JERUSALEM — A Jordanian gunman killed three Israelis on Sunday at the Israeli-controlled border crossing that connects Jordan with the West Bank, according to authorities from the two countries.
The attack is the deadliest on record at the typically quiet crossing, which is the main point of entry and exit for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israel and Jordan are close allies with Washington and signed a U.S.-backed peace treaty in 1994.
“Preliminary results of the investigation indicate that the incident is an individual act,” the Jordanian Interior Ministry said in a statement, adding that the investigation was ongoing. Israel’s Airports Authority, which operates the crossing, said the three victims were employees of a subcontracting company for the cargo terminal.
Israel closed Allenby and its two other land crossings with Jordan in response to the shooting, according to the Airports Authority, which said later that all three would reopen on Monday for people but not for cargo.
The Allenby Bridge, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, is about three miles east of Jericho. It is a vital crossing point for goods to the West Bank, as well as for aid destined for Gaza.
In a meeting Sunday with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew, Israeli President Isaac Herzog named the victims as Yuri Birnbaum, Yohanan Shchori and Adrian Marcelo Podsmesser.
“The peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors are a cornerstone of stability in the region, and we trust all parties will thoroughly investigate the incident and work to prevent future attacks,” Herzog said.
The last violent incident at the crossing took place in 2014, when a Jordanian citizen tried to grab an Israeli soldier’s weapon and was shot to death.
Relations between Israel and Jordan have soured over the course of Israel’s war in Gaza, which erupted on Oct. 7 after Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages in southern Israel. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi has been a vocal critic of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, and recalled the country’s ambassador to Israel in early November. Direct flights between the two nations, which began after the 1994 peace deal, have stopped.
But Jordan and Israel have quietly maintained security cooperation. In April, Amman was part of a U.S.-backed regional coalition that helped thwart an Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel.
Relations with Israel are a matter of extreme sensitivity in Jordan, where the public is overwhelmingly supportive of the Palestinian cause. The country has seen regular protests against the Gaza war despite harsh restrictions on speech and public gatherings.
Analysts estimate that half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian descent, most from families that were expelled or displaced during the 1948 war that led to the establishment of Israel and the 1967 war when Israel seized control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan.
Palestinians in the West Bank now travel back and forth with a laissez-passer document, though many also have Jordanian citizenship. After Oct. 7, Israel canceled all permits for West Bank Palestinians to enter Israel, including for the few with permits to travel through Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.
On Sunday, Hamas praised the attack and said it was “executed by a fearless Jordanian individual” in response to Israel’s war in Gaza and its actions in the West Bank and around al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a holy site for Jews and Muslims that is administered by Jordan and controlled by Israel.
Eytan Meir, international spokesman for Hatzalah, a Jewish emergency services group, said the three victims, all men in their 50s, were pronounced dead at the scene with severe injuries.
Ahead of an Israeli cabinet meeting Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack and sent his condolences to the families.
“This is a difficult day,” he said. “A loathsome terrorist murdered in cold blood three of our civilians.”
Israel was interrogating drivers at the border Sunday, according to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency. All Jordanian drivers who were investigated after the shooting were released, Jordan’s Interior Ministry said, and more than 100 trucks were returned to Jordan.
The attack comes amid delays over the handover of the body of Aysenur Eygi, 26, a Turkish American activist with the International Solidarity Movement, who was killed Friday during a protest in the West Bank village of Beita. Witnesses said she was shot in the head by Israeli forces.
The IDF, which said Friday it was “looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area,” did not respond to a request for updates. Palestinian and American officials are gathering witness testimonies, Beita residents and activists told The Washington Post.
A memorial procession planned for Sunday in the West Bank city of Nablus was postponed amid confusion over which authority should handle the transfer of Eygi’s body. A Post photographer at the scene Sunday said the body is still at the morgue in a Nablus hospital. Turkish authorities said they were working to transfer her remains back to Turkey. The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem did not respond to a request for comment.
Here’s what else to know
Large overnight protests took place in Israel on the 11-month anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. The Hostage Families Forum said the protests were the largest in the country’s history. More than 500,000 people came out to demonstrate in Tel Aviv, and a quarter-million more in other parts of the country, calling on the Israeli government to reach a cease-fire deal to free the remaining hostages.
A “take it or leave it” U.S.-negotiated cease-fire deal has been upended again in recent days, putting it on life support, The Post reported. The latest obstacle is a demand from Hamas for the release of Palestinian militants serving life sentences in exchange for civilian hostages, which had tentatively been agreed to earlier by the two sides in exchange for Hamas freeing Israeli soldiers.
At least 40,972 people have been killed and 94,761 injured in Gaza since the war started, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of the dead are women and children. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and it says 340 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operations in Gaza.
Timsit reported from London and Masih from Seoul. Joby Warrick in Washington, Kareem Fahim in Beirut, Heidi Levine in Nablus and Alon Rom in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
