Amman (Dispatches) – Zionist prime minister Naftali Bennett and Jordan’s King Abdullah II met secretly last week, in what appeared to be the first between the two sides in over three years.
Bennett, who took office less than a month ago, reportedly travelled to meet Abdullah in Amman last Tuesday, where they discussed the severe water shortage in Jordan and potential aid b y the occupying regime, Haaretz reported.
The report of the meeting, which was first carried by Walla News on Thursday, came hours after the regime’s foreign minister Yair Lapid met with his Jordanian counterpart, Ayman Safadi.
The meeting marked the first time Abdullah met a Zionist prime minister since he hosted Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018. That meeting was also held in secret and only announced later.
Still, media reports on Thursday indicated that Jordanian officials were unhappy with the meeting being leaked since it was held on the contingency of secrecy.
A regime source told Channel 12 News that the news had “embarrassed the king and it will definitely affect the ties between the sides.”
A spokesman for the Jordanian embassy in the United States declined a request for comment on the matter.
Tensions in Zionist-Jordanian ties hit its peak after Netanyahu cancelled a visit to the United Arab Emirates on March 11, citing a disagreement with Jordan over crossing its airspace.
A statement from then Zionist premier’s office said at the time that the overflight row “apparently stemmed” from the cancellation by the Zionist regime of a planned visit by Jordan’s Crown Prince Hussein to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Al-Quds the previous day.
The prince’s visit was called off following “a dispute over security and safety arrangements at the site,” the statement read.