Rishi Sunak welcomes King of Jordan to Downing Street
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The Prime Minister welcomed the King of Jordan to Downing Street on Thursday, amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
Rishi Sunak greeted Jordan’s King Abdullah II on the steps of No 10, where a red carpet had been rolled out.
The two men shook hands before heading inside where they posed for photographs in No 10’s White Room.
Abdullah II, king of Jordan since 1999, spent about half an hour with Mr Sunak before leaving at 5pm.
The meeting comes amid international concern over the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
While in Washington earlier this week, Jordan’s king called for a lasting ceasefire.
Speaking at the White House on Monday, the Hashemite king said: “We cannot afford an Israeli attack on Rafah. It is certain to produce another humanitarian catastrophe.
“We cannot stand by and let this continue. We need a lasting ceasefire now, this war must end.”
The war began when Hamas militants burst through Israel’s defences on October 7 and rampaged through several communities, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage.
Israel responded to the attack by launching an invasion of the Gaza Strip.
More than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed and 80% of the population are estimated to have fled their homes amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe.
More than two million Palestinian refugees already live in Jordan, many holding Jordanian citizenship.
The first wave of Palestinian refugees arrived in Jordan during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, peaking in the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1990 Gulf War.
The Hashemite kingdom has also faced challenges from an influx of more than one million Syrian refugees during the Syrian civil war.
Jordan is a constitutional monarchy but Abdullah II holds wide executive and legislative powers.
