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AMMAN — Foodies and art lovers alike this weekend feasted on an unusual display of pizza boxes turned into works of art at F.A.D.A 317 in Jabal Amman.

Some 40 pizza boxes covered the walls of the atypical creative space, offering the visitors a taste of the young local art scene.

“When my family used to come see me at the space, we would have pizza altogether. One day, we started drawing on the boxes and I realised they looked exactly like canvases when you open them up,” said Mike V. Derderian, the founder of the place, who is also a noted Jordanian cartoonist.

“There are so many young talents in Jordan, so many inspiring artists but there is no faith in them among society,” Derderian, also known as Sardine, told The Jordan Times at the launch of the exhibition.

After giving 40 artists pizza boxes of various sizes, he waited for the result, dreading the reaction of the young talents. “I wasn’t sure if they were going to take me seriously but, when I saw their output, I was stunned. The pieces are incredible,” he said.

The collection of artworks covering the walls indeed gives an original feel, with shapes and forms varying from 2D to 3D models, some including electricity lighting, while others give the illusion to be painted on the traditional woven canvas.

“In Jordan, we don’t have that many chances to create unconventional artwork, we kind of have to ‘keep it down’ for the galleries which tend to focus on fine art only,” said Mary Abu Zaid, a 29-year-old artist exhibited at the event. 

“Because my subject of interest is nudes, which can be seen as provocative, it is hard to find a public that will be receptive to my art. But here, because it is such a cool, open minded place, I knew the visitors would be OK with it and that I was free to do whatever I wanted,” she added.

Her oil painting hangs right below Tala Abdul Hadi’s couple of boxes which depict two people’s daily life in an Amman house.

“I was inspired by my city and the people living around me,” the 24 year-old recalled, adding “when you look around the capital, you see all these bars on the houses’ windows, which gives a very specific look to the city.”

“Even though all the houses kind of look the same, you can see an attempt to individuality with the way people choose to design their windows,” she noted, explaining the reason behind her choice for the art piece she created.

Like Mary and Tala, all the artists exhibited are rather young, most of them aged below 25 years old. “When I was young, nobody helped me and it was really hard to make it as an illustrator. With F.A.D.A 317, I wanted to give those young people the support and the chance that I never had,” Derderian explained, noting that “society tends to look down on illustrators, cartoonists and comics artists, saying that ‘what we do is not art’ but, when you look around today, I think it is pretty clear that the room is bursting out with artistic talent.”

The exhibition, which was launched this Friday and Saturday, will run through mid-January.

Artists exhibited at the event include Dina Fawakhiri, Sama Sahouri, Hanan Khalil, Hind Al far, Karam Hamadneh, Ahmad Barqawi, Sara Allan, Samer Kurdi, Maya Assad, Ameer Ispaih, Ahmad Rayyan, Seddeq Abu Ghoush, Haya Halaw, Suha Sultan, Landstreicher, Suha Younis & Dana Al Basha , Joanna A. Arida, Madaline Marrar, Grace Haddadin, Dina Haddadin, Hamza Talal Mahfouz, Alia Tabbara, Sarah Raji, Hosam Omran, Amanee Hasan, Teejan Sabbah, Raya Suheil Baqaeen, Nader Hammouqah, Lutfi Zayed, Tariq Rawajfeh, Saja Emad, Miramar Moh’d, Karen Saleh, Ehab “Shyroland” Hamad, Samar Elasmar, Majdoleen Almufatesh, Mary Abu Zaid, Tala Abdul Hadi and Sardine.

AMMAN — Forty per cent of the construction of the Sahafa (Press) Tunnel overpass of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has been accomplished, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Saturday. 

The section, which is the fourth phase of the BRT, will cost JD5.489 million, according to Petra. 

During a visit to check on the work progress, Riyad Kharabsheh, head of the BRT project, told Amman Mayor Yousef Shawarbeh that the work of the overpass will be completed by the end of May and the tunnel will be reopened for traffic, while construction works will continue above it.

Once the construction of the overpass is completed, the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) will start building the passenger service stations.

The multimillion-dinar project, launched by GAM in 2009, before it was halted in 2011, entails operating premium, high-capacity buses that can carry more than 120 passengers per bus and which are expected to run every three minutes during peak hours on segregated lanes along Amman’s busiest roads.

Shawarbeh noted that more traffic projects are in the pipeline  to be implemented in Amman next year in cooperation with the Public Works and Housing Ministry including three main intersections, according to Petra.

