Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity: A History 1962551148, 9781962551144

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
1. The Makings of a Fateful Triangle
2. Jordan, Israel, and Palestine (1948–1967)
3. The 1967 War: Demise of the Post-1948 Political Order
4. Hussein’s Retreat
5. The Evolution of Jordanian Identity
6. Jordanian Identity and the Palestinians
7. The Politics of Peace with Israel
8. King Abdallah II Inherits the “Cold Peace”
9. The King and the East Bankers: An Uneasy Relationship
10. Wrestling with an Obsolete Social Contract
11. The Enigma of Hashemite Resilience
Bibliography
Index
About the Book

Citation preview

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity A History

Asher Susser

Published in the United States of America in 2024 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Suite 314, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1 Bedford Row, London WC1R 4BU www.eurospanbookstore.com/rienner © 2024 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Susser, Asher, author. Title: Jordan, Palestine and the politics of collective identity : a history / Asher Susser. Description: Boulder : Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Traces the evolution of Jordanian politics through the prism of the kingdom’s policies toward Palestine and the Palestinians”— Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2024018857 (print) | LCCN 2024018858 (ebook) | ISBN 9781962551144 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781962551519 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Palestinian Arabs—Politics and government. | Jordan—Foreign relations—Palestine. | Palestine—Foreign relations—Jordan. | Jordan—Foreign relations—Israel. | Israel—Foreign relations—Jordan. | Jordan—Politics and government. Classification: LCC DS154.16.I75 S87 2024 (print) | LCC DS154.16.I75 (ebook) | DDC 320.95694—dc23/eng/20240430 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024018857 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024018858 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5  4  3  2  1

Contents

Preface

vii

1

The Makings of a Fateful Triangle

2

Jordan, Israel, and Palestine (1948–1967)

17

3

The 1967 War: Demise of the Post-1948 Political Order

47

4

Hussein’s Retreat

67

5

The Evolution of Jordanian Identity

93

6

Jordanian Identity and the Palestinians

131

7

The Politics of Peace with Israel

151

8

King Abdallah II Inherits the “Cold Peace”

177

9

The King and the East Bankers: An Uneasy Relationship

205

1

10 Wrestling with an Obsolete Social Contract

245

11 The Enigma of Hashemite Resilience

279

Bibliography Index About the Book

289 305 317

v

Preface

IN 2021, JORDAN CELEBRATED ITS CENTENARY—A MOST IMPRESSIVE achievement—against the odds and contrary to the expectations of many analysts and observers who had predicted the kingdom’s demise on countless occasions over the years. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is far more stable than its Arab neighbors in the Levant and the Fertile Crescent—Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq—which were also established in the 1920s and were initially considered to be stronger, less “artificial,” and more promising than Jordan. This book is about the evolution of Jordanian politics through the prism of the kingdom’s policies toward Palestine. It tells the story of Jordan’s involvement with Palestine from the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921 to the present, with particular emphasis on the period since 1948. The book explains how the intimate triangular association of Jordan, the Palestinians, and Israel influenced and eventually shaped the Jordanians’ own sense of collective identity and how it molded the relationship between Jordan and Israel in the making of peace between the two countries. It also shows how this “fateful triangle”1 has shaped the unusually complex and often tense relationship between Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin and their East Bank compatriots. Much scholarly work has been produced on Jordan, covering the kingdom’s history, politics, and society.2 In this book, I seek to fill a remaining gap by providing a comprehensive overview of Jordan’s century of involvement in Palestine. This overview examines the triangular relationship of Jordan with Israel and the Palestinians and the impact it has had on the evolution of Jordan’s domestic politics and collective identity. It covers the early days of the British Mandate all the way to vii

viii

Preface

the most recent effects of the Israel-Hamas war of 2023–2024 with regard to Jordan’s ties with Israel and the Palestinians. *  *  * This book is a product of the many years I have spent on the study of Jordan. Research for the book started well over ten years ago, but various detours into other projects extended this particular study. The peace between Israel and Jordan allowed for numerous visits to Jordan over the years, and I am extremely grateful to the many Jordanians, in government, academe, and the media, whom I had the opportunity to meet and learn from during my visits to the kingdom. As a member of the faculty of Tel Aviv University for over forty years, I had the privilege to benefit throughout my career from the continuous and fruitful interaction with my colleagues in the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Middle Eastern History. It was an endless learning experience to be a member of this community of scholars of the Middle East, which included my teachers, friends, and colleagues for decades (in alphabetical order): Yoav Alon, Israel Altman, Duygu Atlas, Dan Avidan, Ami Ayalon, Ofra Bengio, the late Uriel Dann, the late Daniel Dishon, Brandon Friedman, Gideon Gera, the late Joseph Kostiner, Martin Kramer, Meir Litvak, Bruce MaddyWeitzman, David Menashri, Amos Nadan, Uzi Rabi, Itamar Rabinovich, Yehudit Ronen, Shimon Shamir, the late Arieh Shmuelevitz, Joshua Teitelbaum, Mira Tzoreff, the late Esther Webman, and Eyal Zisser. I am especially indebted to Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, who read the manuscript and made insightful and useful suggestions and corrections. I also want to thank the two anonymous readers of the manuscript for their valuable comments. I am very thankful to Uzi Rabi, the director of the Moshe Dayan Center for the years during which this book was completed, whose encouragement and support made this project possible. On the technical side, I owe special thanks to Elena Kuznetsov, who prepared the manuscript with much talent and even more patience. I also greatly appreciate the masterful job of the publisher, Lynne Rienner, the senior project editor, Allie Schellong, and the copyeditor, Jen Kelland, in steering this project through the production process. Needless to say, I remain solely responsible for the errors that may remain. Above all, I value the continuous support of my family, Miriam, Boaz, Efrat, Eyal, Liya, Dana, and Naomi, who lend a special sense of purpose to my many years of scholarly endeavor.

Preface

ix

Notes 1. This term is not original. It has appeared in numerous contexts, such as in Chomksy, Fateful Triangle and, closer to the subject at hand, Karsh and Kumaraswamy, Israel, the Hashemites and the Palestinians. 2. Among the most important works, one may mention Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom; Alon, Making of Jordan; Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan; Brand, Jordan’s Inter-Arab Relations; Dann, King Hussein and the Challenge of Arab Radicalism; Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan; Fathi, Jordan; Katz, Jordanian Jerusalem; Layne, Home and Homeland; Lucas, Institutions and the Politics of Survival in Jordan; Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres; Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War; Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine; Robins, History of Jordan; Rogan and Tell, Village, Steppe and State; Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings; Salibi, Modern History of Jordan; Satloff, From Abdullah to Hussein; Schwedler, Protesting Jordan; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan; Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination; Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan. There are many more, but in this space one cannot do justice to all.

1

The Makings of a Fateful Triangle

TRANSJORDAN (LATER JORDAN) AND THE JEWISH COMMUNITY IN Palestine (later Israel) developed common cause on the question of Palestine from the very beginning of the British Mandate for Palestine in the early 1920s. Israel consequently acquiesced in Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as the two countries jointly contained the defeated Palestinian national movement. The post-1948 political architecture was undone by the June War of 1967 and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Though common cause on Palestine between Israel and Jordan had never been complete, it was now far less so, as Israel and Jordan no longer agreed on the dispensation of what had become the occupied territories. The post-1967 reality of Israeli occupation revitalized the Palestinian national movement, which posed an existential challenge to the Jordanian kingdom, with its large Palestinian population. The clash of interests between the Hashemite Kingdom and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) culminated in the 1970 “Black September” civil war in which the Jordanian military crushed the Palestinian fighting forces that had deployed on the East Bank of the Jordan River after 1967. The Jordanian-Palestinian clash was a catalyst for the evolution of a unique Jordanian national identity and the complex relationship between Jordanians and Palestinians in the kingdom restricted to the East Bank in the post-1967 period. The political developments in the Palestine of the British Mandate and in the West Bank under Jordanian rule until 1967 provide the historical context of the emergent existential 1

2

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

challenge posed to the Hashemite Kingdom by the post-1967 revival of the Palestinian national movement. The major effort of the Jordanians to “Jordanize” the Palestinians after 1948 failed for the most part. A steady outflow of Palestinians from the West Bank to the other side of the river from 1948 onward resulted in the eventual creation of a very large Palestinian community, probably a majority, on the East Bank. Instead of “Jordanizing” the Palestinians, the original Jordanians now faced the threat of the “Palestinization” of Jordan, exacerbated by the argument from some on the Israeli right, and others in the Arab world too, contending that essentially “Jordan is Palestine.” The rejuvenated Palestinian national movement in the post-1967 era became the major propellant behind the evolution of the new unique sense of Jordanian national identity. The East Bankers developed their own particular identity versus the Palestinian ultimate other as they struggled to protect their patrimony. Jordanian identity issues affected the problématique of peace with Israel and were at the root of the acute sense of disappointment in Jordan with the results of the peace treaty. For the Jordanians, peace with Israel was expected, albeit unrealistically, to deliver on two critical issues: one was settlement of the Palestine problem in the form of a two-state solution that would finally clarify to all and sundry that “Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine,” with the latter being in the West Bank and Gaza and not in Jordan; and the other was final extrication, through the “fruits of peace,” of the kingdom from its perennial economic woes. But neither of these materialized. Jordan’s economy remained in the doldrums, and the Palestinian issue persisted unresolved, with the attendant domestic tensions in Jordan and the Jordanians as insecure as ever. The reign of King Abdallah II has therefore been shaped to a large degree by the consequences for Jordan of the unfulfilled expectations for peace with Israel. Under Abdallah, as the peace with Israel failed to deliver solutions for Jordan’s major difficulties, internal tensions between Jordanians and Palestinians heightened against the backdrop of the country’s unrelenting economic crisis. Jordan continued to suffer from its failure to find a solution for the inherent imbalance between population and resources, and Abdallah’s determined neoliberal policies produced escalating political fallout. Many East Bankers, who felt that they were constantly getting the short end of the stick, developed an animosity toward the king, though not necessarily toward the monarchy. The neoliberal economic solutions that Abdallah believes in, also under constant pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have exacerbated the Jordanian-Palestinian cleavage. The East Bankers, the traditional bedrock of support for the regime, are

The Makings of a Fateful Triangle

3

deeply dependent on the public sector for their employment and economic well-being and are consequently far more reliant on the largesse of the state. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have generally tended to be integrated into the private sector and are less directly affected by the reforms that cut into government spending. Among the “angry tribes” of the East Bank there is a growing sense of socioeconomic vulnerability. There is no obvious alternative to the regime, and East Bankers still remain basically loyal servants of the state, the armed forces, and the security establishment. But an aura of uncertainty prevails. The areas that presently form Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza, and Israel have been linked together by geography, demography, history, and politics since time immemorial. The political destinies of Jordan, Israel, and Palestine, as modern political entities, have been inextricably linked since the very day of their creation. The main thesis of this study is that Jordan and Israel, after failing in their shared effort to contain Palestinian nationalism, in recent years sought political formulae to disengage from Palestine lest it eventually consume them both. Disengagement, however, was easier said than done for both Jordanians and Israelis. Jordan had vital interests in Palestine that it could not ignore. Likewise, Israel had security concerns in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as domestic political and ideological issues, that made withdrawal from these territories, however desirable, extremely difficult to actually implement. A subsidiary thesis is that, while Jordan and Israel still shared considerable common cause on Palestine and had thus been able to make their peace, the two states simultaneously diverged on the ultimate resolution of the question of Palestine. As for Israel and the Palestinians, no similar set of mutual interests bound Israel and the Palestinian national movement. Their respective national narratives were separated by an unbridgeable abyss, which, thus far, has made a lasting agreement between them unattainable. Another subsidiary thesis is that while Palestinian identity was shaped to a large degree by the ongoing conflict with Israel, Jordanian identity has been shaped in no small measure by the competition between Jordanians and Palestinians that has resulted from the fallout of the conflict with Israel. Palestinian refugees and migrants radically altered the composition of Jordan’s population, with the Jordanians eventually defining themselves largely in opposition to this ultimate Palestinian other. Jordan and Israel have been intimately tied together through the Palestinian problem for decades. It was virtually impossible to discuss Jordanian-Israeli relations in isolation from the Palestinian context: one could not fully comprehend the Israeli-Palestinian interaction if one

4

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

ignored the Jordanian component; likewise, Jordanian-Palestinian relations were inexplicable if detached from the Israeli input. Both recent and more distant history and present-day demographic realities linked these three protagonists together, perhaps considerably more than they would really like. Jordan is home to a Palestinian community that probably constitutes more than half of the kingdom’s total population. Moreover, the special ties linking the Arab populations on both banks of the Jordan River were anything but new; nor were they solely a consequence of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem.

The People and the Lay of the Land The lay of the land has contributed to the merger of the peoples on both banks of the Jordan River since the earliest of times. Three rivers flow from east to west on the East Bank of the Jordan into the Jordan Valley, carving the East Bank into three distinct geographical segments: the Yarmuk in the north, on what today forms the border between the states of Syria and Jordan; the Zarqa in the center, flowing from its source near Amman into the Jordan Valley; and the Mujib further south, which flows into the Dead Sea. In their flow westward, these rivers cut through the hilly terrain of the East Bank, creating deep ravines and gorges more difficult to cross than the Jordan River itself, which is easily traversed during most times of the year. Historically it was less challenging for people and goods to travel along the east-west axis across the Jordan rather than along the more daunting routes on the north-south axis. It followed naturally that political, administrative, economic, social, and family ties developed more intensively between the East and West Banks of the Jordan than between the northern and southern parts of the East Bank. Towns like Salt and Karak on the East Bank, which are part of the present-day Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, were more intimately connected through a web of historical family and commercial ties with their sister towns on the Palestinian West Bank, Nablus and Hebron, respectively, than they were to each other. In the administrative divisions of both banks of the Jordan River in biblical times, then again during the Roman era, at the time of the Arab conquest, and thereafter under the Ottomans, large areas on both banks of the river were united in the same provinces, and the river did not serve as an administrative boundary between them. Biblical Gilead, in central Transjordan, was the home of the Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Menasheh. Virtually every Israelite polity in ancient times, from the Kingdom of David and Solomon (tenth century BCE) to Herod’s Kingdom (37–34 BCE), included parts of the East Bank of the Jordan, up to the outskirts of Rabbath Ammon (today’s

The Makings of a Fateful Triangle

5

Amman). In the Roman period, by the fifth century, the two banks of the Jordan River had been divided into three provinces: Palestina Prima, the central part of the country administered from Caesarea; Palestina Secunda, to the north ruled from Scythopolis (Beth Shean of today); and Palestina Tertia, the arid south, of which Petra was the capital.1 All three included vast territories in Transjordan. The administrative order of the Arab conquest in the mid-seventh century more or less followed the Roman lines, but the provinces were renamed. Palestina Prima became Filastin (Palestine) and Palestina Secunda was called Urdunn (Jordan). “In the Arab as in the Roman periods, the division between Palestine and Jordan was not, as in modern times, vertical between west and east, but horizontal, between north and south, with both districts extending, one above the other, from the Mediterranean across the Jordan River to the eastern desert.”2 This administrative logic carried over into Ottoman times when districts on the East Bank were on occasion placed under governors whose seats of authority were on the West Bank. Thus, for example, in the 1880s the Balqa region on the East Bank, that area between the Zarqa and Mujib Rivers, was included in the district (first a sanjaq and then a mutasarrifiyya) of Nablus and remained so until 1905.3 But the close association was not just the technicality of administrative boundaries. It was the intensity of the social and economic interaction. Since the lay of the land made social, commercial, and administrative ties along an East-West axis far more natural than along the NorthSouth one, the relations between the Hawran in the north and adjacent Palestine to the west were far closer than those between the Hawran and the Balqa to the south. Similarly strong, or even stronger, were the social and commercial ties that linked Salt with Nablus, the Balqa with Jerusalem, and Karak with Hebron and Gaza. In comparison, relations between the Hawran and Karak were almost nonexistent.4 The magnum opus of renowned Palestinian historian Ihsan alNimr, Ta’rikh Jabal Nablus wal-Balqa,5 records, as its title suggests, the history of Nablus on the West Bank and the East Bank province of Balqa, of which Salt was the capital. The two towns were so intimately attached that their histories could not be written separately. Eugene Rogan quotes a Damascene visitor to Salt who had written in 1906 that economic migrants from Nablus had flocked to the town in such great numbers, for trade, construction, and government employment, that “it could almost be called ‘Nablus the Second.’”6 Karak and Hebron had similarly close ties. The Majalis, one of the most powerful clans in Jordan and time-honored stalwarts of the Hashemite monarchy, hail from the southern town of Karak. But the origins of the family are actually in the Palestinian West Bank town of

6

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

Hebron, from whence they immigrated to Karak as merchants in the mid-seventeenth century. With the passage of time “a succession of brilliant political leaders [was] able to raise the tribe from a virtually powerless position to that of the leading power of the region and a mover in the whole of Transjordan.” Karak traded much with Hebron and Jerusalem, and it was also a tradition in Karak to reserve a seat for a Hebroni on the municipal council.7 Other Transjordanian towns had Palestinian connections of their own. The northern town of Irbid, usually noted for its links to Damascus, also had its share of families whose origins were in northern Palestinian towns, such as Safed.8 The 1910 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica defined Palestine rather loosely as a territory whose limits could not “be laid down on the map as a definite line,” except in the west where the country was bordered by the Mediterranean. “Eastward there is no such definite border. The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian Desert begins.”9 Upon their occupation of Palestine at the end of World War I, the British unsurprisingly observed that “Palestine is politically and economically closely interested in all that passes beyond the Jordan.” The two areas were “economically interdependent,” and “Palestine has ever looked to Transjordania for surplus supplies of cereals and cattle.” The development of the two areas, therefore, ought to be “considered as a single problem.”10 With all the above in mind, it made sense for the British to include both banks of the Jordan within the boundaries of their mandate for Palestine.

The Making of Jordan and Palestine In 1921 Jordan was carved out of the mandate in the hope that what was then the Emirate of Transjordan would develop into an independent Arab state, as the Zionist project would be restricted solely to Palestine west of the River. Thus created, however, Transjordan was intimately associated with the question of Palestine from its very inception, and it remained part of the Palestine Mandate until granted independence in 1946. The emirate was placed by the British in the hands of Hashemite prince, or emir, Abdallah, son of Hussein ibn Ali, the sharif of Mecca, who had launched the Arab Revolt, in cooperation with the British, against the Turks during World War I. At the end of the war, the Hashemites, led by Abdallah’s younger brother Faysal, were ensconced in Damascus, from where they ruled over the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria, which lasted only until July 1920. Faysal was then unceremoniously ejected by the French, who had come

The Makings of a Fateful Triangle

7

to claim their zones of influence, as agreed with their British counterparts in the notorious Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916. After Faysal’s ouster, the French took Syria, but Transjordan, part of the British zone of influence and no longer governed as a province of Faysal’s kingdom as it had been hitherto, was now an area that the British did not quite know how to administer. When Abdallah came up north from the Hijaz to Transjordan in late 1920, ostensibly on his way to Damascus to coerce the French to reinstate the Hashemites, a solution to the British quandary about Transjordanian government had just presented itself. After talks in Jerusalem between Abdallah and the British colonial secretary, Winston Churchill, Abdallah agreed in early April 1921 to remain in Amman as the prospective ruler of Transjordan and to abstain from pursuing his initial objective of confronting the French in Syria. During the talks, even before the boundaries of Transjordan had finally been drawn, Abdallah repeatedly asked Churchill to have Palestine included in his realm. But Churchill turned him down.11 Thus, it was agreed that Abdallah would take control of Transjordan for an initial trial period of six months. He undertook to prevent both anti-French and anti-Zionist agitation to the best of his ability, and he was promised a stipend of £5,000 in return.12 Abdallah could hardly remain on his seat of power in Amman without British support. It goes without saying, therefore, that he also accepted the British Mandate for Palestine, of which his emirate was but a part. What began as a temporary stopgap measure became the most stable political entity in the Levant. Acceptance of the British Mandate was not to be taken lightly. It also meant accepting the Zionist enterprise, which the British were committed to fostering in terms of the mandate they had obtained for Palestine from the League of Nations. The Arabs of Palestine never accepted the mandate precisely because of its Zionist agenda. Thus, from the outset the emir of Transjordan was at loggerheads with the embryonic Arab nationalist movement in Palestine and its first leader, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni. Conversely, potential common interests between the emir, the British, and the Zionists were already in the making. This was not a question of ideology, just pragmatic political expedience. Abdallah was not enamored with his swath of desert in Transjordan. Likened to a “falcon trapped in a canary’s cage,” for Abdallah Transjordan was but a stepping-stone to greater prizes in Syria, Iraq, or Palestine. He even disliked the name Transjordan (Sharq al-Urdunn) and preferred al-Sharq al-Arabi (the Arab East), but the British would not countenance a name for the emirate that signified an express desire for expansion, particularly so as not to fall afoul of their French allies in Syria.13

8

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

Abdallah envied his younger brother Faysal, who received the throne of Iraq, seated in Baghdad, a glorious city of antiquity and capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, on the banks of the great River Tigris. Abdallah, on the other hand, was quartered in Amman, the dusty and almost desolate remains of Roman Philadelphia, now a nondescript, predominantly Circassian village of some 3,000 souls. Transjordan was very sparsely populated and had only one town with over 10,000 inhabitants—Salt, just northwest of Amman. The northern district of Ajlun was the most densely populated, and its two principal towns, Irbid and Ramtha, both had less than 5,000 inhabitants.14 Encountering resistance in the long-established market town of Salt, Abdallah preferred to make Amman his capital, a choice that “radically reconstructed the political geography” of Transjordan. Amman rapidly outgrew the other towns of the East Bank, and by the time of independence in 1946, it had reached a population of 100,000. The city gradually developed into the sprawling, metropolitan, political and economic center of the kingdom, with a population that exceeded 5 million by 2020.15 After 1948, Amman became a city with a predominant Palestinian majority, after hundreds of thousands of Palestinian migrants and refugees settled in the capital. The original Transjordanians, who populated the country’s periphery, were placed at a built-in socioeconomic disadvantage that would deeply influence Jordanian politics in later years. They resented the wealth that was being concentrated in Amman to the benefit of the Palestinians, who also enjoyed the upgraded services and infrastructure in the capital. In more recent times many East Bank communities have turned to protest, feeling neglected and excluded from the “state’s geography of neo-liberal investment and development.”16

Hashemite Ambition Abdallah was initially disappointed with his desert principality. Just a few months after his arrival, in the summer of 1921, the deeply frustrated emir declared that he had “had enough of this wilderness” of Transjordan.17 Syria was Abdallah’s obsession until his dying day. Despite all his intrigue in Syria and his pleading and maneuvering, the British never had any intention of installing Abdallah in Damascus. At best, they treated him with patronizing disinterest. At times they were irritated or embarrassed by his machinations, which only complicated their relations with the French and some of their other Arab allies.18 Palestine, in contrast, was not an obsession. It was primarily about realpolitik and rational state interest. Considering the historical ties between both banks of the Jordan River, whatever occurred west of the

The Makings of a Fateful Triangle

9

river had immediate ramifications for the East Bank. He who ruled Transjordan ignored events in Palestine at his peril. Transjordan’s links to Palestine were therefore naturally strong. Many of Abdallah’s cabinet ministers and civil servants hailed from Palestine. More significantly, the three most prominent prime ministers of his entire reign were of Palestinian origin: Ibrahim Hashim from Nablus, Tawfiq Abu al-Huda from Acre, and Samir al-Rifa’i from Safed.19 Abdallah constantly meddled in Palestinian politics, courting Hajj Amin’s enemies. Palestinian Arab society was deeply divided between two rival camps: Hajj Amin and his allies, the Husaynis, and their opponents, the Nashashibis, otherwise known as the “opposition” (almu’arada). Abdallah and the Husaynis were to become mortal enemies, driven by conflicting political interests that even carried over to future generations. Abdallah’s grandson, King Hussein, would be similarly entrapped in conflict in later years with the founder of the PLO, Ahmad al-Shuqayri, and with his successor at the helm of the Palestinian movement, Yasir Arafat. As Hajj Amin was the bête noire of both the Hashemites and the Zionists, it made sense for Abdallah to forge close ties with the Jews. Abdallah’s links to the Jewish Agency, the official leadership of the Jews in Palestine, were both political and financial. Abdallah met with nearly all the senior Zionist leaders, usually in secret.20 Though the emir received regular payments from the Zionists, it would be wrong to infer that his relative moderation was simply bought. The Zionists and Abdallah had many genuine common interests. Moreover, Jewish financial assistance granted Abdallah a much-needed measure of leeway in his overly dependent relationship with his British patrons and some extra means to manage East Bank local politics too.21

Competing Nationalisms and the Idea of Partition The Arab Rebellion erupted in Palestine in April 1936. It was to become a critical turning point in the history of the triangular relationship between the Hashemites, the Zionists, and the Arabs of Palestine. Clashes between Arabs and Jews spread rapidly throughout the country in the hitherto most sustained Arab opposition to the British Mandate and the Zionist enterprise. The British appointed a royal commission to ascertain the causes of the rebellion and to make recommendations for a way out of the Palestinian conundrum. The commission, headed by Lord Peel, former secretary of state for India, presented its report in July 1937.22 The report noted that “an irrepressible conflict [had] arisen between two national communities [author’s emphasis] within the narrow bounds

10

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

of one small country.” The British had come a long way from the formulations of the Balfour Declaration, which had recognized only the Jews as a people with national rights, regarding the Arab population as no more than the “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” with civil and religious but not national rights.23 The Arab Rebellion imposed new modes of thinking about Palestine, coercing both the British and the Zionists to recognize the Arabs in Palestine as a national entity. It was now more readily apparent that there were two national communities in Palestine, one Arab and one Jewish, and both equally deserved to exercise their right to self-determination. But, the report observed, the lesson of the rebellion was “plain, and nobody . . . will now venture to assert that the existing system offers any real prospect of reconciliation between the Arabs and the Jews.” The obligations that Britain undertook toward the Arabs and the Jews had proved irreconcilable. “To put it in one sentence,” the commission concluded, “we cannot—in Palestine as it now is—both concede the Arab claim to self-government and secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home.”24 The commission, therefore, recommended that the country be partitioned. One area would become a new British Mandate for the Holy Places and would include an enclave of Jerusalem and Bethlehem with a corridor to the sea via the towns of Lydda and Ramle, terminating at Jaffa. A second area, encompassing much of the Coastal Plain, as far south as Majdal, the Valley of Jezreel, and the Galilee, just less than a fifth of the country, would become an independent Jewish state. The rest of Palestine, the Negev, the West Bank and the Gaza area, and the southern Coastal Plain, would be united with Transjordan to form an independent Arab state under the Hashemite crown.25 The majority of the Zionists, though disappointed by the amount of territory allotted to the Jewish state, accepted partition. It was better than nothing and an important victory in principle, having secured British support for the establishment of an independent Jewish state, a safe haven to which the oppressed Jews of Europe could immigrate freely. Emir Abdallah, just as he had accepted the mandate, supported partition. It would seem to have been the eminently sensible thing for him to do. Considering his most impressive territorial endowment, coupled with the political exclusion of his nemesis, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, who had fallen out of British favor with the outbreak of the rebellion, this was hardly an offer he could refuse. But in so doing he was not only accepting Arab Palestine as part of his realm; he was also acquiescing in Jewish statehood in part of the country. That was an unforgivable concession, completely at variance with the Arab consensus. In the eyes of other Arabs, it was a betrayal

The Makings of a Fateful Triangle

11

of their cause in Palestine, and Abdallah was vilified by all and sundry. The Arabs of Palestine adamantly rejected partition, and in the late summer of 1937 the rebellion was renewed with a vengeance. On September 26, Lewis Andrews, the acting district commissioner of the Galilee, was murdered by Arab assailants. The Palestinian leadership, the Arab Higher Committee, headed by Hajj Amin al-Husayni, was outlawed, and warrants were issued for the arrest of its members. Hajj Amin first went into hiding and subsequently, in mid-October, managed to slip out of the country by boat to Lebanon. From then onward the recognized Palestinian Arab leadership functioned in exile. The absence of their leadership and its inherent illegitimacy in the eyes of the powers that be would haunt the Palestinians for decades, giving their Zionist and Hashemite rivals a secure advantage. Continued contacts between Abdallah and the Zionists during the rebellion further enhanced their relationship in preparation for future cooperation.26 This severe Palestinian handicap was only finally overcome with the signing of the Oslo Accords and the return of the Palestinian leadership to the homeland in the early summer of 1994 for the first time in nearly sixty years. In the face of Arab rejection, at the end of 1938, after yet another commission of inquiry, the British retreated from the idea of partition, arguing that it was unworkable. The British summoned a conference of Arab and Zionist representatives in London in February 1939. The conference ended, as expected, in failure after a few weeks of fruitless negotiations, in which Arabs and Jews talked not to each other but solely to the British. At the conclusion of this dialogue of the deaf, an exasperated British government issued a new white paper in May 1939. The rebellion had run out of steam by then, and as the clouds of war collected over Europe, it was opportune for the British to appease the Arab states, which were of immeasurably greater strategic and economic importance than the Jews of Palestine and their supporters in the Diaspora. The white paper severely limited Jewish immigration to Palestine, restricted land sales to Jews, and promised independence to Palestine within ten years. In such circumstances independence could only have meant an independent Arab state in which the Jews would have been relegated to the unenviable position of a permanent minority. Had this white paper ever been fully implemented, Jewish statehood would never have come to pass. The outbreak of war in Europe with its catastrophic consequences for European Jewry reconfigured the political context of the Palestine problem. The plight of the Jews imposed itself on the conscience of the international community, reorganized in the newly formed United

12

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

Nations. More than ever, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, the notion of Jewish statehood appeared to most fair-minded people in the West to be both timely and inherently just. The practicalities of Palestine were forced into the background by the plight of the Jews, and the inner logic of partition resurfaced again. But Jewish and Arab positions remained irreconcilable. The Jewish Agency insisted on partition, while the Palestinians would have nothing less than Arab majority rule and independence in all of Palestine. By now British energy and interest for the intractable conflict in Palestine had been exhausted. Once they had made up their minds to finally part with India, the jewel in the crown of empire, the passage to India, in which Palestine was an essential link, had lost its inherent strategic value. In February 1947, unable to impose a solution of its own, His Majesty’s government decided to hand the issue of Palestine over to the United Nations. The General Assembly established yet another committee to study the problem—the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). In September, after having traveled to Palestine and then to Europe to meet with Jewish Holocaust survivors, the majority on the committee recommended partition. On November 29, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181 endorsing the plan to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem and their holy places, as an international enclave, to remain under UN supervision. Throughout the world war Abdallah had tirelessly continued to cultivate his relationship with the Jewish Agency and to enhance his influence with the mufti’s rivals among the Palestinian Arabs—the Nashashibis and their allies. With Jews and Arabs and with the British, of course, he probed relentlessly for common ground on variations of the notion of union between Palestine and Transjordan under his crown. Winston Churchill’s government revived partition as a viable option, and in late 1943 a special cabinet committee recommended resuming discussion of the Peel Commission proposal. With the end of the war, the idea of partition and annexation of the Arab state to Transjordan became one of Abdallah’s favorite subjects of conversation with his British interlocutors. He was, however, careful not to make his opinions known. Forced to endure universal Arab opprobrium in 1937 for having supported partition, he was now doubly cautious.27 Actually, Abdallah’s preference was not for partition. He would rather have had all of Palestine attached to his kingdom, with some form of autonomy for the Jews. But he was realistic enough to understand that this was not attainable.28 In May 1946 Abdallah became the newly crowned king of the independent Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The Makings of a Fateful Triangle

13

He and the Zionists soon resumed their efforts to establish common ground on the future of Palestine, where neither side had any interest in a separate Arab state under their common enemy, Hajj Amin. During talks between Abdallah and the Jewish Agency in the summer of 1946, both sides came to the conclusion that partition and annexation served their respective interests.29 After UNSCOP’s recommendations of September 1947, partition was clearly becoming the most realistic option. As Abdallah told the representatives of the Jewish Agency in November, he sought the incorporation of the Arab part of Palestine into his kingdom. He was determined to prevent the mufti from returning to Palestine to upset his plans and have Hajj Amin and the other Arabs ride him ragged. “I want to be the rider, not to be ridden,” Abdallah explained.30

The 1948 War and Its Aftermath The passage of the UN partition resolution resulted in war, which came to an end in a series of armistice agreements signed between the State of Israel and its Arab neighbors, which had invaded Palestine the day after the Israelis had declared their independence on May 14, 1948. The agreements were signed in 1949 with Egypt (in February), Lebanon (in March), Jordan (in April), and Syria (in July). The Palestinians were notably absent. The war had ended not only in their military defeat but in the shattering of their society and the dispersal of half of their number as refugees in other parts of Palestine and in the neighboring Arab states. The Palestinian people were no longer an autonomous player in what had now become the Arab-Israeli conflict. The “shared memories of the traumatic uprooting of their society and the experiences of being dispossessed, displaced, and stateless” were to “come to define ‘Palestinian-ness.’”31 This collective consciousness would later energize the Palestinian national revival, but after the disaster (the nakba) of 1948, the fate of the Palestinians was entirely in the hands of others. The West Bank, captured by the Jordanians in the war, was formally annexed, with Israeli acquiescence, to the Hashemite Kingdom in April 1950. Israel and Jordan now sought to contain and constrain the remnants of Palestinian nationalism between them. Though Abdallah enjoyed a variety of practical advantages over the mufti in the struggle for dominance in Arab Palestine, he had one major deficiency: his lack of legitimacy, in the eyes of the Palestinians and the other Arabs, to represent Palestine.32 In late 1948, as the war was coming to an end, Jordan, with the help of the military forces of the sister Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq, was in effective control of the West Bank. In October, in a futile effort

