2023-05-07 08:10:02
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli authorities on Sunday released a Jordanian lawmaker to return home, according to Israel’s internal security agency, after he tried to smuggle dozens of rifles and handguns through a border crossing controlled by Israel.
The arrest of lawmaker Imad Al-Adwan threatened to further complicate ties between Israel and neighboring Jordan, which have suffered recent tensions despite a peace treaty signed nearly three decades ago. Israel considered the incidents serious, although Al-Adwan’s release indicated that he wanted to put an issue at risk of escalation behind him.
Al-Adwan was detained on April 22 with bags containing more than 200 weapons, according to a statement from the Shin Bet agency. The investigation revealed that the parliamentarian had carried out 12 different smuggling attempts since the beginning of 2022 and used his diplomatic passport to carry everything from electronic cigarettes to gold or birds.
Since the beginning of the year, he has made several successful trips to smuggle weapons, according to the Shin Bet. In return he got unspecified amounts of money, the agency added, which said he had been released for “further investigation and pursuit of justice” by Jordanian authorities.
At first it was not possible to contact the Jordanian Foreign Ministry or a brother of Al-Adwan.
Violence in the West Bank has increased in the past year. Israel says the area has been flooded with illegal weapons, some smuggled in from neighboring Jordan.
Since the conservative Israeli government took office last year, relations with Jordan have soured over Israeli settlement construction, violence in the West Bank and crackdowns on places of worship in Old Jerusalem.
Bilateral relations hit a rocky patch in 2017 when a security guard at the Israeli embassy in Jordan shot dead two Jordanians, claiming one had attacked him with a screwdriver. The Israeli guard and the then Israeli ambassador were greeted as heroes by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, outraging Jordan.
Jordan controlled the West Bank and east Jerusalem before Israel captured the territories in the 1967 Six-Day War, and the kingdom remains custodian of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Muslim holy sites in the old city.
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