Jordan's King to visit Trump after welcoming Netanyahu

Jordan's King to visit Trump after welcoming Netanyahu
The Jordanian monarch is set to visit the White House to discuss the Israel-Palestine peace process which comes days after he met with Netanyahu.
2 min read
21 June, 2018
Jordanian King Abdullah II will visit US president Donald Trump on Monday [Getty]

Jordanian King Abdullah II will visit US President Donald Trump in Washington next week, the White House said on Thursday.

In a statement, the president's office said that King Abdullah and Queen Rania will visit on Monday to discuss "terrorism, the threat from Iran and the crisis in Syria, and working towards a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians".

Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, recently met with King Abdullah in Amman to discuss the stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace process during a regional tour.

The meeting came less than a day after the Jordanian monarch hosted Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in a short, but rare, visit.

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been stalled since 2014.

Ramallah's Palestine Authority froze ties after Trump broke with decades of US policy in December by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital and declaring he would move the country's embassy from Tel Aviv to the contested city.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the United States had disqualified itself as a mediator. "We will no longer accept that it has a role in the political process," he said at the time.

Abbas' office defiantly added that "Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the state of Palestine, and is not for sale for gold or billions" with other senior officials adding that they will not be "blackmailed" by Trump's threat of aid cuts.

At least 145 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the beginning of "Great Return March" protests began in late March.

The demonstrations and violence peaked on 14 May when at least 61 Palestinians were killed when Gazans protested the US transfer of its embassy in Israel to the disputed city of Jerusalem on the same day.

Israel considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

East Jerusalem is considered occupied Palestinian territory under international law.

In the decades since Israel's 1967 occupation, international consensus has been that the city's status must be negotiated between the two sides, but Trump broke with that to global outrage.