Jordan Revokes Palestinian Citizenship

The favorite propaganda line by Zionists opposed to a Palestinian state is that Jordan already serves that purpose. These people argue that since Jordan was cut up from more than half of the original Palestine mandate, and because two-thirds of Jordanians are Palestinians, Jordan is the Palestinian state much sought after.

These people argue this solely because they want Israel to maintain nearly half of the West Bank [and all of East Jerusalem] thus denying the Palestinians their claim that the residual territory is insufficient for a state because, after all, Jordan is more than enough territory as it is larger than even all of Israel "proper." These individuals - as recently argued in a op-ed by fmr. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton on the pages of the neo-conservative Washington Post - believe that the rest of the West Bank should then fall under Jordanian sovereignty. Gaza would go to Egypt.

pic from marina11 KgODb 19672

Palestinian Refugees In Jordan. Photo Source Unknown.

Missing in all of this is the opinion of the Palestinian people. The Palestinians demand their own state called Palestine with East Jerusalem as their capital. But Zionists have always shown contempt for Palestinians and dismissed their concerns from the very beginning when they thought they could just "kick out the Arabs and take their land" to quote the founding Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion. A century of Palestinian resistance against Zionist has apparently not taught them that the Palestinians are not going to be just pushed aside, that they will not be shunned, and that Israel will never know a day of peace until the Palestinians have their own state.

And - in the infinite arrogance of Zionists who think Arabs are children, as David Ben-Gurion once remarked, and can just be dictated to - the concerns of Egypt and Jordan are never considered. These people think only about Israel and believe that everyone else - Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians and Arabs in general - should organize their national ambitions and priorities in subservience to Israeli wishes.

That is why they think they can ask Jordan to absorb millions of Palestinians without ever even consulting the Jordanian monarchy. I got news for these people: in Jordan or not the Palestinians will never give up their resistance. When the PLO was dominant in Jordan, it used the country to launch raids and plan attacks against the Zionist state. The PLO even tired to overthrow the Jordanian monarch because of the latter's timid commitment to the Palestinian struggle. The PLO's coup was a failure that resulted in the Black September massacre of thousands of Palestinians in Jordan and then the PLO's forced exile into Lebanon.

Because of this history, Jordan has absolutely no intention of taking in millions more Palestinians - including thousands of armed militia men - most of whom are hostile to the monarchy because of bitter memories of Black September. A Jordanian absorption of millions of Palestinians or even a fraction of that would almost certainly spell doom for America and Israel's royal client.

Zionists could care less as long as Israel colonizes more land, but Jordan's King knows this. That is why he is taking preemptive measures in fear that Israel's far-right government will seek to define a Palestinian state as Jordan. The Jerusalem Post:

Many Palestinians living in Jordan are convinced that the Jordanian authorities are trying to squeeze them out," said Ismail Jaber, a West Bank lawyer who has been living in the kingdom for nearly 20 years. "There is growing discontent and uncertainty among Palestinians here."

He and other Palestinians said that Jordanians' "hostile" attitude toward them had escalated after the rise to power of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu earlier this year.

Several Jordanian government officials, they said, are convinced that Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are secretly working toward turning Jordan into a Palestinian state.

As a preemptive measure, the Jordanian authorities recently began revoking the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians, leaving many of them in a state of panic and uncertainty regarding the future.

The Jordanians have justified the latest measure by arguing that it's aimed at avoiding a situation in which the Palestinians would ever be prevented from returning to their original homes inside Israel.

Jordan's Interior Minister Nayef al-Kadi stated to the Saudi-owner paper Al Hayat that "We're not expelling anyone, nor are we revoking the citizenship of Jordanian nationals." Instead, he argued, this was "only correcting the mistake that was created after Jordan's disengagement from the West Bank. We want to highlight the true identity and nationality of every person."

Palestinians with revoked citizenship will be able to stay in the country with a new yellow ID card.

Jordan's is the only Arab country that has ever offered Palestinians citizenship. In that it served as a refugee for Palestinians, giving them rights of citizenship and ability to travel abroad.

In light of this, its actions are heartbreaking for Palestinians and a betrayal of a besieged people. Further, it highlights how pathetic and weak Jordan's regime is in that it would allow the mere possibility of Israeli thuggish action to engage in nothing more than an act of submission toward Zionism imperialism rather than stating with unequivocal righteousness that Jordan or not the Palestinian people are entitled to all their land and the right-of-return as mandated by universal ideals of justice and property ownership, and as recognized by a 1948 United Nations Security Resolution that has been renewed every year since.