AMMAN: Four Jordanian lawyers have filed a lawsuit against Israeli Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and the National Union lawmaker Aryeh Elad, accusing them of committing a crime against Jordan, one of the lawyers said on Wednesday.
The move, which apparently has the aim of arresting the two Israeli legislators if they visit Jordan, came in a letter to the Jordanian public prosecutor Hassan Abdullah.
“Both Rivlin and Elad have committed a crime against Jordan under the country’s penal code, by presenting proposals to the Knesset in June and July suggesting respectively that Jordan should have been part of Israel and that Jordan should be the homeland for Palestinians,” lawyer Hikmat Rawashdeh said.
“The objective of this petition is to ensure that the two Zionist aggressors who encroached on Jordan ‘s sovereignty be tried by Jordanian courts,” he added.
Elad’s proposal envisaging “two states on the two banks of River Jordan” for Israel and the Palestinians was supported by 53 members of the 120-strong Knesset. Rivlin’s suggestion that Jordan should have become part of Israel upon its foundation in 1948 was condemned by Israeli President Shimon Peres as a “baseless hallucination” and interference in Jordan’s internal affairs.
“I believe Jordan is becoming a target for an attack by the Zionist enemy, which seeks to rob Jordan of its sovereignty and turn it into an alternative homeland for the Palestinians in flagrant violation of the peace treaty,” Rawashdeh said.
Jordan concluded a peace pact with Israel in 1994, but a coalition of opposition parties and the country’s 16 trade unions is campaigning for the annulment of the treaty and closing down the Israeli Embassy in Amman.
The campaign gained fresh fuel after the assumption of power in Israel early last year by a right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
