The relationship between Jordan and Israel came under renewed strain after a terrorist attack on September 18. A Jordanian truck driver arrived at the Allenby Bridge Border Crossing, ostensibly carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, and shot and stabbed two Israeli soldiers before being shot dead. Hamas praised the attack, and Israel has shut the border crossing for cargo traffic, while re-examining the security set-up around the area.
A year earlier, in September 2024, a terrorist gunman from Jordan killed three Israelis at the same crossing before being shot dead.
In the background of both terrorist attacks lies a worsening anti-Israel public context in Jordan. A new report by a London-based research center, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, found that in 2024-2025, Jordanian school textbooks portray the 1994 peace treaty with Israel as a burden, glorified attacks on Israeli civilians, and erase Israel from educational maps, according to an Israeli media report.
Jordanian textbooks, including to this report, describe Israeli hostages kidnapped during the October 7 massacre as “settlers” from “Israeli colonies around Gaza.” A 10th grade textbook says October 7 was the result of “daily massacres” by Israel and “assaults on [the] Al-Aqsa Mosque.” It also accused Israel of conducting indiscriminate killings of “tens of thousands of martyrs,” and wholly omitted Hamas’s role in the conflict.
Despite these problems, bilateral security and economic ties between Israel and Jordan remain good. The two militaries quietly coordinate security activities along the 309 kilometer border, Israel’s longest, which has become the site of increasing arms trafficking efforts, leading to a boosted IDF patrol presence and plans to create a new Israeli $1.4 billion border barrier.
In 2024, the IDF set up Division 96, known as the Eastern Division, and staffed it with tens of thousands of reservist soldiers, tasked with operating alongside the border and preventing large-scale terrorist incursion threats.
Since the 1994 Peace Treaty between Israel and Jordan, Jordan has acted as Israel’s essential strategic depth to the east. Israel has helped Jordan particularly against Iranian efforts to destabilize Jordan with the aid of Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas networks. Both cooperate to stop the smuggling of arms to the West Bank.
Regarding economic ties, Jordan has imported Israeli natural gas since 2020. Since a 2022 memorandum of understanding, Jordan provides Israel with UAE-sponsored solar-generated electricity and Israel supplies the parched Hashemite Kingdom with desalinated water. Israel’s water-sharing agreement with Jordan was renewed in May 2024, and from 2021, Israel has doubled the amount of water it supplies annually to Jordan.
And, while the Allenby Bridge border crossing is temporary closed to cargo, further north the Sheikh Hussein/Jordan River Crossing remains open and is used by Jordan to export goods via the Haifa seaport on the Mediterranean.
Yet, the political environment surrounding this framework of quiet Israeli – Jordanian strategic and security coordination is under strain, owing to both domestic Jordanian and external Islamist-jihadist forces.
In April 2025, Jordan banned the Muslim Brotherhood. The cause, expressed in the April 15 2025 announcement of Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate, was discovery of a major terrorist plot and arrest of 16 suspects accused of making weapons, training terrorists, and planning attacks within the Kingdom. Jordanian authorities said the suspects were linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and trained and financed by terror entities in Lebanon including Hamas.
However, according to Jordanian think tank Strategiecs, “The decision to ban the Muslim Brotherhood came a day after Hamas called for the release of [its] members, which was widely viewed as interference in Jordan’s internal and security affairs. This move reignited the issue of the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, whose offices in Jordan were shut down in 1999.”
As for Iran’s role, senior Jordanian officials recently told Iran International that the threat from Iran and its proxies “sharply increased” over the past year.
“Iran’s threatening activities, finance and recruitment, has tripled for the last three years to the extent that there have been people in security who have been accused of spying for Iran,” a security source was quoted as saying.
Iran has exploited Jordan’s internal make-up where an estimated 50 to 60 percent of the population is of Palestinian descent, making them particularly sensitive to the war between Israel and Hamas. Incitement against Israel is ubiquitous, as are regular calls to cancel the peace treaty.
Outlawing the Muslim Brotherhood does not prevent clandestine foreign organizations from working with Jordanian Islamists – actors like Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies are strategically positioned to absorb radicalized ‘former’ Muslim Brotherhood members and exploit the political discontent.
The Allenby Bridge attacks serve as a warning sign of instability beneath the solid government-to-government ties. The Israeli embassy in Amman remains open, though there are no walk-in services, and security around the site is stepped up. On November 24, 2024, a gunman opened fire near the embassy, before being killed in return fire by Jordanian police. Three Jordanian police officers were wounded.
Even as security and economic ties endure, the functional cooperation between the two sides has become focused on crisis management, as risks fueled by only partially suppressed extremism in Jordan have grown. More such management will be needed in future.
