• Former Jordanian MP Imad al-Adwan was apprehended at the Allenby Border Crossing for smuggling rifles into the West Bank.
• Al-Adwan’s arrest has sparked outrage in Jordan, where he is viewed as a hero for supporting Palestinian resistance.
Former Member of Parliament Imad al-Adwan, along with three other individuals, were sentenced on Wednesday by Jordan’s State Security Court.
The court sentenced Imad al-Adwan to 10 years of hard labour for smuggling weapons into the West Bank. He was apprehended on April 22, 2023, at the Israel-administered Allenby Border Crossing (also known as the King Hussein Crossing) between Jordan and the West Bank. Israeli security forces reportedly uncovered 12 rifles and 194 pistols in his vehicle, according to Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency.
After his detention by Israeli authorities, al-Adwan was transferred to Jordan in May 2023. He was subsequently stripped of parliamentary immunity and convicted of “exporting weapons with the intention of illegal use” by the Jordanian State Security Court. The three other men implicated in the case also received lengthy prison sentences.
Al-Adwan, a lawyer and a member of the Jordanian parliament’s Palestine Committee, had used his diplomatic passport 12 times since February 2022 to smuggle various goods, including “birds, pigeons, electronic cigarettes, and gold,” according to the Shin Bet.
Al-Adwan’s arrest has triggered outrage in Jordan, where he is hailed as a hero for supporting Palestinian resistance under Israeli occupation.
“I’m not satisfied with the state’s response. The conditions imposed by the Israelis for Adwan’s return are unacceptable. He shouldn’t be tried,” MP Salah al-Armouti, who voted against the lifting of Adwan’s immunity, said, following his indictment in May 2023.
It’s important to note, just two days ago, The Guardian reported on recent developments in the West Bank:
According to the UN, Israeli troops and settlers have killed 171 Palestinian in the West Bank over the course of the last year. This is equivalent to one death almost every other day. Furthermore, more than 1,000 others have been injured.
“In the course of last year there was an extremely concerning increase in children killed in conflict-related violence in the West Bank, and we already see the trend is continuing,” said Jonathan Crickx, spokesperson for Unicef Palestine.
“Unicef wants to ring the alarm bell, that children are being killed and seriously injured on a regular basis, mostly by live ammunition….No soldier has been charged over any of the shootings, and the Israeli military did not directly address the surge in child casualties when approached for comment,” The Guardian asserts.
Moreover, immediately after it was announced that Donald Trump would be taking office in January, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that 2025 would be the year to impose the occupation state’s sovereignty over “Judea and Samaria”, known to the rest of the world as the West Bank.
In 2016, a similar announcement was made by Naftali Bennett, when Trump was a US presidential candidate for the first time. The Palestinian territory said Bennett should be a part of the occupation state.
Israel has been found to have passed the threshold as an apartheid state by B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
