Israel Analysis
Crisis after crisis
By Jim Fletcher
Truly, Benjamin Netanyahu has 1,000 things on his mind.
Leaders like Winston Churchill and David Ben Gurion never really left politics. It’s doubtful Netanyahu will. At 76, he is about the same age the other two were as PM. He seems as engaged and energetic as ever…far younger than his age.
Still, the sheer pressure is enormous. Name a problem and he has it. Political rivalries. War. Terrorism. Jew-hatred.
As if all those huge problems weren’t enough, there is word that Israel and Jordan might be fighting over water. This area of the world is parched in the extreme—I once stepped across a length of the Jordan River with a medium-size stride—and desalination and other water solutions are all the rage. Israel, with its genius desalination efforts, is far ahead of her neighbors in this regard. And remember, it was the Israelis that gave us the concept and technique of drip irrigation. The tiny Jewish country hasn’t totally solved its problem with water shortage, but like natural energy, it is on the way to solving it.
Now comes word the country of Jordan is concerned over a recent water agreement, one in which Israel agreed in its historic 1994 agreement to provide its neighbor with 50-million-cubit meters of water annually. That number was doubled in 2020, but the short life of that agreement expired in 2025. Needless to say, Jordan wants it continued. Keep in mind, the Arabs spend about .0000002 of time on solutions for its people and 99 percent on terrorism.
I’ve never been a fan of King Abdullah, who is at best a pragmatist and has spent a good deal of time slicing and dicing Israel in public. His wife, Rania, was born to “Palestinian” parents; her father is from Tulkarm, from which devastating terror attacks have been launched against Israel.
Abdullah himself in his 27 years heading the Jordanian government has departed from the stance on Israel that his grandfather (Abdullah 1) and father had. In 1951, Abdullah 1 was rumored to be working on a peace deal with Israel. For that he got assassinated by an Arab on the Temple Mount. His son, King Hussein, did some public dissing of Israel, as is expected of an Arab, but behind the scenes it was a different thing.
A former Mossad officer told me once that Hussein actually warned Israel in the spring of 1973 that Egypt and Syria were once again up to no good. His warning, coming after he flew his own helicopter to the Negev at night, was not taken seriously enough and the Yom Kippur War followed in the fall.
The present Abdullah is a leftwing mediocrity that barely conceals his contempt for the Jews. His unhelpful public comments routinely put Israel behind the eight-ball.
The leftwing Wikipedia almost comically describes Abdullah as having “an authoritarian regime with wide executive and legislative powers.”
In other words, he’s a dictator.
So, the water issue is another in which Israel is expected to provide their own resources and prop-up a rabid Islamic entity.
According to The Jerusalem Post:
“Jerusalem’s refusal to extend a water agreement with Amman until it changes its rhetoric on Israel will likely be interpreted by Amman as a ‘stab in the back’ after the support Jordan gave to Israel during the Iran war, Dr. Ronen Yitzhak, an expert in Israeli-Jordanian relations from the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.”
“Support.” That’s comical. Israel demanded a cooling of rhetoric due to Jordan’s ridiculous stance on Hamas. The rhetoric coming from Amman was troubling, especially when one can see the murder and mayhem Hamas live-streamed on October 7. Jordan won’t abandon its support for Israel’s enemies and wants more water!
Jordan is no friend or ally or peace partner with Israel. Not even in the same universe.
So, Israel has conditioned consideration of more water on Jordan cooling it. Naturally, this will become Israel’s fault.
It’s unconscionable that Israel was forced (by the Clinton team) to supply Jordan with water 30 years ago. It’s no surprise that the five-minute unity government of Bennett and Lapid in 2021 agreed to double the water. Now Netanyahu has to clean this up.
And the only reason Jordan gave some support against Iran is because it is terrified of the Islamic Republic. It was acting in its own best interests, hoping like the rest of us that the gargoyles in Tehran would go away.
Here’s to hoping Jordan can put on its big-boy pants and get its own water, and Israel will have one less fly buzzing around causing trouble.