Jordanians outside Grand Mosque slam Trump's deal of century

In Jordan, thousands of people have come to the streets of the capital for the third week to express their anger over US President Donald Trump's so-called deal of the century on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

News ID: 449067

Date: 15 February 2020 - 13:15

RNA - Protesters converged outside Grand Husseini Mosque in Amman on Friday amid a heavy security presence, chanting slogans against the Israeli regime and the deal.

They carried Jordanian and Palestinian flags. Demonstrators rejected the government’s multi-billion-dollar agreement to import natural gas from the occupied Palestinian territories.

On January 28, Trump unveiled his deal, negotiated with Israel but without the Palestinians.

Palestinian leaders, who severed all ties with Washington in late 2017 after Trump controversially recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as the 'capital' of Israel, immediately rejected the plan, with President Mahmoud Abbas saying it “belongs to the dustbin of history.”

The leaders say the deal is a colonial plan to unilaterally control historic Palestine in its entirety and remove Palestinians from their homeland.

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On September 26, 2016, Jordan’s National Electric Power Company signed a 10-billion-dollar deal with US-based Noble Energy and Israeli partners in order to tap the Leviathan natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel for the supply of approximately 1.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over a 15-year term.

On March 26 last year, members of Jordan’s parliament called for the cancellation of the gas deal with Israel during a parliamentary session closed to the public.

House Speaker Atef Tarawneh stated at the time that all sectors of the society and members of parliament utterly reject Jordanian electricity company's agreement to buy Israeli natural gas.

Lawmaker Saddah al-Habashneh said the deal was unconstitutional. He argued that members of parliament were not given access to read what he called the “secret” deal.

“Why are they hiding it? It’s a clue that there is something. It is totally rejected.”

Habashneh also demanded that the deal be scrapped along with Jordan’s peace accord with Israel – known as Wadi Araba Treaty and signed on October 26, 1994.

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