Israel Matzav

Living in Jordan is expensive!

During the period just after the US invasion of Iraq, one of my law colleagues traveled back and forth from Jerusalem to Baghdad several times. The first time, he made the mistake of trying to go through Turkey and ended up taking a taxi from Istanbul to the Iraqi border, being turned back and then having to fly from Istanbul to Amman (which Israelis are not supposed to do because you fly over Syria). After that, he learned his lesson and flew to Amman, took a taxi to the Iraqi border and another taxi to Baghdad. There were no flights to or from Baghdad in those days! (July 2003 - April 2004) He stopped traveling there when they started kidnapping and murdering foreigners and after a nasty write-up in some of the world media about him.

Pajamas Media today has a report from its Baghdad bureau chief Omar Fadhil about his effort to travel to Amman to get a visa to go to the US for graduate school. It's a fascinating article, and should be read in full, but this little tidbit caught my eye:

So the Iraqis I’m talking about are not refugees. Every one of them had a good reason for visiting Jordan; businessmen, official delegations, people who have family members who are residents in Jordan (residency in Jordan requires keeping $100,000 permanently in a bank in Jordan) and others who simply come to that airport in transit — to fly to another destination that is not among the limited destinations of the Iraqi airlines.

Do you mean to tell me that all those 'Palestinian refugees' in Jordan (which is 70% 'Palestinian') each has $100,000 in the bank? Where did that come from?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:14 PM