Jordan River. Photo: Wiki Commons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet today approved a plan to modernize the Allenby Terminal on the country’s border with Jordan. The new infrastructure and a modern X-Ray machine will speed up the crossing process, the government said.

The new X-ray scanning system will be installed and operated at the border crossing by Israel. The machine, itself, was donated by the Dutch government following a survey of Palestinian businesses that identified upgrading the system as a way to expand exports to Jordan by a third.

The survey was carried out in cooperation with the international Quartet and Israel’s Regional Cooperation Ministry, where Minister Silvan Shalom and Finance Minister Yair Lapid said  NIS 35 million ($10 million) is being invested in the project.

The border control is run by the Palestinian Authority, with assistance from Israel.

The Allenby Border Terminal is the export control part of the original bridge built by British General Edmund Allenby in 1918 over an earlier Ottoman structure from 1885. Arabs call it the Al-Karameh Bridge and Jordanians call it the King Hussein Bridge.

The bridge was destroyed once in the Night of the Bridges operation by the Palmach, in June 1946, and then destroyed again during the Six-Day War, after which it was replaced with a temporary truss-type bridge. As a result of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, a modern paved crossing was constructed adjacent to the older wooden one with the aid of the Japanese Government.