Israel has let a deal that doubled its water exports to Jordan expire without renewal, attaching any fresh flow to softer public rhetoric from Amman and a fuller diplomatic posture from King Abdullah II. The arrangement, signed in 2021 under the Bennett-Lapid government, stopped flowing in late 2025 after a series of six-month extensions, even as Jordan helped Israeli and US forces intercept Iranian drones during the recent widening of the Iran conflict.
The lapse does not break the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty. It does strain what had been one of Israel’s few quiet, continuous working relationships with a neighbour. The dispute now runs through every other file between the two governments, including a possible energy summit in Abu Dhabi and a long-shelved plan to swap solar power for desalinated water. What was once routine supply has become a measured tool of conditional diplomacy, and the bargaining has moved into the open.
The numbers at stake
- 50 million cubic meters: the annual water supply Israel owes Jordan under the 1994 peace treaty, drawn from Lake Tiberias.
- 100 million cubic meters: the combined supply during the 2021 to late 2025 expansion period, before the add-on lapsed.
- 61 cubic meters: Jordan’s renewable fresh water available per capita per year, according to US Commerce Department data.
- $5.8 billion: the projected cost of Jordan’s National Water Carrier desalination and pipeline project.
- 300 million cubic meters: the annual output target for that same National Water Carrier once it is running.
From a 2021 Doubling to a Quiet Lapse
Under the 1994 peace treaty, Israel supplies Jordan with 50 million cubic meters of water annually from Lake Tiberias. That baseline still flows. The dispute sits on top of it.
The 2021 add-on agreement, concluded under the Bennett-Lapid government and signed by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi at a meeting held just inside the Jordanian border, roughly doubled deliveries by adding another 50 million cubic meters a year at a discounted price. The deal was, at the time, described as “the largest quantity ever sold between the two countries” by Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of EcoPeace Middle East. Since 2021, Energy Minister Eli Cohen renewed the additional agreement every six months, reportedly under US pressure and because Jordan helped shoot down Iranian drones fired at Israel.
The extension lapsed in late 2025. Since then, supplies have reverted to the 50 million cubic meters per year guaranteed under the peace treaty alone. The treaty is intact. The arrangement that doubled it is not.
What Israel Says It Wants
Israel is asking Amman to moderate public statements about Israel and restore full diplomatic ties before any renewed expansion water flows. The conditions are now central to how Jerusalem treats every renewal decision.
Israeli officials have linked renewal to political terms that include softer public rhetoric and the restoration of full diplomatic engagement. Jerusalem became reluctant to continue the renewal process in the face of repeated criticism of Israel by Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi. Energy Minister Eli Cohen had been the official approving six-month extensions. Cohen’s stand-down reflects a calculation that domestic patience for sending extra water abroad is thinner than it was two years ago, and that political cover from Washington has thinned with it.
Jordan needs the water, but when you help your neighbors, you expect warmer relations. If there is a meeting, everything will be on the table – normalization, water, and strengthening bilateral ties.
An Israeli official quoted by the Times of Israel added that 2025 was Israel’s driest year in the past 100 years. The government has placed priority on refilling the country’s water reservoirs, along with supplying local agriculture.
Israel has no legal obligation to deliver the additional volume. The 1994 peace treaty is the only binding supply commitment. That gives Jerusalem room to make the higher figure a lever rather than a right, but it also means any escalation is on Israel, not on Amman.
Why Jordan Calls It Blackmail
Jordan’s King Abdullah declined repeated requests from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet in March, according to Israeli media reports. One of Abdullah’s demands for agreeing to a meeting was the renewal of the water agreement, the reports said. A Jordanian source close to the royal family told Israel’s Kan public broadcaster that the water issue “is very important to us, and is part of the peace treaty.”
Jordanian Middle East analyst Daham Matkal al-Fayez was blunt in an interview with Ynet. “Water is directly linked to water security and the needs of millions of Jordanians,” al-Fayez said. “If a decision has been made not to renew the additional water agreement, I see it as part of the current Israeli right-wing government’s policy of undermining relations with Jordan.” He framed the linkage as sending “a negative message that agreements can become subject to domestic political considerations,” and accused Jerusalem of repeatedly testing the peace treaty through “a series of escalating measures and statements” that have weakened mutual trust.
The domestic audience in Jordan makes any deal political. A country where upwards of 50% of the population is of Palestinian origin would punish a deal seen as trading support for Palestinians in exchange for water. The framing matters more than the liters.
Jordan recalled its ambassador in October 2023 and told Israel not to return its envoy, and the two countries have not maintained ambassadors in each other’s capitals since. Within that vacuum, Israeli conditions land as coercion rather than negotiation. As Ronen Yitzhak, head of Middle East studies at Western Galilee College and a researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center, put it to Ynet: “The Jordanians did not want to connect the two issues. They felt they were being blackmailed.”
The Iran War Shadow Over the Tap
Jordan’s help during the widening Iran conflict against Israel cuts hard against the current Israeli posture. Jordanian air defenses shot down Iranian missiles and drones that crossed into Israeli airspace during repeated rounds of escalation. Iranian forces also repeatedly targeted the Al-Azraq air base in Jordan, which hosts US troops, during Israel’s Operation Rising Lion against Iran.
That military cooperation came at real political cost in Amman, where public opinion was already hostile to any visible alignment with Israel. The water dispute compounds the pain now. Yitzhak told Ynet that “the timing of the Israeli announcement not to renew the agreement is not good for Jordan because it comes at the height of the war with Iran and the aid that Jordan gave to Israel during the war.” He described the public mood as one of having been “stabbed in the back” after helping Israel at the moment Israel needed it most.
Jordan helped Israel and the United States more than any other country. Now, when public opinion in Jordan already opposed that assistance, this debate over water is being perceived as a stab in the back.
