A Jordanian company was misled into selling sand that would go into building the Israel-Jordan gas pipeline.

But once managers found out the true purpose of the delivery, they picked up the sand with excavators and put it back in their trucks.

The Dwairi Contracting company was told that the sand was for a fellow Jordanian citizen and sent the trucks carrying the materials on that understanding.

But when they got to the building site, workers realized its true purpose.

“The sand delivery that was sold on the grounds that it was for a citizen has been retrieved, after discovering that it was for the Zionist gas pipeline,” Fuad al-Dwairi, the head of the company, stated on Facebook.

The video above shows the company’s bulldozers loading the materials back onto their trucks.

Fuad al-Dwairi says in the video that the company was contacted multiple times to sell building materials for the pipeline in recent months but the firm consistently rejected the requests.

“The delivery today was made by mistake,” Fuad added.

“We are retrieving the materials,” Iyad al-Dwairi, another company official, states in the video. “We refuse to work with [the occupation] or with anyone working with it and we are against any normalization.”

He adds, “It does not honor us for our sand, or materials, or efforts or our products to go into the pipeline of normalization.”

Support from the parliament

Some Jordanian members of parliament have spoken out against the deal, in light of the al-Dwairi incident.

Lawmaker Tarek Khoury applauded the actions of the al-Dwairi company in a Facebook post, stating that their stance could inspire other Jordanians who are afraid to resist normalization.

Another member of parliament, Dima Tahboub, commended the head of the company on Twitter.

Earlier this week, 18 lawmakers spoke in parliament to demand either the cancellation of the Israel-Jordan gas deal or its presentation to parliament to clarify its terms and conditions.

Omar Razzaz, Jordan’s prime minister, did not even respond to the members’ demands, according to the publication 7iber.

According to BDS Jordan, a campaign group that supports the boycott of Israel, most members of parliament oppose the deal.

Uprooting trees to make way for Israeli gas

This video is said to show a bulldozer uprooting decades-old olive trees that belong to a Jordanian farmer to make way for the Israel-Jordan gas pipeline.

"طاح عرق من الأجداد في هالزيتون أكثر ما أنتج زيت".. مسن أردني يصرخ قهراً على تجريف الحكومة الأردنية أرضه لتمديد خط الغاز الإسرائيلي.#غاز_العدو_احتلال pic.twitter.com/VpPvJu3iv8 — شبكة قدس الإخبارية (@qudsn) July 22, 2018

The person filming the video says the olive trees are more than 30 years old.

“Israel was imposed on us,” the videographer says. Addressing Razzaz, he adds, “You have no right to do this, prime minister. Even the king has no right to uproot an olive tree that’s 40 years old.”

The videographer then points to the farmer and says, “this olive tree drank more of this farmer’s sweat than it produced olive oil.”

Jordan unions protest

Jordan’s trade unions organized a demonstration in the northern city of Irbid on Wednesday refusing to work on the pipeline.

The leaders of several Jordanian professional associations, including the engineers and contractors associations, participated in the sit-in.

Dr. Ali al-Abous, president of the Jordan Medical Association and the head of the council of professional associations, stated that the sit-in was an extension of the associations’ refusal to normalize with the occupation.

He added that Jordan does not need stolen gas given it has alternative energy resources.

Gas will flow by 2020

Earlier this month, local media reported that work had begun to build the pipeline which is expected to start delivering gas from Israel to Jordan in 2020.

The 65-kilometer route stretches from Jordan’s northern borders with Israel to the Mafraq governorate in the northeast.

Jordan’s national electricity company NEPCO has signed a $15-billion agreement to buy natural gas from Israel over a 15-year period.

The deal is set to proceed despite strong internal opposition from the public and parliament.

In less than two years, the gas will be extracted from the Israeli-controlled Leviathan fields in the eastern Mediterranean. The extraction is being led by the US giant Noble Energy.

The Israeli government is set to make $8.4 billion from the deal, according to campaigners.

Other forms of normalization

On Tuesday, Jordanian activists rallied in front of the tourism ministry in Amman. Organizers said it was to protest recent initiatives to promote Israeli tourism in Jordan.

“All the agreements for Zionists to enter Aqaba, Wadi Rum and Petra are to provoke the Jordanian people and to pressure them into gradually accepting the enemy,” Mohammed Absi, head of the Etharrak anti-normalization campaign, said at the protest, according to The Jordan Times.

Meanwhile, Israeli media reported earlier this month that Israel donated one of its Merkava tanks to be exhibited at Jordan’s Royal Tank Museum.

“The tank, one of Israel’s most sophisticated military platforms manufactured domestically, crossed the border between Israel and Jordan in recent weeks aboard a flatbed truck,” The Jerusalem Post reported.

Jordanian media, however, reported that Jordanian officials denied the story, adding that patrons are welcome to come to the museum and see for themselves.