Mick Hartley

This seems like a big deal:

Israel and Jordan on Monday signed their largest-ever cooperation agreement, which will see the construction of a major solar power plant in the Hashemite Kingdom to generate electricity for the Jewish state while a desalination plant established in Israel will send water to Jordan.

The agreement was brokered by the United Arab Emirates, which hosted a signing ceremony at the Dubai Expo. Present at the ceremony were Emirates Development Bank chairman Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber and US Climate Envoy John Kerry, who was involved in getting the agreement over the finish line.

The agreement will see Israel purchase solar power from the Jordan-based facility, which will be constructed by an Emirati firm, and Jordan purchase water from the Israeli site to be constructed along the Mediterranean coast.

The deal represented the latest byproduct of the Abraham Accords normalization agreement Israel signed with the UAE last year under the auspices of the Trump administration. The Biden administration has also pledged to build on those agreements while remaining adamant that they are not a replacement for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The deal was reportedly first raised in a September meeting between Energy Minister Karine Elharrar and UAE Ambassador to Israel Mohamed Al Khaja, during discussions on how the UAE can help broker future regional deals in the wake of the Abraham Accords.

Elharrar met with Jordan Water and Irrigation Minister Mohammed Al-Najjar last month for the signing of a separate agreement doubling the amount of water Israel supplies to perennially parched Jordan.

Peace in our time? Well, naturally enough given Jordan's ragingly antisemitic culture, it's not a popular move:

Thousands of Jordanians protested against a major deal between Jordan and Israel on energy and water in Amman on Friday.

Extra police forces were deployed to the downtown of the capital as protesters demanded the government cancel Jordan’s peace deal with Israel and called normalization a humiliation.

Protesters chanted “No to the agreement of shame,” and carried signs that read, “Normalization is treason,” according to a Reuters report.

The protest was put together by opposition parties, tribal groups and unions….

It is the largest-ever cooperation agreement signed between Jerusalem and Amman since the former enemies signed a peace treaty in 1994, and is the largest current renewable energy project in the Middle East.

Jordan is one of the world’s most water-deficient nations and its cooperation on water with Israel dates back to before the two established formal relations.

Israel is also a hot, dry country, but its advanced desalination technology has opened opportunities for selling freshwater.

Experts say the future cooperation could help improve relations, which Jordan’s King Abdullah has described as a “cold peace.”

A Wednesday report said that Saudi Arabia attempted to pressure the UAE to torpedo the deal. Unlike Jordan and the UAE, Saudi Arabia does not have formal relations with Israel.

The Abraham Accords were a major step forward, but there's still a long way to go.