The Jordanian prisoner who carries the most in Israel arrives home Jordan News

Abu Jaber, 44, was sentenced to 20 years in December 2000 for planting a bomb on an Israeli bus.

The longest-serving Jordanian in prison has arrived home after serving a 20-year sentence for planting a bomb on an Israeli bus.

Abdullah Abu Jaber, 44, was arrested after the bomb went off a bus in Tel Aviv and injured more than 2,000 people in December 2000.

He was one of thousands of Jordanians who normalized relations between the two countries in 1994 after finding normalization of the peace treaty.

Witnesses said Abu Jaber, who was among 22 prisoners detained in Israeli jails, marched to his parents ’home at the Baqaa Palestinian refugee camp near the Jordanian capital.

Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry officials said Israel had dropped the charge on two Jordanians who were arrested last month for allegedly carrying a border knife.

Authorities arrested him and tried him shortly.

Jordan, which has the longest border with Israel, is a close ally of the West.

Last month, there were heavy protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and against repression against Palestinian worshipers and protesters in the Al-Aqsa Mosque building in Jerusalem.

Political ties between the two countries have been strained by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and the Jordanian government has come under increasing public pressure to suspend an unpopular peace treaty.

Most of Jordan’s 10 million citizens are of Palestinian origin. They or their parents were expelled in the 1948 war or fled to Jordan to establish the state of Israel.

They have close relations with relatives on the other side of the Jordan River, in the occupied West Bank and east of Jerusalem, both captured by Israel in the 1967 war.