Here’s some good news to those of you who’ve been following the vote in the Jordanian parliament on Wednesday, to demand that King Abdullah expel the Israeli envoy scrap the peace treaty with Israel.

That treaty, signed back in 1994 on the White House lawn, by his Majesty, the late King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister, the late Yitzhak Rabin, with U.S. President Bill Clinton watching – that treaty regulates the use of regional water by both countries. It’s all in Article 6 of the treaty, which is bigger than all the rest of the 30 articles put together.

The reason is simple: much of the water—just about all of it, really—alongside the border between the two countries happens to be in Israeli territory. Without that water, Jordan goes back to being the proud desert country it’s always been, which is fine if you’re Bedouin, but not so great if you’re a farmer.

Here’s what can happen, should Jordan decide to scrap its peace treaty with Israel: it would have to do without the following items:

Israel accepted responsibility for operating, supplying and maintaining systems on Israeli territory that supply Jordan with water.

In the summer, May 15 to October 15 of each year, Israel agreed to transfer 20 million cubic meters from the Jordan River directly upstream from Deganya gates.

In the winter, October 16 to May 14 of each year, Jordan is entitled to a minimum average of 20 million cubic meters of the floods in the Jordan River south of the Yarmouk. Unusable excess floods that would otherwise be unused, including pumped storage, can also be taken by Jordan.

In addition, Israel agreed to share the Yarmouk River with Jordan. Anything above 12 million cubic meters in the summer and 13 million in winter goes to Jordan.

When you hear about the Kinneret water going below all kinds of red lines? It’s because they’re being diverted north of the lake, at a rate of up to 50 million cubic meters a year.

OK, that was the deal, we wanted a peace treaty and that’s what we had to pay for it. The fact is that Israel’s relations with Jordan are a whole lot warmer than with Egypt—until the Arab Spring thing hits Amman, of course.

But now the Jordanian parliament—which is largely Palestinian, incidentally—has reacted to the fact that Israel, in an unprecedented display of courage, decided to detain the Jerusalem Mufti for his blatant preaching of violence against the Jews. If the Israelis don’t let our holy guy preach murder, we’re scrapping the treaty.

The treaty that’s the life blood of Jordan’s economy—in addition to supplying Jordan with much of its water, much of Jordan’s industry is owned by Israeli tycoons, who relocated factories from Israel, where organized Jewish workers used to burden them with demands for benefits and realistic wages—to Jordan, where a working man gets a pitta and a couple of onions which he shares with his family of 15.

Now, what did Israel just do, following the Jordanian parliament’s threat to call it quits?

Amb. Oded Eran

Oded Eran, Israel’s ambassador to Jordan, was interviewed on Reshet Bet Thursday morning, and he said that Israel has increased the amount of water it diverts to the Hashamite kingdom, in order to accommodate the numerous refugees flooding Jordan from Syria.

Talk about doing the decent Christian thing…

Or treasonous. Potato-potato.

Ambassador Eran also said Israel also allows Jordan to export its goods to the West through the port of Haifa.

The benefits of peace.

So the host, Ya’akov Achi-Meir, asked him how that sits with the recommendation of the Jordanian parliament to kick him out of the country, and the ambassador answered that once the peace process with the Palestinians is on its way, things in Jordan would calm down.

According to Ambassador Eran, the Jordanian government is on very friendly terms with Israel, it’s only the vast population that wants all of us dead.

Now, here’s the zinger: according to Reshet Bet, Israeli sources have said that Israel has increased the amount of water it transfers to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority recently regardless of the increase in the number of refugees from Syria in Jordan.

Jordan’s King Abdullah has given up on negotiations with Syria and has allowed Israel to use its air space to mount drone attacks on Syria, the French newspaper Le Figaro reported.

“Known only to a handful of Western intelligence services, the decision was taken by the Hashemite King during the visit by President Barack Obama” last month, according to the newspaper.

The situation at the border with the Golan Heights has deteriorated in the past several weeks, with occasional mortar shells and artillery directed into Israel. Israel’s drones are armed and can fly at night to avoid detection, an expert told Le Figaro.

It said that Jordan has opened up for Israel two air corridors, one from the Negev and via southern Jordan and the other to the north of Amman, allowing Israeli aircraft to take off from a base near Tel Aviv and quickly reach Syria.

Opening an air corridor in Jordan decreases the necessity to carry out surveillance flights in Syria via Lebanon.

King Abdullah tried to avoid taking the step of cooperating with Israel against Syrian President Bashar Assad, but he reported failed to gain headway with the head of the struggling regime during a secret trip to Damascus in March.

The report also may explain why Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a short and unannounced secret visit to Jordan earlier this year.

Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, a leading Saudi cleric, who was imprisoned in the 1990s for speaking in favor of change, and whose Twitter is accessed by 2.4 million believers, published an open letter on the social media site, with a warning to the government of Saudi Arabia—which isn’t accustomed to receiving public criticism—that it would be facing “the spark of violence” if it didn’t act quickly on burning issues like detained dissidents, bad public services and corruption, Reuters reported.

