Amman (Reuters) – Jordan’s foreign minister said on Thursday the country feared the worst was yet to come in the Israel-Hamas war, with no signs of success in efforts to de-escalate tensions.
A deadly rampage on Oct. 7 by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas killed 1,400 people, prompting Israel to bombard the Gaza Strip in strikes that have killed thousands and made more than a million homeless.
In remarks at a press conference with his German counterpart, Ayman Safadi said the war would have “catastrophic repercussions” and urged “protecting the region from the danger of its expansion”.
“All the indications are that the worst is coming.. The catastrophe will have painful consequences in coming periods,” Safadi said, adding that diplomatic efforts were not yielding any results in ending the conflict.
“The decision to end the war is not with us, it’s with Israel and we must exert all efforts to end it,” Safadi said.
Fears of a widening war also cast a shadow on a meeting between Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Thursday in Cairo.
In a statement after the meeting, the two leaders said they rejected forcibly displacing Palestinians and that Israel was “imposing collective punishment” on the inhabitants of Gaza by bombing civilians after the Hamas attack.
In Amman, Safadi said that the kingdom would confront “with all its means” a mass displacement of Palestinians that results in major changes to the region.
“We won’t accept such a solution. This is a red line and would be a declaration of war,” he added.
The conflict has stirred long-standing fears in Jordan, home to a large population of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, that a wider conflagration would give Israel the chance to implement a transfer policy to expel Palestinians en masse from the West Bank.
Jordan, which shares a border with the West Bank, absorbed the bulk of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of their homes when Israel was created.
“We won’t allow Israel to export the crisis it created to Jordan,” Safadi said.
