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Since the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023, King Abdullah II of Jordan has resisted domestic pressure to annul his country’s 30-year-old peace treaty with Israel. Instead, Jordan has sought to acknowledge public outrage over Israel’s killing of Palestinians while preserving its security cooperation with its neighbor.

Now, Jordan faces yet another challenge. Since rebels overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad last December, Israel has deepened its military engagement in Syria. Abdullah is trying to manage ties with Israel and Syria’s new government without shaking up domestic politics—and potentially destabilizing his regime.

Since the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023, King Abdullah II of Jordan has resisted domestic pressure to annul his country’s 30-year-old peace treaty with Israel. Instead, Jordan has sought to acknowledge public outrage over Israel’s killing of Palestinians while preserving its security cooperation with its neighbor.

Now, Jordan faces yet another challenge. Since rebels overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad last December, Israel has deepened its military engagement in Syria. Abdullah is trying to manage ties with Israel and Syria’s new government without shaking up domestic politics—and potentially destabilizing his regime.

Jordan’s monarchy has long been a master of strategic ambidexterity, balancing domestic politics with security interests. Nowhere is this more evident than in its relationship with Israel. In 1994, Jordan became the second Arab state—after Egypt—to recognize Israel. A peace treaty reached by the two countries that year included commitments to cooperate on security and border controls. It also affirmed Jordan’s custodial role over Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem.

Jordan’s peace with Israel is a cold one, meaning that it lacks buy-in from the Jordanian public. Approximately half of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin. Although Jordan has quietly maintained robust intelligence and security coordination with Israel—even after Oct. 7, 2023—publicly, Jordanian officials are some of Israel’s harshest critics. In recent years, Jordanians have staged large-scale protests demanding that the government cut ties with Israel and expel the Israeli ambassador.

Israel has come to accept Jordan’s dual-track approach—where loud diplomatic condemnation coexists with quiet security pragmatism—as the price of peace with the kingdom. But Israel’s incursions into Syria could undermine this balancing act.

Since the fall of Assad’s regime in December, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have launched over 700........

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