How Jordan’s refusal to extradite a convicted terrorist could imperil $1.5 billion in US aid

That language threatens to cut Jordan off from the $1.5 billion in US economic and military assistance that Congress gave the kingdom for fiscal year 2020 as part of the very same spending bill. Jordan — a bipartisan darling of congressional appropriators because of its 1994 peace treaty with Israel — is heavily reliant on foreign aid, and the COVID-19 pandemic is set to deepen that dependence.

“Jordan is a tremendous recipient of US aid, at the cost of $1.75 billion a year, and of Israeli assistance, with agriculture, with medicine, with high tech and with water,” said Sarah-Leah Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Endowment for Middle East Truth, a pro-Israel group that has pushed Congress to pressure Jordan on the Tamimi case. “Why is it just a one-way street? The United States has certain principles and certain values that we, as a nation, stand for.”

The legislation, backed by the endowment, does allow Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to issue a national security waiver that would allow US aid to Jordan to continue even if it fails to extradite Tamimi. Pompeo’s thinking is currently unclear, as neither the State Department nor the Jordanian Embassy responded to Al-Monitor’s request for comment.

Israel gave Tamimi 16 life sentences in prison for her role in the 2001 attack but released her as part of a 2011 prisoner exchange with Hamas. Since then, Tamimi has become a popular media personality in Jordan, which hosts more than 2 million Palestinian refugees.

The United States unveiled terrorism charges against Tamimi and requested her extradition in 2017 under the terms of a 1995 treaty with Jordan. Shortly thereafter, Jordan’s Court of Cassation ruled that the extradition treaty was invalid.

“Harboring a known murderer of American citizens and refusing our extradition request, when we have a signed extradition treaty with Jordan, and when the government of Jordan has extradited three other terrorists, at our request, who are serving out lengthy sentences in American maximum security prisons, it’s absurd that they now claim that no extradition treaty exists,” Thompson told Al-Monitor.

Tamimi is currently on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists and the State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information that leads to her arrest or conviction.