AMMAN — The government on Thursday won a case at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes worth JD123 million, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Friday.

The international arbitration case was filed by Fouad Alghanim & Sons Group and Fouad Alghanim against Jordan in accordance with the provisions of the Jordanian-Kuwaiti agreement to encourage and protect mutual investments. 

Fouad Alghanim group demanded issuing a decision to cancel the income tax that had been imposed on the profits achieved by Umniah Telecommunication and Technology after selling its shares in the capital of Umniah Mobile Phones in mid-2006. 

The company’s dues reached JD47 million as income taxes, JD10 million as additional tax and annual fines worth 18 per cent of the taxes’ value. 

The plaintiff also demanded a decision to be issued preventing Jordanian government from prosecuting them in Jordanian courts for the dues.

The civil attorney general had filed a suit at the Amman Court of First Instance against the plaintiff demanding compensation for the failure to pay the tax and fines incurred until August 31, 2014, which totalled JD123 million.

AMMAN — The Court of Cassation has upheld a May Criminal Court ruling sentencing a man to five years in prison after convicting him of molesting a child in one of the governorates in January.

The court declared the defendant guilty of molesting the 14-year-old girl on January 26 and handed him the maximum punishment.

Court papers said the victim met the defendant via Facebook and established a relationship.

On the day of the incident, the court added, the defendant met with the victim where he “kissed and touched her private parts”.

“The matter was exposed and the victim’s family alerted the authorities and the defendant was arrested,” court documents said.  

 The defendant had contested the court ruling claiming that “the prosecution failed to provide any solid evidence to implicate him in the charge and that there were contradictory statements made by the victim”. 

The higher court ruled that the verdict was accurate and the defendant deserved the punishment he received. 

The Court of Cassation tribunal comprised judges Mohammad Ibrahim, Naji Zubi, Majid Azab, Nayef Samarat and Bassem Mubeidin. 

AMMAN — William Jobling, the late professor at the University of Sydney, was the head of the Aqaba-Maan Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey (AMAES) conducted between 1980 and 1990, which documented the archaeological heritage and natural landscape of Jordan’s Hisma Desert (better known as Wadi Rum).

In nine field seasons, the AMAES produced photographic documentation, maps, and drawings of the desert landscape’s little known archaeology, particularly thousands of Thamudic inscriptions and rock drawings dated to more than 2,000 years ago.

After his sudden death in 1994, Jobling’s impressive archive passed first to his longtime field assistant and photographer Richard Morgan and then, more recently in 2016, to the American Centre of Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman.

At ACOR, the archive is now being catalogued, digitised and made available to scholars interested in Wadi Rum’s ancient past. The initial aim is to scan and make available more than 5,000 colour slides photographed during the survey, according to Glenn Corbett, ACOR’s grants officer and former associate director. 

Corbett, who received his PhD in 2010 from the University of Chicago, has been working in Jordan for several decades, particularly in Wadi Hafir, an area of Wadi Rum where the Jobling survey recorded thousands of ancient inscriptions.

“[The Jobling] collection is now housed here at ACOR and we, with the help and support of the University of Sydney and the Near Eastern Archaeology Foundation, are beginning to preserve this very important primary data about Wadi Rum,” Corbett said in a recent interview for The Jordan Times.

“A lot of people go to Wadi Rum, they see the amazing scenery, the majestic mountains, the colourful sand dunes, the ancient springs, and they appreciate the nature of the place, but often they don’t know that there is an incredible, immense amount of archaeology to be seen,” noted the American scholar, adding that while there are a handful of traditional archaeological sites, what distinguishes Wadi Rum are the thousands of ancient inscriptions and drawings found carved in its mountains and rock faces. 

The AMAES was the first systematic archaeological exploration and survey of Wadi Rum, Corbett highlighted, adding that over the course the decade-long project, Jobling and his team recorded thousands of Thamudic, Nabataean, Greek, Latin and Kufic inscriptions. 

“The survey’s findings really provided tremendous insight into the way that people lived for several thousand years in what we now perceive to be a remote desert region,” said Corbett.

The AMAES covered a vast region, covering more than 2,500 square kilometres between Maan, Aqaba, and the Saudi border post of Mudawwara, although Wadi Rum was the survey’s focus, he explained.

