His Majesty King Abdullah II on Monday arrived in Ramallah on an official visit, to meet with the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan’s official news agency Petra reported. The king was received at the helipad of the Muqata, Abbas’s presidential headquarters.
The two leaders reviewed an honor guard as a military band played the national anthem of both countries.
While the king is away, his Royal Highness Prince Faisal Bin Al Hussein, son of King Hussein and Princess Muna, and the younger brother of King Abdullah II, was sworn in as Regent in the presence of Cabinet members.
At a Saturday meeting at Al Husseiniya Palace with leaders of Jordan’s Lower House of Parliament, King Abdullah outlined the challenges currently faced regarding the Palestinian cause and Jerusalem. In this regard, the Monarch said there would be no breakthrough in the peace process without a US push for a solution.
The PA leadership, on the other hand, does not hesitate to attack the Trump team. Over the weekend, PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi said that the advisor to the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, could not serve as a mediator between the PA and Israel because he is not sufficiently aware of events in the Middle East and “tends to adopt the Israeli position in a prominent fashion.”
Also, the Palestinian Authority leadership has been reluctant to join a peace process at this point in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political crisis, while he is under investigations and could face indictments in the coming months. The PA leadership believes the current situation makes any effort to renew the political process irrelevant.
Moreover, the PA fears that in view of the developments in the investigations, Netanyahu would be veering right and take steps that would make it difficult to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian agreement in the near future.
King Abdullah for his part told his parliamentary leaders that without the Hashemite Custodianship of Jerusalem’s holy places and its support for Jerusalem Arabs, the Al-Aqsa shrines “would have been lost years ago.” He stressed that the future of the Palestinian cause is at stake, noting that applying solutions is becoming increasingly more difficult.