A
must-read piece in Hudson-NY by Mudar Zahran:
The King of Jordan, Abdullah II, delivered a speech on September 11, in which he mentioned the Jordanian civil war of 1970 for the first time ever: "There are not any issues we are too embarrassed to discuss, even if there is someone who wants to discuss the incidents of 1970, this is a part of history; let us think of the future and not the past."
Commenting on the fear of Jordan's Bedouin minority -- who make up the king's military and are the protected class -- that Jordan might become the Palestinian majority's homeland -- a plan dubbed "the alternative homeland" by the local media -- the king said: "I would like to assure everyone that Jordan will not be an alternative country to anyone. Is it even logical that Jordan will become an alternative to anyone while we sit there and do nothing? We have an army and we are willing to fight for our country and for the future of Jordan, and we must speak vigorously and not ever allow this idea to remain in the minds of some of us….We have fought Israel before many times."
"Jordan and the future of Palestine," he added, "are much stronger than Israel today; the Israeli is the one who is afraid….When I was in the United States, I spoke to an Israeli intellectual; he told me that what was happening in Arab countries today is in the interests of Israel. I told him, 'I think it is the opposite: your situation today is much harder than before.'"
King Abdullah also mentioned the need to address the issue of "national identity" in Jordan -- a phrase associated with isolating the Palestinians, who make up 80% of the population, in favor of the Beduin minority, for whom he would establish Jordan as a purely Bedouin state: "We must speak with a loud voice about the Jordanian identity," he said, "yet national unity is a red line." In other words, the king openly supports talk about imposing a Jordanian Bedouin identity on the country, while at the same time prohibiting any "unity" with the Palestinians -- a notion he had previously denounced.
The king, in his speech, was using a common Arab political trick of saying an undesired thing to the public -- reminding the Palestinians of the civil war in which they were slaughtered -- and then, in the same sentence, ostensibly defusing the threat of another slaughter by adding that he would spare the Palestinians so long as they accept the situation as is, where they are citizens, but still treated as refugees and outsiders in every way.
Although it is common for Arab regimes that are pro-Western to talk tough about the US and Israel every now and then -- to rally their people behind them by threatening these cost-free targets, and thereby divert anger away from their own repressive regimes onto other countries -- this time the context was different: The King's speech, aired on Jordanian national television, came two days after Wikileaks released several US Embassy, Amman, cables that described the testimonies of some Jordanian Palestinians officials who were complaining to Embassy officers about the discrimination against the Palestinians in Jordan. One cable, entitled, "The Grand Bargain," mentioned a Palestinian political leader's belief that the "right of return" was unfeasible - signifying the Palestinians' willingness to accept a permanent home in Jordan --rather than in hoping to return to Israel, as the refugees and five generations of descendants are continually being promised -- in exchange for finally attaining civil rights in Jordan.
The government-controlled Jordanian media expressed anger at the US Embassy -- to the point of issuing calls for a protest against both the American and Israeli embassies in Amman, which they called "the espionage beehive."
The King's talk sounded provocative and terrorizing to the Jordanian Palestinians, who are already discriminated against and disenfranchised politically by the Hashemite regime. The Bedouin-dominated town of Kerak in Southern Jordan, for example, has ten parliamentary seats for fewer than 150,000 voters, while the Palestinian-dominated Amman has barely twenty parliamentary seats for three million voters.
What made matters especially threatening was the way Jordan's Bedouins seem to have understood the King's remarks. The King's statement, for instance, that he would "not feel embarrassed to address any issue including the civil war," seems to have been understood by the Bedouin military as permission to go out and target the Palestinians. Comments on Jordanian social websites, such as Facebook, appeared, with disturbing messages of incitement: Jordanian Bedouins began calling for violence against both Israel and the Palestinian majority. One of commentators said on Facebook: "We shall give the Palestinians another Black September," said one, "only this time we will make it red." Another said: "Those Palestinians are worse than Jews. I could never make out the difference. We will march to kick [the Palestinian] out [of Jordan] and we will knock down the Israeli embassy." Still another said, "You do the killing, guys, just leave the hot Palestinian chicks for me; I will rape their little girls." While this anti-Palestinian sentiment is not new in Jordan, after the King's speech it reached a new extreme.
