06 Jan 2019; MEMO: Twenty-five members of Jordan’s parliament yesterday walked out of a session yesterday in protest against the country’s gas deal with Israel.
Officials were due to discuss the issue of waste in the kingdom however MPs urged Parliament Speaker Atek Al-Tarawneh to change the topic at hand to the gas deal with Israel.
One MP asked the speaker: “Did not you hear what the aggressive entity [Israel] had said about its future after getting its revenues from the gas deal?”
MP Mustafa Al-Assaf, from the Islamic Action Front, told Quds Press that his bloc had rejected the deal from the onset, in addition to rejecting all forms of contracts and dealings with the “occupation entity”.
“Therefore, the MPs of the bloc in addition to a number of other MPs decided to boycott today’s meeting,” Al Assaf said, stating that his bloc had filed a notice to parliament to dissolve the government over the gas deal.
“The government has ignored the people’s will, which is more important than parliament,” he said.
Last week Jordan’s National Electricity Company (NEPCO) announced that it has started receiving natural gas from Israel’s Leviathan offshore natural gas field in implementation of the agreement signed between the two sides in 2016.
