Jordan’s King Abdullah issued a royal decree to hold a parliamentary election, with the date to be set within the next 10 days by an independent election commission, state media said.
The election will be held at a time the aid-dependent country grapples with economic contraction with the impact of COVID-19 amid heightened worries about any unilateral Israeli move to annex territory in the occupied West Bank.
Officials fear that annexation would bury the prospect of a viable Palestinian state and eventually bring a settlement of the decades-old conflict at the expense of Jordan, a country where many people are descendants of Palestinian refugees whose families left after the creation of Israel in 1948.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