14

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

to challenge the reality on the ground, Hajj Amin declared the independence of Palestine and set up the All of Palestine Government (hukumat umum Filastin) in Gaza, under the protection of the Egyptian military occupation. The Palestinian government was an empty vessel. Not only was Hajj Amin unable to establish control in all of Palestine, but he was in practical control of none of it. The declaration had hardly been made when the government was evacuated by the Egyptians to Cairo. But the declaration, which was well received by the people in the West Bank too, was intended to delegitimize Abdallah and the Hashemites. Abdallah had to respond in kind. He waged a relentless campaign of defamation against the All of Palestine Government. But he was most desperately in need of an explicit Palestinian appeal to him to annex the West Bank to Jordan. On December 1, 1948, the Jordanians convened a Congress of Palestinians in the West Bank town of Jericho. Abdallah’s political objective was to obtain a democratic vote of approval from a representative body of Palestinians that would endorse the unification of the West Bank with Abdallah’s kingdom in an ostensible act of Palestinian self-determination. The Congress, however, had dubious representative credentials. Estimates of the number of participants varied from several hundred to 3,000, most from the Hebron area. Representation from other areas of the West Bank, where the Husaynis were still relatively strong, such as Jerusalem and Ramallah or Nablus, was disappointing. Even so, Abdallah failed to get the conference to do his bidding. The king sought an unconditional authorization to do as he saw fit—that is, to annex the West Bank and, in practice, to accept the partition of Palestine. He had no interest in resuming the war with Israel. The Congress would not hear of it. It was quite willing to recognize Abdallah as the “King of all Palestine,” emphasizing that Palestine was an “indivisible entity” and that any settlement that contradicted this principle could not be considered final. The conditionality was unacceptable to Abdallah. He had new resolutions drafted that authorized him to solve the Palestine question as he saw fit, and these resolutions were broadcast over Jordanian radio as the resolutions of the Jericho Congress. The problem was that the Congress had dispersed in the meantime, and the resolutions published in its name were not those it had adopted.33 The conference was a farce, but no more so than Hajj Amin’s maneuvers in Gaza. As opposed to Hajj Amin, the Jordanians really were in full control of all that remained of Arab Palestine (except for the snippet in Gaza), and that made all the difference. According to the official Jordanian narrative, their armed forces had saved the West

The Makings of a Fateful Triangle

15

Bank from the Zionists. The Jordanians would subsequently also contend that the first parliamentary elections held on both banks of the river in April 1950 were actually a Palestinian act of self-determination. The parliament elected then, representing the people on both the East and the West Banks, formally endorsed the unification of the two banks on April 24, 1950. In practice Jordan became the inheritor of Palestine, and the West Bank, politically, administratively, and economically subordinate to the East Bank, was tightly integrated into the Jordanian kingdom. Since the capital was Amman, the entire state bureaucracy was centered there. All the heavy industry and then the first university were also situated on the East Bank, partly for security reasons, stemming from the fear that Israel might occupy the West Bank, and partly just to ensure that the West Bank never developed into an independent power base that might challenge the regime in Amman. These policies produced a steady outflow of Palestinian migrants from the West Bank to the East Bank in search of jobs and higher education. This was all part of a grand design to Jordanize the Palestinians through integration into the Jordanian state. The constant migration between 1948 and 1967 from the West Bank to the East Bank, in addition to the Palestinian refugees who had settled on the East Bank in 1948, steadily increased the Palestinian population of the East Bank. Initially the migration may have appealed to the Jordanians as a facet of their project of de-Palestinization or Jordanization by integration. But the Jordanization policy met with only limited success, and in later years relations between Palestinians and original Jordanians would become a source of much controversy and tension in Jordanian domestic politics.34 The large numbers of Palestinians, refugees and others, settled down in Jordan fairly rapidly in the first few years after the war, establishing themselves and their businesses in Amman and elsewhere—so much so that there were early signs that “far from the Jordanians colonizing eastern Palestine, it [was] the Palestinians who [were] colonizing Jordan.” According to Alec Kirkbride, Britain’s minister in Amman and stalwart of the Hashemite order for decades, Jordan was undergoing a “peaceful revolution” as the Palestinians extended their political and economic influence over the whole country.35 The relationship between the East and West Banks was never one of equals. The Palestinians, though the decisive majority in the country as long as it included both banks of the river, were underrepresented in all walks of political life. The East Bank and East Bankers were systematically preferred over the West Bank and the West Bankers, and this all remained true until Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel in 1967.36

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Notes

1. Susser, Israel, Jordan, and Palestine, 5–11; Lassner and Troen, Jews and Muslims, 47, 50. 2. Lewis, “Palestine,” 155–156. 3. Salibi, Modern History of Jordan, 37; Rogan, “Bringing the State Back,” 40. 4. “Domestic Dimension,” 5. 5. al-Nimr, Ta’rikh Jabal Nablus wal-Balqa. 6. Rogan, Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire, 98. 7. Gubser, Politics and Change in al-Karak, Jordan, 15, 26. 8. Salibi, Modern History of Jordan, 38, 45. 9. Quoted in Lewis, “Palestine,” 158–159. 10. W. Deeds (Jerusalem) to John Tilley (Foreign Office), October 18, 1920, in Palestine Boundaries, 1833–1947, 3:675. Extract from the conference on Middle East affairs on the position of Transjordan in relation to the Palestine Mandate, February 26, 1921, CO 732/3, in Records of Jordan, 1919–1965, 1:292. 11. Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, xiii. 12. Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan, 53. 13. Shlaim, Politics of Partition, chap. 1; Salibi, Modern History of Jordan, 94. The emirate’s first official newspaper bore the name al-Sharq al-Arabi, and piles of the paper were stored in the upper floors of the Jordanian National Library. 14. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 74; Alon, The Making of Jordan, 26–29, 64. 15. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 68, 74, 231. 16. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 94, 249. 17. Salibi, Modern History of Jordan, 95. 18. Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan, 158; Pipes, Greater Syria, 71–81; Gelber, Jewish-Transjordanian Relations, 167, 222, 231. 19. Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 9. 20. Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 74 (Hebrew). 21. Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan, 120; Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 77–78. 22. Morris, Righteous Victims, 135–138. 23. Geddes, Documentary History, 38, 154. 24. Geddes, Documentary History, 157–158. 25. Geddes, Documentary History, 165–169; Morris, Righteous Victims, 138–139. 26. Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 79. 27. Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 48–49, 54–55. 28. Gelber, Jewish-Transjordanian Relations, 207, 211; Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 56–59. 29. Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 60–62; Gelber, Jewish-Transjordanian Relations, 207, 211, 214. 30. Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 72. 31. Doumani, “Palestine Versus the Palestinians?,” 52. 32. Susser, Israel, Jordan and Palestine, 172–173. 33. Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 167–171. 34. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 173–174. 35. Sir Alec Kirkbride, “Jordan: Annual Review for 1949,” January 2, 1950, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 472; Sir Alec Kirkbride, “Jordan: Annual Review for 1950,” January 3, 1951, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 521–523. 36. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 174.

2

Jordan, Israel, and Palestine (1948–1967)

T HE MUTUAL REJECTION OF I SRAELIS AND PALESTINIANS AND THE suspicion and hostility between the Palestinian national movement and Hashemite Jordan laid the firm foundations for shared interests and common cause between Israel and Jordan. Israel generally had a vested interest in the stability of the Hashemite Kingdom, and Jordan was the one and only Arab state that had an interest in Israel’s existence. Other Arab states and the Palestinians had in part come to terms with Israel, but unlike Jordan, they had no real interest in its long-term survival. 1948: The “Best of Enemies” at War Conventional wisdom has it that the Arabs lost the war of 1948. That, of course, is true, certainly of the Palestinians and also of most of the Arab states that invaded Palestine. But there was one notable exception: Jordan. The Jordanians and their well-trained and well-equipped professional army, the Arab Legion, were more than a match for the Israelis. They assisted Palestinian irregulars in overrunning the Etzion Bloc settlements on the eve of Israel’s independence in May. In nearly all subsequent major battlefield encounters, the Jordanians at least held their ground, and they inflicted heavy losses on the Israelis in Latrun and the old city of Jerusalem. More importantly, in the political realm, King Abdallah emerged from the war with most of his objectives met. In mid-November 1947, shortly before the passage of the UN partition resolution, King Abdallah came to certain political understandings

17

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Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

with the Jewish leadership in Palestine. At a secret meeting at Naharayim, at the confluence of the Yarmuk and Jordan Rivers, Abdallah and Golda Meir, representing the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, arrived, according to Avi Shlaim, at an “explicit agreement” to divide Palestine between them. This agreement, according to Shlaim, also formed the basis for the mutual restraint that the two parties exercised during the war that was to ensue.1 Other historians present a somewhat different account. In the meeting the Jews agreed to Abdallah’s annexation of Arab Palestine, provided that he would not interfere with the creation of the Jewish state or take military action against them. In practice, the understandings were incomplete and not quite agreed, and of what was understood only part was actually carried out.2 Uri Bar-Joseph speaks of agreement and discord, and, as Joseph Nevo concludes, the agreement “amounted in effect to an oral understanding whose binding nature could always be questioned.” Indeed, by May 1948 “no one could tell what was left of the original accord and what one party could expect from the other.”3 In their last meeting on the night of May 10–11, Abdallah complained that he was no longer alone and was instead one of a coalition of five and thus no longer entirely the master of his own fate. Meir countered that the Jews were in reality his only true allies, to which the king replied that he was fully aware of that fact but unable to do anything about it.4 The main purpose of the prewar talks between the Jewish Agency and King Abdallah was, after all, to offset the chances of war between them. That they obviously failed to achieve, and Jordanians and Israelis fought each other in some of the bloodiest battles of the war, especially in the struggle for Jerusalem and its approaches. Suspicion, confusion, and misunderstanding characterized their relationship at this time more than mutual restraint. As was invariably the case in war, there was considerable lack of control, reliance on pure chance, and chaos rather than a carefully calibrated understanding. When the Arab Legion and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) refrained from engagement in the latter phases of the war, this had much more to do with their exhaustion, logistical constraints, and force limitations than with prior agreement.5 Moreover, as the war ground to an end, Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank was not regarded by the Israeli leadership as a foregone conclusion. In the summer of 1948, the Israelis seriously considered the option of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank rather than Jordanian annexation. Both Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett shared the assessment that, in the longer run, Iraq might swallow Jordan, and if Jordan annexed the West Bank, in the future the Israelis would find the Iraqis on the border facing their very

Jordan, Israel, and Palestine (1948–1967)

19

narrow coastal plain. But no realistic Palestinian option was in the offing. When the war began, there were no Palestinians of stature who would countenance compromise. By the time the war was over, the Palestinians were in such turmoil that there was no recognizable Palestinian leadership that could deliver on any agreement even if there were to be one.6 Jordan had managed to occupy the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Thus, most of the territory allotted to Arab Palestine in the UN partition plan became an integral part of the Hashemite Kingdom. Twothirds of the Palestinian people became Jordanian citizens (some 800,000 people, more or less equally divided between the original population of the West Bank and the refugees from other parts of Palestine, who had settled there and on the East Bank). Israel acquiesced in the annexation of the West Bank to Jordan, which was in accordance with the prewar, albeit rather vague, unwritten understanding between Abdallah and the Jewish Agency. There were no other, more appealing options. A Palestinian state led by Hajj Amin, the mortal enemy of both Israel and Jordan, hemmed in between them, was unthinkable. Israeli occupation of the territory, which was militarily feasible at the end of the war, would have left Israel in control of a densely populated territory extremely difficult to digest, especially when its own entire population was still less than 1 million. Following the signing of the Jordanian-Israeli armistice agreement, Jordan and Israel conducted clandestine negotiations for a peace treaty. These began in late November 1949 and continued until early March 1950. The negotiations failed for a number of reasons. On the one hand, Israel was unwilling to make any meaningful concessions either on territory or on the issue of refugee return, which might have made it easier for Abdallah to obtain the support of his government and his public for an agreement with Israel. On the other hand, Abdallah was ageing and was no longer the unchallenged master of his realm as he had been hitherto. This was all the more so after the demographic revolution that Jordan had just undergone. Two-thirds of the kingdom’s population were now Palestinians, half of whom were refugees from what had just become Israel. They were hardly inclined to peacemaking. Peace with Israel was unacceptable as a matter of principle to the Arab consensus of the time, and it was questionable whether any concessions that would have left Israel intact would have sufficed to placate Jordan’s opponents at home and abroad.7 After a number of fruitless rounds of negotiation, in mid-February 1950 Abdallah proposed a detailed agenda for a five-year nonaggression pact. He coerced two of his ministers to initial the principles of the draft agreement, which was subsequently approved reluctantly by

20

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

his government. But in the approval the government introduced a number of amendments to ensure that the agreement would not constitute a separate peace treaty with Israel. The Israelis were now unwilling to sign what was, in effect, just a “new edition of the armistice agreement.” Abdallah reprimanded his recalcitrant ministers and attempted to force the agreement on the government. Prime Minister Tawfiq Abu al-Huda resigned in protest. Two other potential candidates, Sa’id alMufti and Samir al-Rifa’i, failed to form a new government because of domestic opposition and anti-Jordanian campaigns in several Arab countries. Abdallah was left with no choice but to succumb to the pressure and give up his efforts for a peace agreement with Israel.8 Even without a peace treaty, Jordan and Israel were genuinely supportive of the status quo. They preferred sharing Jerusalem between them to internationalization, which would have left them both with nothing. King Abdallah and his government maintained consistently that they would “neither accept nor implement” the scheme to internationalize Jerusalem as outlined in the 1947 UN partition resolution. The Jordanians “were doubtless encouraged to make this stand by the Israeli position,” which was just the same.9 Equally, both countries had no interest in the preservation of a separate Palestinian identity. In March 1950 the Jordanian authorities prohibited the reference to Palestine and Transjordan as distinct territorial units in official documents. They were henceforth to be referred to as the West and East Banks of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.10 The formal annexation of the West Bank to Jordan paved the way for the “Jordanization” of the Palestinians and of Arab Palestine. With careful aforethought Jordan designated the newly occupied area as the “West Bank” to erase and inherit Palestine. With the creation of the State of Israel and the conversion of “the Gaza Strip” into an area under Egyptian military government, Palestine as a political entity ceased to exist. Jordan, seeking to absorb Palestine and the Palestinian identity into its own, accepted the territorial and demographic status quo created by the war, as did Israel. The Jordanians had done well and were quite satisfied with their territorial acquisition, which afforded the kingdom a controlling influence over the political fate of the Palestinians, while keeping the peace with Israel. Jordan’s position was diametrically opposed to the basic instincts and aspirations of its newly arrived Palestinian citizenry. Quite naturally, they wanted anything but the status quo, which only prolonged their misery and humiliating predicament. Above all else, the Palestinians wanted to turn back the clock of history. They were indisposed to acquiescence in the consequences of the war that had shattered their society and their homeland and turned half of them into refugees.

Jordan, Israel, and Palestine (1948–1967)

21

A gulf of mistrust and conflicting interests separated the Hashemite regime from its Palestinian subjects. Perennial latent tensions often burst into the open, particularly during the heyday of Egyptian president Gamal Abd al-Nasir during the 1950s and early 1960s, until the disastrous defeat of 1967. Abd al-Nasir, with his messianic popular appeal and charismatic leadership, was for the great majority of Palestinians the man destined to be the future liberator of Palestine. Abd al-Nasir was the one who would correct the course of history, not the young King Hussein, who did not really want to fight Israel and depended on the support of the very same “treacherous” Western powers that shared responsibility for the “original sin” in Palestine.

Doubts About Jordanian Resilience Abd al-Nasir and his Palestinian allies were an almost constant menace to the Hashemite monarchy, and on occasion they shook the foundations of the Jordanian state to its very core. But even before the advent of Abd al-Nasir, in the final days of King Abdallah I, there were many in Israel and the West who entertained serious doubts about the continued survival of Jordan. Jordan’s resilience was constantly underrated, as was its elite formation and institutionalization. It was the conventional wisdom to regard Jordan as King Abdallah’s one-man show, which would not outlast him and was bound by the forces of history to collapse. King Abdallah was assassinated by a Palestinian gunman at the entrance to AlAqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in July 1951. A US State Department paper noted at the time that Jordan was “not a viable territorial unit, and its existence as an independent state was intimately related to the personality of Abdallah.” His death, therefore, was seen as a possible “golden opportunity to correct an entirely illogical situation.”11 As “illogical” as Jordan’s existence might have been in the years after World War II, with the advent of the Cold War, coupled with Britain’s receding regional role, the United States developed a vital interest in preserving the Middle Eastern status quo. Jordan’s strategic position “as an interior section of the land bridge connecting the Mediterranean and the Mesopotamian-Persian Gulf area” gave the United States a “definite interest in the political fate” of the kingdom. The “political and economic stability of Jordan” was of “great importance” to US security, as was the need to maintain the kingdom’s “orientation toward the West and away from the Soviet Union.”12 In the mid-1950s the United States and other Western Powers found themselves in the awkwardly inconsistent position of being driven by real strategic interests to maintain a political reality that, according to their own analysis, was unsustainable. Jordan, they

22

Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

believed, was economically nonviable and promised to remain so. But as the Soviet Union made inroads in the region, what happened to this “insignificant national entity of Jordan” was likely to “affect critically the Western position in [the] entire Middle East.”13 Therefore, when Jordan ended its special relationship with Britain with the abrogation of the treaty of alliance in March 1957 and the concurrent termination of the British subsidy, the United States stepped in to fill the vacuum. In April, as King Hussein struggled through the most serious crisis of his brief reign against the Arab nationalist, Nasserist, and anti-Western domestic opposition, the US president and secretary of state clarified that “the independence and integrity of Jordan” were vital to the United States. More importantly, the words were backed up by deeds. The United States undertook to generously support Jordan’s economy, and it sent units of the Sixth Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean to deter the Soviet Union.14 The overthrow of the Hashemites in Iraq just over a year later, in July 1958, revived US and UK uncertainty about their capacity “to carry Jordan indefinitely.” In the short term they believed “it would be disastrous” from the point of view of Western prestige if Jordan were to fall.15 In coordination with the Jordanians, the British dispatched a contingent of paratroopers to Amman to help keep the peace and maintain regime stability, until they were finally withdrawn in early November. As for the long term, the Western powers did not believe in Jordan’s viability. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles noted that the only justification for Jordan’s existence was that it was “preferable to its non-existence.”16 Jordan’s collapse was potentially dangerous not only because of the gains it might afford the Soviet Union and its regional allies but also because of “what Israel would do if Jordan [went] down.”17 The Israelis, in the prevalent Western assessment, “would clearly not stand by and see the whole of Jordan taken over by Nasser.”18 Secretary Dulles was fully aware that it “took a lot of money to keep [Jordan] going,” but this was precisely because “its disappearance might reopen the Arab-Israeli war.”19 Britain’s ambassador in Amman, Charles Johnston, explained that Jordan actually had “no inherent interest for us except through the accident that its disintegration would bring the Israelis to the Jordan River and would thus start an international crisis of unforeseeable dimensions.” The British, he thought, ought with American support to “take the lead in helping Jordan preserve its stability and independence.”20 There were those in the US government who believed that such ideas were woefully wrongheaded. In their view, the time had come to reach an accommodation with Abd al-Nasir and Arab nationalism. They were the inevitable wave of the future, and if the United States did not

Jordan, Israel, and Palestine (1948–1967)

23

come to terms with them, “the USSR will beat us to death in public opinion.” There was no point, therefore, in relentlessly seeking at great cost to maintain “fortress Jordan” as a “non-viable Western satellite” in the heart of a Nasserist Arab world. The United States had to “adjust to the tide of Arab nationalism” and allow the Nasserists to take over Jordan. The Nasserists would eventually affect the incorporation of the kingdom into the United Arab Republic (UAR), the union between Egypt and Syria established in early 1958.21 The compromisers, however, did not have their way, in no small measure because of Israel’s belligerent warnings about the West Bank and possible regional war. As understood by the US Embassy in Amman, the absorption of Jordan into the UAR was impractical. Thus, “for the time being” there was no real alternative to the continued payment of “the peace insurance premium” in order to maintain Jordan as is.22 By supporting Jordan in the name of regional peace and stability, the United States and the United Kingdom made a decisive contribution to the kingdom’s surprising longevity, which they themselves, ironically, did not really believe in.

Israeli Interest in Jordan’s Stability It was widely believed that Israel had consistently supported the status quo in Jordan. For the most part, this assessment was correct. But it was not always so. In the early 1950s, Israel’s Prime Minister David BenGurion and Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett had their moments of uncertainty about Jordan’s future. Ben-Gurion believed that “Transjordan [was] not a stable and natural thing.” Sharett was not sure whether Jordan would be “a stable player over time. [It] could be absorbed by Syria . . . and also by Iraq.”23 It was therefore not surprising that, at certain critical junctures, Ben-Gurion considered preemptive action to forestall the fall of the West Bank into the hands of forces thought to be particularly inimical to Israel. After King Abdallah’s assassination in July 1951, Ben-Gurion considered for a moment occupying the entire West Bank down to the Jordan River. Then, in October 1956, at the time of the Suez crisis, Jordan’s viability was questioned again. Hussein, who had just allowed for relatively free elections, looked as if he was falling into the clutches of his own Nasserist opposition. Ben-Gurion suggested to French premier Guy Mollet that the kingdom should perhaps be divided between Israel and Iraq. Ben-Gurion proposed that Israel take the West Bank and Iraq the East Bank, provided that the Iraqis would sign a peace treaty with Israel and also agree to absorb a large number of Palestinian refugees.24

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A variation of this theme was raised again by the Israelis only days after the overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq in July 1958. As the Hashemites in Jordan appeared momentarily to be tottering too, Ben-Gurion dispatched two senior foreign ministry officials, Abba Eban and Reuven Shiloah, to London for talks with Dulles. They suggested to their American counterpart that there was an alternative to an independent Jordan. In the event that the status quo there could no longer be maintained, the two emissaries explained, it might be possible to bring about a union of Iraq with the East Bank of the kingdom, in conjunction with some form of autonomy for the West Bank, which might be linked to Israel. But precisely at this time, in the second half of 1958, any remnant of vacillation in Israeli thinking on Jordan disappeared. It was then that the Israelis finally came to the firm conclusion that a stable Jordan was a vital Israeli interest. One can readily discern that Ben-Gurion’s directive to Eban and Shiloah was couched in the most cautious of terms, referring to an alternative to Hashemite sovereignty in Jordan only if and when the status quo was found to be untenable. Israel, as Ben-Gurion had made clear to Eban, had no intention of exploiting Jordan’s unfortunate predicament for purposes of expansion, if that could only be avoided.25 From the Israeli point of view, the regional political architecture had changed for the worse. It seemed as though Abd al-Nasir, buttressed by his pan-Arab, pro-Soviet, and militantly anti-Western posture, was at the zenith of his power and regional appeal. Israel recoiled in anxiety as it surveyed his stunning winning streak. The UAR was formed in February 1958, and the anti-Nasserist monarchy in Iraq was overthrown in July, just as pro-Western Lebanon was lurching uncontrollably into the throes of its first civil war, as Nasserists there sought to restructure the political order. The landing of US marines in Beirut and British paratroopers in Jordan with Israel’s active cooperation helped to stem the tide of what was beginning to look like an inevitable Nasserist victory sweeping through the entire region. In retrospect it is clear that none of this was nearly as intimidating as it initially seemed to be. In reality things were not going that well for Abd al-Nasir. The union with Syria did not last very long and fell apart in 1961. Similarly, the new regime in Iraq under Abd al-Karim Qasim was at loggerheads with Abd al-Nasir as soon as it transpired that Iraq under Qasim would not submit to the dictates of the UAR.26 But hindsight is always the privilege of those who never have to make momentous decisions in real time. And in real time the situation looked very ominous for Israel. The Israelis searched desperately, near and far, for potential allies in resistance to the Nasserist offensive.

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At first Israel looked for strategic solace in the non-Arab periphery of the Middle East—in Turkey, Iran, and Ethiopia. As for the states of the Arab core of the region, Jordan alone fully shared Israel’s interest in impeding Abd al-Nasir and was also willing to stand up and be counted. For the Hashemites, Abd al-Nasir was a mortal enemy. He represented everything they were not. He was anti-Western, antimonarchist, revolutionary, and subversive. The monarchy in Jordan lived in trepidation of his messianic influence and especially his captivating appeal among Jordan’s Palestinian majority. Abd al-Nasir’s capacity to fire the imagination of and mobilize the Palestinian public on his behalf against their own government was demonstrated all too frequently. Jordan and the UAR were locked in a zero-sum game. Abd al-Nasir’s gains were Jordan’s losses, and vice versa, and the same was true for Israel. In Israel’s view, after Jordan had survived yet another crisis in the summer of 1958, its resilience and staying power ought to be acknowledged, and the kingdom should in fact be regarded as an important and reliable link in the regional deployment against Abd al-Nasir. From the latter half of 1958 onward, Israel’s policy toward Jordan evolved into one of active and consistent support for its independence and territorial integrity. Jordan, in the eyes of Ben-Gurion, was no longer a colonial invention bound to disappear at any moment but a critically important ally against Abd al-Nasir. The cooperation of the Israelis over the British military intervention in Jordan “was warmly appreciated” by the Jordanian leadership, which now assumed a more forthcoming attitude toward Israel. In the assessment of the British embassy in Amman, for its part, Israel wished “for nothing rather than that the present moderate regime” in Jordan should continue.27 In August 1960, Jordan’s Prime Minister Hazza’ al-Majali was killed by an explosion in his office in Amman. The Jordanians knew the plot had been masterminded by the intelligence of the Syrian province of the UAR. Under intense pressure from Bedouin tribes and the Majalis in particular, Hussein decided to seek revenge and attack Syria.28 Aware of the Israeli recognition of mutual interest, Hussein sought coordination with the IDF. In September 1960 the king sent an emissary to meet with the chief of IDF intelligence and to apprise him of Jordan’s intention to attack Syria. The emissary requested that the Israelis not take advantage of Jordan’s deployment of its forces along the border with Syria in preparation for their assault. In reply Ben-Gurion ordered that a message be sent to Hussein according to which Israel undertook not to carry out any action against Jordan. In a second meeting, the chief of IDF intelligence emphasized

26

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to the Jordanian what he presumably already understood: that Jordan’s survival under King Hussein was an Israeli interest. The Jordanian replied that his country recognized the mutual interest of both countries in the survival of the other.29 Hussein, in the end, had second thoughts about Syria. But the Israeli-Jordanian recognition of common interest gained added credibility and operative significance when the Western powers began to evince an unsettling lack of resolve on Jordan, voicing increasing skepticism in respect to the kingdom’s long-term survivability. As Abd al-Nasir seemed unstoppable and the victory of Nasserism inevitable, ever-louder voices were heard in the corridors of power in Washington and London suggesting that the time had come to throw in the towel on Jordan. In the West there were those who were considering coming to terms with Abd al-Nasir at Jordan’s expense. A British assessment in early 1959 noted, “Jordan can clearly not survive forever as an independent country. . . . The best hope seems to be that, with Western help, it will be maintained in existence until it can be merged into a larger entity.”30 Position papers of the US National Security Council recommended reducing the American commitment to Jordan, presenting the option of Jordan being carved up or incorporated into one or more of the neighboring Arab states in order to improve relations with them. An American intelligence assessment for 1959 expressed little confidence in Hussein’s capacity to remain on his throne and cast doubt on Jordan’s continued survival as a state. Jordan had survived thus far because external forces in the area had operated to maintain the state as a buffer zone. The UAR had shown a measure of caution because of its preoccupation with problems in Syria and Iraq, its fear of Western retaliation, and its fear of war with Israel.31All the same, the Americans and their British allies suggested that the Jordanians seek rapprochement with Abd al-Nasir and, no less, “turn the other cheek” to reduce levels of antagonism.32 If, in the past, it had been the United States that occasionally warned Israel not to take any action that might destabilize the kingdom, it was now Israel that urged the United States not to let its guard down on Jordan.33 Israeli support for Jordan was unequivocal. The Israelis described Jordan’s economic development as important not only to the interests of Jordan but for the stability of the entire region. Jordan for that reason, according to Israel’s ambassador in Washington, deserved “any infusion of strength” that the West was able to supply.34 In the US assessment, however, militant nationalism would “continue to be the most dynamic force in Arab political affairs,” and Abd al-Nasir was “very likely to remain its foremost leader and symbol for the foreseeable future.” The long-term outlook for the conservative and

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Western-aligned regimes was therefore bleak.35 The breakup of the union between Egypt and Syria (the UAR) in September 1961 was seen in Washington as a “body blow” to Abd al-Nasir’s prestige.36 Yet this appraisal encouraged, rather than a more pugnacious US approach, the belief that this was actually “the time to be extra nice” to Abd al-Nasir and to promote “a somewhat more forthcoming policy” toward Egypt.37 Given the “undoubted geo-political importance” of Egypt, improved relations were essential for the successful conduct of US Middle Eastern policy, and despite his Syrian setback, Abd al-Nasir remained “the most formidable single leader in the Arab world.” His Syrian debacle, plus an acute Egyptian need for economic assistance, offered a real opportunity for the United States to attempt to enhance its own influence and to reduce Egypt’s reliance on the Soviet Union.38 Washington was fully aware that Israel and Jordan were both “vocally unhappy” with the new US departure,39 but there was obviously nothing they could do about it. Even Egypt’s extensive military intervention in the Yemeni civil war, as of late 1962, much to the dismay of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, did not deflect the United States from its policy of “constructive cooperation” with Egypt.40 In April 1963, following Ba’thi coups in Iraq and Syria in February and March, respectively, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq declared their intention to form a tripartite union. Jordan found itself completely isolated when its Palestinian citizens took to the streets in their thousands in enthusiastic support of the impending Arab Union. For them Arab unity was the essential precondition for the “liberation of the usurped homeland,” and they vigorously demanded that Jordan become the fourth member of the new union. Hussein, needless to say, had no intention of joining such a union, which could have meant the irreversible absorption of his kingdom into its larger and more powerful neighboring Arab states. The massive demonstrations turned into riots against the monarchy that were finally dispersed with live fire. In East Jerusalem four of the demonstrators were killed by the security forces. The government was forced to resign, and the regime appeared to be in real trouble. As Jordan went through yet another of its domestic convulsions fueled by the monarchy’s ongoing confrontation with Abd al-Nasir, the reaction of the Western powers was cautious. They were disinclined to a head-on confrontation with Abd al-Nasir. But behind closed doors, both the United States and Britain still shared the assessment that Jordan’s stability was vital, and they were desperate to prevent a new Arab-Israeli war.41 The reason Jordan was important for US policy in the region, it was noted in Washington, was “its close location to Israel and the latter’s concern over the stability of Jordan.” In these circumstances Israel’s stance toward Jordan was obviously crucial. Israel indicated a readiness

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to move militarily to protect Jordan, while it urged the United States to take action to preserve the political status quo in the kingdom.42 The Americans engaged in quiet diplomacy with both Egypt and Israel. They cautioned Israel not to “act precipitously,” while they simultaneously exploited the Israeli threat to deter Abd al-Nasir. The Americans warned Egypt to refrain from subversion in Jordan, noting their inability to restrain Israel if it chose to take action in the West Bank. President John F. Kennedy urged Abd al-Nasir to avoid turning Jordan into “the cockpit of an Arab struggle.” In such an eventuality “the peace of the Near East might well be destroyed by Israel’s intervention in Jordan, using the argument of its own security interest.” This, Kennedy concluded presciently, might face all concerned “with a fait accompli.”43 Messages were also relayed by the State Department to the Ba’thi regimes of Iraq and Syria, warning them that attempts to subvert the Hashemite regime in Jordan would touch upon vital US interests.44 Nothing came of the tripartite declaration in the end. The negotiations turned into a fiasco of internal Arab acrimony, and the crisis in Jordan blew over. In their postcrisis analyses, both the British and the Americans shared the view that the tough US stance and the Israeli military threat had combined to deter Abd al-Nasir. The threat of Israeli military action also deterred the Palestinians in Jordan, who understood that if they pushed matters too far against the regime, they might very well end up under Israeli occupation.45 The common interests of Israel and Jordan were now plain for all to see. They were also at the foundation of the regular, secret high-level contacts that began shortly after the April crisis, in September 1963, between the two countries. The secret talks continued for decades, until the formal Israeli-Jordanian peace negotiations that took place in the early 1990s.

The Revival of the Palestinian Entity: A Jordanian Setback Common cause between Israel and Jordan was readily apparent in an array of critical issues, none more so than the “revival of the Palestinian entity” (ihya al-kiyan al-Filastini) in the Arab world of the late 1950s and early 1960s. They had invested considerable effort since 1948 to digest the Palestinian entity between them. The reemergence of a Palestinian identity threatened to overturn the status quo they so desperately sought to preserve. Since the main political arena of this struggle was in the Arab world, the Jordanians bore the onus of the confrontation. There was not much Israel could practically do about the matter other than to indirectly uphold the Jordanian status quo.