“In addition to inscriptions, the survey identified archaeological sites characteristic of Jordan’s deserts. If you go to Wadi Rum, for example, you’ll see lot of Nabataean dams, water channels, and cisterns carved into the rock faces and springs,” Corbett noted.

Furthermore, the survey found many examples of prehistoric rock art predating, perhaps by several thousand years, the Thamudic carvings.

“It was during the course of my research that I came across the work of William Jobling and I was given access to the archives that were in Australia. I was able to use the information Jobling collected to inform my own field research in Wadi Hafir,” Corbett explained.

After completing his PhD, Corbett was committed to making sure the entirety of the Jobling archive would be made available to researchers.

In September 2016, he travelled to Australia and shipped 20 boxes of archival material to Amman, where the ACOR team is now digitising all of the survey’s photos, drawings, and notes, he said.

“We shouldn’t forget that Wadi Rum, an area we often consider remote and desolate, is actually changing quite rapidly,” Corbett emphasised.

“It’s important to keep in mind that more tourists and more businesses in Wadi Rum are also negatively affecting its archaeology, so it’s important that we preserve documentation of what these places looked like before they change further,” Corbett concluded.

AMMAN — The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Development Law Organisation (IDLO) are promoting gender equality in the southern and eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) by developing a regional advocacy platform to help reduce gender barriers to women in the judiciary and related strategic areas.

In cooperation with the International Association of Women Judges, the Union of Moroccan Women Judges, under the patronage of the Supreme Judicial Council of Morocco, the EBRD and IDLO organised a regional forum last week, the EBRD said in an e-mailed statement to The Jordan Times.

The forum gathered around 50 women judges, academics and representatives of women lawyers’ associations from Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Poland, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, the US, and West Bank and Gaza to discuss women’s experiences, knowledge and opportunities in the justice sector, and formulate the vision, objectives and action items of the first regional women judges’ network.

“The EBRD is committed to promoting gender equality and equality of opportunities in its countries of operations. This initiative contributes to the achievement of goals set out in the EBRD Strategy for the Promotion of Gender Equality. We are working hard with various stakeholders in the region to promote this important agenda,” Marie-Anne Birken, General Counsel at the EBRD, was quoted in the statement as saying.

Irene Khan, director-general at IDLO, said in the statement: “Creating and supporting a fair, equitable and accountable justice system where women and girls are treated equally, where their concerns and situations matter and where they can not only seek justice but actually get justice, is a true manifestation of the rule of law. Women are not only justice seekers, women are also justice providers. Women’s full participation in the justice system is an important benchmark for determining the true work of a justice system.”

Kim O’Sullivan, Senior Counsel at the EBRD’s Office of the General Counsel, is leading this initiative under the EBRD Legal Transition Programme.

“Women judges’ networks play an important role in reducing gender barriers and advancing gender reforms. We hope that the forum will lay the foundations for the establishment of a broader regional women judges’ network in the SEMED region and that the forum will meet annually,” the statement  quoted O’Sullivan as saying.

AMMAN — Amman Chamber of Industry (ACI) President Senator Ziad Homsi said that around 61 per cent of Jordan’s imports are exempted from custom duties under trade agreements in which some commodities negatively affect the national industries, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported on Friday.

During a press conference organised by the “Made in Jordan” campaign, Homsi said that national industries are “suffering from imported goods flooding the local market”. 

Homsi added that national industries should be protected and called for enacting legislation that enhances their competition in the local market. National products are the “lifeboat” and “safety valve” of the economy as they create jobs and support foreign currency reserves.

Homsi said that the national industries have increased their exports from $1 billion in 1998 to $7 billion last year and their products have reached more than 125 countries despite the regional conditions imposed on the industrial sector along with domestic challenges.

Homsi stressed that the national products are of high quality and highly competitive in the local and foreign markets, adding that national industries contribute to around 25 per cent of the gross domestic product and employ nearly 250,000 people who are the main family supporters of more than 1 million.

President of the “Made in Jordan” campaign and board member of the ACI Musa Saket said that the campaign was launched a few years ago by the chamber to serve and promote the national industries by enhancing consumer confidence in national products. 

By Suleiman Al Khalidi

AMMAN — Sabih Al Masri, one of Jordan’s most influential businessmen and the chairmen of its largest lender Arab Bank, was detained in Saudi Arabia for questioning after a business trip to Riyadh, family sources and friends said on Saturday.

Masri’s detention, which follows the biggest purge of the Saudi kingdom’s affluent elite in its modern history, has sent shockwaves through business circles in Jordan and the Palestinian territories, where the billionaire has major investments. 