In reaction to the “Arab Spring” of the past two years, the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, pledged $110 billion in social spending, in return for a religious ban on protests.

But according to the conservative Sheikh, nothing significant has changed so far. He described a stagnation, caused by a lack of housing, unemployment, poverty, corruption, bad health and education services, the suffering of political prisoners and the fact that Saudis see no hope for political reform.

“If revolutions are suppressed they turn into armed action, and if they are ignored they expand and spread. The solution is in wise decisions and in being timely to avert any spark of violence,” al-Awdah wrote.

Dissidents have been detained as political prisoners in Saudi Arabia during the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. The issue of the detainees has united some Saudi Islamists and liberals against what they see as a punitive state security apparatus.

As of 2012, estimates are that as many as 30 thousand dissidents are sitting in Saudi prisons. They included tribal leader Mukhlif al-Shammari, who was charged with “annoying others” for his op-eds, assistant professor of law Muhammad al-Abdul Karim who published an article on “The crisis of conflict amongst the governing wings in Saudi Arabia,” in 2010.

A week ago, two prominent human rights activists were jailed, having campaigned for years on behalf of detainees. Most demonstrations in support of detainees involve only a few dozen Saudis, but now and then, such as in a late February rally in Bureidah in the central Qassim Province, many more show up. In that instance, 161 protesters were arrested.

Sheikh al-Awdah wrote that his Saudi countrymen “like people around the world” aren’t always going to remain ” silent about forfeiting all or part” of their rights, adding that “when someone loses hope, you should expect anything from him.”

The Saudi authorities do not tolerate public dissent, this is, most likely, because signs of public rage are being closely monitored by the world’s oil industry experts, who make their futures purchases with said dissents in mind.

King Abdullah II of Jordan arrived in Ramallah on Thursday, in the first visit by an Arab leader since “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations as a state,” Maan reports.

The new state’s president Mahmoud Abbas and the new state’s prime minister Salam Fayyad welcomed the king along with PLO and Fatah members as well as ministers and members of clergy.

Only 42 years ago, King Abdullah’s father, His Majesty King Hussein, slaughtered  at least 10 thousand Palestinians, in what became known as Black September, 1970.

The Palestinians’ capacity for forgiveness and acceptance of their neighbors is truly admirable.

Jordan’s premier Abdullah al-Nusoor was to accompany Abdullah along with foreign minister Nasser Judah and other officials.

The king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, is clinically dead, according to Al-Sharq al-Awsat daily news.

The king underwent back surgery in Riyadh on November 17, but complications arose, leading to his death at the National Guard’s King Abdul Aziz Medical City.

Abdullah inherited the crown in 2005.  His brother, Crown Prince Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Defense, had assured Saudis and members of the Gulf Cooperation Council just the day before that Abdullah was well and in good health.

Analysts say Salman acted to ensure national stability to preserve smooth sales of oil.  Saudia Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, holds over 20% of the world’s petroleum, and is the epicenter of Islam, being home to the pilgrimage city of Mecca.

Salman is expected to take over Abdullah’s duties, as well as his crown.

Last week, protests broke out in Jordan after a government decision to raise fuel prices. While protests have been taking place in Jordan for almost two years now, for the first time there is major involvement from Jordan’s Palestinians, with open calls for toppling the regime. With the future of Jordan’s King Abdullah in jeopardy, so is regional stability as well as Jordan’s peace with Israel. Pro-Western forces have critical options to consider.

The protesters, last week, started openly to call for the king to step down. The Independent noted that previously the protests had been “peaceful and rarely targeted King Abdullah II himself,” and reported that this time crowds “chanted slogans against the king and threw stones at riot police as they protested in several cities.”

Al Jazeera, as well, reported that protests have been taking place “across the width and the length of the country,” with “most chanting for toppling the regime.” Several of the king’s photographs – regularly displayed in public places in Jordan – were set on fire.

What came as a surprise in the recent protests, according to Al Jazeera, is that Palestinian refugee camps have been also participating to the fullest. These protests apparently broke out in the Al-Hussein refugee camp, close to Jordan’s capital, Amman. Protesters were seen calling for toppling the regime.

In another protest, Al-Hussein refugee camp protesters chanted: “Our god, may you take away our oppressor. Our country Jordan has existed before the Arab Revolution,” referring to the revolt against the Turks by which Jordan’s king’s great grandfather established the Hashemite kingdom.. Al-Hussein refugee camp protesters eventually marched into lively Douar Firas area near central Amman, where they were attacked by the fearsome Jordanian gendarmerie.

The gendarmerie officers were even harsher in the Al-Baqaa refugee camp, Jordan’s largest, where protests broke out for the first time, and slogans targeted the king with demands that he step down. Protesters reportedly burned tires, blocking the highway which borders the camp and connects Amman to Northern Jordan.

The Jordanian news website Ammon published a video showing an al-Baqaa refugee camp leader calling for “calm” within camps in Jordan, while admitting that the refugee camp’s leaders, usually favored by the regime over the Palestinian public, were not able to form a public committee to reach out to protesting youths. The Palestinian-dominated Jabal Al-Nuzha camp has also been the site of regular protests, with demonstrators also calling for toppling the king.

