The United States’ failure to bring about renewed Middle East peace talks has doomed chances for peace in the near future, Jordan’s King Abdullah told The Washington Post.
Abdullah also said that Israelis have moved steadily to the right and no longer are interested in a two-state solution.
The king sat for a 45-minute interview at his palace in Amman, which was reported in the Post on Thursday.
He said the failure to bring about a peace agreement will likely lead to “some sort of military confrontation, at which point we all come running and screaming to pick up the pieces. Nobody wins in a war.”
“2011 will be, I think, a very bad year for peace,” Abdullah said.
Abdullah said the U.S. support of Israel led to a false sense of security.
“When you get billions in aid and your weapons resupplied and your ammunitions stock resupplied, you don’t learn the lesson that war is bad and nobody wins,” the 49-year-old monarch said. “So there’s a false sense of understanding.”
Abdullah, who has led Jordan since 1999, has been working to restart peace talks. Jordan signed a peace pact with Israel in 1994.
“I support anybody, whether it’s the Russians or the French, the Americans—anybody coming out with any initiatives—because when we all sit back and, you know, sit on our haunches, then that’s never a good story,” Abdullah said.
“I think the Americans are looking at their own internal issues and maybe other issues internationally, and so the Israeli-Palestinian issue is not a priority.”
