More in ‘Jordan’

• Last decade, thousands of Palestinians were stripped of Jordanian citizenship. Jordan’s government wants to maximize the Palestinians’ numbers to improve their bargaining position vis-à-vis Israel. [NYT]
• U.S. officials continued to criticize Israeli building in East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized again for the construction announcement’s timing while maintaining support for the settlements. My 10 ...

If you have not been following this exciting story, I wrote a catch-up yesterday for the magazine: do check out.
The most interesting tidbit today in the continuing story of the assassination, likely by Mossad, of Hamas weapons procurer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, was that one Hamas official told an Arabic-language paper that his group believes an Arab ...

Angrily responding to an article in the prior issue of Foreign Policy, former President Jimmy Carter—who helped orchestrate the Camp David agreement with Egypt, and in recent years has emerged as an especially staunch critic of Israel—offers this apologia pro vita sua regarding his presidency’s Israel policy:
There was no pressure on me to launch a ...

• After the first-ever summit between Germany and Israel, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced she would seek harsher sanctions against Iran for its alleged nuclear violations. [NYT]
• Pope Benedict XVI defended Pius XII, the controversial pontiff who is now up for sainthood. During the Holocaust, Benedict said, the Vatican gave European Jews “hidden and discreet” help. ...

• Jordanian authorities arrested several suspects in connection with yesterday’s bombing of a convoy carrying Israeli diplomats from Amman to Israel (an assault in which no one was injured). Jordanian news outlets fingered a “professional terror cell,” and warned of similar future attacks. [JPost]
• Haaretz’s military correspondent guesses that the attack was launched by either ...

A convoy of cars carrying Israeli diplomats through Jordan was attacked by a roadside bomb (or perhaps a Molotov cocktail) Thursday evening, local time. No one was injured, and the Israeli ambassador was not present (and is reported safe). The diplomats were traveling from the capital city of Amman to Israel via the Allenby Bridge. ...

• In a formal complaint to the United Nations, Jordan accused Israel of illegally seizing the Dead Sea Scrolls during the Six Day War, and demanded that they be returned. [JPost]
• Columnist Yossi Melman suspects that the Iranian physicist killed in Tehran yesterday was likely done in by some entity that wanted to slow the ...

• A new study argues that al Qaeda has spurned Hamas’s desire for closer cooperation. The global jihadist network is concerned that Hamas’s jihadist intentions are not quite global enough. [Ynet]
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Jordanian counterpart met today in Washington, D.C. They both hit the same note afterward: Israel and the ...

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sounded a note of unusual optimism regarding potential future talks with the Palestinians. [Haaretz]
• It turns out that the suicide bomber who slayed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan last week had actually been recruited by Jordanian intelligence to infiltrate al Qaeda in the Afghan hinterlands. [NYT]
• Iran announced plans to ...

The Israeli settlement Ma’aleh Adumim, which operates as an independent municipality in the West Bank, is expected to be incorporated into Israel in any two-state solution. Home to about 30,000 residents, 99.8 percent of whom are Jews, Ma’aleh Adumin is the settlement that Israelis pointed to the most when arguing against the Obama administration’s now-scuttled ...