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Sunday, May 29, 2011

If the world supports the Arab Spring, shouldn't Jordan become Palestine?

I linked last week to an article by Victor Shikhman pointing out that the Arab Spring should have important consequences for Jordan:

The real question, in light of the Arab Spring, and the mass uprisings which we are told are driven by the universal human urge towards democracy and freedom, isn't whether Jordan is Palestine, or even whether it could be Palestine. The real questions are whether Jordan should be Palestine, and whether Jordan will be Palestine. Is this not the most moral, just and inevitable outcome for an overwhelming majority ruled, against its will, by a minority? We should consider the possibility.

Apparently, a new movement led by Jordanians is aiming to do exactly that. From IsraelSeen, in an interview with Mudar Zahran, a Jordanian dissident:

Were the Hashemites not ruling the eastern part of Palestine then the Palestinians already would have had a country for sixty years and nobody would have pressured Israel to give away its land. Yet this is not the case and the Hashemites are ruling the place and constantly telling the Palestinians they are merely refugees.

However, the world will only change its views on the location of the future Palestinian state if it wakes up to the problem of Jordanian apartheid. This is something my colleagues and I are constantly trying to do. As much as we can we’re telling the world that the Palestinian majority in Jordan is oppressed and discriminated against. Yet I am stunned by how little interest the world, the International Criminal Court, the US and other Western governments show in our rights. I believe they are more interested in bashing the “evil Jews” in Israel rather than securing our rights. Anti-Semitism has surely made a well-groomed comeback.

Jordan is a vicious apartheid state; how come there is no Jordanian Apartheid week in the UK or the US?

His party, the New Jordan Party, recently wrote to Secretary of State Clinton about Jordan's discrimination against and demonizing of Palestinian Arab residents of that country.

The problem is that both the Jordanian protesters and the Hashemite government hate Palestinian Jordanians, and the majority Palestinian Jordanians are not willing to speak upfor fear of more persecution.

Yet if the West truly cares about getting rid of Arab dictatorships with minority rule, then shouldn't there be more talk about Palestinian Arabs gaining a proportionate amount of political power in Jordan?