In the midst of rising tensions in the West Bank and Israel’s continued military operations in Gaza, a notable event took place on September 8—marking the first such incident since the October 7 attack. A shooting occurred within a commercial area controlled by Israel at the Karameh crossing, near the King Hussein Bridge connecting Jordan and the West Bank. Preliminary investigations revealed that the assailant was a Jordanian truck driver who, upon reaching the crossing, opened fire on Israeli personnel, killing three members of the Israeli security forces and injuring several workers. The shooter was subsequently neutralized. This incident has sparked critical questions about its implications amid the rising tensions in the West Bank and Gaza.
In light of these developments, this article seeks to explore key observations arising from the Karameh crossing incident, as well as the swift, yet temporary, actions taken by Tel Aviv to secure its borders with Jordan.
I. Observations on the Karameh Crossing Operation
The following observations provide insight into the Karameh Crossing operation, marking the first such incident since the October 7 attack:
1. Jordan: The Popular Incubator of the Palestinian Cause
Although the Karameh crossing operation was driven by individual motives of a Jordanian national, Hamas praising it as a heroic response to Israeli aggression in the West Bank and Gaza, highlights two key points. First, Jordan remains a strong popular incubator of the Palestinian cause. The attack, along with the ongoing demonstrations in Jordan since October 7 in solidarity with Palestinians, underscores the deep sympathy and unwavering support from the Jordanian public for Gaza and the West Bank. This reveals that the Palestinian cause continues to hold a central place in the hearts of the Jordanian people, occupying a priority within their collective consciousness and echoing across the Arab world in what can be described as “the unity of popular squares.”
Second, Hamas’ endorsement of the attack reveals the movement’s effort to capitalize on the operation by framing it as a direct response to Israeli assaults in the West Bank and Gaza and a show of support for Palestinian resistance, particularly Hamas in its conflict with Israeli forces. This reflects an attempt by Hamas to project its influence within Jordanian society, claiming the ability to mobilize and rally support along the Israeli border, thereby inciting fear within Israel of potential protest gatherings. Notably, Hamas had previously, with backing from the Jordanian Islamic Action Front, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, called for protests in solidarity with Gaza during the period of March-April 2024. Through these calls, Hamas attempted to co-opt the Jordanian street movement in support of Gaza and turn it against the Jordanian government, while also seeking to include Jordan in the broader regional unrest seen (in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq) in the wake of the Gaza war. Jordanian authorities, however, responded with a decisive rejection of any such destabilizing efforts.
2. The Weapon of Crossings: Israel’s Stranglehold on the West Bank
The Karameh crossing serves as the primary gateway for Palestinians to Jordan and the rest of the world, providing a crucial channel for humanitarian aid. As such, it is a lifeline for Palestinians and the people of the West Bank. Although the crossing is under Israeli control, Israelis are not permitted to pass through it. Hence, this incident gave Tel Aviv a valuable pretext to shut down the crossing, further tightening the noose around West Bank residents, coinciding with ongoing military operations since August 28 in northern West Bank cities and refugee camps. These operations, in addition to the killings and arrests, have included the destruction of infrastructure—roads, electricity and water networks, residential buildings, and hospitals—reflecting a strategy reminiscent of Israeli heavy-handed tactics used in Gaza.
Similarly, just as Tel Aviv closed the Rafah crossing in Gaza following attacks by resistance forces on Israeli troops stationed there, coinciding with Israel’s assault on the city of Rafah, this incident provided Tel Aviv with a pretext to justify the closure of the Karameh crossing to the international community. Following the incident, Israeli forces returned buses of Palestinian passengers bound for Jordan and reinforced military measures at the checkpoint near the eastern entrance of Jericho, situated 5 kilometers from the crossing. This move further tightened the stranglehold on West Bank residents, effectively isolating them from their surrounding geographic areas.
In this vein, the Palestinian National Union of Transport Workers reported that since the closure of the Karameh crossing, around 300 trucks transporting goods into the West Bank daily, sometimes up to 700, have been halted. Half of these trucks are designated for cement, while others carry vegetables, fruits, raw materials, and production inputs for West Bank cities. The Union also highlighted that the crossing serves as a livelihood for approximately 300 drivers, who are now unemployed, in addition to the negative impact on dozens of Palestinian workers at the crossing, merchants, and hundreds of beneficiaries. This has led to a shortage of various goods and products in West Bank markets, along with a rise in prices.
