AMMAN, 3 April 2005 — Jordan finalized a deal with Israel to secure the release this week of most of the 18 Jordanians in Israeli jails for supporting the Palestinian uprising, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday.
A ministry spokesman said the deal, which is likely to free all but four of Israel’s 18 Jordanian prisoners, was in the final stages after Israeli authorities including the Justice Ministry sanctioned the release.
“We hope this week that most of the 18 Jordanian prisoners will be released by Israel after several authorities approved the matter. Now it is only left to be presented to the Israeli cabinet,” Rajab Suqeiri, Foreign Ministry spokesperson, told Reuters.
Suqeiri would not give precise numbers but said Israel was unlikely to release four Jordanians who were jailed before Jordan’s peace accord with its neighbor in 1994 and are serving life sentences for perpetrating deadly attacks on Israelis. “Israel is still reluctant to release those who were involved in the killing of Israelis,” Suqeiri said, adding that months of negotiations had also involved those prisoners.
Since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000, several Jordanians have left the country to join Palestinian militant groups fighting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and wage attacks on both civilians and targets. Many of the kingdom’s people are of Palestinian origin.
Jordan has faced growing criticism by lawmakers who say the government was putting insufficient pressure on Israel to release the prisoners despite Amman having the warmest ties to the Jewish state of any of its Arab neighbors.
Diplomats say the expected release of the prisoners, some of whom are serving long sentences, would be an Israeli gesture after Jordan returned its envoy to Tel Aviv in February for the first time in four years amid strengthened hopes for peace in the Middle East. Jordan withdrew the envoy following the start of the Palestinian uprising in 2000.
Meanwhile, Jerusalem’s embattled Patriarch Irineos I told a Greek newspaper yesterday that he has support from King Abdallah of Jordan in the ongoing Old City land sale crisis that has engulfed the Greek Orthodox patriarchate. In an interview with Eleftheros Typos daily, Irineos again denied selling any of the church’s politically-sensitive land to Jewish investors, and claimed that his administration has instead bolstered the patriarchate’s land holdings inside the Old City with “several purchases.”
Two days after Irineos pledged in Amman to cooperate fully with Jordanian authorities to shed light on the alleged land sale, the patriarch said he received personal encouragement from Jordan’s King Abdallah in a phone conversation. “(King Abdallah said) we are close to his side,” Irineos said, adding that the Jordanian monarch told him he was fully aware of an ongoing “war” against the Greek Orthodox patriarchate.
“He is aware of everything,” Irineos said. “I have known (the king) from when he was a small boy. I was a deacon then, and would lift him in my arms whenever he would come visit (then) Patriarch Benedict,” he told the newspaper.
Amid calls for his resignation from a growing section of his Arab flock, and claiming that there is “an entire network that wants the Greeks to leave” the Old City, the patriarch said yesterday he had found “understanding” from the Jordanian government.
He also reiterated his insistence to remain on the patriarchy throne. “Why should I resign? I have committed no crime,” he said. Irineos insisted that instead of sapping the patriarchate’s presence in Jerusalem, he has taken steps to boost church land holdings since his election in 2001. “We bought the Lark Hotel at David’s Gate, three shops at the New Gate, three shops on Christian Street, and a complex at the Old City, near the patriarchate,” he said. This was achieved despite finding a mere $300 in patriarchate coffers upon his election, he claimed.
