Jordan king’s half-brother tweets article denouncing UAE-Israel deal

Prince Ali bin Hussein, the half-brother of Jordan’s King Abdullah II, has tweeted an article published on the Middle East Eye (MEE) news portal condemning the UAE-Israel normalization agreement.

The MEE opinion piece, written by Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at Oxford University, included a photograph of posters of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan with the word “traitor” written across them.

On Wednesday, Prince Ali tweeted the article with the picture. The post garnered over 900 retweets.

Later, however, he took down the tweet and reposted with just the link.

The Jordanian prince’s tweet apparently sparked controversy in a kingdom that has diplomatic relations with the Israeli regime itself.

Jordanian news site al-Urdunyya said in a series of tweets that King Abdullah II had contacted Prince Ali personally, asking him to the delete his tweet.

The column argues that the Emiratis did not act in the interest of Palestinians and did not consult them before reaching a normalization deal with Israel, choosing instead to go behind their back.

“It is one thing for the rulers of the UAE to pursue their narrow national interest by bringing their decades-long covert cooperation with Israel into the open … but to pretend that the UAE struck the peace deal with Israel in order to help the Palestinians achieve their goals is rank hypocrisy,” it read.

Israel, UAE reach US-brokered agreement to establish full diplomatic ties

Israel and the United Arab Emirates agree to normalize diplomatic ties in a deal apparently brokered by US President Donald Trump that includes Tel Aviv regime’s agreement to suspend annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Amman signed a peace treaty with Tel Aviv in 1994, but pro-Palestinian sentiment remain widespread in the kingdom, where the public is usually quick to express solidarity with their Palestinian neighbors in the face of Israeli crimes and occupation.

Jordanian cartoonist detained

In another development on Wednesday, the al-Khaleejonline news website reported that Jordanian forces had arrested editorial cartoonist Emad Hajjaj after he mocked Tel Aviv’s opposition on Abu Dhabi’s potential acquisition of American F-35 warplanes despite their US-brokered normalization.

The Israeli-UAE spat only broke out shortly after the normalization deal was announced on April 13.

According to Israel’s Walla news site, the Emirati envoy to the UN had snubbed a meeting with his Israeli and American counterparts at the UN headquarters in New York after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he had opposed the sale of F-35s and other advanced weapons to any country in the Middle East, including Arab countries that have peace agreements with Tel Aviv.

Abu Dhabi says the normalization deal with Israel should remove any hurdle for the US to sell the UAE with the advanced jets.

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