3. Israel’s Creation of a Global Alliance Against Iran and Consolidation of Its Internal Front
Israel sought to leverage the Karameh Crossing operation to rally international support against Iran. This was reflected in statements from Israeli military and political leaders accusing Tehran of being the primary backer of resistance elements in Gaza and the West Bank, blaming it for the chaos and instability in the region. Israel claimed that Iran, through its regional proxies, was responsible for sowing disorder. Furthermore, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz accused Tehran of attempting to establish an eastern terrorist front against Israel via Jordan, coinciding with Israel’s ongoing operations in the West Bank. Katz also alleged that “the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is smuggling weapons from Syria to Jordan attempting to destabilize the Jordanian regime and turn the Israeli-Jordanian border from a peaceful one into a volatile front.”
In addition, Katz advocated for a defensive measure, urging the swift construction of a security fence along the Israeli-Jordanian border. This revived an idea Tel Aviv had proposed two decades ago, which involved building a security wall or fence along the 238 km border with Jordan, from Lake Tiberias to the Gulf of Aqaba. However, the high financial cost led Israel to shelve the plan at the time. The idea was brought back by Netanyahu in 2018, primarily to prevent the infiltration of African refugees, despite the natural barrier of salt mountains covering 40 km of the border.
Netanyahu is also attempting to use the incident to rally the divided Israeli home front, which has been fractured due to his refusal to negotiate a deal to exchange Israeli hostages for a ceasefire in Gaza. He has linked the Karameh crossing operation to the deaths of six Israeli hostages in Gaza and three Israeli policemen killed in a resistance attack in the West Bank. His remarks on the crossing operation reflect this strategy, as he stated: “We are surrounded by a murderous ideology led by Iran’s axis of evil. In recent days, abhorrent terrorists murdered six of our hostages and three Israel Police officers in cold blood. The murderers do not differentiate between us. They want to murder us all, right and left, secular and religious, Jews and non-Jews, until the last one.”
4. The Eastern Philadelphi Corridor: Israel’s Security Dilemma on the Jordanian Border
The challenge of securing Israel’s eastern border with Jordan, which spans 238 kilometers and represents Israel’s longest border with an Arab state, poses a significant security dilemma for Tel Aviv. This has led Israeli officials to refer to it as the “Eastern Philadelphi Corridor,” drawing a parallel to the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border. Much like the security concerns surrounding the Egyptian border that contributed to the recent strain in Egyptian-Israeli relations amid Tel Aviv’s claims regarding the growing security threats through the corridor, the Jordanian border has become a focal point for Israel’s defense strategy.
Israel’s eastern border with Jordan had not factored into its security considerations until a series of incidents sounded alarms, alerting Israeli military and security officials to the gap along this frontier. The first alarm was the shooting attack in the Jordan Valley on August 11, carried out in two separate locations—one near the settlement of Rotem and the other near the Mehola settlement—resulting in the death of one Israeli and the injury of another. This incident prompted the Israeli Chief of Staff to visit the attack site and prioritize the border in the army’s strategic planning and security assessments. Before and after the October 7 operation, the eastern border with Jordan had largely been overlooked in Israel’s security evaluations and contingency plans.
The second critical alarm that shifted the focus of Israel’s security and military leadership to the eastern border was the surge in arms smuggling operations and the rising number of infiltrators, particularly after the October 7 operation. These actions have been motivated by either support for Palestinians in the West Bank, who are enduring a wave of violent escalation from settlers with Israeli military backing, in an effort to neutralize their cause through killings, arrests, or forced displacement, or by the heightened demand for weapons from residents of the West Bank and regions north and south Israel amid the intensifying conflict. Smuggling networks have developed well-organized tactics to guarantee the secure transportation of arms.