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During the years of Jordanian rule in the West Bank, the Palestinians did not develop a viable movement of secession and generally tended to acquiesce in the Jordanian state that had been forced upon them, irrespective of their often determined opposition to the Hashemite regime.46 On occasion, in the mid-1950s, there were reports of “separatist talk” in the West Bank, in which “the dream of an independent Palestinian Arab state,” along the approximate lines of the 1947 partition plan, “was widely discussed.”47 But these were few and far between and did not represent the evolution of an organized or sustained movement for secession. The Jordanian authorities were extremely vigilant in their pursuit of intelligence on any and every indication of separatist tendencies in the West Bank but usually had little to report. These were the days of militant pan-Arabism, which aimed to remove borders and unify the Arabs. Secession was out of step with the popular mood of the time.48 The late 1950s witnessed the stirrings of a Palestinian national revival, but these were more about political organization to advance the struggle for the liberation of Palestine rather than the promotion of separate Palestinian statehood in the West Bank. Two simultaneous competitive trends of Palestinian revival were at work in the Arab world of the late 1950s. The one, public and very formal, was represented in the deliberations of the Arab League, a replay of long-standing Arab efforts to manage Palestine, culminating in the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964 under its founding chairman, Ahmad al-Shuqayri. The other, unofficial and initially clandestine, was the embryonic phase of al-Fatah, piloted by Yasir Arafat and a handful of close associates in the undetected seclusion of Kuwait. They sought to restore Palestinians’ agency and control of their destiny, wresting it from Arab custodianship (wisaya), and to reclaim the “independence of Palestinian decision-making” (istiqlal al-qarar al-Filastini), the hallmark of the Fatah credo. The PLO and Fatah competed with each other until the Arab defeat of 1967, which discredited Shuqayri and gave rise to the fida’i movement. The fida’iyyun (the soldiers of sacrifice waging the armed struggle) under Fatah and Arafat brought the former competition to a close when they fused both trends by taking control of the PLO. They constructed an altogether different kind of organization, which became an umbrella for the various Palestinian armed factions, superseding Shuqayri’s bureaucratic appendage of the Arab League. As could only have been expected, the establishment of the PLO reignited in full force the highly combustible contest between Jordan and the Palestinian national movement. Only the main actors had changed. Hussein replaced Abdallah, and Shuqayri stood in for Hajj

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Amin. It soon became very clear that, as far as the PLO was concerned, the deep differences with Jordan were not restricted to the control of the West Bank and its future. Shuqayri did not hesitate to question whether Jordan in its entirety, as a purely colonial invention, had any right to exist at all, and Jordan likewise cast doubt on the need for an organization such as the PLO. The Palestinian-entity idea was first raised by Abd al-Nasir’s UAR, in the Arab League in early 1959, and became a major bone of contention in the “Arab Cold War”49 between the so-called progressive states and their reactionary rivals. For Abd al-Nasir the revival of the Palestinian entity was primarily intended to “frustrate Israel’s effort to eliminate both the Palestinian problem and the rights of the Palestinian people.” But central to Abd al-Nasir’s perception was the denial of Jordan’s right to represent the Palestinians and even Jordan’s very right to exist. In Abd al-Nasir’s view, Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank was illegal, the kingdom itself was no more than an “artificial creation,” and its reigning monarch, Hussein, represented a “fifth column” obstructing the liberation of Palestine. Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim, the new ruler of Iraq, though at loggerheads with the UAR, was on the same wavelength when it came to Jordan and the Hashemites, whose cousins his coup had just recently overthrown and murdered in Baghdad. Qasim similarly denied the Jordanian kingdom’s legitimacy but upstaged Abd al-Nasir by calling for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian republic in the West Bank and Gaza, the territories that Jordan and Egypt had “stolen” from the Palestinians in 1948.50 The Palestinian-entity debate was intensified by the outbidding rivalry between Abd al-Nasir and Qasim, and for both it became a convenient political cudgel to browbeat the Jordanians. By definition, therefore, the Palestinian-entity initiative meant confrontation with Jordan. From the very outset of the deliberations in the Arab League, Jordan resisted the idea—but, in the long run, to no avail. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the king and his prime ministers fought a losing battle on behalf of their beleaguered kingdom. Prime Minister Hazza’ alMajali issued frequent pronouncements arguing that since the overwhelming majority of Palestinians were Jordanian citizens, Jordan essentially represented Palestine. As Majali affirmed in March 1960, “The Jordanian government was the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians living in Jordan, and they had the right, in accordance with the law, to determine everything related to their rights in Palestine.”51 After Majali’s assassination, the new rising star of Jordanian politics was the young, energetic, and audacious East Banker Wasfi al-Tall. In the summer of 1962, Prime Minister Tall, in a desperate effort to take the ini-

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tiative on Palestine, initiated the publication of an official white paper titled “Jordan, the Palestinian Question and Inter-Arab Relations.”52 In the white paper and other official statements, Jordan sought to dismiss the need for the political organization of the Palestinians. Most of the Palestinians, Tall reaffirmed, had been absorbed into Jordan, and no one other than the Jordanian government could have the right to speak for them.53 In the Jordanian scheme of things, Palestine was a collective Arab cause, and responsibility rested with the Arabs as a whole, with Jordan at the core. Jordan, according to Hussein, was the “launching pad for the liberation of Palestine,” and its army was the “spearhead of all the Arab armies.”54 The Arabs ought to coordinate their efforts rather than fight each other on these critical issues. As for the Palestinians, they would be able to finally decide their own fate after the liberation of Palestine—that is, at some unspecified time in the distant future. But the Jordanians did not have their way.

Jordan Versus the PLO: Round One At the first Arab Summit conference in January 1964, it was unanimously resolved that the Palestinian representative to the Arab League, Ahmad al-Shuqayri, would continue his contacts with the Arab states and the Palestinian people “in order to establish the proper foundations for the organization of the Palestinian people, to enable it to fulfill its role in the liberation of its homeland and its self-determination.”55 This resolution set the stage for the establishment of the PLO just a few months later. The Jordanians had thereby acquiesced in a resolution that embodied all that they had consistently opposed for nearly five years. Hussein, still in his late twenties, after years of relentless skirmishing with Abd al-Nasir, needed a breather. The constant altercations with the Egyptian president, who was much his senior in years and who towered over Hussein physically and in regional stature, severely taxed the king’s emotional resources. Hussein longed for a rapprochement, albeit a momentary one, in the comfort of the new Arab “summit spirit.” Moreover, since it was clear that the trend in the Arab world toward some form of revival of the Palestinian entity was unstoppable, Jordan could at least change tactics, retire from its obviously losing battle, and try instead to contain the fallout. The Jordanian objective was now to acquiesce and even cooperate in the formation of the new Palestinian political organization, in the hope of bringing it under Jordanian influence and neutralizing its potentially negative impact from the start. The Palestine Liberation Organization was founded in Jordanian East Jerusalem in May 1964. The venue was telling as it reflected both

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the mutual dependence and the inherent rivalry between Jordan and the PLO. For the PLO, uninhibited access to Jordan was critical. After all, the Hashemite Kingdom was home to the great majority of the Palestinian people, and there could be no real revival of the Palestinian entity without their active engagement and participation. For precisely that reason, however, it was crucial for Jordan to control the PLO’s activities, especially those within the kingdom. The tension between these conflicting needs was palpable from the outset. The PLO was a “thorn in the side of King Husayn,”56 and the initial preparations for the inaugural PLO congress were charged with mistrust and suspicion as the Jordanians maneuvered to bolster their control over the congress proceedings. Shuqayri acquiesced as part of the heavy price of his dependence on Jordanian goodwill to get his daunting project off the ground.57 At the inaugural congress the PLO’s first national charter was ratified. It included a special clause on relations with Jordan, according to which the organization would “not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” and its activities would be “on the national popular level” in the organizational, political, and financial fields.58 The charter did not explain how the PLO would in fact go about mobilizing and organizing the Palestinian people in Jordan for the eventual battle of liberation without infringing upon Jordanian sovereignty. The inevitable clash between the two was soon to come. In February 1965, Shuqayri arrived in Jordan for the first round of serious talks on PLO-Jordanian coordination. Waiting in Amman was the late Hazza’ al-Majali’s tough-talking, headstrong protégé, Wasfi alTall, whom the king had just recently returned to the prime minister’s office. Shuqayri’s requests must have sounded preposterous to any Jordanian, even to those more agreeable and of lesser stature than Tall. Shuqayri called for the establishment of Palestinian regiments, the fortification and arming of the frontier villages in the West Bank, and military training for the Palestinian populace toward the formation of “popular resistance units.” The Palestinians living in the border zone with Israel were to become “soldiers in the army of return.”59 To assist in the financing of the above, Palestinian civil servants in Jordan were also expected to pay a 5 percent “liberation tax” in support of the PLO. Needless to say, each and every one of these demands was rejected as an insufferable challenge to the sovereignty of the Jordanian state. As the British embassy put it, the Palestinian entity “was so obviously of Trojan pedigree that no one was surprised when the Hashemites saw no necessity to equip it with teeth.”60 There was no way Jordan would willingly allow for the establishment of alternative armies on its own soil,

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for the handing over of its most sensitive border zone to the military control of outsiders, and for the parallel taxation of its own citizens in the name of some foreign entity. When, in different circumstances just a few years later, the Jordanians succumbed to such intrusions upon their sovereignty, it almost spelt the end of their kingdom. Shuqayri tried to clear the air with conciliatory statements such as one explaining that the “Jordan River could not separate between the same homeland and the same people.”61 These only made matters worse. It now became abundantly clear that the real struggle between Jordan and the PLO was not restricted to the future of the West Bank but related to the eventual control of both banks of the river. The Jordanians would not concede. The PLO lost its patience and began to complain that Jordan was not living up to the resolutions of the Arab Summit. As PLO radio, broadcasting from Cairo, explained to its listeners, Jordan was Palestine, just like Gaza. The Jordanians should therefore do just as the Egyptian military authorities had done in Gaza and allow for the formation of regiments of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA). Likewise, the Jordanian Chamber of Deputies ought to pass legislation on the collection of the “liberation tax,” just as the Palestinian Legislative Council (operating under Egyptian auspices) had done in Gaza.62 On May 9, 1965, Tall responded to the PLO before a specially convened session of both houses of parliament to discuss the relationship with the PLO. Tall dismissed the idea of PLA regiments in Jordan and urged the Palestinians to join their many brethren already serving in the Jordanian armed forces.63 King Hussein followed through a few days later in a speech to the nation in commemoration of the “catastrophe of 15 May” (Israel’s birth). The king elaborated upon the essential unity of Jordanians and Palestinians in the kingdom. “Since the unification of the two Banks,” he noted, “the two peoples had blended together and Palestine had become Jordan, and Jordan Palestine.”64 There could therefore be no distinction between Jordanian citizens, whether of Palestinian or Jordanian origin, either in military service or taxation. As for the PLO’s demands in these matters, there was clearly nothing to talk about. Shuqayri similarly subscribed to the essential unity of the two banks, but that was the crux of the problem, not the solution. He put the historical record straight, suggesting that it was the “East Bank that had been annexed to the Palestinian homeland” and not the other way round. He keenly waited for the day when the likes of Wasfi al-Tall and Bahjat al-Talhuni, another Jordanian prime minister, would become members of the PLO’s quasi-parliamentary body, the Palestine National Council (PNC). After all, thus said Shuqayri, “our Jordanian brothers are actually Palestinians.”65 There was no room for compromise.

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The crisis finally broke in the spring of 1966. It was the Jordanians who struck first. Jordanian intelligence had solid information in the early months of 1966 on Palestinian members of political parties, such as the Ba’th, the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), and the Communists, who were liaising with Shuqayri in Beirut. To the Jordanian eye, these looked like the beginnings of subversion by the PLO. All political parties had been banned in Jordan since April 1957, when the opposition had posed its most serious challenge to the monarchy, in its enthusiastic endorsement of Abd al-Nasir and all that he represented. Hussein, having turned twenty-one just a few months before, declared martial law, removed the untrustworthy government, and banned all political parties, a ban that remained in force until 1992. The party activists were the natural allies of the PLO in any potential effort to upset the political order in the kingdom. The Jordanians opted for preemption. The two key players on the Jordanian side were classic representatives of the East Bank elite, Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tall, of the prominent northern family from the town of Irbid, and Minister of Interior Abd al-Wahhab al-Majali, a scion of the all-powerful Majali clan from the southern town of Karak. Better than most, these two men embodied the Jordanian establishment in its struggle to maintain its dominance in the relationship with the Palestinians. In early April 1966, some 200 Palestinian political activists were arrested. They were members of the various political parties, the Ba’th, the ANM, and the Communists, as well as members of the professional associations (especially the lawyers, the engineers, and the doctors) who were thought to be sympathetic to or collaborating with the PLO. The crackdown also netted numerous Fatah activists.66 Majali denied that the arrests had anything to do with the PLO. These were all members of the illegal parties, he explained, up to their usual mischief of “creating anarchy . . . and plotting coups.”67 But Jordanian security sources let the truth be known, and the PLO fully understood from the very beginning what had really happened.68 At the end of May, the third session of the PNC convened in Gaza, turning quickly into an anti-Jordanian rally. Jordan was condemned for the arrests and was urged to free “the patriotic prisoners.”69 Tall now openly accused the PLO of conspiring with the members of the illegal parties to overthrow the regime in Jordan. Shuqayri retorted that the PLO had the inherent right to intervene in any country on behalf of the Palestinians, as the PLO represented Palestinians everywhere.70 For Hussein that was the last straw. The suggestion that the PLO had the inherent right to interfere in the most sensitive of domestic security issues in the kingdom was intolerable. On June 14, in the

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northern town of Ajlun, Hussein made one of his more historic speeches. He announced the termination of Jordan’s relationship with the PLO in its existing form—that is, under Shuqayri’s leadership. His language was the harshest ever against the organization. “Any hand lifted with malice aforethought against this united struggling country will be cut off. Any eye that looks at us with hate will be gouged.” For Hussein it was all over.71 The last word, however, was Shuqayri’s. In a speech before Palestinians in Cairo on June 17, he denied Jordan’s right to exist. Shuqayri upped the ante amid rhythmic chants from the audience—“Thuri ya Amman, thuri, khalli Husayn yilhaq Nuri [rebel yaAmman, rebel, let Hussein catch up with Nuri]”72—followed by the same incantation for Wasfi al-Tall, thus wishing upon them the fate of Nuri al-Sa’id, the notorious strongman of Hashemite Iraq, who, following the coup that overthrew the monarchy in Baghdad in July 1958, was caught in a Baghdad street and killed by the mob.73 Shuqayri left nothing unsaid. Jordan had to be removed. It was a country “under the colonial rule of the Hashemite family” that had to be liberated “as an essential forerunner to the liberation of Palestine.” When he spoke of Jordan, he actually meant “Palestine whose borders extended from the Mediterranean Sea in the West to the Iraqi and Syrian Desert. That is where our people are, and that is the country which is the launching pad for liberation.”74 As if Jordan’s problems with the PLO were not enough, operations by Fatah were launched from the West Bank against Israel with sustained frequency, from January 1965 onward. The founders of Fatah were firm believers in the Algerian model. As the National Liberation Front had evicted the French by armed struggle, so the Palestinians could do the same to the Zionists. As Fatah operations gained publicity, more organizations joined the armed struggle. The PLO, after initially expressing reservations about Fatah, eventually joined in the fray itself by collaborating with other Palestinian organizations that were engaged in military operations against Israel. The number of operations conducted by the various groups against Israel from Jordan increased dramatically between January 1965 and June 1967. Efforts by the Jordanians to prevent them met with only partial success, and the escalation naturally had a negative effect on relations with Israel. Fatah’s strategy was to eventually provoke Israel to retaliate in the hope that this would gradually arouse the Arab publics against Israel and drag the Arab states into full-scale war with Israel.75 In a rather roundabout way, Fatah actually succeeded beyond all expectations, with the outbreak of war in June 1967. The catastrophic results

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of the war, however, were hardly those they had been planning for. Yet in the long run, despite the humiliating Arab defeat, the results of the June war did indeed work for the cause of Palestine.

From Accommodation to Escalation with Israel Despite their shared interest in stemming the tide of Palestinian nationalist revival and their disinterest in war with each other, errors of judgment on both sides set Israel and Jordan on an unforeseen trajectory that culminated in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Jordan had great fears of Israeli power and of what the leadership believed to be Israel’s aggressive designs on the Arabs. Israel, Hussein believed, was an “expansionist power determined to acquire more territory.” The completion in 1964 of Israel’s National Water Carrier, from the Sea of Galilee in the north to the Negev desert in the south, was seen by the Arabs generally, and by Hussein as well, as a potential threat. The carrier was an essential component of Israel’s economic development to provide for more immigrants, which, the Arabs surmised, could drive Israel to seek territorial expansion at their expense. Hussein told US President Lyndon B. Johnson in April 1964 that more immigration would increase the Israeli threat to the Arabs. He feared that Israel could “clobber” Jordan in forty-eight hours.76 In the early months of 1965, an intensive diplomatic exchange took place between the United States and Israel on planned American arms sales to Jordan, including tanks and possibly supersonic aircraft as well. The United States was concerned that Jordan might turn to the Soviet Union if the Americans failed to deliver. Israel resisted at first, worried by the possibility that the Jordanians might develop a more threatening posture on Israel’s long and vulnerable front with the West Bank, facing Israel’s narrow coastal plain.77 Eventually the Israelis and the Jordanians came to an understanding with the United States, according to which comparable sales of tanks would be made to both sides. Jordan also agreed that the Jordanian tanks would not be deployed in the West Bank in “normal conditions” but that such a proviso would obviously not apply in wartime.78 (Indeed, in late May 1967, in the rundown to the June war, units of Jordanian armor were dispatched to the West Bank.79) Understandings were similarly achieved a year later on the sales of combat aircraft by the United States to Israel and Jordan.80 Thus, despite the real tensions and mutual suspicions, the Israelis and the Jordanians were capable of unofficial accommodations even on such sensitive matters as their respective arms deals with the United States. Washington did not have much difficulty in convincing the Israelis that it was in their own self-interest for the Americans to pro-

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vide economic aid and military equipment to Jordan to enhance the Hashemite regime. The United States could see “no other way to keep Soviet-backed radical Arabs off Israel’s softest flank,” and the Israelis similarly prized Hussein’s independence of Cairo.81 These were the years of a certain budding intimacy in Israeli-Jordanian relations. David Ben-Gurion had resigned from the premiership in Israel in June 1963 and was succeeded by Levi Eshkol, who was somewhat more inclined to accommodation with Israel’s Arab neighbors. Moreover, Israel and Jordan shared their opposition to the “revival of the Palestinian entity” and to other objectives of the Arab League under Abd al-Nasir, such as the formation of a United Arab Command to prepare for war against Israel and the project to divert the sources of the Jordan River to disrupt Israel’s water supply. Hussein began to meet regularly in secret with representatives of the Israeli government to exchange views, political assessments, and information and to discuss security cooperation. The first of these meetings was held in London in September 1963 with Dr. Ya’akov Herzog, the deputy director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, who represented Premier Eshkol. Herzog told Hussein that Israel had a vested interest in Jordan’s independence and integrity, a commitment Herzog would repeat in their second meeting in London, in May 1964. They met again in London in December 1964, and in September 1965 Hussein met with Israel’s foreign minister, Golda Meir, in Paris. Notwithstanding the Arab League decision of January 1964 to divert the sources of the Jordan, they discussed the continuation of Israel’s long-standing cooperation with Jordan in the sharing of the waters of the Jordan River. This cooperation was in accordance with the arrangement already reached in 1955, through the good offices of US mediator Eric Johnston. Meir also took the opportunity to urge the king to take more energetic steps to stop Fatah groups from crossing into Israel from Jordan. This was the last of these meetings before the 1967 war. After the war Hussein met secretly with various Israeli leaders on many occasions before the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan was finally signed in 1994.82 The subject of Fatah raids that Meir raised in their meeting rattled the measured intimacy of the mid-1960s. The Jordanians had real difficulty, political and operational, in putting an end to these incursions from the West Bank into Israel. Some officers and politicians, mostly Palestinians, were sympathetic toward Fatah. The Israelis, however, could hardly acquiesce in acts of violence being perpetrated regularly against their civilians and soldiers from Jordanian territory. Infiltrations into Israel drew retaliation, and the tension rose steadily. The countdown to war on the Jordanian front began in November 1966, when

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Israel staged a massive raid on the village of Samu’ in the Hebron foothills of the West Bank. On November 11, three Israeli soldiers were killed when their vehicle struck a landmine near the town of Arad, on the border with Jordan in the Judean Hills. The tracks of the infiltrators who had laid the mine led back to the Mount Hebron area. On November 13, in broad daylight, the IDF carried out its largest reprisal raid since the Suez War of 1956. A brigade-size formation occupied the village of Samu’, evacuated its inhabitants, and demolished scores of buildings. Over twenty Jordanian soldiers were killed as they rushed to the scene. The Israeli response was clearly disproportionate, and it led the Jordanians to reach mistaken conclusions about Israeli intentions, which in turn led to subsequent miscalculations with disastrous consequences. Jordan was harshly punished, even though it was well known that the operations from Jordan were carried out by Fatah in coordination with the Syrian Ba’th regime and were deliberately designed to trigger Israeli reprisals that would destabilize the Jordanian monarchy.83 Israel preferred to try and coerce the Jordanians to do a better job of restraining Fatah rather than to attack the real source of evil in Damascus. Samu’ failed in this regard. The Jordanians made an effort, but operations from Jordan continued unabated. In the first months of 1967, there were some 270 incidents on the border with Jordan, an increase of 100 percent, according to Israeli sources.84 Whatever goodwill may have been generated in the secret talks with Israel vanished after Samu’. Hussein was now convinced that Israel’s intentions toward Jordan were fundamentally hostile and that the Israeli attack on Samu’ was “the first step in grabbing” the West Bank. He told the Americans that his understandings with the United States and Israel on the deployment of Jordanian armor “had now been permanently shattered.” The United States had consistently opposed Israeli retaliatory raids that it thought would only impede Jordanian efforts to carry out an effective antiterrorist campaign in the West Bank. The Americans deplored Israel’s action. Israel’s “ill-considered and grossly excessive strike” in Samu’ had “wrecked a good system of tacit cooperation” with Hussein, they complained. Moreover, the operation “undermined the whole US effort to maintain Jordanian stability, which was so much in Israel’s own interest that Israel’s action was almost incomprehensible.”85 The Israelis reassured the Americans that they had “as much of a stake in preserving the king” as the United States, and they continued to believe that the “maintenance of the territorial status quo and existing regime in Jordan” was of great importance for Israel’s security. The Jordanians, however, remained unconvinced. Hussein was sure that Israeli

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policy toward Jordan had changed, and as far as the Jordanians were concerned, Israeli assurances to the contrary could not be trusted.86 Whatever Israeli intentions may have been, the Hashemite throne was shaken to the core in the wake of Samu’ by a mini intifada that rocked the West Bank for a fortnight. In late November, Jordan went through the worst bout of demonstrations and rioting in a decade. The initial sense of shock and disbelief of the Palestinians in the West Bank was rapidly replaced with anger and a sense of helplessness and abandonment. Their government was evidently incapable of preventing the Israelis from wreaking havoc, with relative impunity, wherever and whenever they chose. Jordan’s key rivals in the Arab world, the PLO, Egypt, and Syria, were offered a golden opportunity to wage a merciless propaganda campaign against Jordan, calling on the people to rise in rebellion and overthrow the “regime of treason.” Now Shuqayri and Jordan’s other Arab foes could argue with greater credibility that had the Jordanians only done as Shuqayri had asked of them—allowed PLA regiments to be formed in Jordan and armed the frontier villages—the Samu’ attack would not have happened, at least not with such apparent Israeli ease. Samu’ exposed the deep divide that had separated the regime from much of its Palestinian citizenry since the annexation of the West Bank. The regime, in recognition of its relative weakness, sought to preserve the status quo with Israel. The Jordanians feared that open conflict with Israel would only reveal Jordanian vulnerability and might even provoke the occupation of the West Bank by Israel. The Palestinians, on the other hand, wished to transform Jordan into the staging ground for the liberation of Palestine. Palestinian frustration translated into riots throughout the West Bank. Demonstrations were dispersed by security forces wielding clubs and whips, and on occasion they resorted to live fire, killing a number of rioters in Nablus and Jerusalem.87 Not a shred was left of the Arab “summit spirit” of reconciliation. Jordan was cornered once again. In this atmosphere of siege from without and seething disaffection from within, the Jordanians entered the crisis of May 1967. Tension had begun to rise in mid-May, after Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal into Sinai, ostensibly to deter Israel from attacking Syria. Israel’s border with Syria was never entirely quiet. Egypt and Syria had signed a mutual defense treaty the previous November, and as of early January 1967 the security situation along the border between Israel and Syria had deteriorated rapidly. Israeli and Syrian forces often exchanged fire, while Fatah stepped up its infiltrations into Israel from Syrian territory. Violence steadily escalated throughout the early months of 1967, as did Syrian inflammatory rhetoric. On April 7,

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in the wake of a major clash on the border, Israeli Mirage fighter aircraft downed six Syrian MiGs with no losses of their own. In early May, senior Israeli spokesmen, including the prime minister and the chief of staff, went on record warning Syria to desist from aiding and abetting attacks on Israel.88 Then the crisis unfolded.

The Outbreak of War In mid-May, for reasons that to this day remain obscure, Soviet sources passed on false intelligence to Egypt on Israeli troop concentrations poised to attack Syria.89 After Samu’ and the dogfight of April 7, Abd al-Nasir felt he was in no position to sit by and watch again. Egyptian forces paraded through Cairo in broad daylight before rolling across the Suez Canal into Sinai amid intense publicity and threatening saber rattling over the airwaves. Within a day, Abd al-Nasir learned from his own reliable sources that the Soviet information was groundless. “There is nothing there,” Egyptian chief of staff Gen. Muhammad Fawzi told his president. “No massing of forces. Nothing.”90 But Abd al-Nasir could not backtrack without losing face. The Egyptian troop movements, which the intelligence services in the Middle East and in Washington had generally assessed to be no more than a vacuous show of force, had a built-in escalatory dynamic. What had begun as an exercise in showmanship culminated in war and unmitigated catastrophe. For the Jordanians, the May 1967 crisis was at first a golden opportunity to humiliate Abd al-Nasir. For years Jordan and the UAR had exchanged rhetorical blows in one of the key battles of the so-called Arab Cold War. Now was Jordan’s great chance to score against Abd alNasir and to ridicule him and his regime. Jordan (and the Saudis too) had been doing this for years regarding the presence of the UN Emergency Forces (UNEF) in Sinai and the uninterrupted passage of Israeli shipping through the Strait of Tiran to Israel’s southern port of Eilat. The constant Jordanian refrain over the airwaves was that the Egyptians, while preaching patriotism to others, had since the 1956–1957 Suez War upheld a form of agreement with Israel and had their army “hide behind the skirts”91 of the UN forces in Sinai instead of taking the Israelis on. Now the Jordanians were at it again, baiting the Egyptians to expel UNEF and close the strait if they were really serious about going to war with Israel and not just showing off.92 The Jordanian assessment, no different than most others, was that Abd al-Nasir was engaged in brinkmanship and had no intention of really going to war.93 But this Jordanian taunting had rankled the Egyptians over the years94 and must surely be considered as one of the factors that contributed to

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pushing Abd al-Nasir over the edge. On the night of May 16, Egypt ordered UNEF to withdraw, and just days later, at noon on May 23, Abd al-Nasir closed the Strait of Tiran to Israeli shipping.95 The removal of UNEF had been on Abd al-Nasir’s mind from the onset of the troop deployment in Sinai. As for the closure of the strait, he had “longed for the blockade” and had already decided in principle on May 17 to reinstate it.96 So the Egyptians probably would have made their decision irrespective of Jordanian propaganda. But there still was some hesitation about whether to actually go ahead with the blockade, considering that such a move would make war with Israel virtually unavoidable. The Jordanians, in their dash to settle old scores, had certainly helped to remove any residual doubt that the Egyptian president may still have had and thus contributed to the escalation of a crisis that they themselves never wanted. When war seemed imminent, Hussein had no choice but to close ranks with Abd al-Nasir. The unsettling effect of the post-Samu’ riots in Jordan was still fresh in his memory, as was the almost constant subversive Arab propaganda railing against the Hashemite monarchy. The elation in the Arab world, and especially in Jordan, expressing acclaim and admiration for Abd alNasir’s challenge to Israel was creating an aura of impending deliverance. The people of Jordan, particularly the Palestinians were ecstatic in their belief that the great moment of liberation that they had yearned for since 1948 was now finally in reach. In the new circumstances Hussein was convinced that standing aside might very well cost him his throne. On May 30, Hussein flew to Cairo to sign a defense pact with Abd al-Nasir, who convinced him not only to sign the pact but to patch up his relations with the PLO’s Ahmad al-Shuqayri. The president asked Hussein to return with Shuqayri on the king’s plane back to Amman in a show of Arab solidarity. On their way from the airport to the Royal Palace, Hussein and Shuqayri received a tumultuous welcome in the streets of Amman from thousands of cheering spectators, applauding what appeared to have been the collective Arab decision to go to war. As US Ambassador Findley Burns was to subsequently reveal, Hussein was truly shaken by the experience.97 The thought of how this human mass would explode in violent fury if Jordan did not join its Arab brethren in war against Israel surely tipped the scales further in Hussein’s mind to the side of war. Moreover, his army’s mood was determined, and the king faced “serious morale and loyalty problems if he did not respond to it.”98 To safeguard the Hashemite regime on the East Bank, Hussein consciously took a decision that he knew might cost him the West Bank. In any event, the determination whether to go to war was no longer entirely in his hands. In Cairo Hussein had also agreed to place the

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Jordanian front under the command of an Egyptian general, Abd al-Mun’im Riyad. This was an understandable but horrendous decision. It revealed the depth of the scars that the endless confrontation with Abd al-Nasir had left on Hussein. The price he was willing to pay not to be damned by his fellow Arabs was prohibitive. Riyad was a competent professional soldier, but he knew woefully little about the Jordanian front. He took command on June 1, just four days before the war began, and conducted the campaign with Egyptian rather than Jordanian operational considerations in mind.99 The results were disastrous. It was the “Egyptians who committed his country to war . . . and it was they who made all the strategic decisions that led to the crushing defeat of his [Hussein’s] army.”100 On June 5, on the morning of the Israeli air strike against Egypt, Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol sent a message to Hussein via Gen. Odd Bull, the Norwegian chief of the Jerusalem-based UN Truce Supervision Organization, informing the king that Israel would take no action against Jordan if the Jordanians stayed out of the war. By the time Hussein received the Israeli message, General Riyad had already given orders to go to war, and the guns were blazing.101 In any event, the Jordanians treated the Israeli missive with suspicion. Ever since Samu’, they were convinced that Israel was planning to occupy the West Bank. Eshkol’s message therefore seemed like a ploy. The Jordanians suspected that it was intended to give Israel ample time to finish its war against Egypt before redeploying its forces to take on the Jordanians and thus to spare the Israelis the difficulty of fighting simultaneously on two fronts. Hussein, politically and mentally, was way past the point of no return.102 By midday on June 7, it was all over. Within forty-eight hours the post-1948 strategic architecture had been torn asunder.

Notes

1. Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan, 1. 2. Bar-Joseph, Best of Enemies, 7–11, 47–51; Morris, Righteous Victims, 221; Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 71–73, 108–121; Sela, “Transjordan, Israel and the 1948 War,” 623–688; Podeh, Chances for Peace, 49. 3. Bar-Joseph, Best of Enemies, chap. 1; Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 119–120; Sela, “Transjordan, Israel and the 1948 War,” 627, makes a similar case. 4. Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 118; Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 84. 5. Sela, “Transjordan, Israel and the 1948 War,” 676. 6. Gelber, Independence Versus Nakba, 436–437, 444–446, 476–477 (Hebrew). 7. Rabinovich, Road Not Taken, 149–155. 8. Podeh, Chances for Peace, 53. 9. Ambassador Alec Kirkbride, “Jordan: Annual Review for 1949,” January 2, 1950, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 471.

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10. Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine, 197. 11. “Future of Jordan; Possible Alternatives.” Paper prepared in the Office of Near Eastern Affairs for Discussion by the Policy Planning Staff, July 24, 1951. FRUS (1951), Vol. V, Near East and Africa, 986. 12. Memorandum by Mrs. Christina P. Grant of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs, February 26, 1946, FRUS (1946), Vol. VII, Near East and Africa, 8901.01/2-2646; Policy Statement Prepared in the Department of State, April 17, 1950, FRUS (1950), Vol. V, Near East, South Asia and Africa, 811.65/4-1750. 13. Embassy in Jordan to the Department of State, October 22, 1955, and March 30, 1956, FRUS (1955–1957), Vol. XIII, Near East: Jordan-Yemen, Documents 5 and 25. 14. For details, see Satloff, From Abdullah to Hussein, 170–175; Dann, King Hussein and the Challenge of Arab Radicalism, 59–67. 15. Letter from UK Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd to US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, August 25, 1958, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Document 295. 16. Memo of Conversation in New York Between UK Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd and US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, August 12, 1958, FRUS (1958– 1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Document 267. 17. Alan Dulles, Director of CIA in Conversation with President Eisenhower, Memo of Conference with the President, July 23, 1958, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Document 221. 18. Memo of Conversation in New York Between UK Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd and US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, August 12, 1958; Letter from UK Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd to US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, August 25, 1958, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Documents 267 and 295. 19. Memo of Conversation in New York Between Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and UAR Foreign Minister, Mahmud al-Fawzi, August 14, 1958, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Document 270. 20. British Embassy Amman, “Annual Review for Jordan, 1959,” January 16, 1960, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 853–854. 21. Memo of Discussion at the 373rd Meeting of the US National Security Council, July 24, 1958; Embassy in Jordan to Department of State, August 19, 1958, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Documents 226 and 281. 22. Embassy in Jordan to Department of State, September 5, 1959, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Document 404. 23. Shalom, David Ben Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab World, 1949– 1956, 208–209 (Hebrew). 24. Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 37 (Hebrew). 25. Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 36–39. 26. Dann, Iraq Under Qassem, 78–86. 27. British Embassy Amman, “Annual Review for Jordan, 1958,” January 22, 1959, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 830, 835. 28. Shemesh, Palestinian Entity, 20. 29. Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 40; Dann, King Hussein and the Challenge of Arab Radicalism, 111. 30. British Embassy Amman, “Annual Review for Jordan, 1958,” 835. 31. National Security Council, “U.S. Policy Toward the Near East,” November 4, 1958, NSC 5820/1 (National Archives, Washington DC), 10–12; National Intelligence Estimate, “The Outlook for Jordan,” March 10, 1959, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Document 392.

