The story of Jordanian lands that Israel has exploited for decades

Jordan's King Abdullah II on Sunday declared Jordan's full sovereignty over the territory of the Baqoura and Ghamr areas, which lie along the Jordanian-Israeli border, which Israel leased for 25 years, after signing the Wadi Araba peace agreement with Jordan in 1994.

"I announce today the termination of the annexes for the areas of immersion and Baqoura in the peace agreement and the imposition of our full sovereignty on every inch," the king said in a speech to the throne on the occasion of the opening of the ordinary session of the National Assembly (Parliament).

Area and location
The area of ​​Baqoura is six thousand dunams (dunum equivalent to one thousand square meters) and is located east of the Jordan River in the northern Jordan Valley of Irbid governorate, in 1950 Israel occupied 1390 dunums of them, and in the negotiations of the peace agreement (Wadi Araba in 1994) claimed that 830 dunums of which are Personal property of Israelis.

The Wadi Araba agreement provided for the restoration of Jordan's 850 dunums of Baqoura land, the rest of which it deemed to be Israeli-owned land, but under Jordanian sovereignty.

The British Mandate authorities sold the Baqoura area to a Zionist investor named Pinhas Rothenberg in order to generate electricity as part of a project of the Palestine Electric Company known as the "Rothenberg Project". The investor discovered that he did not need all this space, and sold part of it to the Jewish Agency, which in turn owned it to farmers. Israelis, and accordingly became individual property.

In 1948, the Rothenberg project was discontinued, and two years later Israel occupied the territory of Baqoura and continued to manage and manage it until the signing of the Wadi Araba Agreement on 26 October 1994.

Al-Ghamr is located in the Wadi Araba desert in Aqaba Governorate (southern Jordan), about 168 kilometers from the capital Amman.It is owned by the treasury of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.It covers an area of ​​4,235 dunums (about four square kilometers) and stretches along five kilometers towards the border.

The area includes agricultural land, which was occupied by Israel after the 1967 war, and in the Wadi Araba negotiations, the Israeli side argued that it was owned by Israeli settler farmers, and demanded that a special regime like Baqoura be applied to it.

Their status in the peace agreement
Annexes 1 / b and 1 / c of the Wadi Araba Agreement provide for "subjecting the Baqoura and Ghamr areas to a special regime on a temporary basis", which are placed under Jordanian sovereignty, but are not subject to Jordanian customs laws, as no taxes or fees can be imposed on land and agricultural activities. Practiced where.

It is not possible, according to the two annexes, to apply customs or travel legislation to Israelis who enter it or their guests and their workers.It is up to the Israeli authorities to investigate the crimes and legal violations committed by these persons, their guests or their workers and apply Israeli laws.

The two annexes in Article 6 provide for the lease of the two areas for 25 years from the date of entry into force of the peace treaty, and also stipulates that they will be automatically renewed for similar periods unless one of the parties notifies the other of its intention to terminate the two annexes one year before its expiry. "In this case, the Parties shall enter into consultations at their request."

Jordan also pledged in the annexes to take the necessary measures to protect anyone entering these areas and to prevent "harassment or harm, and to allow the entry of Israeli police officers in their uniforms, with a minimum of formalities, to the area, for the purpose of investigating crimes or dealing with other incidents involving users exclusively. Land or their guests or their users. "

In return, Israel undertook not to carry out or permit any activities in the area that would harm Jordan's security or safety, and would not allow anyone entering the two areas (except police officers in uniform) to carry any weapons of any kind unless authorized by the Jordanian authorities. And not to allow the dumping of waste from outside the area into it.

Termination conditions
The announcement of Jordan's intention to end the work of these two attachments is not Walid today, but was already announced by the Jordanian monarch on October 21, 2018, where he wrote in a tweet on Twitter, "Baqoura and immersion has always been our top priority, and our decision is to end the attachments of Baqoura and immersion from Peace Agreement; out of our keenness to take all necessary for Jordan and Jordanians. "

Immediately after the announcement, the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs notified its Israeli counterpart in two separate letters of intent to end the situation of Baqoura and immersion, and to suspend the operation of the two annexes.

This official announcement came at a time when Israeli-Jordanian relations were experiencing a cold, after a series of tremors suffered, and coincided with a strong popular movement demanding the restoration of the two areas, and signed eighty Jordanian deputies signed a memorandum linking the continued granting the Jordanian government confidence to cancel the lease contracts, which ended in October 25, 2019.

Earlier, in the summer of 2017, two Jordanians were killed and one Israeli was injured in a shooting incident inside the Israeli embassy in Amman.The Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed the incident by saying that a security guard at its embassy in Amman had shot dead a Jordanian. The incident soured the atmosphere between the parties for several weeks.

In March 2017, Jordan released soldier Ahmad al-Daqamseh, who worked for border guards and killed dozens of Israelis in 1997 in Baqoura, shooting a group of Israeli girls for making fun of him during prayer.

His release revived growing public demands for the return of Baqoura and immersion, the cancellation of the Wadi Araba agreement, and then demonstrations demanding it.

In addition, Jordan-Israel relations have been considerably cooled in the past two years due to Israel's rejection of the two-state solution, continued settlement policy and frequent incursions by settlers against Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, and Jordan's refusal to accept international and regional pressure to approve the US peace plan for the East. Middle East, which is known as the "deal of the century".