Israel Matzav

Jordan's Abdullah II clenches his fist, revokes 'Palestinians' citizenship

Jordan's King Abdullah II has decided to 'help' the 'Palestinians' who have lived in Jordan for generations by revoking the Jordanian citizenship that his father gave them in 1988 to 'ensure' that they won't 'give up' their 'right of return.' The 'Palestinians' do not seem pleased.

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.

Since 1988, when the late King Hussein cut off his country's administrative and legal ties with the West Bank, the Jordanian authorities have been working toward "disengaging" from the Palestinians under the pretext of preserving their national identity.

That decision, said Jordan's Interior Minister Nayef al-Kadi, was taken at the request of the PLO and the Arab world to consolidate the status of the PLO as the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

"Our goal is to prevent Israel from emptying the Palestinian territories of their original inhabitants," the minister explained, confirming that the kingdom had begun revoking the citizenship of Palestinians.

"We should be thanked for taking this measure," he said. "We are fulfilling our national duty because Israel wants to expel the Palestinians from their homeland."

Kadi said that, despite the new policy, Palestinians would be permitted to retain their status as residents of the kingdom by holding "yellow ID cards" that are issued to those who have families and homes in the West Bank.

He said that Palestinians working for the Palestinian Authority or the PLO were among those who have had their Jordanian passports taken from them, in addition to anyone who did not serve in the Jordanian army.

The Jordanian minister said that the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank had been notified of the decision to revoke the Jordanian citizenship of Palestinians.

A PA official in Ramallah expressed deep concern over Jordan's latest move and said that it would only worsen the conditions of Palestinians living in the kingdom. The official said that PA President Mahmoud Abbas raised the issue with King Abdullah II on a number of occasions, but the Jordanians have refused to retract.

Asked by the London-based Al-Hayat daily where the Palestinians should go after they lose their Jordanian passports, the minister replied: "We're not expelling anyone, nor are we revoking the citizenship of Jordanian nationals. We are only correcting the mistake that was created after Jordan's disengagement from the West Bank [in 1988]. We want to highlight the true identity and nationality of every person."

Kadi claimed that the kingdom was seeking, through the new measure, to thwart an Israeli "plot" to transfer more Palestinians to Jordan with the hope of replacing it with a Palestinian state.

Approximately 70% of Jordan's population is 'Palestinian.' The family of King Abdullah (known as the 'Hashemites') is transplanted from the Gulf region. It was 'given' the 'Kingdom' of Jordan (then known as Trans-Jordan) as a consolation prize by the British after losing custodianship over the Islamic holy places in Mecca and Medina to their cousins the al-Faisals (the Saudi royal family). I'll explain that more fully below.

In the meantime, the 'Jordanians' (the King's family? the nomadic Bedouin tribes from the area who never crossed the Jordan River into Israel seeking economic opportunity?) nearly started a brawl at a soccer game over the weekend. The soccer game was between - get this - a 'Jordanian' team and a 'Jordanian - Palestinian' team:

The tensions reached their peak over the weekend when tens of thousands of fans of Jordan's Al-Faisali soccer team chanted slogans condemning Palestinians as traitors and collaborators with Israel. Al-Faisali was playing the rival Wihdat soccer team, made up of Jordanian-Palestinians, in the Jordanian town of Zarqa.

Anti-riot policemen had to interfere to stop the Jordanian fans from lynching the Wihdat team members and their fans, eyewitnesses reported. They said the Jordanian fans of Al-Faisali hurled empty bottles and fireworks at the Palestinian players and their supporters.

Reports in a number of Jordanian newspapers said that the Jordanian fans also chanted anti-Palestinian slogans and cursed Palestine, the PLO, Jerusalem and the Aksa Mosque.

Imagine that? They 'cursed' the 'holy' Aqsa mosque. Well, that ought to tell you that even they know that the mosque was never a Muslim holy site. It was built atop a Jewish holy site to try to vanquish Jewish claims to the site - a pattern Muslims have repeated all over the world (ask the Hindus in India).

What those of you who have not lived in the Middle East may not realize is that the entire concept of a 'Jordanian' or 'Palestinian' is nothing but a fiction. These people are all Arabs from different tribes and families, but essentially ethnically all the same people. They're less different from each other than the Jets are from the Sharks.

Let's go to the videotape and I'll explain more.



Are the 'Palestinians' and the 'Jordanians' any more ethnically different from each other than the Jets are from the Sharks? Of course not!

Jordan is governed by the royal family and its Bedouin elite. Here's how it happened.

The Emirate of Transjordan was an autonomous political division of the British Mandate of Palestine, created as an administrative entity in April 1921 before the Mandate came into effect. It was geographically equivalent to today's Kingdom of Jordan, and remained under the nominal auspices of the League of Nations, until its independence in 1946.

Initially, both the territory to the East and the West of the Jordan river were the British Mandate of Palestine. "Transjordan" was a word coined as a reference to the part of Palestine "across the Jordan", i.e. on the far (eastern) side of the Jordan River. On the western side of the Jordan River was the remaining 21% of the Palestine Mandate, Palestine which contained many places of historical and religious significance to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

In other words, 'Jordan' is 79% of the Palestine Mandate. Not only is it 'Palestine' - it is the vast majority of the area covered by the 1917 Balfour Declaration.

The Mandate for Palestine, while specifying actions in support of Jewish immigration and political status, stated that in the territory to the east of the Jordan River, Britain could 'postpone or withhold' those articles of the Mandate concerning a 'Jewish National Home'.... In September 1922, the British government presented a memorandum to the League of Nations stating that Transjordan would be excluded from all the provisions dealing with Jewish settlement, and this memorandum was approved by the League on 11 September. From that point onwards, Britain administered the part west of the Jordan as Palestine, and the part east of the Jordan as Transjordan....

...

The Hashemite Emir Abdullah, [Abdullah's great-grandfather, who was assasinated by 'Palestinians' in 1951 at the Dome of the Rock. Incredibly, Wikipedia omits this. CiJ] elder son of Britain's wartime Arab ally Sharif Hussein of Mecca [the Saudi royal family. CiJ], was placed on the throne of Transjordan [by the British. CiJ].... In March 1946, under the Treaty of London, Transjordan became a kingdom and on May 25, 1946, the parliament of Transjordan proclaimed the emir king, and formally changed the name of the country from the Emirate of Transjordan to the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. In December 1948, Abdullah took the title King of Jordan, and he officially changed the country's name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in April 1949.

Two thirds of Jordan's population is described as 'descendants of 'Palestinian refugees.''

In other words, the cousin of the Saudi Arabian rulers, whose 'Kingdom' was a creation of colonialism so that his great-grandfather would not fight with his great great uncle, is now denying that two thirds of his population is entitled to call his country their home.

And did I mention that Jews were expelled from Jordan in 1923 and denied citizenship since?

What this move by Abdullah shows is that the Arab world is continuing to try to destroy Israel by flooding whatever is left of it after 'territorial compromise' with 'Palestinian refugees.' In other words, this proves yet again that the conflict has nothing to do with territory. The conflict is about the existence of Israel as a Jewish state on what Muslims regard as Islamic land. No 'peace agreement' and no amount of land that Israel gives the Arab 'Palestinians' can ever change this basic fact. The Arabs are unwilling to accept a Jewish state in this region of any size and having any boundaries.

Hear the crickets chirping in the background? They're accusing Jordan's little rump king of racist apartheid. Too bad no one in the Obama administration wants to hear them.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:24 PM