Imagine, if you will, my shock upon learning that Jordan is actually guarding their border with Israel: Two Men Sneaking Into Israel Killed. (Is the AP deliberately trying to play down the Jordanian angle, with such a laughably uninformative headline? In the Arab world, it’s politically incorrect to be seen as helping Israel in any way…)

AMMAN, Jordan - Jordanian border authorities shot and killed two armed men, wounded a third and arrested yet another in a 3 1/2-hour gunbattle Monday as the group tried to sneak across the frontier with Israel, a government spokeswoman said.

Security officials said preliminary investigations indicated the four men — all related and of Palestinian origin — had planned to attack an Israeli settlement across the border.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the four had no affiliation with any known terrorist group.

Government spokeswoman Asma Khader told reporters earlier Monday that three men had died in the gunbattle, which started at 6 a.m. in Waqas, a small village near the Jordan River, 40 miles northwest of the Jordanian capital, Amman.

But Khader later corrected the death toll, telling the official Petra news agency that only two men were killed, while the third was seriously wounded. She said police were interrogating a fourth man who was detained.