It seemed as if the king was threatening Israel with a war, and the Palestinians in Jordan with a civil war. This perceived threat translated into protests: one against the American Embassy in Amman on September 15th, and one against the Israeli Embassy for Friday, September 16th. Both protests were called for and organized by Nahid Hattar, a Christian Bedouin writer, who has been calling for ousting the Palestinians from Jordan, and who has openly admitted his direct one-on-one connection to the former chief of the Jordanian Intelligence Department while the latter was in office.
That
Wikileaks cable he refers to doesn't only mention a minority of Palestinian Arabs in Jordan who privately believe that "return" will never happen and who want compensation instead - it also mentions East Bankers who want to use the "right of return" to kick out the Palestinian Arab majority:
East Bankers have an entirely different approach to
thinking about the right of return. At their most benign,
our East Banker contacts tend to count on the right of return
as a solution to Jordan's social, political, and economic
woes. But underlying many conversations with East Bankers is
the theory that once the Palestinians leave, "real"
Jordanians can have their country back. They hope for a
solution that will validate their current control of Jordan's
government and military, and allow for an expansion into the
realm of business, which is currently dominated by
Palestinians.
¶12. (C) Palestinian-origin contacts certainly have their
suspicions about East Banker intentions. "If the right of
return happens, East Bankers assume that all of the
Palestinians will leave," says parliamentarian Mohammed
Al-Kouz. Other Palestinian-origin contacts offered similar
observations, including Adel Irsheid and Raja'i Dajani, who
was one of the founding members of the GID, and later served
as Interior Minister at the time of Jordan's administrative
separation from the West Bank in 1988. Dajani cited the rise
of what he called "Likudnik" East Bankers, who hold out hope
that the right of return will lead to an "exodus" of
Palestinians.
¶13. (C) In fact, many of our East Banker contacts do seem
more excited about the return (read: departure) of
Palestinian refugees than the Palestinians themselves.
Mejhem Al-Khraish, an East Banker parliamentarian from the
central bedouin district, says outright that the reason he
strongly supports the right of return is so the Palestinians
will quit Jordan. East Banker Mohammed Al-Ghazo, Secretary
General at the Ministry of Justice, says that Palestinians
have no investment in the Jordanian political system - "they
aren't interested in jobs in the government or the military"
- and are therefore signaling their intent to return to a
Palestinian state.
¶14. (C) When East Bankers talk about the possibility of
Palestinians staying in Jordan permanently, they use the
language of political threat and economic instability. Talal
Al-Damen, a politician in Um Qais near the confluence of
Jordan, the Golan Heights and Israel, worries that without
the right of return, Jordan will have to face up to the
political challenges of a state which is not united
demographically. For his part, Damen is counting on a mass
exodus of Palestinians to make room for East Bankers in the
world of business, and to change Jordan's political
landscape. This sentiment was echoed in a meeting with
university students, when self-identified "pure Jordanians"
in the group noted that "opportunities" are less available
because there are so many Palestinians.
¶15. (C) The right of return is certainly lower on the list
of East Banker priorities in comparison with their
Palestinian-origin brethren, but some have thought the issue
through a little more. NGO activist Sa'eda Kilani predicts
that even (or especially) after a final settlement is
reached, Palestinians will choose to abandon a Palestinian
state in favor of a more stable Jordan where the issue of
political equality has been resolved. In other words, rather
than seeing significant numbers return to a Palestinian
homeland, Jordan will end up dealing with a net increase in
its Palestinian population.
¶16. (C) As with their Palestinian counterparts, conspiracy
theories are an intrinsic part of East Banker mythology
regarding the right of return. Fares Braizat, Deputy
Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at Jordan
University, told us two of the most commonly held examples
(which he himself swears by). The first is that Jordanians
of Palestinian origin choose not to vote because if they were
to turn out en masse, Israel (and/or the United States) would
assume that they had incorporated themselves fully into
Jordanian society and declare the right of return to be null
and void. The second conspiracy theory, which has a similar
theme, is that after the 1994 peace agreement between Jordan
and Israel, the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank
issued a deliberate directive to "all Palestinians" residing
in Jordan to avoid involvement in Jordanian politics so as
not to be perceived as "going native." The main point of
both theories is that Palestinians are planning to return to
a future Palestinian state, and therefore have nothing
substantive to contribute to the Jordanian political debate -
a convenient reason for excluding them from that debate in the first place.