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32. Memorandum from the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs to the Acting Secretary of State, March 14, 1959, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Document 393; Susser, Jordan: Case Study, 19–20. 33. Israeli Embassy in Washington to Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, April 13, 1962, Hetz 3378/11; October 7, 1963, Hetz 3378/16, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem; State Department Memorandum of Conversation Between President Kennedy and Golda Meir, December 27, 1962, FRUS (1961–1963), Vol. XVIII, Near East (1962–1963), 276–283. 34. Memo of Conversation Between Special Assistant to US President for National Security Affairs and Ambassador of Israel, February 16, 1961, FRUS (1961–1963), Vol. XVII, Near East (1961–1962), Document 12. 35. National Intelligence Estimate, Nasser and the Future of Arab Nationalism, June 27, 1961, FRUS (1961–1963), Vol. XVII, Near East (1961–1962), Document 68. 36. Memo from Department of State Executive Secretary to President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, September 30, 1961, FRUS (1961–1963), Vol. XVII, Near East (1961–1962), Document 114. 37. Memos from National Security Council Staff to President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, September 30 and December 8, 1961, FRUS (1961– 1963), Vol. XVII, Near East (1961–1962), Documents 115 and 149. 38. Memo from Department of State Executive Secretary to President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, November 16, 1961; Memo from Secretary of State Rusk to President Kennedy, January 10, 1962; Memo from National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, January 23, 1962; Special National Intelligence Estimate, March 28, 1962, FRUS (1961–1963), Near East (1961–1962), Vol. XVII, Documents 141, 159, 173, and 225. 39. Memo from National Security Council Staff to President Kennedy, May 28, 1962, FRUS (1961–1963), Near East (1961–1962), Vol. XVII, Document 279. 40. Letter from President Johnson to President Nasser, February 27, 1964, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (1964–1967), Document 20. 41. Dann, King Hussein and the Challenge of Arab Radicalism, 131; Report from Foreign Office to British Embassy Washington, April 28, 1963, FO 371/170182, Records of Jordan, 1919–1965, 14:74–75. 42. Memo by the Director of the Office of Near Eastern Affairs, April 25, 1963; Memo for the Record, Minutes of the Special Group Meeting, November 21, 1963, FRUS (1961–1963), Vol. XVIII, Near East (1962–1963), Documents 219 and 369. 43. Memo of Conversation Between Acting Secretary of State and Ambassador of Israel, April 27, 1963; Telegrams from Department of State to US Embassy in United Arab Republic, April 27 and May 27, 1963; Memo from National Security Council Staff to President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, April 30, 1963, FRUS (1961–1963), Vol. XVIII, Near East (1962–1963), Documents 224, 225, 230, and 257. Emphasis in original. 44. Telegram from Department of State to US Embassy in Syria, October 19, 1963, FRUS (1961–1963), Vol. XVIII, Near East (1962–1963), Document 345. 45. Susser, Jordan: Case Study, 27–29. 46. Cohen, “Political Parties in the West Bank Under the Hashemite Regime,” 48. 47. This was at the time of the anti–Baghdad Pact riots in Jordan at the end of 1955: US Embassy in Jordan to Department of State, January 5, 1956; Memo of Conversation Between Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs (Allen) and the Jordanian Ambassador (Rifa’i), Department of State, Washington DC, January 28, 1956, FRUS (1955–1957), Vol. XIII, Near East: Jordan-Yemen, Documents 11 and 18. 48. Beeri, “Separatist Trends,” 30–52 (Hebrew).

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49. This term is borrowed from Kerr, The Arab Cold War. 50. Shemesh, Palestinian Entity, 3–7, 12–14. 51. Mahafza, Abhath wa-ara’ fi ta’rikh al-Urdunn al-hadith, 67. 52. “Al-Mamlaka al-Urdunniyya al-Hashimiyya, wizarat al-kharijiyya,” alUrdunn wal-qadiyya al-Filastiniyya wal-alaqat al-Arabiyya. 53. Filastin (Jerusalem), July 3, 1962. 54. Speeches by Hussein in April and May 1962, al-Manar (Jerusalem), April 26, 1962; Filastin (Jerusalem), May 27, 1962. 55. Shemesh, Palestinian Entity, 37. 56. From Embassy in Jordan to Department of State, May 8, 1965, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (1964–1967), Document 213. 57. Harkabi, Arabs and Israel, 3–4:25 (Hebrew). 58. Article 24 of the PLO Charter (1964). 59. Al-Gumhuriyya (Cairo), February 24, 1965; Filastin (Jerusalem), February 25, 1965. 60. British Embassy Amman, Jordan: Annual Summary for 1964, January 7, 1965, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 928. 61. Regional News Service (Beirut), February 24, 1965. 62. Radio Cairo, Voice of Palestine, May 6, 1965. 63. Al-Difa’ (Jerusalem), May 10, 1965. 64. Radio Amman, May 13, 1965. 65. Radio Cairo, Voice of Palestine, May 15, 1965; Radio Cairo, May 31, 1965. 66. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 129. 67. Al-Hayat (Beirut), April 14, 15, 1966. 68. Al-Hayat (Beirut), April 14, 1966. 69. Harkabi, The Arabs and Israel, 69–70. 70. Radio Cairo, Voice of Palestine, June 9, 1966. 71. Filastin (Jerusalem), June 15, 1966. 72. Radio Cairo, Voice of Palestine, June 17, 1966. 73. Kedourie, “The Kingdom of Iraq,” 281; Dann, Iraq Under Qassem, 30. 74. Interview with Ruz al-Yusuf (Cairo), July 4, 1966; Radio Cairo, October 25, 1966. 75. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 120, 134–135, 137. 76. Memos of Conversations Between King Hussein and US President Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, April 14, 15, 1964; US Embassy in Jordan to Department of State, April 8, 1965, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, ArabIsraeli Dispute (1964–1967), Documents 39, 40, and 203. 77. Department of State to US Embassy in Israel, February 6, 1965, Memo for Robert W. Komer of National Security Council Staff, February 10, 1965, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (1964–1967), Documents 137 and 146. 78. Department of State to US Embassy in Israel, February 13, 1965; US Embassy in Israel to Department of State, February 15, 1965; Memo from President Johnson to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Harriman) and Robert W. Komer of National Security Council Staff, February 21, 1965; US Embassy in Jordan to Department of State, March 12, 1965; US Embassy in Jordan to Department of State, April 22, 1965, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (1964–1967), Documents 148, 150, 157, 188, and 209. 79. Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War, 105. 80. Memo of Conversation Between Secretary McNamara and Israeli Foreign Minister Eban in Washington, DC, February 12, 1966; Memo from the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Komer) to President Johnson,

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February 22, 1966; Memo from Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (McNaughton) to Secretary of Defense McNamara, March 31, 1966, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (1964–1967), Documents 271, 273, and 283. 81. Memos from the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, June 16, 21, 1966, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (1964–1967), Documents 300 and 304. 82. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 196–201, 207–209, 212–214, 220–222; Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 41–43; Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 95. 83. Oren, Six Days of War, 34–35; Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 124–128, 138–139. 84. Oren, Six Days of War, 45. 85. Department of State to US Embassy in Israel, November 13, 1966; Memo from the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, November 15, 1966; Department of State to US Embassy in Israel, November 15, 1966; Memo from the President’s Special Assistant (Komer) to President Johnson, November 16, 1966; Memo from W. Howard Wriggins and Harold H. Saunders of the National Security Council Staff to President’s Special Assistant (Rostow), November 16, 1966; From W. Howard Wriggins of the National Security Council Staff to President Johnson in Texas, November 23, 1966; Memo from the President’s Special Assistant (Rostow) to President Johnson, December 2, 1966, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (1964–1967), Documents 332, 333, 335, 336, 337, 346, and 355. 86. Memo from Acting Secretary of State Katzenbach to President Johnson, December 12, 1966; Department of State to US Embassy in Israel, December 14, 1966; Memo of Conversation Between Secretary of Defense McNamara and Major General Khammash of Jordan, December 13, 1966, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (1964–1967), Documents 365, 366, and 367. 87. US Embassy in Jordan to Department of State, December 11, 1966, FRUS (1964–1968), Vol. XVIII, Arab-Israeli Dispute (1964–1967), Document 362. 88. Oren, Six Days of War, 42–47, 52. 89. There is a “gamut of theories” on the matter, from an effort to bolster Abd al-Nasir’s stature and to cement the Soviet-Syrian alliance to an effort to deter Israel or even possible Soviet misinterpretation of their own intelligence. See, e.g., Oren, Six Days of War, 54–55; Morris, Righteous Victims, 305. 90. Oren, Six Days of War, 64–65. 91. Shlaim, Iron Wall, 237. See, e.g., Radio Amman, September 2, 1962; Wasfi al-Tall news conference on Radio Amman, November 21, 1966; Filastin (Jerusalem), November 22, 1966. 92. Kam, Husayn Goes to War, 14 (Hebrew); Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 236. 93. Hussein, My “War” with Israel, 126. 94. Oren, Six Days of War, 82–83. 95. Morris, Righteous Victims, 306. 96. Oren, Six Days of War, 55, 83. 97. Findley Burns interview with the author in Washington DC, September 23, 1987. 98. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 240. 99. Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 95, 104. 100. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 246–247, 251. 101. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 241. 102. Mutawi, Jordan in the 1967 War, 77, 130; Oren, Six Days of War, 35–36, 184.

3

The 1967 War: Demise of the Post-1948 Political Order

THOUGH THE JORDANIANS WERE SERIOUSLY CHALLENGED BY THE revival of the Palestinian entity, the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the initiation of Fatah armed operations against Israel from Jordanian territory, they had managed to maintain effective control of the West Bank. Until May 1967, in the contest between Jordan and the PLO, Jordan still had the upper hand. How the Jordan–West Bank relationship would have evolved, had it not been for the Six-Day War, is a matter of conjecture. Certain, however, is that Jordan’s loss of the West Bank was the beginning of a new era in the relationship between Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinians.

The Aftermath and Historical Meaning of the 1967 War

As long as Jordan had ruled effectively over both banks of the river, it also exercised virtually unfettered state control over the great majority (some 70 percent) of the Palestinian people who were citizens of Jordan. By virtue of its control over this population, Jordan also justified its claim to represent Palestine. Both banks of the Jordan were, and remain, the area of decision of the Palestinian question. As long as the PLO was denied a secure foothold in this territory, its capacity to realize the organization’s historical objective of remobilizing the Palestinians as an autonomous political force in the Arab arena was doomed to failure. All this changed irrevocably in June 1967.

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Jordan, Palestine, and the Politics of Collective Identity

After the 1967 war Jordan lost its manipulative control over the main territorial hub of Arab Palestine. The process of the Jordanization of the Palestinians in the West Bank was arrested. The lid of Jordanian containment was finally removed, paving the way for a counterprocess of rePalestinization of the Arab-Israeli conflict. For the first time since 1948, all the Palestinians in former British Mandatory Palestine were united, albeit holding different civil statuses; some were Israeli citizens, and most were under Israeli military occupation, ruled by one sovereign government, that of Israel. For the first time in nearly twenty years, Palestinians from the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel could be in more or less regular contact. They were no longer totally isolated from each other under the rule of three different governments. Moreover, the physical presence of the Israeli occupation, as the stimulus for the collective mobilization of Palestinian nationalist energy, served to revive and revitalize the particular Palestinian identity and national struggle. For the Palestinians the Israeli occupation was fundamentally illegitimate from the outset, and as such it was universally opposed. And this rejection in and of itself focused the hearts and minds of Palestinians in a uniformity of national cohesion and consciousness unknown before 1967. If Palestinians had relied heavily on the deliverance of the other Arabs before the war of 1967, self-reliance became an article of faith in the wake of the crushing defeat of the regular armies of the Arab confrontation states. The Arab collective had been hurled from the heights of euphoric expectation to the depths of its most humiliating defeat in living memory. The popular belief in the messianic omnipotence of Nasserism was shattered overnight. The guiding principles of Fatah—national unity, united representation, and independent decisionmaking—now seemed to offer the only avenue of hope for the Palestinians. The armed struggle modeled after the Algerian experience—or, alternatively, after the Vietcong or Che Guevara—was to become the widely accepted symbol of resistance.1 The PLO was transformed by Yasir Arafat and Fatah into an umbrella organization for the plethora of Palestinian paramilitary factions, of which Fatah was the backbone and unchallenged powerbroker. The left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) were the next two most important groups under the common roof of the PLO. Like Fatah, the PFLP and DFLP also enjoyed considerable popular following as organizations that stood for Palestinian political independence, less constrained by the manipulative control of any of the Arab regimes, as the other smaller factions tended to be. Guerrilla warfare was nothing more than empty talk without a territorial haven from whence to operate against Israel. Initially Fatah sought

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to strike root in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Israeli security services proved to be too efficient in what was, after all, a relatively small geographical area. Jordan, on the other side of the river, was the ideal alternative. An effective autonomous territorial haven, which would guarantee the PLO’s freedom of action and independence of decision, had to answer to three main preconditions: it had to have a border with Israel across which operations could be carried out regularly; it had to have as large a Palestinian population as possible as a reservoir of political support and recruits for the cause; and it had to have a relatively weak central government that would be incapable of restricting or controlling Palestinian freedom of action. Jordan answered all three more than any other Arab state, though the relatively weak central government proved to be a transitory phenomenon that characterized Jordan in the first years after the 1967 war but did not become a permanent feature, as later events would prove. Jordan, in the eyes of Fatah leaders, was the ideal base for deployment. The Palestinian revolution would be no more than a “revolution on a flying carpet” unless they could secure Jordan as a safe haven.2 Until 1970, Jordan became the most effective base of operations the PLO was ever to possess, and its loss in 1970–1971 would be a historical watershed in the fate of the armed struggle and in the annals of Fatah and the PLO as a whole. The fida’i struggle catapulted the Palestinians and Palestine to center stage to the extent that they posed a real threat to the kingdom as the PLO presence whittled away at Jordanian sovereignty. This was Jordan’s rather prolonged hour of weakness. King Hussein allowed the fida’iyyun the foothold in Jordan that he had so resolutely denied them in the West Bank in the period before the 1967 war. Jordan, in the initial phase after the war, had neither the will nor the power to resist the PLO entrenchment in Jordan when the prestige of the fida’iyyun, as the standard bearers of Arab dignity in the struggle against Israel, was at an all-time high. But the PLO overplayed its hand. In the summer of 1970, the PLO factions, especially those on the left, convinced themselves that they were on the cusp of a successful revolution against the Hashemites. This, however, proved to be a very costly misjudgment of Jordanian resilience, one committed by many before and since. The PLO lost its safe haven in Jordan and entered a new phase in its history, marked by a dwindling intensity of the armed struggle, coupled with a more sustained effort to secure a place at the table of the Middle East peace process. Fatah and the PLO, with less of the heroic fida’i imagery, had difficulty in redefining their raison d’être and in preserving internal cohesion. The alternative haven that the PLO had set up in Lebanon in the 1970s was a very poor second best to Jordan. But once forced out of

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Lebanon by Israel in 1982, the much-weakened PLO was left without a usable territorial haven. The modest facilities in Tunis, to which they were banished from Lebanon, were far from the homeland and hardly an effective base of operations. The PLO, with no base of political autonomy, was once again at the mercy of the Arab regimes and in noticeable political decline. The center of gravity of the Palestinian national endeavor was shifting from the Diaspora, where the PLO had functioned since its inception, to the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza. The revolutionaries who had founded Fatah in the late 1950s were now way past their prime. They were succeeded by the younger generation of Palestinians who had matured under the Israeli occupation and who, having despaired of liberation by the Arabs or by the PLO, rose in rebellion against the Israelis in the First Intifada of 1987. The active core of the Palestinian struggle was now firmly rooted in the West Bank and Gaza, not in the refugee camps of the Diaspora or the hotels of Tunis. The tectonic plates of Palestinian politics had shifted. The PLO’s troubles were compounded by its wayward support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the 1990–1991 Gulf War. The revenge of the Saudis and the other wealthy Gulf states bankrupted the organization. The PLO had to find a way into the area of decision of Palestinian politics or risk being consigned to the dustbin of history. Signing the Oslo Accords in September 1993 was the only lifesaver in sight. But Oslo eventually turned sour, resulting in an even more finite emasculation of the PLO. While the 1970 war between Jordan and the PLO had set in motion a process of historical retreat for the PLO, it was a great loss for Jordan as well. Though the crushing of the fida’iyyun had saved the Hashemite Kingdom, in terms of Jordan’s representative role in Palestinian affairs, this was a pyrrhic victory. After they had decimated the fighting forces of the Palestinian national movement, hardly anything remained of the Jordanians’ already tarnished and questionable legitimacy to represent the cause of Palestine. As for the PLO, in retrospect, these developments could be characterized as the beginning of the end of the PLO’s singular reliance on the armed struggle and the initiation of a long process of PLO political decline. As of 1970 (notwithstanding some successful intervening years in Lebanon in the late 1970s and early 1980s), the PLO’s decline, accelerated by Israel’s Lebanese incursion of 1982, was also the retreat of the more secular version of the Palestinian national revival. With Islamism on the rise throughout the region, the PLO’s setback in the field set the stage for the eventual rise of Hamas and the escalation of the struggle for the Islamization of Palestine. But in the immediate aftermath of the

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1967 war, it looked as though Palestinian history was about to be decided by the guns of the fida’iyyun. Filastin al-thawra, Palestine of the revolution, reigned supreme.

The Heyday of the Fida’iyyun

The Six-Day War was a watershed in the history of the Middle East that changed the face of the region. The PLO, which, prior to 1967, had had great difficulty functioning effectively without a secure foothold in Jordan’s West Bank, now established a “state within a state” on Jordan’s East Bank. The late 1960s were to become the heyday of the fida’iyyun. They fired the imagination of the Arabs as a whole and of the Palestinians in particular. It was they, and initially only they, who proudly continued to resist Israel, to reclaim the self-respect of the Arabs that had been shattered by the humiliating defeat. They recast the image of the Palestinian people, from forsaken refugees steeped in their misery to heroic freedom fighters. Liberation, not pity, was the order of the day. King Hussein could hardly afford to be a passive bystander, and he was certainly in no position to resist, as they steadily commandeered more and more of his kingdom. In pre-1967 Jordan, it would have been unthinkable for Hussein to have even considered permission for such an influential armed fida’i presence in his realm. But after the war, with his army still reeling from the defeat, and in the belief that cooperation with the fida’iyyun might allow for at least a measure of control over their actions, Hussein chose to allow the PLO factions to establish their stronghold in Jordan. There was yet another consideration. For a moment Hussein even believed, maybe out of desperation, that Jordan and the fida’iyyun had some common interests. If the fida’iyyun were to cross over from Jordan into the West Bank to carry out operations against the Israeli occupation, it might rattle the Israelis, raise the price of occupation, and hasten an Israeli withdrawal. But Jordan did not need operations that obviously originated on the East Bank, like firing across the border, or involved infiltration by operatives who entered from and returned to Jordanian territory. These were bound to provoke Israeli retaliation. Since the latter type of operations were considerably easier to perform, these became the pattern, and, as could only be expected, Israeli retaliation was swift, fierce, and costly. On March 21, 1968, the Israelis carried out a large-scale operation against a fida’i stronghold in the East Bank town of Karama, in the Jordan Valley. Heavy losses were inflicted on the fida’iyyun, with ninetytwo killed and many taken prisoner. The Israelis suffered unexpectedly

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high casualties of their own. Twenty-eight soldiers were killed, and uncharacteristically, bodies and damaged equipment were left in the field. The fida’iyyun were greeted as heroes when they staged a historic victory parade, with the Israeli equipment, in Amman on the following day. The fida’iyyun were “the heroes of the hour, and Arafat was the hero of heroes.”3 Through “romanticism, wishful thinking, and deliberate distortions,” the Palestinians manufactured the myth of Karama, which became a symbol of fida’i prowess and a vindication of the entire strategy of “popular liberation war.” Karama (which coincidentally means “dignity” in Arabic) became the symbol of fida’i victory and success. Thousands of young Palestinians flocked to join the ranks of the various fida’i factions. In terms of imagery and mythology, Karama was an incredible coup for the fida’iyyun, and it did not matter that Jordanian infantry, artillery, and armor had actually inflicted most of the damage on the Israelis.4 It took years for the Jordanians to claim their place of pride in the battle, though Karama continued to appear in the annals of the fida’iyyun as the greatest victory of the “popular liberation war.” After Karama even the king proclaimed, “We have come to the point now where we are all fida’iyyun.”5 The Jordanian state was in retreat as the fida’iyyun were gradually taking over the kingdom. The fida’iyyun who had left the front line after fierce Israeli retaliation were establishing control of the country’s Palestinian refugee camps, including those in the heart of the capital. The fida’iyyun had not just their own military but their own hospitals, judicial system, prisons, schools, and taxation, as they gradually formed a kind of state-in-the-making. Their armed men seized control of the public space, “behaving as if they owned the place.”6 In February 1970, in an effort to restore state authority, Minister of Interior Muhammad Rasul al-Kaylani, a former director of the mukhabarat (the domestic intelligence service) and a noted stalwart of the Hashemite regime, issued a list of orders designed to rein in the fida’iyyun and subordinate them to the authority of the state. They were to shed their uniforms and guns in the cities, to license their vehicles, and generally to behave themselves. Kaylani’s orders were brushed aside by the fida’iyyun, and within less than a fortnight, in a rather feeble display of royal infirmity, the king dismissed Kaylani, whose orders “were discreetly ignored.”7 Hussein was not standing up for his own, and it got progressively worse. In June he acceded to PLO demands that he remove senior army officers of whom the fida’iyyun disapproved. The officers in question, Commander in Chief Nasir bin Jamil and Zayd bin Shakir, commander of the Third Armored Division, were the king’s uncle and cousin,

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respectively.8 Not for the first time in the kingdom’s history, many from within the country, and more from without, began to treat the monarchy as if its days were numbered. The regime began to resemble an empty shell that had lost its will to survive. Hussein’s indecision, however, had sound reasoning. He fully realized that a war with the PLO, which was what a collision meant, could spell the loss of the last remnant of legitimacy for Jordan’s historical role in the Palestine question. At the same time, however, Hussein’s concessions to the fida’iyyun were undermining the East Bank establishment. Key personalities from the royal family all rallied behind Hussein, including his mother, Zayn (who had a “flair for Realpolitik,”9 was deeply involved, and wielded considerable influence over her son), his younger brother Hasan, his uncle Sharif Nasir bin Jamil, and his cousin Zayd bin Shakir; from the East Bank elite, he had support across the board, from former prime minister Wasfi al-Tall of the northern town of Irbid, to Amman-born palace adviser Zayd al-Rifa’i, and on to Brigadier Qasim Mu’ayta, another active senior army officer from the southern town of Karak. They fully supported the institution of the monarchy and the personality of the king. They appealed to Hussein, contending that he had gone too far to avoid confrontation and that he was endangering the existence of the regime. The fida’iyyun had to be subdued.10 The state within a state—or as the fida’iyyun tended to call it, the “dual power” structure (izdiwajiyyat al-sulta)11—had become intolerable. Among the fida’iyyun there was a similar division between Arafat and most of the Fatah leadership, on the one hand, and, on the other, the more radical left-wing factions, the PFLP and the DFLP, who were pressing for an immediate showdown with the monarchy. The Hashemites, the Marxists argued, had to be overthrown to transform Amman into “the Hanoi” of the Palestinian struggle.12 Fatah did not disagree in principle, but taking on the regime prematurely, Arafat feared, might endanger the existence of the PLO’s vitally important Jordanian haven.13 In the summer of 1970, the “War of Attrition” that had been steadily escalating between Israel and Egypt along the Suez Canal came to an end with the acceptance by both sides of a US-brokered cease-fire in late July. Egypt and Israel agreed to embark upon negotiations on the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 242. Jordan followed suit, expressing its own willingness to participate in such a peace process that would relate also to the future of the West Bank. For the PLO these were ominous developments.14 If Jordan and Egypt arrived at agreements with Israel, the Palestinian question would be settled based on recognition of, and peace with, the Jewish state, essentially nullifying the PLO’s raison d’être.

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For the radical factions time was of the essence. Jordan had to be prevented at all costs from joining in such a process. In the assessment of the Marxist factions, the Jordanian “masses,” including many of the rank and file of the military, 15 like their Palestinian brethren, were supportive of the fida’iyyun. In their view the monarchy was on the verge of collapse. One decisive thrust would force it into the abyss. Just like the regime, they had concluded that the “dual power” formula had outlived its usefulness, but for the Marxists that meant the forceful overthrow of the Hashemites.16 They were not alone in their assessment of the regime’s apparent frailty. Most foreign observers, including American diplomats in Amman, State Department analysts in Washington, and their Foreign and Commonwealth Office counterparts in London, were of the opinion that the monarchy was doomed and that it was only a matter of time before the Hashemites were swept away by the fida’iyyun.17 On September 1, Hussein’s convoy was ambushed on its way to the Amman airport in what the regime understood to have been a deliberate attempt by DFLP fighters to assassinate the king. A few days later the PFLP landed three hijacked aircraft at an unused airfield near Zarqa just north of Amman, holding hundreds of foreign passengers hostage. Jordan appeared completely out of control. The army was humiliated by the fida’iyyun, who made a mockery of the monarchy and of Jordanian sovereignty. Hussein and his allies in the political elite finally decided that it had become an existential imperative to demolish the PLO haven in Jordan. As the government began mobilizing its forces, the Fatah leadership lost its former self-control. Many in Fatah now assumed the self-assurance of the left-wing factions coupled with the belief that the fida’iyyun could seize power if they so desired. In the words of a key figure in Fatah, Faruq al-Qaddumi, the king was a “paper tiger” whom they could “topple in half an hour.”18 Fatah was now in league with the leftist factions and an enemy of the state, just as the Marxists had always been.19 If the regime had made a distinction in the past between Fatah and the left-wing factions, it now lumped them all together as mortal enemies of the kingdom.

Jordan and the PLO Go to War

On September 16, Hussein announced the formation of a military government that was instructed to restore law and order throughout the country. The prime minister was a virtually unknown brigadier of Palestinian origin by the name of Muhammad Da’ud. There could, however, be no

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mistake. Da’ud was in office but not in power. The king and his most intimate advisers from the royal family and from the East Bank elite really called the shots. The men at the helm with Hussein were his younger brother Hasan, his uncle Nasir bin Jamil, his cousin Zayd bin Shakir (who in early August was reinstated in the military and promoted to deputy chief of staff for operations20), and former premier Wasfi al-Tall, advised by the directors of military intelligence and the mukhabarat, Muhammad Bashir and Nadhir Rashid, respectively.21 It was important for Hussein to signal that the regime was about to launch an all-out offensive against the fida’i military presence in the kingdom, but not against the Palestinians per se. 22 The war that came to be known in the Palestinian nationalist narrative as “Black September” ended in decisive fida’iyyun defeat. By July 1971 they were forced out of Jordan completely. The government forces were far better equipped and organized, and the fida’iyyun, over the long haul, were no match for them. Fighting began in earnest in the Amman area on September 17. On September 18, Syrian forces invaded Jordan and took the northern town of Irbid. The Syrians had dispatched two armored brigades and a brigade of commandos, accompanied by a Palestine Liberation Army brigade, in support of the fida’i war effort.23 The Syrian forces assembled some 300 tanks, and after having taken Irbid, they proceeded to dig in and consolidate their position in the north.24 With so much of its army committed to the war against the fida’iyyun in the Amman area, the Syrian invasion put Jordan under immense pressure. The United States and Israel came to Jordan’s assistance in an act of unprecedented strategic cooperation. Jordan’s active participation in the war in 1967 had not altered Israel’s fundamental interest in a stable Jordan under the Hashemite crown that would provide a secure buffer between Israel and Iraq and would forestall the formation of an eastern front under Syrian domination, stretching all the way from Rosh HaNiqra, on the border between Lebanon and Israel on the Mediterranean coast, to the Jordanian port of Aqaba, opposite the southern tip of Israel in Eilat. The United States believed it absolutely necessary to stand firmly by its friends in the region and to face down Abd al-Nasir and his Soviet allies. Henry Kissinger, the national security adviser to President Richard Nixon, was of the opinion that a Jordanian collapse could lead to renewed war in the Middle East. It was therefore of critical importance to demonstrate support for Jordan to make it clear that the friends of the United States were rewarded accordingly with firm American backing. The United States, Kissinger argued, could not stand by

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“dithering on the sidelines, wringing our hands . . . [and] proclaiming our impotence.”25 Desperate in the face of the Syrian invasion, Hussein appealed to the United States to arrange for an Israeli air strike on Syrian troops. Kissinger referred the request to Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Yitzhak Rabin.26 Some in the Israeli government preferred not to intervene and to let Hussein meet his fate. They believed that such Israeli passivity might pave the way for a Palestinian takeover of Jordan and thus set the stage for a convenient solution to the problem of Palestinian statehood. The majority of the Israeli leadership, however, favored a demonstration of determined support for the Hashemite monarchy.27 Momentarily, even a strike by Israeli ground forces against the Syrians was considered, either in northern Jordan or at the Syrian rear through the Golan. Israel mobilized reserves, who were driven northward in long convoys through the Jordan Valley for all to see and deployed in the Beit Shean area and on the southern Golan, opposite the Syrians, as Israeli reconnaissance aircraft flew over the invading Syrian forces. Hussein, however, was most reluctant to actually request Israeli boots on the ground in Jordan, and in any event the above maneuvers sufficed to send a stern Israeli message that it would not tolerate Syrian advances at Jordan’s expense.28 In the crunch, the Jordanians fought well and carried out coordinated tank, artillery, and air operations.29 Jordanian armor and air power inflicted heavy losses on the Syrians. Hafiz al-Asad, the Syrian minister of defense, who was by then “master of Syria in all but name,”30 refrained from committing the Syrian air force. As Asad put it, he “wanted to prevent escalation,” which presumably meant that he did not think the fida’iyyun were worth an “unequal combat with Israel.”31 The Soviet Union, not interested in a showdown over Syria,32 acceded to US pressure and urged the Syrians to withdraw. The Syrians, in need of a breather and worried about possible Israeli actions, readily complied. By September 23 the Syrians had retreated into their own territory, after having lost some 120 tanks and armored personnel carriers and sustained about 600 casualties.33 There had never been such a manifestation of US-Israeli strategic coordination on Jordan’s behalf; nor has there ever been since.34 The war with the fida’iyyun, however, was not over yet. After a few more days of heavy fighting in Amman and elsewhere in the kingdom, Arab intervention culminated in a meeting of Arab heads of state in Cairo in an effort to put an end to the bloodshed. On September 27, Hussein and Arafat signed the Cairo Agreement, which called upon the parties “to ensure both the continuation of fida’i action and the safeguard-

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ing of Jordan’s sovereignty within the law, allowing for such exceptions [from the law] as were necessary for the purpose of fida’i action.”35 This was a futile effort to reconcile the irreconcilable. Neither the Jordanians nor the fida’iyyun had any intention of implementing the agreement. The Jordanians were uncompromising and would no longer allow any “such exceptions” from the law. As for the fida’iyyun, they were equally determined to hang on to their essential foothold in Jordan. Halfway through the fighting Muhammad Da’ud resigned, profoundly embarrassed by his association with the merciless suppression of the fida’i movement. He was replaced on September 26 by another Palestinian, Ahmad Tuqan, who headed a civilian rather than a military government. Tuqan, like his predecessor, was not in control. Hussein was maneuvering for appearances, and the new appointments were no more than a provisional stopgap to placate Arab public opinion in preparation for the next round. On October 28, Tuqan, who had been resoundingly denounced by his family in Nablus for cooperating with a regime that was “destroying the Palestinian people,”36 was replaced by Wasfi al-Tall. Tall, the archetypal representative of the East Banker elite, had notorious anti-fida’i credentials and was one of the key architects of the September crackdown. At last there was complete correlation between the men in office and the men in power. The gloves were off, and Hussein cared less about appearances. The death of Abd al-Nasir on September 28, the day after the signing of the Cairo Agreement, made it considerably easier for Hussein to pay less heed to pan-Arab censure. Tall’s appointment signaled that the Jordanians intended to wage a relentless onslaught against the fida’iyyun, until the very last remnant of the fida’i redoubt had been uprooted. The time was ripe to launch a comprehensive policy of reconstruction. The fida’iyyun after September were in no position to resist effectively, and an Arab world in disarray was less inclined to interfere.37 Tall and many of the generals had never liked the Cairo Agreement. The army complained that it had not been allowed “to finish [the fida’iyyun] off once and for all.” As for Tall, he “did not believe in half measures; and many of the generals agreed with him.” The fida’iyyun were gradually driven out, stage by stage, town by town, until they were confined to their last stronghold in the wooded hills between Jarash and Ajlun. In mid-July 1971, “outnumbered, outgunned and outfought,” the fida’iyyun were finally defeated, and their Jordanian sanctuary existed no more. As one Palestinian observed, by their own indiscipline the fida’iyyun had “dug [their] own graves in Jordan. [They] were welcomed as heroes after Karama and then driven out like thieves in the night three years later.”38

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An epic chapter in the armed struggle had come to an end. From the apogee of their power in Jordan, buttressed by the magnetic appeal of the fida’i mystique and mythology of the late 1960s, the loss of the Jordanian haven initiated a prolonged period of almost linear decline for the fida’iyyun. The defeat in Jordan “represented a defeat of the strategy of people’s war championed by the various guerrilla groups since 1967, and posed a fundamental challenge to their professed aims, political programs, and organizational structure.”39 The armed struggle as initially conceived was over. Waged increasingly from the PLO’s new haven in Lebanon, the armed struggle evolved into something very different from “the people’s war.” In part it degenerated into international terrorism, exemplified most notoriously by the killing of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in September 1972. Such operations were not intended to liberate Palestine but to keep the cause of Palestine on the international agenda at a moment of profound fida’i weakness, dislocation, and internal discord. Matters improved somewhat as the fida’i sanctuary in Lebanon took shape in the mid-1970s. But Lebanon was a very poor alternative to Jordan. Contrary to the two banks of the Jordan, Lebanon was not the area of decision of the Palestinian question. Only a small a minority of the Palestinian people, less than 10 percent, lived in Lebanon; even more importantly, Lebanon did not offer direct access to the main territorial component of Arab Palestine in the West Bank. Operations conducted from Lebanon against Israeli objectives were difficult to carry out, on a much shorter and less porous frontier. Moreover, in Lebanon, just self-preservation was a constant struggle for the PLO against other Lebanese political players, the Syrians, and the Israelis. The loss of Jordan and its impact on the armed struggle forced the PLO to rethink its fundamental strategy toward Israel. The PLO had to seriously consider politics and diplomacy as an unavoidable means for attaining Palestinian national goals. For Jordan too the civil war was the end of an era. The kingdom of the East Bank had been saved from chaos and destruction, and Jordan as a state had given its doubters a lesson to remember on Jordanian staying power and survivability. As Jordanian nationalists appropriated the Battle of Karama into their historical narrative as the kingdom’s first war of independence, in which the Jordanians had effectively repulsed a foreign invasion of their country, so the “Black September” of the Palestinians was for many Jordanian nationalists their second war of independence, frequently referred to in their parlance as “White September” (eylul al-abyad).40 But the Hashemites paid a heavy price in Palestinian currency for their victory. Henceforth Jordanian claims to speak for the Palestinians

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in the West Bank would sound evermore hollow and implausible. A new generation, which had not known Jordanian rule, was growing up in the West Bank under Israeli occupation, looking increasingly to the PLO for political salvation. For them, Hussein of “Black September” was the “Hashemite Nero” and the “butcher of Jordan” with whom all bridges had been burnt.41 Hussein’s army had crushed the hopes of the Palestinians for deliverance by armed struggle, and among the West Bankers, the constituency that Hussein had always regarded as vitally important to keep on his side, attitudes toward Jordan turned hostile. The traditional leadership, businessmen and big farmers, who had strong ties to Jordan, and civil servants, who still received their salaries from Jordan, preserved their links to Jordan largely for reasons of instrumental interest. As for the working class and the younger generation, they had no similar ties, and they became supporters of the PLO and vocal critics of Jordan.42 In these circumstances, the reestablishment of the representative credentials of the Hashemites among the Palestinians would prove an uphill battle. Jordan gradually lost any remnant of a credible claim to control the Palestinian destiny.

