Ayman Fadilat - Oman
In light of widespread public opposition to the agreement to import natural gas from Israel, and strong parliamentary attempts to cancel any agreements to import gas from Tel Aviv, Israeli gas began flowing to the Jordanian side, amid questions about the seriousness of Jordanian decision-makers to cancel the agreement.
The first payments arrived in the Kingdom at dawn yesterday, Wednesday, with the start of experimental pumping, according to an agreement signed in 2016 between the Jordanian National Electricity Company (NEPCO) and Noble Jordan Marketing NBL to import gas from the Leviathan field on the Mediterranean coast.
The start of the experimental pumping coincided with a campaign of Israeli threats directed at Jordan, sometimes by stopping supplying it with water, sometimes by annexing the lands of the Jordan Valley and building settlements, and others that attacked King Abdullah II and the Hashemite royal family, and called for the expulsion of the Palestinians to Jordan and the establishment of an alternative homeland for them there.
The agreement provides for providing Jordan with about 45 billion cubic meters of Israeli natural gas, at a value of ten billion dollars over 15 years, as of January 1, 2020.
The Minister denies
For its part, Jordanian Energy Minister Hala Zawati denied signing the gas import agreement with Noble Energy, noting in a press statement that the signing of the memorandum of intent between the National Electricity Company and Noble in 2014 was then Mohammed Hamid as Minister of Energy.
The gas import agreement was signed between the two companies in September 2016, when Ibrahim Saif was Minister of Energy at the time.
However, political analyst Fahd Al-Khaitan believes that the Minister of Energy was fully aware when she assumed her work that "there is an agreement to import gas from Israel, and will commit to implementing it on the scheduled date" in addition to that "the ministry during its reign (Zawati) supervised the completion of the necessary infrastructure to extend Gas pipeline, and equip the terminal to receive it. "
Fri anger
Since the early morning hours, the media outlets in Jordan were filled with angry tweets from the news of the start of pumping Israeli gas, and the reaction to the # enemy_game_game was greatly reoccupied.
The national campaign called what it called "enemy gas occupation" to a mass rally tomorrow, Friday, downtown, in rejecting the agreement, and described what happened as "a catastrophic day in the history of the country, as the decision-makers hand over Jordan's neck to the Zionists and support their terrorism with billions of its citizens."
"The decision-makers in Jordan deprived the country's economy of development opportunities, deprived Jordanians of tens of thousands of job opportunities, and wasted the strategic security of Jordan and its citizens, by subjecting 40% of Jordan's electricity under the yoke of blackmail," campaign coordinator Hisham Al-Bustani told Al-Jazeera Net.
Parliamentary proposal
NEPIA, Representative Wafa Bani Mustafa submitted to the House of Representatives a proposal by law to cancel any gas import agreements from the "Zionist entity".
In her interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Bani Mustafa believes that the law will constitute "an additional pressure card on decision makers in the Jordanian state to stop this agreement and any future agreements with the Zionist entity."
She added, "There are many legal options available to Jordan to cancel the gas agreement with the Zionist entity, if the Jordanian state is serious and has gone about that, with legal and financial obligations."
He refused to cancel
In this regard, political analyst Omar Ayasrah says, "Higher references in Jordanian decision-making centers do not want to cancel the gas agreement with Israel because the cost of abolishing it is high."
He adds to Al-Jazeera Net that Jordan is official counting on the departure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right from ruling in Israel after the upcoming parliamentary elections next March.
Ayasrah confirms that the Jordanian decision-maker believes that there is a separation between Netanyahu and the State of Israel, and that the Israeli problems with the Kingdom are related to persons and not to the regime in Israel.
He continues, "The high authorities in the Jordanian state do not see a fundamental shift in Israeli society towards the right and the extreme right, and count on the return of the left and center parties to rule in Israel."
It is noteworthy that Jordan has alternatives represented by the Egyptian gas, which began its experimental pumping since the last quarter of 2018 to the Kingdom, in addition to Iraqi and Algerian gas.