What next for Jordan?

by Rana Sabbagh-Gargour
17 September 2009

AMMAN - Jordan's King Abdullah II is holding his breath as US President Barack Obama pursues a strategy for comprehensive Middle East peace that promotes the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Obama is widely expected to define parameters for the "two-state solution" sometime later this month, and possibly set an agenda for final status talks. For Jordan, the best-case scenario would be a programme for the creation of a viable and geographically contiguous Palestinian state along the borders that existed prior to the 1967 war when Israel took the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from the Egyptian-run administration.

Such a scenario would help bury the notion of "Jordan is Palestine", an idea often voiced by Israeli right-wing politicians who believe that the Palestinians of the West Bank should relocate to Jordan. It could also enable King Abdullah to take carefully calibrated moves towards opening up Jordan's closed political system which currently favors native Jordanians (or East Bankers) over Palestinian Jordanians and thus pave the way for a modern meritocracy, which would better reflect the melting pot Jordan has become.

In this new Jordan, East Bankers, the traditional bedrock of support for the ruling Hashemite family, will remain a majority, assuming that many of the up to one million displaced Palestinians living in Jordan could return to live as full citizens in the new Palestinian state. Alternatively, many could maintain residence in Jordan while voting in Palestinian elections.

National identity politics has a long and tortuous history in Jordan, a desert Kingdom in which the present reality has to a large extent been shaped by successive Arab-Israeli wars. Half of Jordan's population is of Palestinian origin, many of them descendants of refugees who fled to the Kingdom in 1948.

Unlike the Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, Palestinian refugees in Jordan became full citizens under a 1950 merger between Transjordan and whatever was left of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

That unity, however, did not, and does not, preclude their right to self-determination if or when a Palestinian state emerges, allowing them to make a final choice between possessing Jordanian or Palestinian citizenship.

The conservative "East Bank" establishment has long thwarted political reform, mainly to minimize Palestinian presence in the political mainstream pending a final settlement.

Dual nationality, or "dual political allegiance", remains a red line. Any premature effort to fully enfranchise half of the population, or give displaced Palestinians living in Jordan permanent nationality, will put the monarch in direct conflict with his traditional power base.

The prospect of regional instability coupled with Israeli statements advocating Jordan as an alternative homeland for the Palestinians have not helped relations between the two groups. Tensions were clearly visible in recent football matches between Jordan's two rival teams—“Al-Faisali” (a team supported by East Bankers) and "Al-Wihdat” (named after a refugee camp and composed of Jordanian Palestinians)—when supporters of the former team chanted anti-Palestinian slogans.

Perhaps more significantly, a few weeks earlier the vocal Jordanian-Palestinian elite, including journalists, criticized Interior Minister Nayef Al-Qadi for tightening residency measures in order to prevent Palestinians living in Jordan without citizenship from becoming citizens. Qadi later responded that his ministry was simply implementing regulations adopted by the late King Hussein to help the PLO set up an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories of the West Bank. Regardless of the minister’s intentions, this incident demonstrates the extent to which tensions between East Bankers and Palestinians have increased in recent months.

Jordan could be seriously destabilized if the “two-state” solution were to disappear, or if the end result of the US plan were to be the imposition of a “fait accompli” on the Kingdom to set up federal links with Palestinians in the West Bank. It would mean a Palestinian takeover of Jordan either by forcing the king to become a constitutional monarch, or worse, through a complete regime change.

In a nutshell, Obama's new plan could be a double-edged sword—it could make or break the modern Jordan created in 1921.

Many officials and ordinary Jordanians remain skeptical about possible peace. Worsening inter-Palestinian rivalry between Fateh and Hamas, and the April election of a right-wing Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu is complicating the situation. So far, Netanyahu is fighting US pressure to freeze settlement activity, wants Palestinian refugees to give up their right of return and recognize the Jewish identity of Israel: and all this before talks have even begun.

Weeks ago, King Abdullah, trying to reassure jittery East Bankers, said he would not allow anyone to change the identity of Jordan by solving the Palestinian problem at the expense of the Kingdom, nor would he be forced into fully integrating Jordanian Palestinians before a final settlement is reached.

Now, like his nation, he is waiting for Obama's plan to see where Jordan will go next.