The Fight for the Mantle of Representation

In the immediate aftermath of the civil war in Jordan, the PLO was at the all-time low point of its political development. The initial wave of extreme condemnation of Hussein among West Bankers subsided, and local leaders there still spoke of the West Bank as an integral part of Jordan.43 Hussein, who was in desperate need of a new formula for JordanianPalestinian relations, sought to exploit the PLO’s hour of weakness to ensure continued Jordanian centrality in the determination of the political fate of the Palestinians. In March 1972, less than a year after the final expulsion of the fida’iyyun, Hussein announced his plan for the formation of the United Arab Kingdom. This was to be a federative union between the East and West Banks, based on an autonomous region of Jordan on the East Bank (qutr al-Urdunn), with Amman as its capital, and an autonomous region of Palestine (qutr Filastin) on the West Bank and any other Palestinian territory that “would be liberated,” with Arab Jerusalem as its capital.44 Hussein had finally come to the conclusion that Jordan had no choice but to recognize Palestinian rights to self-determination in a political entity of their own. It was no longer a realistic proposition to return to the pre-1967 formula of unity.45 This was a historic turning point. Jordan under King Hussein was downgrading its role in Palestine from inheritor to partner, albeit senior partner. In later years that would evolve further, as it became a partnership

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of equals between Jordan and the PLO; eventually Jordan’s role was reduced to no more than that of an interested outsider. The federation plan recognized the Palestinians’ right to autonomous government, with a parliament and a judiciary of their own in the Palestinian region. Yet it simultaneously assured East Bank constitutional, political, and symbolic supremacy. The king would remain the head of state and chief executive authority of the United Arab Kingdom. The federation would have one military, directly subordinate to the king, who would remain the commander in chief. Defense and foreign affairs and all matters pertaining to the kingdom as a unified international personality would be in the hands of the federal government that would unite both autonomous regions, and Amman would be the capital of the United Arab Kingdom.46 The federation was an attempt to reassert Jordan’s representative credentials in Palestinian affairs. Over the heads of the PLO, Hussein appealed to all Palestinians wherever they were.47 Above all, Hussein’s appeal was addressed to the Palestinians in the West Bank in the hope that they would be sufficiently receptive for him to pry the people away from the PLO, offering them not only autonomy but also a possible way out of the Israeli occupation. This was to be a constant refrain in Jordanian policy for years thereafter: it was the people of the West Bank themselves (and by implication Palestinians elsewhere too) who had the inalienable right to determine their own fate, not the PLO. Hussein consistently distinguished between the organization and “the people.” The PLO was fundamentally illegitimate, not elected by anyone, imposing itself by force and intimidation, whereas the people were the democratic source of authority and should therefore be allowed to freely make their own choices.48 The response from the West Bankers was far from an enthusiastic endorsement but not a universal rejection either. The older generation of pro-Jordanian notables represented a shrinking constituency.49 Palestinian nationalists and the younger generation, whose support for the PLO was constantly increasing, greeted the federation plan with suspicion.50 Hussein’s proposal was made shortly before municipal elections that the Israelis were organizing in the occupied West Bank. The PLO suspected that the federation plan was a product of Jordanian-Israeli collusion designed to produce an alternative leadership in the West Bank that would lead the West Bankers into accepting the federation as an agreeable alternative to the Israeli occupation. The PLO leadership panicked; it hastily convened a Popular Palestinian Conference in Cairo in early April 1972 to denounce Hussein and his plan and to pressure Palestinians not to lend any credibility to the Jordanian venture. As much as Hussein sought to reestablish the Hashemite

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mantle of representation of the Palestinian cause, so the PLO endeavored to destroy it without trace. For the organization, all the Palestinian people were united as one under the PLO, their “sole legitimate representative.” As a “popular conference,” it was intended to convey the message that this was not just another meeting of the PLO and its quasi-parliamentary body, the Palestine National Council, but an all-inclusive conference that fully represented all Palestinians. Neither Jordan nor Israel permitted Palestinians from their territories to participate while the conference condemned the federation plan as a Jordanian-Israeli conspiracy. The draft political platform presented to the “popular conference” noted that the “need to struggle to overthrow the agent regime in Jordan, because it was a line of defense for the Zionist state and because of its organic connection to Israel, had become as urgent as the need to continue the struggle against the Zionist occupation.”51 While the PLO offered the Palestinians more armed struggle, Hussein was proposing an agreement with Israel as an alternative to the occupation. That, however, required coordination with the Israelis. The federation plan, as much as it was addressed to the Palestinians in the West Bank, was similarly directed to the government of Israel, though Hussein did not spell this out. But in a speech before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, the day after the publication of the federation idea, Prime Minister Golda Meir summarily dismissed Hussein’s proposal as “presumptuous and unilateral.”52 Israel was not interested in a negotiation on withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries (with minor reciprocal modifications) and the redivision of Jerusalem, which were Hussein’s consistent territorial desiderata.53 Subsequently Arafat contended that if Israel had accepted Hussein’s proposal, the king would have shown up in Jerusalem on the morrow to sign a peace treaty, and that would have spelled the end of the PLO. As Arafat told one of his biographers, the organization would “have been finished. Absolutely finished. Sometimes I think we are lucky to have the Israelis for our enemies. They have saved us many times!”54 After the October War in 1973, once the Arab League had recognized the PLO as the “sole legitimate” representative of the Palestinians in October 1974, the chances of an Israeli-Jordanian agreement over the West Bank gradually disappeared. Jordan’s participation in the October War was only partial and indirect. That did not help the kingdom either. Mutual trust between Hussein and his Arab brethren was nonexistent, and after the war the Israelis had more urgent concerns than dealing with the Jordanians. On the Arab side, President Anwar al-Sadat of Egypt treated Hussein personally, and Jordan as a state, with a combination of hostility and disdain, which naturally

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irritated Hussein. Sadat and his partner in war with Israel, President Hafiz al-Asad of Syria, did not share their secret plans with Hussein. They could never have been absolutely certain that he would not pass them on to the United States or Israel. Hussein, even before the 1967 war and definitely afterward, had no interest in war with Israel. Jordan literally had everything to lose. War with Israel, having resulted in the loss of the West Bank, might end in the loss of the East Bank too, and with it the kingdom in its entirety. Jordan was completely exposed to Israel’s decisive air superiority. As opposed to either Egypt or Syria, Jordan had no really effective antiaircraft defense system. Jordan acquired its first antiaircraft missile batteries, US Hawks, only after the October War, and even then they were restricted by the United States for use only in stationary emplacements. Furthermore, ever since the exhausting and bloody struggle against the PLO forces in Jordan, the Jordanians had become steadily more convinced that in the Arab world, Palestinian and other forces were bent on the destruction of Jordan to set up an “alternative homeland” for the Palestinians in its place. In Israel, too, there were those on the political right who believed in such a solution to the Palestinian problem, adding further to Jordan’s anxieties, which were slowly but surely developing into an obsession. In the summer of 1973, as part of Egypt’s diplomatic preparations for war with Israel, the question of Palestinian statehood was discussed in the Arab arena with increasing intensity. Egypt also raised the issue in the UN Security Council. From an unexpected quarter, Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba, who unlike Sadat was not at all traditionally indisposed toward Jordan, publicly expressed what the Jordanians feared were the private sentiments of many Arabs on the question of Palestine. In an interview to the leading Lebanese daily, al-Nahar, Bourguiba argued that Jordan had no real right to exist. He urged the Palestinians to accept the UN partition resolution of 1947 and to establish their independent state accordingly. That was nothing new. He was just recycling an idea he had already put forward in 1965. Now, however, he was also asked about the possible Jordanian reaction to a proposal that would be denying them the right to retrieve the West Bank for themselves. Bourguiba’s response was telling. He explained that in actual fact Jordan was part of Palestine, and its existence as a separate state “was an artificial matter. . . . Palestine was the basis and the foundation.” The Arabs, therefore, had not only to accept the partition resolution but to correct “the artificial situation that Britain had created in Transjordan.”55

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In inter-Arab circumstances such as these, in more or less “splendid” isolation, when Hussein got wind of Egyptian and Syrian preparations for war with Israel, he suspected that a grand Arab conspiracy might be afoot to entangle Jordan in an undesirable war in which it would lose the East Bank too. Then, so he thought, the “alternative homeland” for the Palestinians, spanning both banks of the river, would be established on the ruins of the Hashemite Kingdom. Hussein was so apprehensive about possible war that he did not hesitate to share his concerns with Israel. On September 25, 1973, Hussein met secretly with Prime Minister Golda Meir in Tel Aviv. He gave her his assessment that without diplomatic progress toward a settlement, war might soon break out. He was not privy to the operational details of the Egyptian and Syrian plans, but he was aware of their general intention. He knew that from them directly, as they had requested that Jordan prepare for possible war and, in such an eventuality, cover the Syrian army’s southern flank. He also had good intelligence from his own sources. But he was apparently unaware of the “H hour” of the Egyptian-Syrian offensive until just twenty-four hours before the actual outbreak of war on October 6.56 When war broke out, simultaneously on the Suez and Golan fronts, Hussein treated the initial Egyptian and Syrian reports of their impressive successes in the battlefield with suspicion and disbelief. With the misleading information fed to him by the Egyptians in 1967 still fresh in his memory, Hussein was wary of being duped again by his Arab brethren. On this occasion, however, their optimistic reports were correct, and they had indeed broken through the Israeli lines on both fronts. Israel, caught by surprise by the coordinated Egyptian-Syrian onslaught, was in truly dire straits in the first few days of the war. On October 9 Israel sent a very strongly worded message to Hussein, warning him of the most serious consequences for any decision he might take to open a third front against Israel along the Jordan.57 On October 11 Hussein dispatched Gen. Amir Khammash, a former chief of staff and one of his most experienced officers, to Cairo with a message for Sadat that Jordan could not actively partake in this war without receiving air support. Sadat, who by this time was beginning to feel that Egypt’s initial gains in the war were slipping away, was not convinced. He wanted Jordan to open a third front against Israel or at least accept the PLO demand from Jordan to allow Palestinian fighters to attack Israeli objectives through Jordan. The Jordanians adamantly rejected both ideas, lest they be exposed to the full force of Israeli retribution.58 The Jordanians also successfully intercepted Palestinian guerrillas infiltrating into Jordan from Syria.59

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Hussein’s ideal compromise, between the embarrassment of standing aside and the mortal danger inherent in the opening of a third front, was to send Jordanian forces to fight on the Syrian front. The Jordanians had by then also developed other concerns related directly to their own defense. In their counterattack on the Golan, Israeli forces had pushed the Syrians back, giving rise to Jordanian fears of a possible Israeli outflanking maneuver into northern Jordan.60 One of the Jordanian army’s elite units, the crack 40th Armored Brigade, crossed into Syria on October 12—but not before the Jordanians had attempted to extract an assurance from Israel, through the Americans, that if and when Jordan dispatched its forces to the Golan front, Israel would not use this as a pretext to launch a frontal assault on Jordan itself. In the midst of a tough, grim, and most costly war, the Israelis were in no mood to make commitments to the Jordanians, essentially allowing them the privilege of making war against Israel at prearranged low cost.61 In practice, Israel did not attack Jordan. The Jordanian brigade was deployed in the field between the units of the Iraqi expeditionary force that had come to the aid of the Syrians and was stationed to the south of the Israeli “bulge” that the Israel Defense Forces had punched through in their counteroffensive against the Syrians. The operational coordination between the Jordanians and their Syrian and Iraqi allies was very poor, and the Jordanian brigade suffered heavy casualties.62 The Jordanians subsequently dispatched their 3rd Armored Division as reinforcement, but it arrived at the front too late to actively participate in the fighting. At one juncture during the fighting on the Golan, the Israelis had planned to attack the Jordanian forces precisely at the time and place King Hussein was visiting his men in the field. Israeli military intelligence was aware of the king’s presence, and the attack was called off, possibly saving Hussein’s life in the process.63 Jordan’s limited participation in the Arab war effort spared the kingdom the ravages of war and possibly horrendous damage from an Israeli air attack, but it cost the kingdom dearly in political capital.

Notes

1. Cobban, Palestinian Liberation Organization, 139. 2. Shemesh, Palestinian Entity, 132. 3. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 276; Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 117. 4. Terrill, “Political Mythology of the Battle of Karameh,” 97–98. 5. Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 108. 6. Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 121. 7. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 247; Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 123–124.

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8. Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan, 136. 9. British Embassy Amman, “Annual Review for Jordan, 1959,” January 16, 1960, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 849. 10. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 176. 11. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 251. 12. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 244, 248. 13. Shemesh, Palestinian Entity, 132. 14. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 179. 15. Shemesh, Palestinian Entity, 142–143; Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 256. 16. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 252. 17. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 318, 322, 328. 18. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 259. 19. Shemesh, Palestinian Entity, 143. 20. Shemesh, Palestinian Entity, 141. 21. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 259. 22. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 185. 23. Seale, Asad, 158; Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 139. 24. Memo from the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, September 21, 1970, FRUS (1969–1976), Vol. XXIV, Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula (1969–1972); Jordan September 1970, Document 305. 25. Kissinger, White House Years, 596–599, 603, 611. 26. Transcript of Telephone Conversation Among the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Sisco), and the Israeli Ambassador (Rabin), September 20, 1970; Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) and the Israeli Ambassador (Rabin), September 20, 1970, FRUS (1969–1976), Vol. XXIV, Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula (1969–1972); Jordan September 1970, Documents 283 and 287. 27. Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 101–102. 28. Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meetings, September 21, 1970; Department of State to US Embassy in Israel, September 22, 1970, FRUS (1969–1976), Vol. XXIV, Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula (1969–1972); Jordan September 1970, Documents 303, 304, and 306; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 332–333. 29. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, September 22, 1970, FRUS (1969–1976), Vol. XXIV, Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula (1969–1972); Jordan September 1970, Document 313. 30. Seale, Asad, 158. 31. Seale, Asad, 159–160; Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, September 22, 1970, FRUS (1969–1976), Vol. XXIV, Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula (1969–1972); Jordan September 1970, Document 313. 32. Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, September 21, 1970; Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meeting, September 22, 1970, FRUS (1969–1976), Vol. XXIV, Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula (1969–1972); Jordan September 1970, Documents 307 and 312. 33. Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 141; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 334; Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, September 23, 1970, FRUS (1969–1976), Vol. XXIV, Middle East Region and Arabian Peninsula (1969–1972); Jordan September 1970, Document 318.

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34. Kissinger, White House Years, 623; Rabin, Memoirs, 1:311–14 (Hebrew); Schueftan, Jordanian Option, 307–308 (Hebrew); Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 45 (Hebrew). 35. Middle East Record, 5:869. 36. Middle East Record, 5:868. 37. Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan, 141. 38. Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 147, 150. 39. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 280. 40. Nevo, “Changing Identities in Jordan,” 200. 41. Middle East Record, 5:383–384. 42. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 189–190. 43. Middle East Record, 5:391. 44. Full Arabic text of the speech in al-Ra’y (Amman), March 16, 1972. 45. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 174, 206. 46. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 178. 47. Al-Ra’y (Amman), March 16, 1972. 48. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 179. 49. Sahliyeh, In Search of Leadership, 36. 50. Shemesh, Palestinian Entity, 167–181, 225, 258. 51. Harkabi, Arabs and Israel, 166, 175–177, 184; Susser, The Two-State Imperative, 180. 52. Divrei Haknesset, Third Session of the Seventh Knesset, Meeting 284, March 16, 1972, 1842–1843 (Hebrew). 53. Schueftan, Jordanian Option, 331–332; Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 46, 161– 163, 179–180, 192. 54. Hart, Arafat, 320; Susser, Two-State Imperative, 181. 55. Al-Nahar (Beirut), July 6, 1973. 56. Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 131–133; Morris, Righteous Victims, 399; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 360–364; Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 106. 57. Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 135. 58. Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 167. 59. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 332. 60. Musa, Ta’rikh al-Urdunn fi al-qarn al-ishrin, 1958–1995, 2:403. 61. Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 136; Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 168; Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 506. 62. Herzog, War of Atonement, 134 (Hebrew); Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 367. 63. Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 137; Schueftan, Jordanian Option, 309; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 369.

4

Hussein’s Retreat

THE OCTOBER WAR SHOCKED THE ISRAELIS AND SHATTERED THEIR post-1967 complacency. The war also altered the regional balance of power in the Arabs’ favor, at least momentarily. The international stature of the Arab collective was reinforced by their far better performance on the battlefield, coupled with the effective use of the oil weapon. Egypt’s President Anwar al-Sadat and other Arab leaders were now firmly convinced that, in the postwar reality, the Arabs could impose new rules of diplomatic engagement on Israel, including the need to accept the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the interlocutor for the Palestinians. Even though the PLO had done considerably less for the Arab war effort than the Jordanians, backing for the PLO was a convenient cover for Egypt’s surreptitious advance toward a separate deal with Israel. For Syria, support for the PLO was an equally useful instrument of control and/or sabotage of the fledgling peace process.1

Jordan’s Defeat at the Rabat Summit

Sadat had political plans for Palestinian statehood, which had already been aired in the diplomatic preparations for the war. During the war Sadat had spoken publicly of the need to incorporate the Palestinians in the political process, and in November 1973 the Algiers Arab Summit recognized the PLO as the “sole” representative of the Palestinian people. The resolution ostensibly displaced Jordan from the senior role it sought to preserve for itself on the question of Palestine. Consideration

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for Jordan’s special interests in the matter was not uppermost in Sadat’s mind, before or during the war, and certainly not thereafter. At the Geneva Peace Conference convened in December, the Egyptians, as a sign of things to come, began to refer to the West Bank as Palestinian territory.2 Jordan, however, had not given up yet. The Jordanians refused to accept the Algiers resolution3 (and the decision was therefore not binding upon them in terms of the Arab League’s charter). During all of 1974, until the Arab Summit at Rabat in October, Jordan fought relentlessly against formal Arab recognition of the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people. The Jordanians explained that they did not refute the PLO’s right to represent the Palestinian problem, but they refused to accept the PLO as the “sole” representative, certainly not of all Palestinians, including Jordan’s Palestinian citizens on both the West and the East Banks of the river. Moreover, the Jordanians clarified, the PLO could only discuss matters that were beyond the purview of Security Council Resolution 242. Since the entire peace process was based on the implementation of Resolution 242 and the retrieval of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, this interpretation did not leave much for the PLO in practice. The Jordanians explained that in their effort to retrieve the West Bank, their real objective was not territorial aggrandizement but rather the liberation of the territory from Israeli occupation in order to allow the local population to freely decide its own future in an internationally supervised referendum. Jordan thus presented itself as the guarantor of the Palestinian right to self-determination. The major objective of Jordanian policy, therefore, was to drive a wedge between the PLO and the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. Such self-determination would be achieved by the joint efforts of Jordan and the people of the occupied territories, not by the PLO, and the Jordanians urged the Arab states to refrain from imposing on the people of the occupied territories an external representation that they themselves had never chosen. In tandem with their effort to forestall the institutionalized Arab recognition of the PLO, the Jordanians strove to achieve an agreement with Israel on a separation of forces that would allow Jordan to establish a foothold in the Jordan Valley west of the river. After the October War, Israel and Egypt and Israel and Syria were in the throes of negotiating interim agreements for the separation of their armed forces along the front lines as a means of stabilizing the postwar situation. King Hussein sought a similar agreement along the Jordan Valley that would give the Jordanians a head start in their competition with the PLO. By gaining a foothold on the West Bank, the Jordanians believed they would be able to rebuild their West Bank political constituency,

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based on the argument that only Jordan could liberate the Palestinians from the yoke of the Israeli occupation. Similarly, they surmised, they could then also convince the Arab League and the international community to desist from the ongoing process of recognition of the PLO, which would only retard the retrieval of the Arab occupied territories. Israel, after all, would not hand territory over to the PLO, which did not accept Resolution 242 and which Israel had refused to recognize. In January 1974 Hussein proposed a separation-of-forces agreement to the Israelis according to which Israel would withdraw from a zone of between four and six kilometers along the entire front in the Jordan Valley. The extent of withdrawal varied in different sources from time to time, fluctuating from eight to ten kilometer or even as many as fifteen. In August 1974, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger showed President Gerald Ford a map to illustrate the Jordanian proposal for a ten-kilometer withdrawal on both sides of the Jordan River. Kissinger was of the opinion that an agreement with Jordan was especially urgent, while Hussein was “still one of the players,”4 before he was pushed out by the PLO. But, as opposed to Hussein, who was in a rush for a deal that would block the PLO, the Israelis felt no similar sense of urgency for an interim agreement with Jordan. Israeli and Jordanian forces were not interlocked with each other as was the case along parts of the front with Egypt; nor was there any ongoing war of attrition with Jordan, as there was between Israel and the Syrians, until a separation-of-forces agreement was finally reached with them. As Jordan had not opened a third front against Israel in the October War, there were also no problems of prisoners of war or new territorial complications that required urgent solutions.5 Paradoxically Jordan was being punished for not having gone to war with Israel. Domestic Israeli politics really tipped the balance against an agreement with Jordan. Hussein’s initial proposal for disengagement was presented to the Golda Meir government. Israel replied with an offer of areas of the interior of the West Bank with an access corridor through Jericho, but it would not accept the Jordanian vision of a vertical disengagement along the entire front and concession of the Jordan Valley.6 For many in Israel, particularly in the ruling Labor Party, the Jordan Valley, in accordance with the so-called Allon Plan (named after Yigal Allon, the deputy prime minister in Meir’s cabinet), was vital for Israel’s defense against a potential Arab eastern front. For Jordan, on the other hand, acceptance of the West Bank interior without the Jordan Valley would have appeared to the Arab world as tantamount to Jordanian collaboration with Israel’s occupation and national security doctrine. There was no basis for an agreement in these

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circumstances. The Jordanians made abundantly clear to the Israelis that “if the Allon Plan is Israel’s goal, there’s no prospect of a settlement.”7 After the resignation of Golda Meir’s government in April 1974, Yitzhak Rabin formed his first cabinet in June. Rabin’s government rested on shaky parliamentary foundations. It enjoyed a very narrow majority, which it could have lost in a flash if Rabin had opted for concessions on the West Bank, in general, and in the Jordan Valley, in particular. Agreements for separation of forces were signed with Egypt in January 1974 and with Syria in May. Kissinger stepped up the pressure, warning the Israelis repeatedly that if they did not negotiate an agreement with Hussein, they would be left to deal with the PLO.8 When Allon, deputy prime minister and foreign minister in Rabin’s cabinet, visited Washington in July, Kissinger cautioned him against missing the opportunity for an agreement with Jordan. The secretary noted that such a failure would pave the way for the PLO’s recognition as the sole interlocutor over the future of the occupied territories, thereby destroying any hope for an agreement. Allon replied that if the Rabin government fell, it might be succeeded by the right-wing Likud, and that too would hardly facilitate an agreement with Jordan. In August it was Hussein’s turn to visit Washington. At the conclusion of his talks with President Ford and Secretary Kissinger, the parties announced their agreement on the need to work toward an IsraeliJordanian separation of forces. Rabin, still concerned for the stability of his government, was aggravated by the specific reference to a separation-of-forces agreement without any advance consultation with Israel. He declared publicly that there was no need to rush on the Jordanian front. Hussein “would not run away,” he retorted, and thus finally put paid to the efforts for an interim agreement with Jordan.9 In September the National Religious Party (NRP), which opposed any territorial concessions in the West Bank, joined Rabin’s coalition. The NRP stabilized Rabin’s coalition but further reduced its freedom of maneuver toward Jordan.10 Ironically, both Israel and the PLO, each for its own respective reasons, were uninterested in an Israeli-Jordanian interim agreement. For the PLO, the peace process following the October War was fraught with risks and opportunities. The shifting regional balance of power after the war offered a chance for the PLO to make diplomatic advances. But, as in the past, there were still the residual dangers for the organization in Arab states seeking to settle the Palestinian question as they saw fit. Above all else it was vital for the PLO to stymie the Jordanians. For its own diplomatic gain and to impede the Jordanians, the PLO had to formulate a more pragmatic and realistic policy. The PLO leadership had

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concluded that it could no longer restrict itself to the adoption of ideologically purist and rejectionist positions that would automatically disqualify the organization for the peace process and leave the field open for Jordanian political maneuvers. In June 1974, the PLO’s quasi-parliamentary body, the Palestine National Council (PNC), convened one of its historically most significant sessions. It was here that the PLO adopted its “strategy of phases” whereby it accepted the formation of a “fighting national authority” on any part of Palestine liberated from Israeli occupation, as a phase toward the total liberation of the country. This “national authority” would come about as a result of either armed struggle or other, diplomatic means. By acquiescing in even a temporary coexistence with Israel and by resorting not only to armed struggle but to diplomacy as well, the PLO was abandoning some of the key articles of faith of the organization’s charter. The charter, after all, spoke of the complete liberation of Palestine and of armed struggle as the one and only means to achieve this objective. The new resolutions thus signified the first serious break with the PLO’s guiding principles. One could argue that the resolutions were no more than a tactical maneuver or, alternatively, that they were the start of a process of moderation toward eventual reconciliation with Israel. Either way, the unquestionable major objective of these new decisions was to pave the way for the acceptance of the PLO by all the Arab states and the international community as the legitimate interlocutor for the Palestinians. Such an achievement, the PLO believed, was essential to finally scuttle the possibility of an Israeli-Jordanian agreement that would have resulted in the return of Palestinian territory to the Hashemite Kingdom. The reestablishment of Jordanian rule in the West Bank was the worst of all options for the PLO as it would possibly create an insurmountable obstacle for the liberation struggle as understood by the organization. In response to the PLO’s maneuvers and as Jordan’s talks with Israel were faltering, Hussein, in a desperate move of last resort, turned to the Egyptians. But, for Jordan, Sadat was a broken reed. Sadat deceived Hussein at every turn all the way to the Rabat Summit, where the Jordanians were finally humbled. In July 1974, Hussein and Sadat met in Alexandria, where they arrived at a mutually acceptable formula recognizing the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, except for those living in the Hashemite Kingdom. At least formally, the Hashemite Kingdom still included the West Bank, and thus Jordan and Egypt had agreed that the PLO was a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, but not the only one, and Jordan still ostensibly represented all its Palestinian citizens on both banks of the river. This

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understanding with Egypt, however, was worthless. In September, at a meeting in Cairo between Sadat, Hafiz al-Asad, and Yasir Arafat, the three leaders agreed that the PLO was the “sole” legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.11 That was precisely the formula accepted by the Arab Summit conference in Rabat in October, disqualifying Jordan as a negotiator on behalf of the people of the West Bank, even though they were still Jordanian citizens. The Jordanians were not only angered by Egypt’s duplicity but also disappointed with the Americans. They had expected Kissinger to extract a separation-of-forces agreement from the Israelis, or at least to have prevented the Rabat resolutions by pressuring some of the United States’ Arab allies. They ended up with neither. At Rabat, Jordan was coerced to accept the Arab collective dictate. Hussein acquiesced in the resolutions, but not before he made his reservations known. The king explained that the resolutions were misguided and unrealistic and that they would not bring the Palestinians any closer to liberation from the Israeli occupation. It would have been preferable, he argued, to have allowed Jordan to negotiate for the West Bank, in accordance with Resolution 242, the diplomatic foundation of the political process, which the PLO, at the time, still rejected. The PLO’s role in Hussein’s mind was not to bring about an Israeli withdrawal, which it could not have done anyway, but to defend all those historical Palestinian issues that went beyond the future of the West Bank. Even worse for the Jordanians, the Rabat resolutions not only impacted the West Bank but also what was left of Jordan on the East Bank.12 Jordan had no choice but to accept the Arab consensus on the West Bank, but it could hardly accept that the PLO was the “sole” legitimate representative of all the Palestinian people, including half or more of Jordan’s own population on the East Bank. It would have been unthinkable for the Jordanians to accept that these citizens of the kingdom would be represented by a foreign and fundamentally hostile organization like the PLO.

