The two significant speeches delivered recently by the King of Jordan reflect an especially belligerent and aggressive rhetorical line against the State of Israel. This rhetoric has grown increasingly extreme in recent years, particularly since the Simchat Torah massacre of October 7, 2023.
While the king’s first speech was directed at an international audience during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly on September 22, 2026, his second speech, delivered before members of the Jordanian Parliament at the opening of its current session on November 2, 2026, was primarily aimed at the Arab “Jordanian-Palestinian” audience and Jordan’s neighboring countries.
Israel as a Regional Threat
In both speeches, the king defined Israel as the greatest threat to the future of the region. He sharply attacked what he called “Israeli expansionist ambitions” in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, which, he claimed, were intended to thwart the two-state solution west of the Jordan River. The king does so while ignoring the fact that Jordan, in practice, is the second state in that very political solution of “two states for two peoples,” which he himself seeks to obstruct. It is worth recalling in this context that Queen Rania, a full-fledged “Palestinian” queen, resides in the royal palace. She is the mother of Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah and his brothers and sisters, descendants in whose veins flows more “Palestinian” blood than Bedouin or Hashemite blood, as he defines it.
From the king’s speech before Parliament (from the king’s official website).
Before defining Israel as the greatest threat to the Middle East, the king opened his speech with a minute of silence and a reference to the severe terrorist attack at a church in Karak Governorate on October 23, 2026. In this attack, an ISIS (Islamic State) terrorist cell murdered nine participants at a funeral ceremony held at the site and wounded another 40 people to varying degrees. This grave attack was carried out with cold-blooded cruelty by Jordanian citizens, members of the Dhneibat tribe, who were captured alive after a manhunt lasting approximately 60 hours. Shortly after their capture, the Jordanian Air Force attacked targets associated with ISIS in the Daraa area of southern Syria. That strike resulted in the deaths of at least eight innocent civilians and injuries to others, including children, women, and elderly people, collateral damage, as implied by statements issued by senior Jordanian officials.
Although the ISIS threat remains present throughout the Middle East, periodically providing painful reminders of jihadist ambitions to establish an Islamic caliphate across the entire region and beyond, the king chose instead to attack the State of Israel. The world’s only Jewish state, whose territory amounts to just approximately 31 percent of Jordan’s, is presented by Abdullah as the principal colonialist threat in the Middle East. Evidently, even the Iranian missile and drone attacks Jordan has suffered, alongside subversive activities on its territory supported by Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood (which has been outlawed in the kingdom and relentlessly pursued by its security services), have not diverted the king’s attacks from Israel, which in practice serves as a stable pillar of support and a strong shield for him.
In all his speeches, the king makes a point of emphasizing that there will be no security or stability in the region without realizing the rights of the “Palestinians,” by which he means the right of return and the establishment of an independent, sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital. Through these statements, the king effectively encourages elements within Jordan to act against Israel. For example, immediately following the king’s speech before Parliament, and on the occasion of the 109th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the Higher Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return in Jordan, whose official emblem reveals its true objective, a Palestinian state from the river to the sea, published a statement reaffirming the “continuation of the Palestinian national struggle for return, liberation, and the restoration of national rights.”
Emblem of the “Higher Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return in Jordan” (from the Jordanian news website 24JO).
Jordan currently faces complex security challenges, both domestic and external. These include extremist Islamic terrorist organizations inspired by Iran and ISIS, alongside a persistent struggle against the drug epidemic spreading through Jordanian society as a result of unprecedented levels of smuggling, primarily from Syria. Examining the amount of time the king devotes in his speech to these challenges, which Israel actually helps him confront, reveals a striking imbalance: there is no correspondence between the severity of the “threat” attributed to Israel and the other genuine threats that, without Israeli support, could potentially topple the king from his throne.
The Hashemite Kingdom faces numerous security challenges arising from the need to defend long and complex borders, with relatively limited military forces compared to the vast territory along its northern and eastern frontiers in particular. These borders are exposed to infiltration by pro-Iranian militias, Syrian smuggling gangs, and other terrorist elements. All this is before even mentioning the kingdom’s many internal security challenges, stemming from the characteristics of Jordan’s heterogeneous population, which has been affected in recent decades by waves of refugees, economic hardship, religious radicalization, and more.
Protecting the Holy Sites
In his speeches, the king repeatedly declares that Jordan will continue to serve as the custodian of the sites holy to Islam and Christianity in Jerusalem. The king, who failed to protect Christian holy sites in his own kingdom, as demonstrated by the recent terrorist attack at the church in Karak, or approximately a decade earlier, on December 18, 2016, in the deadly attack carried out by ISIS terrorists at the historic Karak Castle, intended to strike a site associated with Jordan’s Christian heritage (where ten people were murdered, including a Canadian tourist), presumes to protect the holy sites of Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem’s Old City, which he seeks to hand over to a future Palestinian state.
Any reasonable person understands that the king himself does not believe Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, who would likely rule such a state if it were unfortunately established, and whom he despises and relentlessly persecutes, would respect the interests of the Hashemite royal family in the Old City and on the Temple Mount. The king is well aware that his survival and the security of his kingdom depend first and foremost on the security support provided by the State of Israel and the United States.
