After Haniyeh’s death, Jordan says Israel ‘a rogue state,’ undermining hostage deal
Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi calls on UN not to allow Jerusalem to ‘impose more wars and more destruction on the region’
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Thursday that Israel has turned into a “rogue” state with its “assassination” of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and needed to be stopped.
He said the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s politburo, was a clear sign that Israel had decided to undermine the US, Egypt and Qatar-backed hostage-ceasefire talks.
“Yesterday, Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh. He was the one who was negotiating the exchange deal. So how on earth is a country that wants to conclude a deal killing the main interlocutor in those negotiations?” Safadi said at a news conference.
“So when [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu decided and sent his missiles to assassinate Haniyeh in Iran in violation of the sovereignty of another country and bringing escalation to a very high level, is that somebody who wants the deal to work?
“And all the work that has been done by Egypt, Qatar, and the US to bring a deal that would have brought a ceasefire, that would have released the hostages, that would have released prisoners — Israel decided to undermine all that.”
Israel has not taken responsibility for or commented on the assassination, though both Iran and Hamas have alleged it was the result of an Israeli air strike in Tehran before dawn on Wednesday.
The New York Times reported Thursday that Haniyeh was killed by a sophisticated, remote-controlled bomb that was smuggled into the Tehran guesthouse he was staying in.
Safadi demanded action by the international community to rein Israel in.
“The [UN] Security Council must not allow a state that has turned rogue to impose more wars and more destruction on the region,” he said.
The war in Gaza broke out on October 7 with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages. Israel vowed to dismantle Hamas and return the hostages.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Israel and Hamas were in the midst of negotiations for a deal that would see at least some of the 111 hostages believed to still be in Gaza released in exchange for a ceasefire, the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisoners, and more humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip.
US officials believed the parties were close to closing the deal, but both sides accused each other of stalling this week and it remains to be seen how Haniyeh’s death will affect the continuation of talks.