Hussein’s Attempted Comeback

Hussein, therefore, did not throw in the towel after Rabat. He continued to believe that reality would prove the impracticality of the Rabat resolutions and that the Arab states would turn to Jordan again to pull the chestnuts out of the West Bank fire. Israel, he assumed, on the basis of what the Israelis had assured him directly, would not alter its policy rejecting any truck with the PLO. On these grounds Jordan sought to convince anyone who was prepared to listen that the PLO was a false start.13

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Generally speaking, in Hussein’s pronouncements in the first few years after the Rabat Summit, the PLO was conspicuously absent. He contended repeatedly that the occupied territories must be returned to “their inhabitants” and to “their owners” so that that they could live there freely, as masters of their own national destiny “without any pressure or coercion.” There was no point, he argued, for the Israeli rifles to be withdrawn just to be replaced by “others,” that is, the PLO, which would, he suggested, impose itself on the unwilling people.14 After Rabat, the Jordanian leadership still contended that the West Bankers, if given the chance to choose freely, would opt for a Palestinian state with close ties to Jordan.15 Jordan’s policy had two possible objectives: to bring pressure to bear on the PLO to cooperate with Jordan on Jordan’s terms or, alternatively, to push the PLO out of the political process altogether. The credibility of the Jordanian position, however, depended on its ability to bring about an Israeli withdrawal. On this score the Jordanians failed. As time went by and the Israelis entrenched themselves in the West Bank, the Jordanian effort seemed increasingly futile. The Jordanians demanded full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 boundaries. They would not countenance anything other than minor, mutually acceptable border rectifications. Israel of the Labor Party never had the power, the foresight, or the courage to accept such an extensive withdrawal—all the more so, Israel of the Likud or of the national unity coalitions of Likud and Labor that ruled the country after 1977. The United States had neither the will nor the capacity to coerce Israel to accept the Jordanian position. The people of the occupied territories, for the most part, did not trust Hussein; nor did they wish to revert to being part of the Hashemite Kingdom. Since the recognition of the PLO by the Arab League, they regarded the organization as their true representative. For the PLO, Jordan was more of a threat than an ally. In November 1977, Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat launched his historic initiative for peace with Israel by visiting Jerusalem and delivering a speech to the Israeli people in their parliament, the Knesset. Less than a year later, in September 1978, President Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin convened under the auspices of US President Jimmy Carter at Camp David, where they reached an agreement for peace between Israel and Egypt as well as an outline for a settlement of the Palestine question. As opposed to most of the Arab countries and the PLO, Jordan did not condemn Sadat for his unilateral initiative. Hussein urged his Arab brethren to exercise restraint in their criticism of Egypt as Jordan waited anxiously on the sidelines for the creation of an opportunity that might have allowed it to join the process.16

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In the circumstances of Jordan’s legitimacy deficit, the manner in which Egypt, Israel, and the United States invited Jordan to participate in the implementation of the Palestinian section of the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel struck Hussein as more an insult than a serious offer. The accords invited Jordan to take part in the negotiations for Palestinian self-government envisaged for the West Bank and Gaza and even to share in the maintenance of security in the areas of Palestinian autonomy during the transition phase that was to precede the final settlement. All of the above was written into the Camp David accords without consultation with the Jordanians or even the elementary courtesy of informing them before the accords became public knowledge. In his meetings with American officials, Sadat often belittled the king, contributing to the American tendency to take Hussein for granted.17 Prior to the Camp David Summit, Hussein informed President Carter that Jordan, like other Arab countries, believed “the Israeli Government [was] opposed to a total withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied by force in June 1967, under any circumstances.” For Jordan, therefore, it was “more necessary . . . to have a clear and unambiguous indication that as a result of the process of negotiation Israel would end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza . . . and allow a process of self-determination leading to the resolution of the Palestinian problem.” It made no sense for Jordan to play any role whatsoever in the West Bank unless it was absolutely clear from the outset that the result would be an end to the Israeli occupation.18 Without such an advance commitment by the Israelis, the Jordanian argument went, the envisaged Palestinian self-rule would evolve into just another form of Israeli occupation, and any participation by Jordan in such a venture would put it in the position of co-occupier with Israel. In a meeting in Amman with US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance a few days after the publication of the Camp David accords, the king presented the secretary with a list of fourteen questions in an effort to clarify whether the United States could indeed make the kind of advance commitment on the desired final outcome that the Jordanians felt was essential. Hussein made clear that any final settlement had to “be acceptable to future generations” and its details had to be known in advance and based on an eventual Israeli withdrawal “to its pre-1967 borders.” Jordan, the king concluded, would “play a role toward achieving a peace we feel we can live with. For this we are ready to risk everything, but short of that, this risk is not justified.” Vance replied to Hussein that “real movement [could] only emerge from the dynamics of on-going negotiations,” and to be practical, the United States could “not give the assurance” of a final settlement then and there.19

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The consensus among Hussein’s advisers was that the American answers to their questions “were opaque, non-committal and unsatisfactory.”20 The United States would go no further. In the American view, that would have been tantamount to determining the results of the negotiations before they had even begun. The autonomy plan, Hussein concluded, was an “insult to [Jordanian] intelligence,” and Jordan joined the PLO and the rest of the Arabs who railed against the Israeli-Egyptian agreement.21 President Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, visited Amman in March 1979. His talks with Hussein did not go well, and 1979 turned into “one of the worst years ever in the American relationship with the Hashemites.”22 Jordan resurfaced in the Palestinian dimension of negotiations after Israel invaded Lebanon in the summer of 1982 and forced the PLO to abandon its last autonomous base of operations in that country. US President Ronald Reagan published a Middle East peace initiative on September 1, immediately after the PLO’s final withdrawal from Beirut. Unlike with the Camp David accords, Hussein was consulted in advance,23 and the Reagan plan had very noticeable Jordanian fingerprints. The plan, obviously taking advantage of the PLO’s setback in Lebanon, suggested Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza in close association with Jordan as the best possible opportunity for lasting peace. The United States made clear that it opposed independent Palestinian statehood as well as the continuation of the Israeli occupation. Hussein welcomed the Reagan initiative as the most courageous American stand ever taken since 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower condemned Israel for its attack on Egypt in the Sinai campaign.24 Hussein, however, failed in his efforts to come to an understanding with Yasir Arafat on Jordanian-PLO coordination on the Reagan initiative. The Israeli governments of the time, Menachem Begin’s cabinet and that of Yitzhak Shamir, who succeeded Begin, were staunchly opposed to the idea of “foreign sovereignty” in any part of historical Eretz Israel, and the Reagan plan went nowhere. These were days of decline and disarray for the PLO after the defeat in Lebanon, and Hussein sought to make the most of the organization’s predicament by pressuring Arafat to cooperate with Jordan in the peace process. In January 1984 Hussein revived the Jordanian parliament that represented both banks of the kingdom. The parliament had been indefinitely dissolved in late 1974, in ostensible compliance with the Rabat resolutions, which had recognized the PLO as the “sole” legitimate representative of the Palestinians. The Jordanians, having accepted the resolutions, could not continue to maintain a parliament

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that also represented the people of the West Bank. The revival of the parliament, therefore, was clearly intended to challenge the PLO’s representative status. In September 1984, Jordan became the first Arab state that had severed ties with Egypt after the signing of the Camp David accords to restore diplomatic relations with Cairo, thereby suggesting that peace with Israel was acceptable after all. From the PLO’s point of view, these were dangerous Jordanian maneuvers, possibly designed to circumvent the organization. Hani alHasan, one of Arafat’s closest confidants, noted at the time that “no Palestinian strategist can afford to remove his eyes from Jordan for even a minute. The only Arab state able to replace us [as a party to a political settlement] is Jordan.”25 Yet, despite all the suspicion of Jordan, in November 1984, the PLO convened the seventeenth session of the Palestine National Council in Amman of all places, hardly the natural habitat of the PLO after September 1970. Forced out of Lebanon, and having barely survived a Syrian-inspired internal rebellion in the spring of 1983, Arafat was desperately seeking to escape Syrian tutelage, and Amman was not the worst of options. The price the PLO had to pay for its defiance of the Syrians was increasing dependence on the Arab states most committed to the peace process with Israel: Jordan and Egypt.26 Hussein made no secret of his objective to induce the PLO to enter into a partnership with Jordan. Shortly after the PNC in Amman, Hussein told the Egyptian parliament in early December 1984 that “Jordan would not be a substitute for the Palestinians in any negotiations, but it was prepared to be a partner with the [PLO] in a peace initiative or peace endeavor to solve the Palestinian question.”27 In February 1985, Hussein and Arafat finally arrived at an agreement on political coordination. The accord was based on the future establishment of a confederation between the two states of Jordan and Palestine and on joint representation at an international peace conference.28 But the ink had hardly dried on the agreement before Jordan and the PLO came to loggerheads over its interpretation. Was this to be a confederation between two independent states, as the PLO contended, or just two states, as the Jordanians maintained? Was the joint representation to be in a JordanianPalestinian delegation, as the Jordanians contended, or a joint Arab delegation, as the PLO averred? In practice this was not an agreement between the two parties about the future but rather a calculated maneuver by both leaders to tie the hands of the other in the present. In February 1986, having lost all hope for cooperation with Arafat, an exasperated Hussein announced the ter-

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mination of the so-called accord with the PLO.29 Jordan embarked on a major political offensive against the PLO in the occupied territories, which included a five-year plan for the economic development of the West Bank and Gaza, in what literally looked like an effort to “buy” the goodwill of the people. Jordan, however, was still fighting an uphill battle, and the chances of success were remote. In a poll published at the time in the West Bank, the pro-PLO nationalist daily al-Fajr revealed that an overwhelming majority of the West Bankers supported the PLO, while only 3 percent supported King Hussein.30 Even if tendentious, the poll was not an unreasonable reflection of the popular mood.31 In April 1987 Hussein met secretly in London with Israeli Labor Party leader Shimon Peres. Peres at the time was deputy prime minister and foreign minister in Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud-led national unity government. Hussein and Peres discussed the procedures for the convening of an international Middle East peace conference. For Hussein the international conference was an essential component of the peace process. The participation of the Soviet Union was imperative to balance the United States, which the Jordanians regarded as biased in Israel’s favor. The participation of the relevant Arab players, including the PLO in some form or another, was similarly critical to grant Jordan the necessary overall Arab backing. (Despite his failure to arrive at a viable agreement with Arafat, Hussein nevertheless believed that he could not possibly negotiate with Israel entirely without him.) At the London talks an agreement was reached on the procedures for an international conference. The conference would convene on the basis of Resolution 242, with joint Jordanian-Palestinian representation (according to the Israelis that meant without PLO representatives, but according to the Jordanians the PLO could not have been ruled out). Even the parties to the agreement could not agree on its contents, not only in reference to Palestinian representation but also in regard to the authority to be wielded, interventionist (as the Jordanians preferred) or ceremonial (as the Israelis wanted), by the great powers at the international conference. More importantly, the agreement was unacceptable to Prime Minister Shamir. He rejected the notion of such a conference in principle, mainly concerned that an international forum would bring undesirable pressure to bear on Israel. Shamir was similarly opposed to the suggested Palestinian representation, which he suspected would let the PLO in through the back door. As soon as the details of the agreement were leaked to the press, the Jordanian government denied its existence. 32 Nothing came of the London agreement. In any event, it

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amounted to no more than an understanding on procedure rather than a substantive accord on Israeli-Jordanian relations.

The “Alternative Homeland” Scenario

The apparent dead end in the peace process after a decade of rightwing dominance in Israeli domestic politics was a potentially dangerous combination for the Jordanians. It provided the fertile ground for especially alarming scenarios for the kingdom. The political upheaval in Israel in 1977 that had brought the right-wing Likud to power for the first time ever in the history of the Zionist movement was a radical departure in Jordanian-Israeli relations. Israel was now governed, as never before, by those who believed in Greater Israel and, as such, unlike the Labor movement, did not regard Jordan as Israel’s natural partner in the partition of Palestine. Moreover, among the Israeli Right there were those who not only rejected partitioning the country together with Jordan (and certainly not with the Palestinians) but also believed that the real solution to the Palestinian problem was to be found in the transformation of Jordan into the homeland of the Palestinians. “Jordan is Palestine,” they contended. This was the “alternative homeland” (al-watan al-badil) theory, in Jordanian parlance. Thus, not only was Hashemite Jordan irrelevant to an unwanted partnership in a Palestinian settlement, but Jordan was in fact the obstacle to the desired solution. It was therefore no surprise that the Jordanians increasingly saw this Israel of the Right not as a potential regional support but as a mortal threat. The political stalemate in the region in the aftermath of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, signed in early 1979, caused profound anxiety in Jordan. With Egypt’s withdrawal from the Arab order of battle, the regional balance of power shifted ever more in Israel’s favor. Israel had almost unfettered freedom of action, and it hastily expanded its settlement activity in the occupied territories deliberately designed to make extensive withdrawal all the more difficult in the future. When the Likud was reelected in 1981, the Jordanians understood that the rise to power of the ideological Right was not coincidental but a function of profound social change in Israel. As of the early 1980s the Jordanians expressed their mounting concern that Israel had no intention of ever withdrawing from the occupied territories and that this could have most ominous ramifications for Jordan. To resolve the demographic problems that would arise from this policy, the Jordanians feared Israel would wage “demographic aggression” against Jordan and expel masses of Palestinians across the river. Such an eventuality would

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arise as a precursor to the annexation of the occupied territories to Israel, or as a result of their annexation, and as part and parcel of “the alternative homeland conspiracy.” In the eyes of some members of the ruling elite, such as Sa’id alTall, the brother of former prime minister Wasfi al-Tall, a minister in various Jordanian cabinets, and a prominent writer, the “alternative homeland” was part of a much greater Zionist strategic design. The plan was but an “interim tactical objective” on the road to the long-term strategic objective, which was the establishment of “a powerful hegemonic Jewish state that would include Palestine, Jordan, Southern Lebanon and Southern Syria.” The East Bank had always been in the minds of the founding fathers of the Zionist movement, and Israel’s forcing of the Palestinians to leave for Jordan as refugees in 1948 and again in 1967 was all part of this premeditated scheme. Israel, Tall warned, might take advantage of Arab weakness and disarray to “gradually evacuate the West Bank and Gaza of its Arab inhabitants” since the very existence of this Arab population and its natural increase “was the greatest danger that threatened the enemy in the realization of its ambitions.” This was, of course, fully understood by the Israelis as the most serious challenge to the stability and longevity of their state. Jordan’s total rejection of this Israeli plan was not solely for selfish state interest but part and parcel of Jordan’s historical commitment to the Arabs as a whole. Jordan, after all, was not the “alternative homeland” but rather the “savior homeland” (al-watan al-munqidh). It was from the land of Jordan that the Arab and Muslim armies had set off to liberate Palestine from the Byzantines and the from the crusaders, and, God willing, it would be from Jordan that the Arab armies set off to liberate Palestine from the Zionists.33 Hussein himself did not share the general vision of the conspiracy theorists. But he did believe that if Israel did not withdraw, it would eventually have to choose between two undesirable options: granting citizenship to all the residents of the occupied territories and losing its Jewish character or, alternatively, giving up Israel’s democracy by adopting some mode of the South African apartheid system. He feared that Israel might choose mass expulsion to resolve its dilemma.34 Even if these Jordanian assessments may have seemed unrealistically alarmist, the Jordanians firmly believed them. Since the rise of the Likud to power in Israel in 1977, Jordan dreaded this possibility with ever-increasing intensity. Some of the Likud’s key spokesmen, such as Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon, were known advocates of the Israeli right-wing contention that “Jordan is Palestine” and that all of Palestine west of the Jordan River was to be Greater Israel. In June 1982, in the midst of Israel’s war

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against the PLO in Lebanon, King Hussein sent a letter to US President Ronald Reagan expressing his fear that Sharon’s real ambition was to drive the Palestinians from Lebanon into Jordan, where they would be joined by others driven from the West Bank and Gaza. These expulsions would pave the way for an eventual Israeli occupation of Jordan, whereby a docile Palestinian government would be installed there at the expense of the Hashemite Kingdom.35 Jordanian anxieties in this regard were roused once again with the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada in the December 1987. The Palestinian popular uprising against the Israeli occupation was a cause for concern in Jordan that Israel might resort to expulsion to weaken the Palestinian challenge. At the end of the decade the massive Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union further reinforced Jordanian fears that Israel might turn to expulsion to make room for waves of new immigrants.

Intifada and Disengagement

The Palestinian intifada was another dramatic watershed. For both the PLO and the Jordanians, it was the culmination of various negative trends. For the PLO, coming in the wake of its 1970 Jordanian debacle and its 1982 eviction from Lebanon, the uprising of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza represented a shift of the center of gravity of Palestinian politics from the Diaspora to the “inside”—the occupied territories. The loss of the PLO’s last autonomous haven in Lebanon had further curtailed the organization’s room for maneuver in the Arab world and seriously undermined its regional stature. The November 1987 Arab Summit in Amman was the first ever held in the Jordanian capital, and taking place at a time of PLO decline, it provided a golden opportunity for the Jordanians to mistreat and humiliate Arafat at every turn.36 Due to the ongoing Iran-Iraq War, the Palestinian question and the PLO were marginalized. The intifada therefore represented an outburst of the rage, the fury, and the despair of the Palestinians under occupation. It also meant that, henceforth, the core of the Palestinian national endeavor was to be firmly rooted in the West Bank and Gaza. In the early days of the intifada, the Jordanians had hoped that the uprising might be an effort by the people of the West Bank and Gaza to wrest control of their own destiny by taking advantage of the PLO’s predicament. Hussein thought for a moment that the people in the West Bank and Gaza had “chosen to lessen their reliance on others outside to speak for them.”37 But this was no more than wishful thinking. The uprising certainly reflected disappointment with the PLO. These were the early days of Hamas in the occupied territories. But it was by no

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means a repudiation of the Palestinian national leadership by the people, and the secular nationalists in the occupied territories were still unswerving in their loyalty to the PLO. The intifada actually proved to be a new propellant for the PLO’s continued legitimacy and political supremacy. The PLO swiftly imposed its own authority over the intifada operatives in the occupied territories and effectively mobilized the uprising as a vehicle for its own, albeit short-lived, political revival. For the Jordanians, the intifada soon turned sour.38 Thus, for example, a leaflet distributed on March 11, 1988, by the United National Command of the intifada (which was aligned with the PLO) linked Jordan with the Israeli occupiers and the Jewish settlers when it appealed to the people to take action against Jordan’s supporters, to punish them and pressure them to “desist from their ways.”39 Hussein was personally stung by the communiqué, which he described as a “horrible sign of ingratitude.” He soon came to realize that his strategy of substituting a partnership with the PLO for one with the Palestinians in the occupied territories “had fallen apart.”40 The intifada was as clear an indication as any that Jordan’s cause had been lost. The argument that the Jordanians had made since the adoption of the Rabat resolutions in 1974—that the PLO had in effect been imposed on the people of the occupied territories by an Arab League decision—had clearly been disproved by the intifada. Hussein now admitted that the Palestinian people had “elected the PLO.” Jordan, therefore, could “not carry any more burdens.”41 The intifada, however, also gave rise to Jordanian fears of their ultimate nightmare scenario. They believed that the Israelis had no intention of withdrawing from the West Bank and Gaza, and the Palestinian rebellion against the occupation was only pushing them toward greater extremism.42 The Jordanians now feared that the “demographic aggression” about which they had been concerned for so long might actually materialize if the Israelis became desperate enough.43 Hussein’s first option was to seek Arab support for Jordan’s continued role in the peace process on the Palestinian track to try and avert disaster. The alternative would be for Jordan to disengage entirely from the West Bank and withdraw into the protective shell of the East Bank. At the Arab Summit in Algiers in early June 1988, Hussein made a final effort to obtain all-Arab recognition of Jordan’s special status in Palestinian affairs. Hussein’s appeal fell on deaf ears,44 in what was a humiliating personal defeat.45 After the Algiers Summit, Hussein finally realized that his effort to circumvent the PLO in an alliance with the people of the West Bank and Gaza was an exercise in futility. But if Jordan was to have no major role in the West Bank, it had to take the necessary precautions to protect the

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integrity of the kingdom on the East Bank. Jordan had to ensure that the intifada would not spill over onto the East Bank, possibly through an Israeli act of massive Palestinian expulsion.46 On July 31, 1988, in a speech to the nation, Hussein announced Jordan’s legal and administrative disengagement from the West Bank.47 On the day before, July 30, Hussein issued a royal decree dissolving the Chamber of Deputies (majlis al-nuwwab) representing both banks of the river, which had been revived just four years earlier. The appointed upper house of the parliament, the Senate (majlis al-a’yan), was not dissolved, but West Bank residents were replaced in mid-August by East Bankers. The Senate still had Palestinian representatives, but all were henceforth residents solely of the East Bank. All Jordanian civil servants in the West Bank were retired except for some 3,500 employees of the Ministry for Endowments and Religious Affairs. They cared for the mosques and religious courts throughout the West Bank, especially in Jerusalem with its Muslim holy places at al-haram al-sharif, for which the Jordanians remained responsible, to safeguard the “Islamic cultural presence in the occupied Palestinian territory.”48 Most significantly, however, all Jordanian citizens residing in the West Bank prior to July 31, 1988, would henceforth be considered Palestinians; they would no longer be citizens of Jordan and therefore also no longer entitled to take up residence on the East Bank. The people of the West Bank would still be allowed to obtain “temporary” passports, valid for two years instead of the regular five, but these would serve solely as travel documents and would not entitle their bearers to any rights, nor impose on them any obligations, of citizenship. The decision to disengage was a direct consequence of Jordan’s anxieties about the “alternative homeland conspiracy,” which had clearly been exacerbated by the intifada. Crown Prince Hasan explained at the time that Jordan was “not the alternative repository for the Palestinian people.” It was “not waste land.”49 While he was finally accepting the Palestinian national identity of the West Bank and pressuring Israel to do the same, it was vitally important for Hussein to declare to all and sundry that Jordan was not Palestine. Jordan was Jordan, and only Palestine was Palestine. The Chamber of Deputies, representing both banks of the river, was replaced, after new elections in November 1989, by a parliament of representatives from the East Bank alone. Disengagement, however, did not mean disinterest. Nor did it mean that Jordan was disengaging from the Palestinian question. It did mean that Jordan no longer had any intention of restoring the pre-1967 status quo ante, in the West Bank, although it still had a vital interest in the future resolution of the Palestinian question.50 The Jordanian position was complex

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and a little confusing too. Jordan was sending Israel and the United States the message that it was not, and could not be, the sole interlocutor over the West Bank and that Israel would have to engage with the PLO. The kingdom now required a political foundation for coordination with the reinvigorated PLO, if only for the preservation of its own narrow state interests in the Palestine question. Jordan had argued consistently, well before the intifada, that it could not possibly shoulder the historical responsibility for the Palestinian question on its own. However, the Jordanians had never intended that they themselves should be excluded from the process and that others ought to settle the Palestinian question in their stead. The Jordanians were therefore very supportive of the model for Palestinian representation adopted by the Madrid conference that convened after the Gulf War in October 1991. In the aftermath of the war, in which the PLO had supported Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the standing of the organization in the marketplace of the Middle East peace process was at rock bottom, and the Madrid peace conference was convened without it. Palestinian representation was established with leaders from the West Bank and Gaza, who were formally part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. This representation formula corresponded with Hussein’s long-standing ideas of federation or confederation between Jordan and the West Bank. Now, in the run up to Madrid, in the summer of 1991 King Hussein and Crown Prince Hasan reverted to their old tactic of condemning those who hid behind “a facade of patriotism” when the true patriots were not those “pontificating from outside” but those who remained steadfast on their land in the occupied territories. It was the people under occupation who mattered and not the PLO, which was “by definition a temporary body.”51 In practice, however, the PLO was not excluded from Madrid. The Palestinian representatives at the conference were in constant consultation with the PLO. For Arafat, however, this arrangement was not good enough. The PLO was indeed present, but only indirectly, and the Jordanians were not excluded. This was an undesirable setup for the PLO, which had acquiesced only for lack of any better choice, in a moment of weakness. Arafat also resented the delegation’s access to the US administration and feared the emergence of an “alternative ‘insider’ leadership.” As Faruq al-Qaddumi candidly put it, “The PLO had either to join the peace process or to exit history.”52 The only way out was for the PLO to negotiate directly with the Israelis.

The Oslo Surprise

This time it was not the PLO that surprised the Jordanians but the Israelis. The Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the PLO in September 1993,

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stunned the Jordanians.53 They had never imagined such a possibility. They subsequently complained that their Israeli interlocutors did not always fully appreciate the nuances of the Jordanian position. The Jordanians, at times, resorted to rather opaque circumlocution in the presentation of their positions, assuming the Israelis would understand all the fine points and what they really meant. But the Oslo Accords proved them woefully wrong. The Oslo channel sidelined the Madrid conference, derailed Jordan’s policy, and saved the PLO from a particularly sorry state of affairs. In the post–Cold War and post–Gulf War era, the PLO’s position had been considerably weakened. Denied the Soviet counterweight to the United States and following the crushing defeat of Iraq, the PLO was driven to come to terms with Israel and to secure a foothold on Palestinian soil before its regional and international standing declined further. The PLO was in a state of financial bankruptcy and administrative and organizational breakdown facing increasing dissent from the other factions and from within the occupied territories. The organization’s corruption and lack of accountability were resoundingly condemned in the West Bank and Gaza, and demands were being made for a greater political role for the “insiders.”54 For the PLO it was a question of political self-preservation. Oslo made Jordanian-Palestinian partnership redundant. Hussein never believed that Jordan’s demand for PLO involvement would lead to Jordan’s total exclusion from an agreement secretly negotiated between Israel and the PLO behind the Jordanians’ backs on matters of vital interest to the kingdom. Such negotiations had often been held in the past between Israelis and Jordanians behind the backs of the Palestinians. The Jordanians now had reason to fear that the Israeli-Palestinian accord would marginalize them and deny Jordan any role in the determination of the future of Palestine. More ominously, the Jordanians now suspected that Israel and the PLO had possibly arrived at understandings that might be menacing to Jordan’s long-term well-being. Shortly after the signing of the Oslo Accords, on September 26, King Hussein and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin met secretly in Aqaba. Rabin succeeded in reassuring Hussein that Israel had no intention of marginalizing Jordan or of threatening its interests. Moreover, the two men established not only a personal rapport but also a strategic understanding based on Israel’s fundamental interest in the continued stability of the Hashemite Kingdom and in solid bilateral relations between the two countries.55 This was all the more so after Oslo, which was intended to set in motion a process that would culminate in the establishment of a Palestinian state sandwiched between Jordan and Israel in the West Bank and Gaza. In the Oslo Accords, however, Israel had not only unwittingly unnerved the Jordanians. It had also undermined the Palestinian leader-

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ship in the occupied territories and essentially handed them over to be quashed by the PLO. The intifada had ushered in a new phase in Palestinian history in which the Palestinian struggle was now waged not only in a new arena but also by a different constituency of people. The Madrid peace conference further enhanced the stature of the Palestinian leadership from the West Bank and Gaza. It was they who represented the Palestinians at the conference and not the PLO, even though it was clear that they consulted with the PLO at every turn. This came in the wake of a certain transformation that “inside” politics had undergone during the latter years of the Israeli occupation. The local leadership had engaged intensively in civil society institution building of the Palestinian state-in-the-making. In their mind, with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, in terms of the Oslo Accords, the PLO leadership was expected to merge with the institutional infrastructure that they had painstakingly created.56 But the practical implementation of the Oslo Accords put paid to all of that. As the PLO leadership entered the West Bank and Gaza to form the Palestinian Authority, it behaved like any other authoritarian regime and rapidly subordinated the various semi-independent civil society organizations to the central government. The hopes of these budding components of civil society to share in the shaping of a more pluralistic Palestinian political society were dashed. In signing the Oslo Accords with the PLO, Israel had inadvertently undermined the two most important pillars of a potentially moderate historical accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians: Jordan and the more secular nationalist West Bank leadership. Yasir Arafat and his partners in the PLO leadership failed to rein in the Palestinian opponents of Oslo, just as successive Israeli governments contributed their equal share to the undoing of the Oslo Accords by failing to check the settler movement in the West Bank. The Jewish settler population doubled in the decade after Oslo. While this did not run counter to the letter of the Oslo Accords, it certainly contradicted their spirit. In these circumstances the Oslo process met with inevitable failure.

Jordan’s Peace with Israel

Jordan’s decision to sign a peace treaty with Israel had four main immediate political objectives: • To ensure the coordinated stabilization of a Palestinian state between Jordan and Israel

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• To revive and ensure the sound and stable strategic relationship with the United States and Israel • To create the political conditions that would ensure the sustained development of the Jordanian economy • To enhance the kingdom’s regional stability with secure bilateral political and commercial ties with its Arab neighbors (Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia) The Gulf War of 1991, in which the United States crushed the Iraqi army, demolished Jordan’s Arab strategic hinterland. For King Hussein, Saddam’s Iraq had become an ally that provided a military balance versus an increasingly powerful Israel and an ever-more overbearing Syria.57 This alliance had now been lost for good. Jordan was also facing economic collapse. Iraq’s humiliating defeat and the continuing international sanctions against Baghdad disrupted Jordan’s major economic lifeline. Jordan’s economy was now stifled further by the punitive measures taken against the kingdom by the United States and the Gulf states, including the suspension of already declining financial aid and the expulsion of Jordanian workers. Since Hussein had refused to join the US war coalition against Iraq, Jordan entered “the worst crisis ever in America’s relations with the Hashemites.”58 Hussein had no choice but to seek to reestablish Jordan’s place in the orbit of American strategic and economic protection, which also meant joining the Middle East peace process in pursuit of a settlement with Israel. The peace process was Hussein’s “way out of the wilderness.”59 Shortly before the outbreak of the Gulf War, Jordan had sought some initial understandings with Israel. At the beginning of January 1991, King Hussein and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir met secretly in England. Hussein expressed his anxiety that Jordan could become the “killing zone” in the event of a clash between Israel and Iraq or that Israel might exploit the opportunity of a war in the Gulf to expel masses of Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan. Hussein reassured Shamir that Jordan had ceased all military cooperation with Iraq and that Jordan would not permit any deployment of Iraqi forces in the kingdom. In exchange he asked of Israel not to infringe upon Jordan’s territorial integrity, on land or in the air, in the event that it was compelled to attack Iraq. Shamir promised that Israel would not, and he kept his word. One reason Israel chose not to retaliate for the Iraqi scud missile attacks on its cities during the war was Shamir’s understanding with Hussein. The Jordanians drew encouragement from Israel’s restraint and from the fact that it transpired yet again that the Jordanian fear of Israeli expulsion of Palestinians to Jordan in

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the name of the thesis that “Jordan is Palestine” might, after all, be exaggerated. Moreover, Shamir also urged the United States to offer Jordan more generous aid to ensure its stability.60 Jordan accepted the invitation to the Madrid peace conference in October 1991, and just a year later, in October 1992, Jordan and Israel had already arrived at an agreed agenda for the negotiation of a peace treaty between them. They did not sign the agenda so as not to get ahead of the Palestinian track. But after the signing of the Oslo Accords, there was no longer any reason to hold back, and the agenda was signed immediately after the signing of the Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles in September 1993. The initial strategic rapport between King Hussein and Prime Minister Rabin established shortly after the Oslo Accords matured a year later into the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, signed on October 26, 1994. It was a unique document and fundamentally different from the IsraeliEgyptian peace treaty or from the Syrian-Israeli settlement that was negotiated but never consummated.61 In the Jordanian-Israeli treaty, there were no bilateral security arrangements, no demilitarized zones, no early-warning stations, and no international forces—an expression of the relative mutual trust between the parties in matters pertaining to security. The problems that did exist between Israel and Jordan on security issues related to third parties, primarily Iraq and the Palestinians. The treaty sought to reassure Israel about its eastern front and to establish Jordan as a stable buffer between Israel and Iraq (and other third parties). At the same time it reassured the Jordanians in respect to their concerns about the possible consequences of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians—that is, in the main, the fear of “demographic aggression” by Israel, meaning the expulsion of Palestinians to Jordan. The treaty secured Israel’s formal commitment to Jordan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, it affirmed Jordan’s right to a more equitable distribution of water, and it called for cooperation in securityrelated matters, thereby providing Jordan with protection against other potential enemies.62 The article in the treaty dealing with security stipulated that the parties had agreed to refrain from joining or promoting any military or security coalition with a third party, “the objectives or activities of which include launching aggression or other acts of military hostility against the other Party.” They also agreed to refrain from “allowing the entry, stationing, and operating on their territory or through it, of military forces, personnel or materiel of a third party, in circumstances which may adversely prejudice the security of the other Party.”63 That was essentially the “Iraqi clause” for Israel.

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As for Jordan’s concerns, the treaty noted in its general principles that the parties further believed “that within their control, involuntary movements of persons in such a way as to adversely prejudice the security of either Party should not be permitted.”64 That, essentially, was the “demographic clause” for Jordan. Above all, the Jordanians were relieved by Israel’s final recognition of the kingdom’s borders. Only then did Hussein feel that the existential threat of the “alternative homeland” had subsided.65 At long last, according to Prince Hasan, the treaty signaled an end to the “talk of Zionist expansion to the east of the River Jordan and about obliterating the East Jordanian identity.”66 The leading daily al-Ra’y declared that the treaty had finally silenced “the Israeli idea” that Jordan is the “eastern extension of the Hebrew state.” The treaty meant that “Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine.” Fahd alFanik, Jordan’s most widely read columnist, asserted that “the main reason for the peace treaty” was to put an “end to the threat of the alternative homeland.”67 But despite all these assurances, Jordanian anxieties on this issue were never entirely put to rest and were easily revived in times of tension and uncertainty. The Jordanian-Israeli treaty was also designed to provide a platform of strategic understanding on the Palestinian question to ensure that Jordan would not be negatively affected by the results of an Israeli-Palestinian final status negotiation. In the treaty Hussein obtained Israeli recognition of Jordan’s historical role in the protection of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. This was of particular importance to the king, for whom Jordan’s role in Jerusalem remained a critical component of the Hashemite heritage and historical mission. Well before Oslo, it was clear that Jordan would have a recognized and even central place in any future negotiation on the Palestinian refugee question. After all, a very high proportion of Palestinians, refugees included, were Jordanian citizens. But above and beyond these specific matters, the Jordanians also expected at least to be consulted on other matters of concern to them, and there was little on Palestine that did not affect Jordan, whether it be borders, settlements, water, or security, all of which concerned the Jordanians very directly. Jordan’s problem, however, remained how to ensure consultation on the Palestinian question so that it could protect its vital interests without actually becoming a partner to the negotiations and thereby assuming historical responsibility for the outcome. After they had formally disengaged from Palestine, it was never quite clear how the Jordanians could precisely calibrate the required measure of influence on the process without reclaiming a role they did not want.68

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Jordan was no longer driven by a desire for territorial expansion. Its interest was confined to the protection of the integrity of the kingdom on the East Bank. Indeed, it was now all about the various components of the kingdom’s national security far more than the dynastic ambitions of the Hashemites, except for the tie to the holy places in Jerusalem. But after Hussein’s death in February 1999, in the generational change of the guard, this last remnant of dynastic ambition, which had motivated Hussein until the very end, became somewhat less relevant. The period after Hussein’s passing was fraught with disappointment for Jordan. To the west, in the Israeli-Palestinian domain, things went woefully wrong. Jordan’s expectations from the peace treaty with Israel were twofold: (1) Jordan banked on the implementation of the Oslo Accords and the conclusion of a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine; (2) this would stabilize Jordan’s western front and enhance the identity of the Jordanian state, as distinct from Palestine, finally putting to rest the contention that “Jordan is Palestine.” But Israel and Palestine went to war instead of making peace, leading to the revival of Jordan’s nightmare scenario. In the Jordanian analysis, this outcome was largely due to Israeli intransigence and unwillingness to fully withdraw from the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem. The instability inherent in this situation was coupled in Jordanian thinking with the constant anxiety that Israeli-Palestinian armed conflict might eventually lead to massive Palestinian migration across the river into Jordan. This, the Jordanians feared, might irreparably upset the already precarious demographic balance of Jordanians and Palestinians in the kingdom. Precise figures on the composition of Jordan’s population were not available, but the Palestinians were thought to compose at least half of the total population. The East Bank Jordanian political elite were deeply concerned not to allow translation of Palestinian demographic and economic power into political dominance. Their vested interest in a stable and viable Palestinian political order was also to enable the attraction and absorption of refugees from Jordan and thus to reduce the Palestinian population of the kingdom.

Notes

1. Schueftan, Jordanian Option, 333 (Hebrew). 2. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 372. 3. Sela, Unity Within Division, 112 (Hebrew). 4. Indyk, Master of the Game, 424, 436; Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 976; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 376. 5. Safran, Israel the Embattled Ally, 536.