In light of this rhetoric, the question arises: What will become of the sites sacred to Jews? Who, in the king’s view, will serve as their custodian? Will these sites be blown up and destroyed, as the Jordanian Arab Legion did following its conquest of the Jewish Quarter during Israel’s War of Independence, or will Israel be expected to trust the “Palestinians” to protect them simply because the Jordanians asked them to do so?
It seems that King Abdullah has forgotten, as have some leaders in Israel, that his father, the late King Hussein, effectively renounced all sovereign or legal ties to Judea and Samaria in his declaration of “disengagement” on July 31, 1988. In light of this, who will guarantee that his interests will be respected in a future “Palestine” any more than the State of Israel has respected them since the reunification of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War? As evidence, the symbols of the Jordanian royal family, the crown and the flag, appear regularly on signs and buildings throughout the Temple Mount compound, more frequently than the symbols of the State of Israel, such as the flag and the menorah, the symbol that was looted from the Temple that once stood at the center of the Mount.
The emblem of the Hashemite royal family and the original Jordanian flag on a building and signs on the Temple Mount. (Photo: Tal Brown)
Water, Water, Water
While in his UN speech the king mentioned Jordan’s ongoing water crisis as part of the broader regional context, in his most recent speech before Parliament he chose to direct his forceful remarks implicitly against Israel, his principal water supplier. The king declared, “We will not allow the thirst of Jordanians to be held hostage.” This statement reveals the ingratitude of a ruler who persistently spits into the well from which he drinks.
Jordan benefits from a regular annual supply of 50 million cubic meters of water, as stipulated in the peace agreement signed in 1994 (known to Jordanians as the “Wadi Araba Agreement”). Moreover, over the years, thanks to the generosity of successive Israeli governments, additional agreements were signed to increase water supplies, effectively doubling the quantity provided to the kingdom. The agreement, which was supposed to be renewed this year, is now being delayed because of political tensions that have arisen, ironically, partly as a result of the aggressive anti-Israel rhetoric led by the king himself, in all his wisdom.
“Water, Water, Water,” from the king’s speech before Parliament (from the king’s official website).
Although the king refrained from explicitly mentioning Israel by name, there is no doubt that he directed his criticism toward Israeli ears rather than Syrian ones. The “brothers” to the north, who are obligated to supply the kingdom with water under the Yarmouk Basin Agreement, have violated that agreement over the years. It collapsed as a result of the Syrian civil war, the construction of numerous dams, and unauthorized water pumping on the Syrian side.
The agreement has not been renewed as before, despite ongoing negotiations in recent years. No firm and forceful messages have been directed at Syria’s president, al-Jolani, and millions of cubic meters of water to which Jordan is entitled by right from its neighbor have not flowed for decades and are not expected to flow anytime soon.
Conclusion and Recommendations: The Two-State Solution
The trend of increasingly extreme rhetoric in Jordan continues to rise gradually. Incitement is not the exclusive domain of senior regime officials, such as Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi, but is dictated directly by the royal palace. This is a familiar governing strategy: to divert domestic criticism, it is preferable to identify a common enemy beyond the kingdom’s borders. This is precisely the role assigned to the State of Israel in this campaign: to serve as the foreign actor toward which domestic criticism, hatred, and public frustration are redirected. Israel has silently and submissively accepted this role for decades, based on the perception that doing so is essential for the king’s survival and for preserving relative quiet along the eastern border.
Yet in the Middle East, those who fail to stand up for their dignity do not earn respect. Their deterrence is eroded, and the risk that verbal incitement will translate into hostile acts on the ground increases significantly. Therefore, in light of the king’s increasingly extreme statements, the time has come to break the official silence and make clear to the kingdom what the king himself knows very well: the State of Israel will continue to defend its independence, sovereignty, and security by every means at its disposal, from the sea to the river.
Our historical duty as Jews is to protect the sites sacred to Judaism while simultaneously allowing freedom of worship for members of other religions at their holy places, but never at the expense of the security and rights of Jews in their homeland.
The two-state solution already exists in practice. The obstacle to its realization is the Hashemite royal family, whose origins lie in the Arabian Peninsula. The royal family refuses to acknowledge this reality, even at the cost of massacring and discriminating against the “Palestinian” population in the kingdom, and uses Israel as a mechanism for “diverting the fire” away from itself, knowing that Israel will tolerate verbal attacks, incitement, and even terrorist attacks.
The short history and Arab culture demonstrate that Jordan is Palestine. Just as there is no distinct Palestinian people, there is no Jordanian people, and both constitute a single Arab entity. Evidence of this is provided by Arabs on both banks of the Jordan River whenever they have an opportunity to demonstrate solidarity through songs, articles, protests, and conferences. These demonstrate that the line separating them is entirely artificial, for the attention of the royal family.
شعب واحد مش شعبين الاردن وفلسطين🇯🇴قاسم النجار وشادي البوريني من مهرجان اكسبو نابلس ٢٠٢٦ اهداء للاردن
“Jordan and Palestine are one people, not two. Al-Najjar and Al-Bourini at the Nablus Expo Festival 2026, dedicated to Jordan.” (Source: YouTube)