Other Palestinian-dominated areas are witnessing first-time protests as well, including Al-Ashrafiah, the Hiteen refugee camp and the broader East Amman.

It is not the Palestinians alone who are protesting against the king. “East Bankers” in Northern Jordan had generally kept away from the protest movements until last week, when the residents of Irbid, the biggest city in Northern Jordan, started calling for toppling the regime.

Other major protests have been taking place in several parts of the country. Tensions ran high in the southern city of Kerak, an East Banker-dominated city. A known opposition leader in Kerak, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he was expecting serious escalation from the regime, and alleged that Jordanian police were cracking down on protesters and arresting their leaders. His claim was consistent with footage that appeared on YouTube, exhibiting parts of the unrest. He also claimed that southern Jordanians “have made up their minds, they will not tolerate the king any longer …it is too late for him to make any reforms.”

The Muslim Brotherhood too organized a protest, in the city of Rusifay, east of Amman. Their demonstration, critical of Abdullah’s Prime Minister, Al-Nosuor, but with no criticism of the king or calls for toppling his regime, simply demanded that fuel prices be reduced.

On November 18, the popular Jordanian news website, Al-Sawt, published an article entitled: “Will the Muslim Brotherhood get the price for its realism and positivity during the fuel-prices protest?” In the article, editor in chief, Tarek Dilawani (also a seasoned journalist for the Jordanian daily, Ad-Dustor), claims that the Jordanian regime had “an arrangement with the Muslim Brotherhood not to surf the tide of the protests, and to keep their demands fixed on peaceful reform of the regime.”

Nonetheless, the supposed arrangement between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hashemite regime has not worked. It has not stopped protests by either Palestinians or East Bankers. As The Independent recently wrote: “The protesters…were led by activists that included the secular Hirak Shebabi youth movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, and various nationalist and left-wing groups.” It is therefore possible that the Muslim Brotherhood is only a part of the opposition, and not “the opposition.”

Has the U.S. Administration decided to get rid of Jordan’s King Abdullah?

This is the question that many Jordanians have been asking in the past few days following a remark made by a spokesman for the U.S. State Department.

Deputy State Department Spokesman Mark Toner managed to create panic [and anger] in the Royal Palace in Amman when he stated that there was “thirst for change” in Jordan and that the Jordanian people had “economic, political concerns,” as well as “aspirations.”

The spokesman’s remark has prompted some Jordanian government officials to talk about a U.S.-led “conspiracy” to topple King Abdullah’s regime.

The talk about a “thirst for change” in Jordan is seen by the regime in Amman as a green light from the U.S. to King Abdullah’s enemies to increase their efforts to overthrow the monarchy.

The U.S. spokesman’s remark came as thousands of Jordanians took to the streets to protest against their government’s tough economic measures, which include cancelling subsidies for fuel and gas prices.

The widespread protests, which have been dubbed “The November Intifada,” have resulted in attacks on numerous government offices and security installations throughout the kingdom. Dozens of security officers have been injured, while more than 80 demonstrators have been arrested.

And for the first time, protesters in the Jordanian capital have been calling for overthrowing King Abdullah. In an unprecedented move, demonstrators last week tried to march on the monarch’s palace in Amman in scenes reminiscent of anti-regime protests in Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and Egypt.

The Jordanian authorities claim that non-Jordanian nationals who infiltrated the border have been involved in the violence, the worst to hit the kingdom in decades. The authorities say that Saudi and Syrian Muslim fundamentalists are responsible for attacks on government offices and other institutions, including banks.

Some Jordanian officials have pointed a blaming finger at Saudi Arabia and Qatar for encouraging the anti-regime protests and facilitating the infiltration of Muslim fundamentalists into the kingdom.

The officials believe that Jordan is paying the price of refusing to play a larger and stronger role in Saudi-Qatari efforts to topple Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

The talk about the involvement of Saudi Arabia and Qatar in the recent unrest in Jordan prompted Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour to issue a warning to all the Gulf states that their security would be severely undermined if the Jordanian regime collapsed. Ensour was quoted as saying that the Gulf states would have to spend half their fortune in defending themselves against Muslim terrorists who would use Jordan as a launching pad to destabilize the entire Gulf.

Unless the U.S. clarifies its position regarding King Abdullah and reiterates its full backing for his regime, the Muslim fundamentalists are likely to step up their efforts to create anarchy and lawlessness in the kingdom. Washington needs to reassure King Abdullah and his followers that it would not allow the creation of an Islamic terror republic in Jordan. The Americans also need to put pressure on the Gulf countries to resume financial aid to Jordan, to avoid turning the kingdom into a source of threats against moderate Arabs and Muslims, as well as the West.

Originally published at the Gatestone Insitute.

Friday – A few hundred people have begun protesting in Jordan’s capital against King Abdullah.

On Friday, October 5th, 15,000 Islamist protested in Amman demanding regime reform, after the king dissolved the parliment.

Jordan’s Islamist have strong support among Jordan’s Palestinian majority, who have very limited representation in the government.