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6. Indyk, Master of the Game, 437–440; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 376. 7. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 377. 8. Indyk, Master of the Game, 417. 9. Indyk, Master of the Game, 438; Safran, Israel the Embattled Ally, 537–538; Schueftan, Jordanian Option, 310–311. 10. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 380–382; Indyk, Master of the Game, 431. 11. Sela, Unity Within Division, 122; Schueftan, Jordanian Option, 337–338. 12. Susser, “Jordan’s Status and Position,” 70–71 (Hebrew). 13. Susser, “Jordan’s Status and Position,” 73; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 383. 14. Susser, “Jordan’s Status and Position,” 74–75. 15. Yost in Christian Science Monitor, July 25, 1975. 16. Susser, “Jordan,” 2:585; Robins, History of Jordan, 147–148. 17. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 399. 18. US Embassy in Jordan to the Department of State, August 28, 1978, FRUS (1977–1980), Vol. IX, Arab-Israeli Dispute (August 1978–December 1980), 2nd rev. ed., Document 17; Susser, “Jordan,” 3:634–636. 19. Memo of Conversation Between Cyrus Vance (and Others) and King Hussein (and Others) in Amman, September 20, 1978, FRUS (1977–1980), Vol. IX, Arab-Israeli Dispute (August 1978–December 1980), 2nd rev. ed., Document 64. 20. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 403. 21. Susser, “Jordan,” 2:587, 3:634–636. 22. Riedel, Jordan and America, 90. 23. Riedel, Jordan and America, 93. 24. Susser, “Jordan,” 6:682–683, 7:631–632. 25. Hani al-Hasan in Filastin al-Thawra, April 21, 1984, quoted in Mishal and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, 7. 26. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 183. 27. Speech by King Hussein to the Egyptian parliament on December 3, 1984, in Mahafza, Ashara a’wam min al-kifah wal-bina, 603–609. 28. For the full text, see Susser, “Jordan,” 9:523. 29. Hussein in a speech to the nation on February 19, 1986, in Mahafza, Ashara a’wam min al-kifah wal-bina, 792–836. 30. Susser, “Jordan,” 10:452–453. 31. Sahliyeh, In Search of Leadership, 170–171. 32. Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 205–206, 266–273; Susser, “Jordan,” 11:496–498. 33. Sa’id al-Tall, Al-Urdunn wa-Filastin wa-mu’amarat al-watan al-badil and Al-Urdunn wa-Filastin; wijhat al-nazar al-Arabiyya, 76–81. 34. Hussein in a speech to the nation on February 19, 1986 (official Arabic text in Moshe Dayan Center Archives). 35. Ashton, King Hussein of Jordan, 234. 36. Susser, “Jordan,” 11:502. 37. Jordan TV, January 29, 1988. 38. Mishal and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, 20–22. 39. Mishal and Aharoni, Speaking Stones, 70. 40. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 225. 41. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 184; Radio Amman, May 3, 1988; Jordan News Agency, May 10, 1988. 42. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 184–185. 43. Foreign Minister Tahir al-Masri quoted in al-Dustur (Amman), July 13, 1988. 44. Official Arabic text of Hussein’s speech at Algiers Summit, June 7, 1988, Moshe Dayan Center Archives.

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45. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 461. 46. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 185. 47. Full Arabic text in al-Ra’y (Amman), August 1, 1988. 48. Radio Amman, August 4, 1988; Jordan Times, August 6, 1988. 49. Jordan Times, June 28, 1988. 50. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 186–188. 51. Al-Dustur (Amman), June 20, 1991; Jordan Times, July 20, 1991; New York Times, July 30, 1991. 52. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 643, 655. 53. Musa, Ta’rikh al-Urdunn fi al-qarn al-ishrin, 1958–1995, 2: 589. 54. Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, 656, 660. 55. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 525. 56. Lavi, “Palestinians in the West Bank Under Occupation and Self-Rule,” 228 (Hebrew). 57. Mufti, “King’s Art,” 12. 58. Riedel, Jordan and America, 103. 59. Riedel, Jordan and America, 119. 60. Zak, Husayn Makes Peace, 47–51; Susser, “Jordan,” 14:488–490, 15:504– 505; Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 113–114. 61. Rabinovich, Brink of Peace; Ross, The Missing Peace, 509–590. 62. Mufti, “King’s Art,” 10. 63. Treaty of Peace Between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, October 26, 1994, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jerusalem, Article 4. 64. Treaty of Peace, Article 2. 65. Muasher, Arab Center, 74. 66. Radio Amman, October 20, 1994; Jordan TV, October 21, 1994; Jordan Times, October 22, 1994. 67. Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 183. 68. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 188.

5

The Evolution of Jordanian Identity

THE HISTORY OF JORDAN’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE QUESTION OF PALEStine is the context that frames the evolution of the Jordanian collective identity. The establishment of the emirate, through the annexation of the West Bank after 1948, the unity of the two banks until 1967, Jordan’s loss of the West Bank, and the aftereffects of the Six-Day War, chief of which was the challenge of a rejuvenated and energized Palestinian national movement, were the background for the development of a distinctive Jordanian identity. Jordan’s efforts to absorb and contain Palestine had failed. Jordan therefore faced the danger of being consumed by a vibrant Palestinian national identity. Winning the war against the fida’iyyun in 1970–1971 was an essential but insufficient condition for the kingdom’s survival on the East Bank. Jordan also had to retain the mantle of representation of the Palestinians if it wished to continue to play a central role in determining the political fate of the Palestinian people. Such a central role was deemed necessary to contain the Palestinian challenge to the integrity and viability of the kingdom. This was especially true after 1967, when the Palestinians in Jordan were assumed to constitute at least half of the overall population of the East Bank alone. As it transpired in the early 1970s, the mantle of representation was no longer in Jordan’s grasp. It became imperative for Jordan to formulate and disseminate its own separate and distinctive Jordanian identity. Jordan would not be able to incorporate Palestine. But that did not mean that Jordan had no right to exist and ought to be absorbed by Palestine, 93

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as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) began to suggest quite openly in the early 1970s, followed by certain Arab leaders, like Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia. Some on the Israeli right also contended that since Jordan was essentially part of historical Palestine, and since the Palestinians were such a large component of the Jordanian population (and even a majority, as some would argue, not because they really knew the figures but because the contention served their cause), it was only natural that Jordan should become the homeland of the Palestinians. All of Eretz Israel, or western Palestine, belonged to the Jews, and thus, according to this school, it made perfect sense for eastern Palestine to belong to the Palestinians. The Jordanians, needless to say, argued with great force and conviction that Jordan was not an empty lot or an alternative homeland (al-watan al-badil) for the Palestinians. Jordan was not Palestine. It was the country of the Jordanian people, who had an identity of their own and a right to self-determination in their homeland. There were four distinct phases in the evolution of the Jordanian collective identity: (1) the period of King Abdallah I’s reign, during which the country’s Arab collective identity was emphasized, both before and after 1948, when the Palestinians not only became part of the state but a decisive majority on the two banks combined; (2) King Hussein’s rule over both the East and West Banks until 1967, during which the unity of the two banks of the river under the Arab Hashemite monarchy was the staple of collective identity; (3) the post-1967 era, when Jordan, in almost every practical sense, reverted to being an East Bank state and a Jordanian particular identity was deliberately fostered by the regime; and (4) the reign since 1999 of King Abdallah II, whose “Jordan First” initiative was designed to take Jordan one more uninhibited stride forward toward a distinctive, unapologetic, Jordanian territorial identity, openly distancing the kingdom from the devotion of his forefathers to various versions of an all-inclusive Arabism.

Abdallah I, Arabism, and the Islamic Motif

In the early years of the Emirate of Transjordan, Amir Abdallah, who was unhappy with his lot, was not inclined to promote a Jordanian territorial identity. Abdallah envied his younger brother Faysal, and he smarted “over his brother’s preeminence in the firmament of postwar Arab politics and his own marginalization.”1 In the 1920s Transjordan was no more than a desert principality, sparsely populated by peasants and Bedouin nomads, with not a single urban center worthy of the name. Abdallah tended to emphasize Transjordan’s pan-Arab character and to highlight an Islamic Arabism2 under the auspicious leadership of

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the Hashemites. For Abdallah, born in 1882 to Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, the emir of Mecca, the discourse of Islamic reform under the influence of the great Islamic reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—the likes of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida, and Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi—was an integral part of his intellectual upbringing. Their visions of Arab primacy in Islam and of Islamic revival, with the Hijaz as the pivot and the Arabs as the driving force, including the notion of a Sharifian Caliphate, were naturally attractive to the Hashemites. They tended to reinforce the Hashemite claim to the leadership of a renewed Islamic/Arab movement of political revival. As descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, who was a member of the House of Hashim, the Hashemites had unique title to overall Arab leadership, at least in their own minds. Very much in line with pan-Arab ideology of the interwar years, Abdallah understood Islam and Arabism as two intimately related identities that all Arabs shared equally as a “Muslim Arab nation.”3 There could have been no Islamic civilization without the Arabs, who were its creators and propagators, and likewise there could have been no Arabism without Islam, which lent the Arabs their political significance and spiritual and material might. Simultaneously, the supremacy of the Arabs in Islamic civilization had assured the Muslims of their past glories, and the loss of this place of leadership by the Arabs had ushered in prolonged periods of decline.4 In the midst of World War I, the Hashemites, under Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, the guardian of Islam’s two holiest places, in Mecca and Medina, rose against the Ottomans in the name of Islam, excoriating the Young Turks for their foreign-inspired deviation from Islamic tradition. Sharif Hussein’s own aspirations to the caliphate emboldened him in his decision to rebel against the Turks in the Great Arab Revolt of 1916. In his grand strategy the revolt should have led “to a fitting, Muslim replacement for the Ottoman Empire.” Hussein maintained these aspirations from the end of World War I until he declared himself caliph in 1924. None other than his son Abdallah had been instrumental all along in the, albeit unsuccessful, pursuit of British and international support for Sharif Hussein as “the legitimate claimant to the Caliphate.”5 Abdallah’s Hashemite progeny and the ambition of his house were the historical justification for his own quest to rule over Syria.6 The Arabism of the Hashemites was, quite naturally, interwoven with Islamic themes. “We of the Hashemite house,” Abdallah would contend until the end of his days, “were the prime factor in the Arabs’ attainment to a place of honor. Their first age of glory was the creation of Muhammad . . . and their second was the work of the creator of the Arab

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Revolt.”7 Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, who had led the revolt, was in Abdallah’s version of history almost on a par with the Prophet, and the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans was but one remove from the revelation.8 Celebrating the Arab Revolt was the most important national occasion during Abdallah I’s reign. The revolt was “a basic pillar of his legitimacy, providing Jordan with a myth of origin” and a critical role in Arab national revival. Under Abdallah a built-in duality was created by simultaneously propagating the message of Transjordanian and Arab independence.9 In Abdallah’s order of priorities, Transjordan was only the beginning in attaining the grand ideal of Arab unity. Arabism, not Jordanian identity, was elevated to the status of a “second religion.” But the first religion was naturally Islam, and pride of place was given to Islamic religious festivals in Abdallah’s Transjordan.10 In Abdallah’s vision, the Hashemites were the rightful leaders of the Arabs. Unfortunately for them, however, there was always a yawning gap between Hashemite aspirations and the measure of popular support they actually enjoyed. Sharif Hussein’s hasty assumption of the caliphate after its abolition by Kemal Ataturk in early 1924 was not widely supported in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Following his expulsion from the Hijaz shortly thereafter by the Saudis, Sharif Hussein lived in exile in Cyprus and died in Amman in 1931. His sons wished to have him interred in Mecca, but considering the ongoing hostility with the Saudis, this was not a realistic option. Sharif Hussein was buried in Jerusalem, the third-holiest city in Islam, after Mecca and Medina, near Al-Aqsa Mosque, in the compound of al-haram al-sharif.

Early State Building

From the outset, Abdallah’s sights were set on expansion. Transjordan was but a stepping-stone to all of Greater Syria (Bilad al-Sham or Suriya al-Kubra), possibly to retrieval of the Hijaz, and at least to Palestine. His people were the Arabs, and for him the center of the Arab world was Greater Syria, with Damascus as its crown. This was one naturally unified country, Natural Syria (Suriya al-tabi’iyya), the partition of which was illegitimate.11 Again, drawing on the ideological trends of his time, according to which all lands inhabited by Arabs were Arab,12 Abdallah urged his followers not to identify themselves by geographical region; rather, they were members of the Arab nation and were thus to regard “all the Arab countries [as] the country of every Arab.” The ministers in his first government, the holders of the majority of government posts, and the officers of the newly formed security forces were, more often than not, Arabs who hailed from other countries, such as Syria, Lebanon,

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Iraq, or Arabia. Between April 1921 and May 1946, eight men headed eighteen cabinets, but not even one of them was a Transjordanian. Only two Transjordanians served as cabinet members from 1921 to 1929.13 This importation of outsiders gave rise to domestic opposition and to what could cautiously be regarded as the embryonic stirrings of local Transjordanian patriotism, referred to by the Jordanian historian Ali Mahafza as a “Jordanian regionalist tendency” (al-naz’a al-qutriyya alUrdunniyya), which Eric Hobsbawm might have called “popular protonationalism.”14 Both tribal leaders and “petty bourgeoisie professionals” vented their protest against this rule of outsiders, and the slogan “Transjordan for the Transjordanians” and calls for representation of ahl albilad (the people of the country) or abna al-bilad (sons of the country) were heard in the 1920s for the first time.15 These so-called regionalist sentiments were also expressed intermittently in the 1930s and 1940s. But it would be an exaggeration to describe this phenomenon, which was by no means universal and was not shared by the devout pan-Arabists, as a coherent form of Jordanian nationalism. The repeated complaints about the preference of foreigners in the bureaucracy eventually paid off. In December 1929 a law was passed to dispense with non-Jordanians in the government bureaucracy. Despite the law, many non-Jordanians remained in office.16 However, in the 1930s and 1940s, the government bureaucracy was steadily expanded. In contrast to the first decade, the majority of government positions were actually filled by Transjordanians rather than imported personnel. This process was also made possible by the growing pool of local high school and even university graduates. The total number of government officials had increased to 927 by 1939; two-thirds (607) were Transjordanians.17 From Transjordan’s inception as a state in 1921, Abdallah and the British established the necessary governmental institutions to guarantee the loyalty of the new citizenry. By the end of World War II, as elsewhere in the region, the demands of the emergent urban professional intelligentsia, the national military, and the education system, as well as increased urbanization and media dissemination, catalyzed the formation of a more clearly defined sense of Jordanian stateness.18 Yet this early state-building process in Transjordan was not accompanied by a deliberate promotion of a Transjordanian territorial identity. In accordance with Abdallah’s vision of Arabism, he clearly preferred, at least initially, to refer to his territory as the Arab East (al-Sharq al-Arabi), in deference to his pan-Arab expansionist design, an inclination the British would not entertain. Abdallah had to settle for the use of the title on the masthead of his first official newspaper. Al-Sharq al-Arabi began to appear in May 1923. In 1926 its name changed to al-Jarida al-Rasmiyya lil-Hukumat

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Sharq al-Urdunn (official gazette of the government of Transjordan), which only published laws, statutes, and official announcements.19 The first stamps were circulated in the country in the early 1920s in the name of the Government of the Arab East (hukumat al-sharq al-Arabiyya).The unified security force established in 1923 was “pointedly not called Transjordanian” but rather al-Jaysh al-Arabi (the Arab Legion), which the British also let pass and remained the official name of the Jordanian army for decades. Stamps from the Hijaz were also sold in Transjordan, indicating that the origins of the country or its ruler were linked to other places.20 In the schools there was no concerted effort to promote a local Transjordanian identity. Jordanian history textbooks only began to appear in the 1950s. History textbooks in the interwar period, published in places like Beirut, Damascus, and Jerusalem, all tended to accentuate the Arab nationalist identity formation, according to which the Arab world was one indivisible unit. Students received a pan-Arab education from their teachers, most of whom had graduated from the American University of Beirut or Damascus University. They were constantly reminded that Transjordan was part of a larger Arab entity and that the colonial borders were not necessarily permanent. Thus, the education system and the crises in the region had provided the student body in Jordan with an Arab nationalist consciousness by the end of the 1940s.21 Basing their rule on a commitment to Arabism rather than a more local form of affiliation was crucial for the Hashemites too because they themselves were latecomers to Jordan. The regime’s repeated appeal to Arabism and its characterization of Jordan as a home for all Arabs were also essential given the presence in the kingdom, especially after 1948, of large numbers of citizens who, like the Hashemites, were not rooted in the East Bank.22 All the same, in the 1930s steps were taken to create some impression of Transjordan as a coherent historical political entity. After all, if Transjordan had no right to exist, Abdallah might have been denied the essential base from which to expand. Stamps were printed depicting Abdallah’s image and various historical sites throughout Transjordan, thus bolstering the image of Transjordan not as a newly created colonial invention but rather as a country with a glorious past.23 Mapmaking, land surveys, and land registration also had the effect of conveying to the populace a reality of Transjordan as a political entity unto itself, distinct from its neighbors in Syria, Palestine, and the Hijaz.24 According to Michael Fischbach, the state’s intervention in the restructuring of land matters in Transjordan had been so thorough by the 1940s that it went a long way to “contributing to the development not only of the country’s economy but of its identity and self-conceptualization as well.” The

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state’s regularized presence not only changed the way land was owned but also served to “solidify the very definitions of what ‘Transjordan’— and by extension, ‘Jordan’—meant.”25 A newspaper named al-Urdunn was founded in Amman in 1927. Of the first political parties to be established in the emirate, albeit rather ephemeral and noninfluential, some carried specifically “Jordanian” names, such as the Jordanian People’s Party (hizb al-sha’b al-Urdunni), founded in 1927 and disbanded in 1930, or the equally short-lived Jordanian Solidarity Party (hizb al-tadamun al-Urdunni), founded in 1933, which sought to protect the interests of the “sons of Transjordan” and in which membership was open only to people resident in Transjordan prior to 1922 (i.e., excluding the Syrians and other outsiders who had settled in the emirate after its formation).26 In 1937 the Jordanian Brotherhood Party (hizb al-ikha al-Urdunni) was founded by some of the same key figures who had founded the Solidarity Party a few years earlier, such as Rufayfan al-Majali, the sheikh of the Majali and the strongman of Karak, and Mithqal al-Fayiz, the paramount sheikh of the Bani Sakhr.27 These were among the most influential men in the country. Their influence, however, rested on their tribal prestige, pedigree, and power and had virtually nothing to do with their membership in these erratic political parties. Oddly enough Abdallah himself did not share the vision of the country as a worthy political entity in its own right. He remained obsessed with the notion of Greater Syria even though it was plain for all to see that this was an unrealistic ambition. Like Sharif Hussein before him, his aspirations did not enjoy much real support in the Arab world. Though Abdallah was “not totally persona non grata” in Syria and he did have supporters among the Syrian regime’s opponents,28 Damascenes and Jerusalemites generally found the idea of being ruled by a chieftain from the edge of the desert in Amman “slightly absurd.” It was difficult to take Jordan very seriously as a country, and as he himself “well realized,” Abdallah was “trapped by the inconsequence of Transjordan.” Even for his British mentors, Greater Syria was an irritant. They had no intention of upsetting their relations with France for Abdallah’s sake, and when it came to Arab unity, they looked to other Arab leaders who were held in higher regard in the Arab world, like Nuri al-Sa’id of Iraq or Nahas Pasha in Egypt.29 But Abdallah, never satisfied with Transjordan, persevered to the bitter end. Syria was the homeland of his imagination.30 Even in his last days, after almost half a lifetime in Amman, Abdallah refrained from defining himself as “Jordanian.” He and the “Jordanian government and people” considered themselves “part of Syria,” he said. As for himself,

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he was a “Muslim and an Arab,” a “simple Meccan” or “Hijazi.”31 Even so, Abdallah’s greatest achievement was the stabilization and consolidation of the Jordanian state, with an impressively powerful military in regional terms, no mean feat considering his extremely modest point of departure. The state and its wherewithal provided the effective launching pad for the expansion into Palestine in 1948. Palestine, and not Syria, was the point of least resistance. Here Abdallah also had allies: the enemies of Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the British and the Zionists, as well as the mufti’s Palestinian opponents, the members of the “opposition” (al-mu’arada) led by the Nashashibis. By the time of Abdallah’s assassination in July 1951, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan had been radically transformed. It was no longer the dusty desert principality of Abdallah’s early years but a state that had expanded to include the major remnant of Arab Palestine, including half of the historic city of Jerusalem and its Muslim holy places. Identity promotion that had never really focused on the East Bank shifted toward Palestine as “Jerusalem and the holy places, which represented the nation in its new geopolitical configuration, became prominent images on Jordanian-issued cultural artifacts.”32 Jordan had tripled its population and had a large Palestinian majority that outnumbered the original East Bankers by two to one. Jordan was a very different country in the early 1950s, just as the Arab world was an ever-changing environment. This was especially true in the wake of the overthrow of the monarchies in Egypt in 1952 and in Iraq in 1958 and the birth of the militant brand of Nasserist pan-Arabism. For Abdallah I the consolidation of the Jordanian state was but a means to an expansionist end. For his successors the preservation of the kingdom was to become an end in itself. The first test came immediately after Abdallah’s assassination. In the minds of many, especially in the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq (but even momentarily in Syria,33 hardly an example of stability itself), the removal of Abdallah from the scene meant that “Jordan would tend to fall apart.”34 The Iraqis took the lead, arguing that in the natural course of events Iraq and Jordan ought to unite into one state. The Iraqis “engaged in intensive efforts” to bring Jordan under their patronage. The leading figures of the Jordanian ruling elite, by now secure in their belief in the country’s independent viability and jealous of their own prerogatives, were determined to preserve the regional status quo. Iraqi pretensions were summarily defeated.35 The establishment of the United Arab Republic with the union of Syria and Egypt in early February 1958 under the auspices of a triumphalist and self-confident Abd al-Nasir forced King Hussein to

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seek the protection of a union with Iraq. The Arab Federation between the two Hashemite monarchies was established a few days later, but this was much more about form than substance. There was no enthusiasm for a real union on either side, and the Jordanians did not have the slightest intention of forfeiting any of their sovereignty.36 The federation was short-lived. The monarchy that had ruled Iraq for nearly four decades and was paradoxically always seen as a far more enduring enterprise than Jordan was swept away in a few hours of revolution on July 14, 1958.

Hashemite Arabism and the Unity of the Two Banks

If Syria was Abdallah I’s imagined homeland, for Hussein that was never the case. His constant preoccupation was the consolidation of the Hashemite Kingdom that he had inherited. Hussein was Jordan’s first native-born king. For him Jordan was home, to which he felt a true sense of belonging. He had no sentimental attachment to the Hijaz;37 nor did he emulate Abdallah with expansionist ambitions for Greater Syria. He had an instinctively closer affinity with the younger generation of the East Bank elite rather than the older generation of Palestinians whom Abdallah had employed as prime ministers, the likes of Tawfiq Abu al-Huda (born in Acre) and Samir al-Rifa’i (born in Safed). Not that Hussein refused to resort to their experienced counsel and service, but in his initial years on the throne, he appointed the first East Banker prime ministers. These were all men of the younger generation, such as Fawzi al-Mulqi (born in Irbid of Damascene parentage),38 Hazza’ alMajali (a scion of the powerful Majali clan of Karak), Bahjat al-Talhuni (from the southern town of Tafila), and Wasfi al-Tall (also from Irbid). In Hussein’s time a new tradition was set whereby prime ministers were invariably East Bankers, rather than Palestinians, as in the days of Abdallah. Under Hussein there were occasionally Palestinian prime ministers, but that was to become the exception rather than the rule. During the first phase of Hussein’s reign, from 1953 to 1967, the major effort of the monarchy was invested in the two not entirely reconcilable objectives of assuring the dominance of the East Banker elite and the incorporation into the kingdom of its new Palestinian citizens, refugees and nonrefugees alike, under the unifying banner of Hashemite Arabism. The common Arab and Islamic identity was to unite Jordanians and Palestinians in one Jordanian state, as the Jordanians essentially effaced the name of Palestine and sought to eradicate any separate and distinctive Palestinian identity. The term “West Bank” was introduced

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to supplant “Palestine” and to incorporate the West Bank as an appendage of the East Bank in the makeup of the Hashemite Kingdom. This was all part of a project of unification and assimilation. Consolidation, however, was fraught with difficulty. The Jordanian state and the Palestinians did not share interests on the most crucial of issues. For Jordan, the post-1948 situation was more than satisfactory. Jordan did not believe in the capacity of the Arabs to dislodge Israel and sought above all to maintain the territorial status quo. Such a policy was anathema to the great majority of Palestinians, who, disgruntled, defeated, and dispersed, wished for nothing more than to overturn the status quo and to have the Arabs turn back the historical clock by eliminating Israel. Under the umbrella of pan-Arab activism, Palestinians worked within the Jordanian system to generate regime change and then to work toward erasing the boundaries that weakened the Arab world.39 Their savior, therefore, was Abd al-Nasir with his messianic brand of revolutionary, antimonarchist, anti-Israeli, and anti-Western Arab nationalism. The “anachronistic” Hashemite monarchy could hardly compete with the “progressive” alternative of Nasserism. The monarchy was frequently at loggerheads with its Palestinian subjects, placing the regime on the horns of a perpetual dilemma. While seeking to integrate the Palestinians, the Jordanians did not fully trust them. Palestinians were therefore only partially integrated into the ruling elite. The Transjordanian political elite reigned supreme as the administrative centrality and economic preference of the East Bank over the West Bank were maintained throughout. This ambivalence was especially evident in policy toward Jerusalem. The city, on the one hand, was glorified for its sanctity, which, of course, lent prestige to its Hashemite guardians. But, on the other hand, the former administrative capital of British Mandatory Palestine was demoted to the level of just another provincial town in the West Bank. Its Palestinian opponents to the Hashemites, the former loyalists of the mufti and future supporters of the PLO, were firmly and at times forcefully suppressed. In 1959 the rank of the city was raised from municipality (baladiyya) to capital (amana), in theory on a par with Amman. In practice the decision was virtually meaningless.40 For King Hussein the constant struggle to preserve the Hashemite Kingdom was an especially tall order in the face of the pan-Arab onslaught of Abd al-Nasir and his allies in the radical Arab politics of the 1950s and early 1960s.41 Like Abdallah, Hussein did not initially promote a particular Jordanian territorial identity. He was driven, however, by altogether different motives. In Abdallah’s time, the brand of Arabism he conceived was designed to justify Hashemite Arab leadership and expansion. For Hussein, Hashemite Arabism, drawing its

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inspiration and legitimacy from the revolutionary fervor of the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in World War I, was Jordan’s purely defensive counterweight to the revolutionary thrust of Nasserism. It provided the justification for Jordanian-Palestinian unity in the Hashemite Kingdom, encompassing both banks of the Jordan River, but no more—just holding the fort. The cornerstone of Jordanian history was the Hashemite family, and the kings were portrayed as the “paternal father figures of the nation.” The regime naturally disseminated its own brand of nationalist theory. Schoolbooks highlighted the role of the Hashemites in Arab history. The goals of the Hashemite-led Arab Revolt implied a connection between the revolt and the fight against Zionism. The Hashemites also played an important role in the fight against European imperialism.42 Hashemite Arabism under Hussein, as under Abdallah before him, had strong Islamic undertones, which highlighted the noble Hashemite lineage as descendants of the Prophet and united Jordanians and Palestinians not only as Arabs but as Muslims as well. Hashemite Arabism followed in the pattern set by King Abdallah I, but in the service of a different cause. It was now deliberately projected as antithetical to the secular Nasserist or Ba’thi varieties of Arab nationalism. Jordan’s leaders made a point of portraying the kingdom in ideological and religious contradistinction to their Arab socialist foes. The Jordanians frequently dismissed the Nasserist and Ba’thi advocates of Arab socialism as “atheists” or “Bolsheviks” and as fundamentally unIslamic in their pseudo-Marxist propagation of class conflict, destined to tear asunder the community of the believers.43 Jordan of the late 1950s and early 1960s believed in the less ideological and more pragmatic slogan of “Unity, Freedom and a Better Life” (wahda, hurriyya, wal-hayat al-afdal), in contrast to the “Unity, Freedom and Socialism” (wahda, hurriyya, wa-ishtirakiyya) of its secular detractors.44 In their defiance of Abd al-Nasir and the secular Left, the Jordanians constructed a four-sided pillar-like monument in the heart of downtown Amman, with one of its panels underscoring the nation’s devotion to “Unity, Freedom and a Better Life” and another, its dedication to “God, homeland and king” (Allah, watan, malik), in that order. In his confrontation with the Nasir-style officer regimes, Hussein promoted a national narrative striking a balance between Arabism and Jordanian identity, presenting the distinctive Jordanian “family” as part and parcel of the broader Arab nation, just as the Arab Legion was the spearhead of the Arab armies.45 There could be no question where the Jordanians stood in the “Arab Cold War” between the “progressives” and their “reactionary” rivals,

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between the pro-Soviet Arab states and those who remained loyal to the West. Thus, for example, at a press conference especially convened for the occasion on May 1, 1965, a day that the Arab socialists commemorated with other like-minded states and movements as the international day of worker solidarity, Jordan’s Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tall chose to stress that this was a day that Jordan did not commemorate. Jordan, Tall explained, was a “Muslim Arab” country shaped by the “teachings of Islam and the heritage of Arabism.” Class conflict, he continued, was foreign to Jordanian society. Jordan, therefore, only celebrated religious and national holidays, as befitted a country ruled by the Hashemite dynasty, known to the Arabs ever since the revelation of the Prophet “Muhammad the Hashemite.”46 The incorporation of Arab Jerusalem into the kingdom after the 1948 war added an entirely new dimension to the promotion of the Hashemite Islamic heritage. Once again, after a break of a quarter century, since the fall of the Hashemite Kingdom of the Hijaz, the Hashemites were the guardians of important Muslim holy places. “The wholesale adoption” of these holy places “led to stark changes in the kingdom’s identity building project and in the ways in which the kingdom established political and religious legitimacy.” The state-issued cultural markers— postage stamps, banknotes, and tourism brochures depicting images of Jerusalem’s holy places as national symbols. Jordan’s inheritance of Palestine and its holy places was thus legitimized, and Hashemite rule was consolidated, by highlighting the integrity of the kingdom encompassing both banks of the river. In 1952 a series of stamps “commemorating the unity of Jordan” was issued, complemented in 1959 with a new series of banknotes, which similarly portrayed images of historical or religious sites on both banks of the river. Renovating Jerusalem’s holy places was yet another display of Hashemite sovereignty over the city and over Arab Palestine. In the 1920s Sharif Hussein had made a generous contribution to the renovation of Al-Aqsa. In the 1950s and 1960s, over the course of a decade, Jordan supervised the renovation of the Dome of the Rock, crowned by elaborate celebrations in August 1964, clearly calculated to promote the image of the Hashemites as protectors of the Islamic holy places in the city and country. In its coverage of the celebrations, the Jerusalem-based Jordanian press discussed the events as a reflection of the Arab-Islamic unity to which the monarchy aspired.47 Indeed, under this Arab-Islamic umbrella and reinforced by it, Jordanian-Palestinian unity was at the core of Hussein’s version of Hashemite Arabism, so much so that it became customary for the king to declare that the two were indistinguishably one: “Jordan is Palestine,

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and Palestine is Jordan.” Jordan, according to this formula, had inherited Palestine. This notion of unity left no room for a separate Palestinian identity, but not for an especially Jordanian one either. The promotion of an exclusive Jordanian identity was conspicuously absent from the textbooks of the state-run schools until 1967. Their pedagogic message was distinctly Arab nationalist. Jordan in this narrative was “the little Arab homeland” (al-watan al-Arabi al-saghir), which was part and parcel of “the great Arab homeland” (al-watan al-Arabi al-kabir).48 The rapid expansion of the education system provided the state with the opportunity to spread the Hashemite Arab national narrative to larger groups of students. The overall goal, as Betty Anderson explains, was to develop Jordanian society “in the context of an integrated Arab nation” and to fuse together “the different population groups into a harmonious and cohesive Arab Jordanian society.” State textbook production was accelerated in the late 1950s, in the aftermath of the political crisis of April 1957 and the escalating challenge of the Nasserist onslaught after the formation of the UAR in February 1958, in a campaign to “control the students’ nationalized vocabulary.” Central to the narrative of modern Arab nationalism was the Arab Revolt of World War I, which presented the Hashemites as the unquestioned leaders of the Arab nationalist movement. The textbooks took the form of hagiographies of King Hussein, who unified the Palestinian and Jordanian people and secured Jordan’s independence from foreign influence.49 Jordan had protected and saved Arab Palestine in 1948, and the maps of Jordan in the textbooks of the 1950s and 1960s included Palestine—sometimes just the West Bank and other times all of Palestine up to the Mediterranean.50 A Palestinian separate identity was not mentioned, and the Palestinians and Palestine were essentially an integral part of the Hashemite Kingdom.51 The revival of the Palestinian identity that began to gain currency in the late 1950s in the Arab world, particularly among the Palestinians, was for the Jordanians a threat to the integrity of the kingdom. Such a revival was diametrically opposed to the fundamental thrust of Jordan’s policy of incorporating and assimilating the Palestinians, which required the systematic erasure of any semblance of Palestinian nationalism or separate identity. Jordan rejected any idea designed “to tear away [intiza’] the Palestinian brother from the arms of his Jordanian family.”52 Indeed the family was a recurring theme in Hussein’s rhetoric, in this unity steeped in traditional values. The one family (al-usra al-wahida) uniting Jordanians and Palestinians or just the Jordanian family (al-usra al-Urdunniyya) was a constant refrain.53 Jordan’s opposition to a Palestinian national revival was overcome in the corridors of power of the Arab League, where Abd al-Nasir reigned

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supreme, and Jordan eventually had no choice but to acquiesce in the establishment of the PLO. But the schoolbooks ignored the existence of the organization. Jordan and Palestine were one and the same geographically, historically, and socially and an ideal symbol of Arab unity.54 Jordan’s hold over the West Bank remained secure, albeit with occasional difficulty, until 1967. The war of June 1967, however, was a watershed. The loss of the West Bank and of Jordan’s manipulative control of the Palestinians there ushered in a new phase in Jordanian-Palestinian relations. The catastrophic military defeat of the Arabs by Israel in 1967 “exposed the larger shortcomings of the radical Arab nationalist project that had dominated Arab politics for more than a decade.”55 In the wake of Abd al-Nasir’s shattering defeat, the eclipse of pan-Arabism heralded the legitimization of separate territorial nationalism (wataniyya) in the Arab world. The panacea for the Palestinians was no longer Arab salvation but the armed struggle of the fida’iyyun, the backbone of Palestinian national revival. The impact on Jordanian identity was profound. Revived, militant, and armed, Palestinian nationalism posed an unprecedented challenge to the Jordanian state, evoking among East Bankers across a very wide spectrum, from the elite to the Bedouin tribesmen, a keen sense of Jordanian solidarity and common interest in the contest for supremacy with the “ultimate other,” the Palestinians.