Also a Saudi citizen, Masri was detained last Tuesday hours before he was planning to leave after he chaired meetings of companies he owns, according to the sources.

He is the founder of Saudi Astra Group, which has wide interests in diversified industries ranging from agro-industry to telecommunications, construction and mining across the region. 

“Masri was heading to the airport and they told him to stay where you are and they picked him up,” said a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named.

He cancelled a dinner in Amman on Wednesday that he had invited board members of Arab Bank and business associates to attend on his return. 

The Saudi authorities did not respond to requests for comment, while Masri could not be reached for comment. 

His confidants had warned him not to travel to the Saudi capital after mass arrests of Saudi royals, ministers and businessmen in early November, the sources said.

“He has been answering questions about his business and partners,” said a source familiar with the matter who did not elaborate nor confirm he was held. 

A source close to the family later said that “while Masri is currently restricted from leaving Saudi Arabia, no official charges have been filed against him”.

Masri’s multibillion dollar investments in hotels and banking are a cornerstone of the Jordanian economy.

He was elected chairman of Arab Bank in 2012 after the resignation of Abdel Hamid Shoman whose family had founded the bank in Jerusalem in 1930.

Arab Bank, which operates in 30 countries and five continents, has an extensive network in Palestinian territories where it is the largest bank. It also owns 40 per cent of Saudi Arabia’s Arab National Bank ANB.

Masri led a consortium of Arab and Jordanian investors who bought a 20 per cent stake in Arab Bank Group from Lebanon’s Hariri family business empire for $1.12 billion last February.

Masri is also the leading investor in the Palestinian territories with a large stake in Paltel, a public shareholding company, which is the largest private sector firm in the West Bank. 

Masri’s family ranks among the wealthiest in the Palestinian territories, with majority holdings in real estate, hotels and telecommunications firms set up after a self-rule agreement with Israel in 1993. 

AMMAN — Royal Court Secretary General Yousef Issawi, head of the follow-up committee for the implementation of Royal initiatives, on Saturday laid the cornerstone for the project of Sharif Hussein Bin Ali Mosque in downtown Maan.

The scheme is implemented under His Majesty King Abdullah’s directives, after a 2015 meeting with dignitaries of Maan, some 220km south of Amman, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

The project includes rehabilitation and reconstruction of the mosque and building a new mosque that can accommodate up to 2,400 worshippers.

The three-floor project, whose total area constitutes 6,634 square metres, includes residences for the imam and muezzin and a parking lot for around 40 vehicles.

As part of following upon implementation of Royal initiatives in the governorate, Issawi also toured a project to establish a club for retired military personnel in Maan.

The 1,680-square-metre twostorey club includes multi-purpose halls, gymnasiums, outdoor playground and a football pitch. The facility is equipped with solar cells to generate its electricity needs.

Also on Saturday, Issawi handed over keys of 20 houses, built under Royal initiatives, to beneficiary families in Maan’s Shedieh area, Petra added.

The houses are part of Royal initiatives to provide housing units to underprivileged families, which were launched in 2005 and target all parts of the Kingdom with the aim of enabling families to have decent residences. 

In press remarks, Issawi said that the news houses in Shedieh were built following King Abdullah’s visit to the Southern Badia.

He added that beneficiaries were selected based on the Social Development Ministry’s criteria. 

Beneficiaries expressed their appreciation for His Majesty and his keenness to improve citizens’ living conditions through Royal initiatives. 

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah is scheduled to visit the Vatican and meet with Pope Francis on Tuesday to discuss the US administration’s announcement to recognise occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to relocate the US embassy to the occupied city.

After the Vatican, the King will head to Paris, where he will hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron on latest regional developments, especially those related to the holy city, a Royal Court Statement said on Saturday. 

The Pope and Macron were among the first world figures to reject US President Donald Trump’s decision on Jerusalem, calling for keeping the status quo of the city.

His Majesty has been leading an aggressive diplomatic push to contain any repercussions of the move, meeting and contacting in the process an array of regional and global leaders and taking part in an Islamic summit hosted in Istanbul, Turkey.

As the custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, His Majesty has been vocal in criticising Trump over his decision on Jerusalem, Reuters said. 

A popular stand came in tune with that of the leadership, with Jordanians, for the second weekend in a row, took to the streets in Amman and other governorates to protest the decision on Friday.