CAIRO: Jordan's King Abdallah II said last week that the situation in the Middle East is teetering toward an “explosion.” His comments came ahead of a meeting in Cairo of the Arab League over the weekend. “I am afraid the tension could develop into an explosion with all parties paying the price,” the monarch said in a speech to the annual conference of Jordanian ambassadors. The Cairo meeting hopes to embark on the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, which has been nearly constantly stalled since Hamas took over control of the Gaza Strip nearly four years ago. Abdullah said Israel is “playing with fire” by continuing its unilateral actions in East Jerusalem which the Jewish state captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. “Israel should choose between living in an isolated fortress in the region or reaching peace with all Arab and Islamic states in accordance with the Arab Peace Initiative,” he said. The Arab peace plan, which was launched at the Arab summit conference in Beirut in 2002, offers Israel recognition by all Arab states if it pulled out from all the Arab territories it occupied in the 1967 war, including East Jerusalem. BM