Operating 240 km from the border, smuggling networks in the Jordan Valley frequently exploit gaps in the fence where security is lax and monitoring is minimal, allowing them to smuggle goods and facilitate infiltrators’ entry. The fact that Israel’s eastern border was not patrolled extensively has led to a rise in smuggling activities through the Jordanian border into both the West Bank and Israel’s interior, particularly since 2022. In that year alone, Israeli forces confiscated over 500 weapons in 25 smuggling operations, compared to just 143 in 2020. In 2023, more than 415 weapons were seized in 16 smuggling operations, ranging from light firearms such as pistols and rifles to more sophisticated arms like anti-tank missiles, rocket launchers, and explosive devices.
As for the scale of arms smuggling following the October 7 attack, although accurate statistics on the number of intercepted operations are lacking, there are indicators pointing to the ongoing and significant flow of arms from Jordan to the West Bank. As reported by Yedioth Ahronoth in September 2024, for every thwarted smuggling attempt, 3 to 5 successful operations were carried out from Jordan. Data from Israeli security services in August 2024 further indicated that Israeli forces responded to over 1,100 major attacks in the West Bank, including shootings, bombings, stabbings, and vehicular ramming incidents. In just one week in August, more than 10 resistance operations took place, underscoring the intensity of the arms smuggling activities. For instance, on September 14, Israeli police seized 75 Glock pistols hidden inside a vehicle driven by two Bedouin men from the Negev Desert. This followed a July operation at the Wadi Araba crossing with Jordan, where 33 pistols were seized. And on June 1, the Israeli army announced the thwarting of an attempt to smuggle 75 pistols and various other weapons from Jordan to the West Bank, marking the largest smuggling operation since the October 7 attacks began.
On the Jordanian side, authorities have launched numerous campaigns to intercept weapon smuggling operations, often under heavy criticism from Jordanian officials. One such operation was in March 2024, which was publicly revealed in May. The seized shipment, which was smuggled from Syria to Jordan, included Claymore mines, C4 explosives, Semtex, Kalashnikov rifles, and 107mm Katyusha rockets—most of which were intended for the West Bank.
A report published by the American New York Times in April 2024 on Iran’s involvement in smuggling weapons to the West Bank highlighted several smuggling routes. One prominent route begins in Iran, passes through Iraq and Syria, before reaching Jordan as a transit point, and finally ending in the West Bank. Another route bypasses Syria, starting in Iraq and moving directly to Jordan, or alternatively, it runs through Syria to Lebanon, then crosses into the Upper Galilee before reaching the West Bank. The report also revealed that smuggling groups have intensified their use of UAV since the October 7 operation, using them to transport arms across the Jordanian border and drop them into the West Bank.
Regarding infiltration operations as one of the significant security challenges along Israel’s borders, an Israeli report from August 2024 detailed a sharp rise in the number of infiltrators entering Israel from Jordan, reaching approximately 600 per month. Among them were members of militias affiliated with Iran. The report underscored that security threats along the Jordanian border had escalated over the past two years and were intensifying daily since the October 7 attack, exacerbated by the lack of Israeli border surveillance. A separate report presented in an Israeli court during the trial of an infiltrator noted that no fewer than 4,000 people had crossed into Israel over the preceding months until July 2024, all while Israel faces a state of security and military alert on multiple fronts. This growing infiltration trend exposes a severe security risk that Israeli authorities have largely overlooked.
The third critical alarm was the outcome of a joint evaluation session between Israel’s military leadership and security services in August 2024, as a result of which Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi decided to form a new special military unit to be stationed along the border with Jordan, stretching from Beisan in the north of the Jordan Valley to the north of Eilat in the south. Estimates suggest the unit comprises approximately 12,000 soldiers, equipped with infantry, armored units, and heavy weaponry. Its mission will be to maintain security and prevent illegal activities throughout the Jordan Valley, a region that is part of the West Bank. This comes at a critical time, as Tel Aviv grapples with the need for an additional 10,000 soldiers to sustain its operations in Gaza, prepare for potential conflict in northern Israel, and continue its military campaigns in the West Bank.
