Jordan, Dr. Peace and Mr. Apartheid

The world must tell Jordan that peace and integration of its own Palestinians are not privileges it is giving away.


Mudar Zahran
Op-Ed/JPost
24 July '10

Last January, Faisal al-Fayez, a Jordanian senator and former prime minister, threatened Israel on national Jordanian television with “6 million Jordanian suicide bombers.” Fayez is considered one of the closest Jordanian officials to King Abdullah II; he is also a leader of the Bani Sakher tribe which has historically dominated the most important positions in the Hashemite kingdom.

Another member of the tribe, Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Nayef al-Qadi, defended an official policy of stripping Jordanians of Palestinian heritage of their citizenship, a policy that has resulted in the denaturalization of more than 2,700 so far according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch. In an interview with a London-based Arab newspaper, Qadi said that “Jordan should be thanked for standing up against Israeli ambitions of unloading of the Palestinian land of its people” which he described as “the secret Israeli aim to impose a solution of Palestinian refugees at the expense of Jordan.”

Furthermore, King Abdullah, in a clear gesture of carelessness to Israel, has extended his condolences to the family and followers of Muhammad Hussein Fadallah, Hizbullah’s spiritual leader who passed away recently.

THE CAUSES of Jordan’s recent line of official hostility toward Israel are deep-rooted in the makeup of the Jordanian state itself. Jordan is a country with a Palestinian majority which allows them little or no involvement in any political or executive bodies or parliament.

This lack of political and legislative representation of Jordanians of Palestinian heritage has been enforced by decades of systematic exclusion in all aspects of life expanding into their disenfranchisement in education, employment, housing, state benefits and even business potential, all developing into an existing apartheid no different than that formerly adopted in South Africa, except for the official acknowledgement of it.

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