Yitzhak nevertheless predicted the dispute would ultimately be resolved in private. “I believe back-channel talks will continue and solve this problem,” he told Ynet. “Israel also has an interest in resolving it because it does not want to increase tensions or instability in Jordan over water.”
Abu Dhabi as the Next Table
The water question is on the agenda of a possible trilateral energy summit the United Arab Emirates would host in Abu Dhabi, attended by the Israeli, UAE and Jordanian energy ministers. Israeli officials have signaled interest in attending, and have suggested water cooperation with Jordan could feature prominently in any discussions. The proposed UAE-hosted summit is also expected to address the broader question of normalization between Israel and Jordan, which has been frozen since 2023.
Beyond the existing treaty water, the agenda covers a much larger joint project. Israel, Jordan and the UAE signed a declaration of intent in 2021 for the so-called Prosperity initiative. The plan pairs a Red Sea desalination plant with a Jordanian solar plant, with both countries taking power and water from the other’s surplus. Talks at the summit could revive a framework that has been largely dormant since Jordan withdrew from an earlier water-for-energy deal in November 2023.
If the Prosperity scheme is completed, Israel would provide Jordan with 200 million cubic meters of water each year while Jordan would supply 600 MW of electricity to Israel. That volume is twice what the 2021 add-on supplied, but it is tied to a generation of solar capacity Jordan has yet to build.
What could be on the Abu Dhabi table
| Topic | Status before the meeting |
|---|---|
| Expansion of the 2021 water deal | Lapsed in late 2025; renewal held to softer rhetoric from Amman and restored diplomatic ties |
| Prosperity desalination plant | Declaration of intent signed 2021; project dormant since Jordan’s 2023 withdrawal from an earlier water-for-energy deal |
| Jordanian solar plant supplying Israel | Paired with the Prosperity scheme; 600 MW of proposed electricity export capacity |
| Restoration of ambassadors in each capital | Paused since October 2023, when Jordan withdrew its envoy over the war in Gaza |
A Pipeline Jordan Is Building on Its Own
Even if the diplomatic fight is resolved quietly, Jordan is no longer trusting a single supplier for its drinking water. The center of its diversification is the National Water Carrier, also called the Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project. The plan builds a large reverse-osmosis desalination plant on the Red Sea at Aqaba and pipes drinking water north to Amman and other highland cities.
Construction on the National Water Carrier is expected to begin in the final quarter of this year after preparatory work is completed. The project’s technical director, Ahmed al-Samadi, has put the projected cost at $5.8 billion, with about four years of building before water production begins in late 2030. The output target is around 300 million cubic meters a year, enough to cover roughly 40% of Jordan’s drinking water needs. The Green Climate Fund and development banks are backing the build. Once running, the project would not remove the need for transboundary water, but it would sharply reduce the political leverage any single neighbour can exercise over Jordan’s taps.
Why Strategic Cooperation Is Not Going to Break
Yitzhak told Ynet that the dispute is “not a crisis that will harm relations,” calling it “a minor dispute in a long series of tensions.” That framing matters because the security relationship between the two countries stretches back decades and includes coordination that neither public wants to advertise.
Israel has a clear interest in keeping the Jordanian regime stable. Instability on its eastern border could become a regional security problem for Israel, and Jordanian cooperation on Iranian drones made that case obvious during the latest escalation.
Beyond Israel, Amman is also pursuing water cooperation with Syria on the Yarmouk River and maintaining an agreement with Saudi Arabia over the Disi aquifer, spreading risk across several partners. Civil-society groups like EcoPeace Middle East have kept technical channels open through years of political freeze. The likeliest near-term outcome is narrower, quieter coordination, with occasional adjustments negotiated in private when acute needs arise. The fanack water analysis tracking the deal concludes that “the more realistic scenario is one of narrower, quieter, and more fragile coordination.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Will Israel actually cut water to Jordan below the 50 MCM treaty level?
Israel has no plans to drop below the 50 million cubic meters that the 1994 peace treaty obliges it to supply Jordan from Lake Tiberias. The current dispute is over the additional 50 MCM that ran from 2021 to late 2025 under a separate agreement. That add-on has lapsed, but the underlying peace-treaty commitment continues.
Why is King Abdullah refusing to meet Netanyahu?
Jordan’s King Abdullah II declined repeated requests from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet in March, according to Israeli media. One of Abdullah’s demands for agreeing to a face-to-face was the renewal of the 2021 water agreement, the reports said. Israel has tied any renewal to softer Jordanian rhetoric on Israel and the restoration of full diplomatic ties.
What is Jordan’s National Water Carrier project?
The National Water Carrier, also known as the Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance Project, is a planned reverse-osmosis desalination plant on the Red Sea that would pump about 300 million cubic meters of drinking water per year to Amman and other highland cities. Construction is expected to start in the final quarter of this year, with water production slated for late 2030, at a projected cost of $5.8 billion.
Could the Abu Dhabi summit resolve the water dispute?
A possible trilateral energy summit hosted by the United Arab Emirates in Abu Dhabi, attended by the Israeli, UAE and Jordanian energy ministers, would put water cooperation on the agenda alongside normalization and the larger Prosperity desalination and solar plan. Israeli officials have signaled interest in attending, though the meeting has not been formally confirmed.
How much water does Jordan actually get from Israel?
The 1994 peace treaty obliges Israel to supply Jordan with 50 million cubic meters of water a year from Lake Tiberias, and that baseline flow continues. Under a 2021 add-on, the combined supply roughly doubled to about 100 million cubic meters a year. The add-on lapsed in late 2025 without renewal, leaving Jordan back at the original 50 MCM peace-treaty level.
