A long-held fear in Jordan has been brought back to life by Israel’s bombing of Gaza and the deaths of many Palestinian civilians. There is also talk of making safe passages from Gaza to Egypt. This is because Israel might use war to force a lot of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt and from the West Bank into Jordan.
Several Israeli leaders, including former prime minister Ariel Sharon, have proposed the idea. They say Jordan could be a good alternative home because many Jordanians are Palestinian.
A great explanation of why it is so hard to solve the Palestinian problem and also why Egypt is not helping Gaza, even though it is not at war with it:
— Gadi Shamia (@gadishamia) October 18, 2023
TL/DR:
Egypt and Jordan didn't give the Palestinians under their control (20 years until 1967) statehood or self-government.… https://t.co/JKJunPOAnZ
When Israel and Jordan signed a peace deal in 1994, Jordan made sure it had a clause that would stop any mass transfers. “Within their control, involuntary movements of persons in such a way as to adversely prejudice the security of either Party should not be permitted,” says Article 2.6 of the treaty.
Sharon’s ideas, which were once on the edges, are now right in the middle. Not only do two ministers in Israel’s present government think that the West Bank and Gaza belong to Israel, but they also think that the Palestinians who live there have no right to be there.
Since the beginning of the month, both Jordan and Egypt have said over and over that they will not let any Palestinians into their countries. This is not to stop Palestinians in need from getting aid, but to stop Israel from getting rid of as many Palestinians as possible from the West Bank and Gaza. Jordan has good reason to be afraid, and its policy of not letting Palestinians in is not likely to change for some reasons.
The Jordanian government’s case makes sense. Many government comments from Israel have made it clear that the country has no plans to end the occupation or let the 1967 border be used to create a viable Palestinian state.
Israel seems to think that the best thing the Palestinians can hope for is something like a “Bantustan” where Israel is on all sides and the Palestinians have more freedom than they do with self-rule. This kind of plan was laid out in Donald Trump’s “deal of the century,” which is now mostly thought to be just an expression of the Israeli stance.
Many people don’t think about this important fact, but Jordan’s fear was growing even before the October 7 Hamas attack. This was because of population growth. As of now, there are more Palestinians (7.4 million), some of whom are Israeli citizens, living in places controlled by Israel than Israeli Jews (7.2 million). The birth rate for Palestinian women is 4.1 per woman, while the birth rate for Israeli women is 3 per woman. The trend is clear: the number of Palestinians will only grow over time.
Many human rights groups, including B’Tselem (Israel’s biggest), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others, say that Israel cannot keep running as a minority group ruling over a majority population with a legal system that is similar to apartheid. A law passed in 2018 said that Israel is a nation-state for the Jewish people, which means that the country’s Palestinian citizens, who make up 21% of its population, are officially third-class citizens.
A different set of laws applies to Palestinians who are under occupation than to Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank and Jerusalem. When Palestinians living under occupation understand they won’t get their own country, they will only have one choice: to demand equal political rights where they live. This would end the Zionist dream of a democratic Jewish state.
According to Jordan, mass transfer is no longer just an idea; it’s now a real option. There is only one thing for Israel to do if it doesn’t want a Palestinian state or a Palestinian majority: try to get as many Palestinians moved as possible. People used to think that the international community wouldn’t allow people to move, but the cases of Syria and Ukraine show that this isn’t true. 6.5 million Syrians and 6 million Ukrainians fled their countries, and the international community wasn’t able to stop the refugee crisis.
Freeing Palestine
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) October 9, 2023
Is how the
Progressives
Celebrate their
Utter hatred of the eternally successful minority
Jews https://t.co/kCJx2bBAQm
Also, officials in the U.S. government have said in private that Jordan and Egypt have good reasons to be worried, and Washington has said in public that it doesn’t want Palestinians to move to Jordan and Egypt.
History also guides the Palestinians and the host states that are close by. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians either left or were kicked out of the new country of Israel, leaving only 150,000 people living there. Even though UN Resolution 194 says that refugees should be able to go back to their homes, no Palestinian has been able to do so legally.
Today, Israel won’t let any Palestinian back in who has to leave because of the war outside of Palestinian land. No matter how bad things get for people in host countries, neither the Palestinians nor the countries that forced them to leave their homes in 1948 are willing to go through another Nakba.
So far, the elements of the war have only been in place in Gaza. Jordan, on the other hand, is worried that what happened in Gaza could lead to a similar buildup in the West Bank. With the help of the Israeli army, settler groups are already raiding Palestinian towns every day and forcing the Palestinians to leave. This makes it seem like radicals in the Israeli government see the current war in Gaza as a chance to get rid of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Jordan’s fears are also about who he is. After the 1948 war, Jordan’s population tripled, from about 430,000 to 1.2 million. This was due to Palestinian refugees and people who moved to the West Bank, which became part of Jordan. All of the Palestinian refugees were given citizenship in Jordan. The Jordanian constitution says that all residents are equal before the law, but the people who lived in Jordan before 1948, who are called “East Jordanians,” never fully accepted this new order.
No matter how many people are from each community, the unwritten rule is that Jordanians with Palestinian roots have to fully adopt the Jordanian identity as described by East Jordanians before 1948. This is because they are afraid that the East Jordanian identity is in danger. This conflict over identity has not been fixed.
Forcing a lot of Palestinians to move to Jordan right now and maybe giving them citizenship over time would make the debate over who is a Jordanian even stronger. There are two reasons why Jordan doesn’t want to let more Palestinians into the country: the government doesn’t want to lose its identity any further, and the people and the government don’t want a Palestinian state anywhere but Palestine, not even in Jordan.
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While Jordan has taken in Palestinian refugees since 1990, it has also taken in Iraqis after the first and second Gulf Wars and Syrians after their country’s civil war began in 2011. But most of these refugees were either already citizens of Jordan or planned to go back to their home countries and not become citizens. There is no way to put Palestinian refugees into either group.
There should be a clear Jordanian identity on Jordanian soil, and there should also be a clear Palestinian identity on Palestinian land. This is why the choice not to let the Palestinians in is unique, tough, and firm. If fighting gets worse in the West Bank, Jordan probably won’t give in to demands to let Palestinians in.
This is the view of almost everyone in Jordan, including West Bank Palestinians who want to create a state on their land and East Jordanians who are Palestinian or of Palestinian descent. They seem to think that letting Palestinians live in Jordan would help Israel get rid of as many Palestinians as possible from their land.
Many people in Jordan and across the Arab world support closing their borders to Palestinians, even though it may seem insensitive to their pain. The people in the area see it as an attempt to stop Israel from getting rid of its “problem” with its large Palestinian population, which makes it a patriotic move.
The Palestinians also share this view, even though they are suffering now and might suffer more because of Israel’s occupation. A redline that has a lot of support in the US, Palestine, and the Arab world is not likely to change, even if the Hamas war spreads.