II. Temporary Measures: Israeli Strategies to Manage the Eastern Border with Jordan
Confronted with significant security challenges along its eastern border with Jordan, Israel found itself in a position that necessitates the swift implementation of temporary measures. This urgency arises not only from immediate security threats but also from a mounting fear that the Jordanian border could facilitate the strengthening of a resistance front in the West Bank, a front that might seek to mirror the October 7 events by launching assaults on nearby settlements.
In addition Israel’s announcement of the formation of a military unit consisting of approximately 12,000 soldiers deployed along the Jordanian border, the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reported in September 2024 that the Israeli army is digging a trench in the Wadi Araba region, a region that is located in a desert that can be crossed on foot, stretching from the Eilot settlement and extends northward to Wadi Araba. The trench is situated less than a kilometer from the city of Eilat in southern Israel and serves as a temporary measure to prevent infiltration and vehicle passage. This initiative is part of an interim strategy, pending the allocation of a budget for the construction of a security fence along the eastern border.
Furthermore, on September 17, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper unveiled an ambitious multi-phase plan by Israel aimed at bolstering security along its border with Jordan. This extensive plan encompasses the installation of hundreds of advanced monitoring and surveillance systems—comprising radars, cameras, and observation towers—spanning the 365 kilometers from Eilat in the south to the Syrian town of Hama near Tiberias in the north, in addition to deploying the rapid response mobile units to swiftly counter any infiltration or smuggling incidents. New barriers will also be constructed to fortify the border, with the projected cost estimated between $2.5 and $4 billion. Implementation of this plan will be overseen by Deputy Chief of Staff Amir Baram, contingent upon approval from senior officials in both the Defense and Finance Ministries.
While this plan marks the fifth of its kind during Netanyahu’s tenure, earlier plans stumbled over funding issues and never materialized. Nonetheless, there appears to be an emerging Israeli desire-as evidenced by previously mentioned measures-to establish security alternatives for border control until a final decision on constructing a security fence along the Jordanian border is made and funding is approved. Additionally, Tel Aviv seems to be leveraging the Karameh incident and other resistance activities that have intensified since October 7 to shift significant responsibility for border infiltration and smuggling operations onto Jordan and accusing it of lacking adequate security measures to manage its western border, thereby justifying the need for Tel Aviv—under the guise of safeguarding its national security—to implement comprehensive security measures that mitigate potential risks, including enforcing stringent Israeli military oversight along the border with Jordan, particularly near the West Bank, which contravenes the stipulations of the Israel–Jordan peace treaty that regulates troop deployment on the border fronts and delineates the permissible size and number of military forces along the border and their proximity to civilian areas, as outlined in Annex (1).
Notably, in addressing the heightened border security challenges—especially concerning its western borders—Jordan has initiated the first-ever test site in the Middle East to test UAV, counter-UAV, and electronic warfare systems, with the aim of enhancing Jordan’s ability to tackle asymmetric threats, particularly those arising from UAV infiltrating from the conflict zones in Syria and Iraq into Jordan, and from there into the West Bank.
Beyond that, in the wake of the October 7 attack, Jordan had strategically repositioned some of its military forces toward its western borders, anticipating any security threats arising from the intensifying conflict in the Gaza Strip. Indeed, the Gaza conflict, particularly the escalation in the West Bank, has significantly affected Jordan’s western borders, where an unprecedented escalation has been witnessed as Israeli authorities have effectively granted settlers unrestricted freedom to engage in various forms of aggression, legitimizing their possession of weapons, to force the displacement of Palestinians toward Jordan, further accelerating the encroachment on Palestinian lands.
In conclusion, it appears that Tel Aviv has adeptly turned risks and challenges into strategic opportunities, reinforcing its political, military, and economic dominance over the occupied territories and oppressing and terrifying the Palestinian people through systematic killings, detentions, and forced removals aimed at eliminating the Palestinian cause, while building an international defensive alliance to promote Tel Aviv’s policies and military actions as measures necessary for safeguarding its national security. This is evident in Tel Aviv’s handling of the Karameh crossing incident and its response to the events of October 7. In light of this, Jordan must take proactive steps to counter Israel’s efforts to impose military and security dominance along the border and prevent the forced migration of West Bank residents into its territory.
