AMMAN (Reuters) – Jordan’s Foreign Minister said on Thursday the country feared the worst was yet to come in the Gaza war, with no signs of a success in efforts to de-escalate.
In remarks at a press conference with his German counterpart, Ayman Safadi said the war would have “catastrophic repercussions” and urged “protecting the region from the danger of its expansion”.
“The catastrophe will have painful consequences in coming periods,” Safadi said, adding that diplomatic efforts were not yielding any results in ending the conflict.
“The decision to end the war is not with us, it’s with Israel and we must exert all efforts to end it,” Safadi said.
Safadi said that the kingdom would confront “with all its means” a mass displacement of Palestinians that results in demographic or geographic changes to the region.
“We won’t accept such a solution. This is a red line and will mean a new war,” he added.
The conflict has stirred long-standing fears in Jordan, home to a large population of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, that a wider conflagration would give Israel the chance to implement a transfer policy to expel Palestinians en masse from the West Bank.
(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi, editing by Deepa Babington)
