally, signed the treaty on October 26, 1994, becoming only the second Arab state after Egypt to make peace with Israel. |