The Fida’iyyun and the State

The failing fortunes of pan-Arabism after 1967 paved the way for the pragmatic acceptance of the colonially created Middle Eastern state order and for the consequent entrenchment of the territorial state. These developments set the stage for the unapologetic pursuit of the raison d’état of the various Arab states. Narrowly defined territorial nationalism (wataniyya) developed more rapidly in the postwar era, at the expense of the broader linguistic and culturally defined Arab nationalism (qawmiyya) of the 1950s and 1960s. Of all the Arab peoples, the Palestinians were perhaps the most sorely disappointed by the pan-Arab debacle of 1967. The War of 1967 was a new point of departure in Palestinian history, dominated by the belief in the necessity for self-reliance in the wake of the defeat of the Arab states and of Abd al-Nasir’s Egypt most of all. The renewed emphasis on Palestinian identity and independent Palestinian decisionmaking, coupled with the strategy of armed struggle, soon evolved into a major challenge to the Hashemite Kingdom. Palestinian armed groups deployed on the East Bank in defiance of the Jordanian government. Jordan’s confrontation with the fida’iyyun, in

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the aftermath of the 1967 war and in the civil war of 1970–1971 in particular, entailed more than just a struggle for political supremacy. Wars, in the words of Anthony Smith, were often “catalysts for new nationalisms.” They crystallized the ethnic sentiments of the protagonists, as confrontation with the “other” invariably led to the enhancement of the “self.”56 The showdown with the fida’iyyun was a traumatic, formative experience that accelerated the consolidation of the divergent group identities of Jordanians and Palestinians alike. The distinctive divide between Jordanians and Palestinians was endowed with an added sense of national consciousness, fueled by mutual mistrust and acrimony. Jordan’s failure to fully assimilate the Palestinians had ominous consequences in the eyes of East Bankers. The unification of the East and West Banks and the continuous migration of Palestinians to the East Bank had failed to produce the desired level of integration and eventually came to be perceived by many Jordanians as a threat to their own political patrimony. The determined effort of the Palestinians to cultivate a popular consciousness of their national heritage and cultural identity, as part of the struggle against Israel, required the Jordanians to do the same to protect themselves against the emerging Palestinian challenge to their state. Jordanians and Palestinians, like all national movements, sought to mobilize their pasts as instruments for their present struggles as well as for their conflicting visions of the future.57 Thus, the March 1968 Battle of Karama, in which the Israeli attacking force suffered unexpectedly heavy casualties, was appropriated by the Palestinians and transformed into one of the founding myths of the Palestinian armed struggle against Israel. The Jordanians developed a counternarrative of their own for Karama, which stressed not the role of the fida’iyyun but that of the Jordanian army as the critical force that had disrupted the Israeli operation. Jordan’s leading modern historian, Sulayman Musa, observed that “the Jordanian forces in the battle of Karama immortalized all the qualities of heroism and endurance for which the Arabs were renowned as of the time of the first [Islamic] conquests. Despite one’s appreciation for the steadfastness of the fida’iyyun, the battle was in fact the battle of the Jordanian army and its heavy weapons of artillery and armor, from start to finish.”58 In later years the fida’iyyun disappeared altogether from the Jordanian narrative, and Karama became a battle where “Jordanians fought with honor and bravery, to defend Jordan’s soil,” forcing the enemy “to concede defeat for the first time in its history.”59 Karama was incorporated into Jordan’s national heritage as a purely Jordanian story and historical myth in the promotion of Jordanian national identity.60 Karama at times even overshadowed Jordan’s role in

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both the 1948 and 1967 wars, despite the fact that it was but one limited encounter that took place for part of just one day.61 Hussein’s approach to the Palestinians remained ambivalent after the 1970–1971 civil war. On the one hand, he genuinely sought to avoid further alienation of his Palestinian citizens after the bloodletting of “Black September.” He called for national unity and for the formation of a cohesive society where there would be “no place for narrow regionalism [iqlimiyya] nor for sustained tribalism [asabiyya], where there would be no distinction between Easterners [East Bankers] and Westerners [West Bankers] nor between soldiers and fida’iyyun.”62 On the other hand, he remained as determined as ever to remove the armed Palestinian presence from the kingdom, as he launched a concerted effort to reinforce the particular sense of Jordanian identity and loyalty to the Jordanian state. Wasfi al-Tall, who was widely perceived as the true architect of “Black September,” was returned to the premiership in October 1970 to oversee the final expulsion of the fida’iyyun from Jordan, which was completed in the summer of 1971. As much as Tall was revered by Jordanians as a national hero, he was vilified by the fida’iyyun as the moving spirit behind the fida’i demise in Jordan. Tall was eventually assassinated in Cairo by gunmen of “Black September,” a secret arm of Fatah, in November 1971. After his assassination Tall was glorified by nationalists as the epitome of Jordanianism, now defined ever-more blatantly in opposition to the Palestinian “ultimate other.”63 After the defeat of the fida’iyyun, the Jordanians “seemed delighted to be back in control of [their] country and a strong sentiment of defiant East Bank Jordanian nationalism was apparent in government circles.”64 As for the Jordanians at the grassroots level, their gut feeling was that the civil war against the fida’iyyun had been their victory over the Palestinians. The army that had routed the PLO forces was the army not only of their country but the army of their siblings, who were its officers and men. They had restored law and order and the people’s dignity, which had been trampled underfoot by the fida’iyyun. A trend emerged among East Bankers agitating for a greater say in the affairs of the homeland they had so valiantly defended against the fida’iyyun. They urged the king to abandon his long-held policy of seeking to represent the Palestinians and actually supported independent Palestinian nationalism, which they surmised would only reinforce the separate Jordanian identity. Thus, the gulf between Jordanians and Palestinians on the East Bank “grew wider in the wake of the September showdown,” ushering in a “new era in Jordan’s nation-building process.”65 As part of this nation-building process, the Tall government systematically purged political centers of power that the fida’iyyun had

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previously established in the kingdom. This was true of the professional associations and trade unions and of various media outlets as well. The long-established daily al-Difa’ was originally founded in Jaffa in British Mandatory Palestine in 1934 and moved to Jordanian Jerusalem after 1948, then to Amman after 1967. The paper had occasionally been sympathetic to the fida’iyyun and was shut down in mid-1971. At the same time the government established the Jordanian Press Foundation, which began to publish the daily al-Ra’y as the regime’s official mouthpiece (and the English-language daily the Jordan Times as of October 1975). Palestinians were removed from the bureaucracy and the military, thus further reducing their representation in the machinery of state, in a process that became known as Ardanna (from Urdunn), or “Jordanization.”66 In the eyes of East Bankers, the Palestinians were “not just ungrateful for the refuge that Jordan had provided them, they were also traitors, real or potential.” This “East Banker First” trend, with its preferential recruitment of East Bankers into the bureaucracy, came in addition to the fact that the upper, if not the lower, levels of the army had long been a largely East Banker preserve. Hence, bureaucratic procedures like obtaining a passport, driver’s license, or university scholarship or registering a new business required Palestinian interaction with an increasingly East Banker bureaucracy. Palestinians complained of powerlessness in a system where tribal ties assured favoritism toward East Bankers.67 In later years the “de-Palestinization process” continued as more Palestinians were removed from other parts of the public sector, especially from the foreign ministry. In the universities East Bankers were preferred for faculty appointments as well as for student admissions and scholarships. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jordanian nationalist student organizations or clubs were founded with government support. They competed with Palestinian student groups on the campuses, nurturing the sense of divisiveness among the younger generation.68 Generally speaking, the spread of literacy and print culture served the dissemination of nationalist sentiment among the expanding circles of educated Jordanian men and women,69 who were graduates of the schools and the ever-increasing number of universities and colleges, whether from urban, rural, or tribal backgrounds.

The State Promotes Jordanian Uniqueness

The nation, according to Anthony Smith, was “a community in possession of its territory, and distinguished by its own history and destiny.”70 The Jordanian nation was to be no different. As of the early 1970s, in contrast to Abdallah I’s tenure and to the first period of Hussein’s reign,

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the regime initiated a deliberate inculcation of a distinctive Jordanian identity—a Jordanian national consciousness. Jordan was now in constant “search of a usable past”71 to promote a sense of Jordanian political solidarity. School textbooks focused increasingly on the identity of the Jordanian people (al-sha’b al-Urdunni) ahead of their Arab and Islamic identities.72 The advancing of a territorialized national history was promoted through an essentially secular vision of the past that appropriated and conflated the pre-Islamic, the Islamic, and the modern Arab history of the land that became Jordan, all embraced as vestiges of a unique Jordanian heritage. The loss of Jerusalem in 1967 added to the increasing focus and emphasis on the archaeological marvels of the East Bank for national representation. Hussein never rescinded his claim for a special Hashemite role in Jerusalem. But in the post-1967 circumstances, with Jerusalem physically out of reach, pride of place in the cultivation of Jordanian collective identity and “subjective antiquity”73 shifted to the East Bank. In Jordan, as in other Arab states, collective identity had multiple components, territorial (watani), Arab, and Islamic, that alternated between the core and the periphery of the people’s constantly evolving perceptions of their collective self. In Jordan, as elsewhere in the Arab world in the post1967 era, the territorial wataniyya gradually superseded the former panArab emphasis on qawmiyya. Though never excluded, qawmiyya was shifted to the periphery together with the omnipresent Islamic cultural marker as the unique Jordanian identity became the core. The commander of the Arab Legion, Lt. Col. Frederick Peake, initially published The History of Transjordan and Its Tribes in 1935. It was translated at the time into Arabic by Baha al-Din Tuqan, and the English version was revised and republished in 1958 as History and Tribes of Jordan.74 In accordance with nationalist ideology, Peake covers all the events that took place within the confines of Transjordan’s boundaries of the twentieth century to construct the history of Transjordan from prehistoric times to the early years of the emirate, as if they had all “suddenly become part of a uniquely Jordanian past.” The only logic that united all these histories was “the fact that all of it happened within a set of geopolitical boundaries drawn on a map in the 1920s.”75 As in so many other cases, in Jordan too, national consciousness was informed by the colonial boundaries drawn by foreigners. Such new entities, “as artificial as they might initially have been, shaped different political, social, and cultural communities, which gradually acquired lives of their own.”76 The Jordanian government followed the colonial construct as it set about “Jordanizing the past” as part of its cultivation of a sense of identification with the unique history of Jordan ever since

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pre-Islamic times. Thus, it made sense for secondary school textbooks to highlight, for example, the country’s role as an important wheatgrowing area of the Roman Empire or as the home of the winter palaces of the Umayyad caliphs in the early years of the Islamic conquests.77 Jordan’s newer universities, Yarmuk in the north near Irbid (founded in 1976) and Mu’ta in the south near Karak (founded in 1981), both bear the place-names of historic battles waged by Islamic forces in the early seventh century on the land of Jordan against the Byzantines. As of the late 1970s, official interest in Jordan in local archaeology intensified. Excavations and reconstructions took place all over the country as archaeology became a key instrument for this “Jordanizing” of the past.78 In March 1980 Crown Prince Hasan opened the First International Conference on the History and Archaeology of Jordan at Christ Church College, Oxford. Hasan noted the importance of the intellectual awakening to the “thousands of years of history” that were the heritage of the kingdom.79 Further to their honorable lineage as descendants of the Prophet, the Hashemites sought to establish a supposed genealogical and political relationship between the monarchy and the Umayyad caliphate of the early years of Islam. In the 1990s the Umayyad citadel in Amman was restored. Thus, if the Islamic citadel of Amman constituted a historical antecedent to the modern Jordanian capital, the Umayyad caliphs were “in some sense, the ancestors of the Hashemite monarchy.”80 Roman Jarash, Petra of the Nabateans, the tombs of the companions of the Prophet (sahaba) in Jordan, the citadel of the Umayyads in Amman and their desert castles— all were regularly injected into the people’s collective consciousness through festivals and other public occasions and commemorated on banknotes and particularly on postage stamps.81 Postage stamps, as Donald Reid observes, “are excellent primary sources for the symbolic messages which governments seek to convey to their citizens and the world.”82 As opposed to the 1950s and 1960s, when Jordanian stamps regularly highlighted the unity of the two banks and the centrality of Jerusalem to the Hashemite Kingdom, after 1967 the emphasis shifted to the East Bank. Under Hussein, Jerusalem and the Hashemite connection to the city still figured prominently on Jordanian stamps, but they increasingly gave way to sites and symbols of the Roman, Nabatean, and Islamic past of the East Bank.83 The king’s former slogan, “Jordan is Palestine, and Palestine is Jordan,” binding the East and West Banks, was gradually superseded as of the mid-1980s by “Jordan is Jordan, and Palestine is Palestine.” After August 1985 Jordanian stamps stopped showing the West Bank as part of Jordan,84 a trend that culminated in the formal disengagement from the West Bank.

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Under Abdallah II stamps showing Palestine or Jerusalem almost disappeared as virtually all Jordanian stamps since the turn of the twenty-first century have represented themes related to the East Bank and its people. There have been a few exceptions, such as stamps commemorating the Second Intifada (2001) or Jordan’s contribution to the restoration of holy sites in Jerusalem (2018). Notably, in 2019 a series appeared on Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine—that is, not Israel, as recognized by President Donald Trump—but not staking any Hashemite claim either. On the other hand, under Abdallah II, hundreds of stamps have been devoted to the Roman ruins of Jarash, Nabatean Petra, the desert palaces of the Umayyads, mosaics, fauna and flora, the architecture of mosques and churches, traditional dress, cuisine, handicrafts, art and artists, and tourist attractions from Umm Qays in the north, through Ajlun, Madaba, Mount Nebo, and Karak, to Wadi Rum in the south.85 All these East Bank sites and symbols were thus “repositioned as regalia” for the Jordanian state.86 Nabatean Petra, so unique to Jordan, was to become the chosen and most publicized symbol of the Jordanian East Bank state. It was Petra that the leadership highlighted as the historical antecedent of modernday Jordan and as the eternal proof of Jordan as a cradle of civilizations and a country with a long history, “home to some of mankind’s oldest cities and settlements.” The Nabateans, who “spoke a dialect of Arabic” before they switched to Aramaic, were “highly skilled water engineers” who had built “an empire in the arid desert” where they “irrigated their land with an extensive system of dams, canals and reservoirs.” The Nabateans were also “exceptionally skilled traders, facilitating commerce between China, India, the Far East, Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome.” Petra became “a wealthy commercial crossroads between the Arabian, Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman cultures.”87 The daily newspaper al-Dustur, founded in Jerusalem in 1967 just before the outbreak of war and transferred to Amman thereafter, changed its logo at the end of March 1983. The drawing of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem that had adorned the masthead all by itself until then was merged with an illustration of the world-famous Nabatean “Treasury” structure of Petra,88 which was also designated in 1985 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The international recognition in 2007 of Petra as one of the wonders of the world was cause for nationalist celebrations in Jordan, whose people, according to the official narrative, were the direct descendants of the “Arab Nabateans.” In December 2002, just a few days after King Abdallah II launched his “Jordan First” initiative, Jordan’s leading daily, al-Ra’y, began posting a “Jordan First” notice on its masthead on almost every daily issue,

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showing a pair of Jordanian hands clutching a flagpole Iwo Jima–style to raise the Jordanian flag.89 Jordan in Hussein’s later years had achieved a greater measure of self-assurance about its identity and projected a degree of “security of statehood”90 to which much of the citizenry could genuinely rally. Hussein’s pronouncements presented Jordan, in and of itself, as a model of tolerance and political pluralism worthy of emulation.91 Jordan was not a stepping stone of last resort to other, greater domains but a model in its own right for Jordanians to be proud of and for other Arabs to follow. The promotion of Jordanian consciousness was not just a counterweight to Palestinian nationalist fervor; it was equally intended by the monarchy to convince the Israeli Right of the futility of the “Jordan is Palestine” theory.92 The Jordanian state had also become the ultimate protector of secular nationalism and of the secular political order in the struggle against the Islamic fundamentalists. In the post-1967 era, after “Arab nationalism had failed irredeemably,” it was the secular regimes that championed the idea of a statist territorial identity, as opposed to the Islamists, who spoke for the universal political community of the believers.93 It was therefore not surprising to find Jordanian Christian commentators, such as Fahd al-Fanik, one of Jordan’s leading columnists and a former leftist and Arab nationalist, and Nahid Hattar, also a writer and a former Communist, at the forefront of Jordanian territorial nationalism.94 In an age when Arab nationalism had been driven from its pedestal in popular Arab discourse by Islamic fundamentalism, Christians were left with few attractive choices. Arab nationalism had, in its heyday, been a most effective vehicle of secularization and as such was rejected by the Islamists.95 Alternative secular political parties to the Muslim Brotherhood never proved adequate to the task of containing the Islamist thrust. Often, they were no more than a thin veneer for purely tribal politics, whose public appeal was naturally restricted to very particular localities. Most parties had little support in society, and many Jordanians saw them as weak.96 Due to the relative weakness of civil society, the state and its agencies assumed the key role in fostering this rather swiftly created Jordanian “nation of design.”97 This was a natural extension of the regime-led state-building process that Jordan had experienced since its inception.98 The preIslamic, Islamic, Arab, and Ottoman pasts of the East Bank were all appropriated as chapters of a specifically Jordanian history, revived and reconstructed as an exercise in the “invention of tradition” to formulate an imagined millennial continuity of the Jordanian state. Thus, the state, as Benedict Anderson would put it, proceeded to “invite the masses into

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[the] history” of Jordan of the East Bank and to “transform it into a ‘community of memory’ i.e., a nation state.”99 Numerous museums and exhibits, museumizing the imagination, 100 have been opened since the 1970s and 1980s to display Jordan’s history and cultural heritage, as defined by the Hashemites. After all, the reigns of the Jordanian monarchs “constitute the rhythm which characterizes national history from its inception in the Great Arab Revolt.”101 The annual Jarash festival, inaugurated in 1981, takes place in the spectacular setting of the ruins of Roman Jarash, and the Jordanian Folklore Museum and the Jordanian Museum of Popular Traditions are located in opposite wings of the Roman amphitheater in Amman, all suggesting an uninterrupted linear historical continuity between Jordan’s past and present. “Traditional” costumes and folklore are displayed in museums, on television shows, and, since its inception, at the Jarash festival. These aspects of culture were thus coopted by the state “to fill out [Jordanian] society, to give at least a two-dimensional view of it.”102 The establishment in 1980 of the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought (Muassasat Al al-Bayt al-malikiyya lil-fikr al-Islami) by King Hussein was a most instructive and revealing example of the Hashemite Jordanian nation-building project. Coming shortly after the antimonarchist Iranian Revolution, the Aal al-Bayt Institute was named after the Hashemites who were themselves members of Aal al-Bayt (the house of the Prophet), thus accentuating their unique religious and historic legitimacy as direct descendants of the Prophet (presumably in contradistinction to the recently overthrown Pahlevi dynasty in Iran). The Aal al-Bayt Institute has had a dual mission since its foundation: to produce religious scholarship as a counterweight of moderation to the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and to promote, through the mobilization of historical research, a Jordanian nation-statist consciousness and collective memory. In 1987 the institute established the Higher Committee for the Writing of the History of Jordan (al-lajna al-ulya likitabat ta’rikh al-Urdunn). Since its inception the institute has produced an impressive yield of scores of works on Islamic religion and Jordanian history. The latter have covered an equally impressive range of topics, including Jordan in the Stone Age, the history of Jordan since the Islamic conquest, the history of Jordan in the Mamluk era, the districts of Balqa, Karak, and Ma’an from 1864 to 1918, the history of Transjordan in the Ottoman era, and twentieth-century political history. Numerous works have covered other fields, such as Jordan’s poetry, plastic arts, folk literature, theater, and much more.103 In January 1988 the Ministry for Culture and

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National Heritage was also established. In the aftermath of Jordan’s 1988 disengagement from the West Bank, Jordanian historians tended to focus on the 1921–1946 pre-independence period. They highlighted the harmony that had ostensibly existed between the original Jordanians of both tribal and sedentary origin, thus suggesting that the incorporation of the West Bank had eroded the cohesion of the Jordanian state in its original boundaries.104 Aal al-Bayt University was officially inaugurated in the northern town of Mafraq in early 1995 and soon became a hub for the publication of a similar series of historical works on Jordan, such as on the cities of Amman, Irbid, and Salt. Like some of Egypt’s leading intellectuals of the 1920s, who already spoke then of the unique “Egyptian spirit” and the “Egyptian personality,”105 those embarking on the nation-building enterprise in Jordan of the 1990s would include the dissemination of such terminology. But in Jordan’s case this was entirely the work of the state. In 1997, under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, a book published by a former Jordanian senior military officer, Brig. Gen. (ret.) Sulayman Nusayrat, an East Banker from the northern province of Irbid, discussed the “formation of the Jordanian personality [takwin or tashkil al-shakhsiyya al-Urdunniyya].”106 In the words of Jordanian nationalist columnist Bilal al-Tall, this body of scholarship was a “sufficient answer” to those who argued that Jordan was a country with no history. Indeed, it was intended to prove that Jordan was not a wasteland and that Transjordanians had “their roots deep in history as a settled people with a continuous civilization.”107 In November 1988, at the opening of a new coin museum in Amman, King Hussein noted that the collection of “coins minted in Jordan from the dawn of history” was testimony to the fact that throughout the ages, Jordan of the East Bank had been a “wellspring of civilization, development, and prosperity.”108 The use of the mass media, especially Jordanian television, for the promotion of a Jordanian consciousness was similarly evident. The display of the map of Jordan (without the West Bank) and the Jordanian flag was widespread in the media and in the public space. Shots of Jordanian historical sites like Petra, Jarash, or the Roman amphitheater in Amman and clips of Jordanian folk dancing and singing became a daily staple of Jordanian TV, as was the men’s red-checkered kaffiyeh, which had become a symbol of Jordanian identity in contrast to the Palestinian dark-blue- or black-checkered exemplar.109 The population censuses made no distinctions between Jordanians of different national identities and revealed no figures for Jordanians of Palestinian origin. All were meshed into one.110 To borrow again from Anderson, “map

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and census thus shaped the grammar”111 that, as elsewhere, made “Jordan” and “Jordanian” possible.

The 1991 Jordanian National Charter

After the disengagement from the West Bank, the first parliamentary elections since 1967 were held in November 1989. These were also the first elections to be held only for the East Bank since the very first elections in independent Jordan in October 1947.112 Jordan, in the late 1980s, was in the throes of a severe economic crisis, and the Islamists performed surprisingly well in the 1989 elections. There was a pervasive feeling of flux and uncertainty. In Hussein’s mind the kingdom of the East Bank was in need of a regenerated sense of identity, direction, and purpose. A new Jordanian national charter (al-mithaq al-watani alUrdunni) was drafted by a royal commission and ratified in June 1991. The essential political deal enshrined in the new charter was the reaffirmation by the main political forces in the kingdom of the monarchy’s legitimacy and superiority in the political order in exchange for the regime’s acceptance of a regulated political pluralism and the relegalization of political parties, which had been banned since 1957.113 As could have been expected, particularly after the disengagement from the West Bank, the new charter expanded upon Jordan’s particular territorial identity. It opened with an elaboration of the theme, which Hussein himself had been seeking to promote, of Jordan as an area of “human settlement and flourishing culture” (istiqrar bashari wa-izdihar hadari) since the earliest of times.114 As the charter would have it, the conscious identity of the “Jordanian people” was not a product of the creation of the Jordanian state but rather a forerunner to its formation and a factor in the British failure in 1920 to “tear apart the unity of the Jordanian people” by establishing separate local governments on the East Bank for the areas of Irbid, Salt, and Karak.115 The implication was that the establishment of the state was actually an act of self-determination rather than an arbitrary act of British colonial mapmaking. As other Jordanian nationalists who belonged to the so-called East Bank First school would argue (see Chapter 6), East Bankers were bound together by a “separate Transjordanian identity” (hawiyya sharq Urdunniyya munfasila) that had already been in existence in Ottoman times. Moreover, the fact that political parties were established during the mandate period and no less than five national conferences were held between 1928 and 1935 by East Bankers was ample proof that a “distinctive political identity” of the East Bank of the Jordan River had existed before the union of the two banks in 1950.116

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In resorting to a measure of historical invention concerning the specifically Jordanian collective identity dating back to the mid-nineteenth century, the Jordanians were only doing what countless others had done both before and since. The “invention of history” was an ancient practice. Writing “history for a purpose” was usually designed to “legitimize authority.”117 Thus the Jordanians were no different in their historiographic effort to legitimize the existence of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, even if doing so required some imagination. Notably, of the nine pages of the historical introduction of the 1991 charter, no more than half a paragraph is devoted to the Arab Revolt of 1916, for decades the centerpiece of the Hashemite historical justification for their Arab leadership. The leader of the revolt, Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, is mentioned in passing just once.118 Relations with Palestine and the Arabs are shunted to the very end, in the last two chapters, after six chapters dealing with Jordan’s domestic affairs, political institutions, economy, education and culture, and rather mundane social matters. The legacy of the Arab Revolt had obviously evolved. Jordan was no longer the standard bearer of the grand sharifian ambition as it had been in Abdallah I’s time; nor was it the standard-bearer of the Arab nationalist alternative to Nasserism, as it had been in Hussein’s earlier years. In the post-Arab nationalist era of the 1990s, Jordan had become the nation-state of the East Bank, seeking to protect itself against the vagaries and vicissitudes of Middle Eastern regional politics. Jordan was in pursuit of its own interests, in the name of its own specific raison d’état, for which it owed no explanations to the other Arabs.119 When Hussein decided to make Jordan’s peace with Israel, the treaty was justified in terms of specifically Jordanian state interests, with no reference to broader Arab or Palestinian concerns. Jordan’s Palestinian minister of information, Jawad al-Anani, was confronted with a question about Jordan’s daring to go off on its own, to which he replied that it was a matter of Jordan’s own particular state interest (alkhussusiyya al-qutriyya).120 After the Palestinians had served themselves in the Oslo Accords, the Jordanians certainly had no reason to focus on Palestinian concerns; nor did they feel any need to apologize for their own self-serving policies.121 In reaction to Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad’s excoriation of Jordan’s separate deal with the Zionists, Hussein retorted that it was “none of [Asad’s] business.”122 The national charter, described as a “culmination of the Jordanian [state-]building process” (istikmalan li-masirat al-bina al-Urdunniyya), devoted most of its space to an elaboration of an ideal Jordanian political system, functioning as a pluralist democracy based on the rule of law, aspiring to economic and cultural development and social justice

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and seeking above all to guarantee the kingdom’s national security (alamn al-watani al-Urdunni). The monarchy’s promotion of political pluralism in the early 1990s was purely instrumental and came in the wake of the impressive success of the Islamists in the most recent elections. Pluralism was a political and social shock absorber. It was meant to open the way for alternative political parties to compete with the Islamists and prevent their monopoly over local politics. It was obviously not designed to erode the political dominance of the monarchy. On the contrary, the king had no intention of ceasing to reign and rule as he had always done. The charter clearly distinguished between Jordanian society and Islamic fundamentalism. It noted that “Arab-Islamic civilization that was open to human civilization [al-hadara al-insaniyya] was the foundation of the identity of the Jordanian people.”123 When the alternative parties failed to materialize, the Islamists were contained by other far less democratic means, such as legal constraints embedded in the new election law, election manipulation, or even outright fraud.124 Elected representatives and civil society remained “essentially toothless before the authority of the king . . . leaving the power of reform largely in the hands of the monarch and other traditional, status quo– oriented ruling elites.”125 Political parties, according to the charter and the new political parties law passed in August 1992, had to be purely Jordanian in character and would not be permitted to have any external links in terms of leadership, membership, or funding. (This did not exclude Arab or Islamic solidarity and support for the cause of Palestine, which were explicitly accepted.) This was both a vehicle for Jordanian nation and state building and a lesson learned from the 1950s, when political parties with such external ties (Nasserists, Ba’this, and Communists) threatened to bring down the monarchy. Licensing applications for new political parties of the secular Left were initially turned down by the Ministry of Interior. In January 1993 the Democratic Party for Progress in Jordan became the first leftist party to be licensed under the new law. The party, which was an offshoot of the PLO’s Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), deleted all references in its manifesto to the objective of establishing a socialist political system in Jordan. Its members resigned from the PLO’s Palestine National Council and from all the DFLP institutions before it applied for the license. The party also declared its financial and organizational independence of any other party in Jordan or elsewhere. The way was now paved for the legalization of other leftist parties, including the Jordanian Communist Party (JCP), the Jordanian Popular

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Democratic Party, the Jordanian Arab Socialist Ba’th Party, and the Jordanian Socialist Democratic Party (which had broken away from the JCP). They all similarly declared their allegiance to the Jordanian constitution and the national charter and likewise confirmed their financial and organizational independence. The Ba’th Party added the word “Jordanian” to its name and declared that it had no external affiliations. The leftist parties, all combined, could not have mustered the support to win even a handful of seats in parliament.126 Far more noteworthy, however, than the machinations of these quarrelsome parties was the symbolism of their submission to the Jordanian state and their formal acceptance of their own Jordanian identity above any other. This was a counterrevolutionary shift for the leftist parties, which in the mid-1950s had banded together with the pan-Arabists in a concerted effort to overthrow the monarchy and have Jordan concede its sovereignty to the greater cause of Arabism. As fervent Arab nationalists, they deemed Jordan an artificial colonial construct that had neither right nor capacity to exist as a separate nation-state. In fact, it was in opposition to this mode of thinking that the 1991 national charter spoke of the Jordanian collective identity as a critical facet of the kingdom’s national security. It was incumbent upon the state to secure independence in all fields, to strengthen Jordanian society, and to “deepen the sense of belonging to the homeland” (ta’miq al-intima ila al-watan) of all citizens of the state irrespective of their origins.127

The Tribes, Tribalism, and the State

The liberator of Poland, Col. Jozef Pilsudski, famously claimed that it was “the state which makes the nation and not the nation the state.”128 Yet, even though the Jordanian state and its agencies had assumed a key role in fostering this “imagined community” or “nation of design,” Jordanian territorial identity was never solely a top-down model of “official nationalism.” It was unquestionably a popular nationalism as well, instilled by the integration of the Bedouin tribes into the state and the writings of members of the Jordanian intelligentsia, reinforced by the widely felt antagonism toward the Palestinians in the kingdom, especially after the civil war of 1970–1971. Anderson’s characterization of the nation-building policies of new states is very similar to the Jordanian case. As with other states, one sees both a “genuine, popular nationalist enthusiasm and a systematic, even Machiavellian, instilling of nationalist ideology [by the state] through the mass media, the education system, administrative regulations and so forth.”129 The promotion of the Jordanian identity has gone

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hand in hand with the integration of the tribes into the machinery of the state. East Bank Jordanians dominated the bureaucracy, the military, and domestic security—that is, the running of the state—while the Palestinians attained predominance in the private sector, the financial markets, and the economy in general. Jordanian society has developed with an almost built-in functional cleavage. The cleavage is deeply rooted in Jordan’s political and social history, and ever since the early years of the union between the East and West Banks, Palestinians have complained about their underrepresentation in government, while East Bankers tend to resent Palestinian dominance in the economy. In Jordan, as elsewhere, the modern state integrated and mobilized the masses.130 The integration of the Bedouin into the state was unquestionably one of the most important and lasting achievements of King Abdallah I and the British Mandate.131 It was obtained through the repression in the early 1920s of the initially rebellious tribes and their subsequent co-optation and integration. The British-backed Emir Abdallah and the state of Transjordan formed a “political configuration quite unlike anything” the tribes had ever seen before. “It combined the moral authority of the Hashemites—proponents of Arab nationalism and descendants of the Prophet—with the military brawn of Christian Europe.”132 The tribes were unable and for the most part unwilling to resist, and they “would slowly be subsumed into the Hashemite project . . . [to] serve as instruments of the state.”133 The residual co-opted power of the tribes was still impressive. They preserved their tribal ethos and continued to play a leading role in politics, the military, and the bureaucracy. But the power they enjoyed by royal decree and favor paled in comparison to the power they had once wielded in the “age of shaykhs.”134 The key mechanism of this co-optation was the Arab Legion. In a revolutionary turn of events, those whose traditional lifestyle had been antithetical and even hostile to any form of centralized control and law and order were transformed into the backbone of the state. When John Bagot Glubb arrived in Transjordan to establish the Desert Mobile Force in 1930, the economic status of the Bedouin was in steep decline. Modern means of transport had made camel breeding woefully obsolete. Droughts in the late 1920s and early 1930s decreased the value of land and decimated the livestock population. “Hunger stalked the desert,” the tribes were weakened and desperate, and service in the armed forces became an attractive option for tribesmen on the verge of destitution. Glubb also attended to the tribes’ economic difficulties through various relief and welfare projects, and this new dependency set the stage for their integration into the state structure. With the passage of time, tribesmen came to “form a basic pillar of the Hashemite monarchy.”

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The Arab Legion also established schools for the Bedouin, and the army “simultaneously nationalized a large proportion of the population to the Hashemite national ethos and provided a repressive institution for use against those who opposed the project.”135 Service in the legion also “provided a channel through which the tribes could conceptualize the state as a positive institution, providing resources and training, instead of threatening their livelihoods.”136 In tribal societies, in Jordan as elsewhere, the leadership offered patronage, protection, economic assistance, and other benefits in return for allegiance and support.137 Service in the Arab Legion therefore contributed decisively to the transformation of traditional tribal allegiance into loyalty to the commanding officer and ultimately to the monarch. It was the king who now took over the role of “the shaykh of shaykhs”—the supratribal leader.138 The Hashemites thus placed themselves in the position of the shaykhs of the Jordanian tribes “as father figures for the nation, and, as such, the focus of allegiance.” The Hashemite kings of Jordan, with their lineage from the Prophet, could double as religious leaders or bearers of the religious heritage, thus further augmenting their appeal to tribal soldiers.139 The preferential enlistment of the Bedouin not only provided poorer people with career opportunities but also served to consolidate the legitimacy of the state and to create a patron-client relationship, characterized as the “quintessential monarchical/tribal-military axis.”140 Regular reference to the Jordanian people as a “family” or “tribe” conveyed the image of a “closely knit tribal society, guided by tribal values,” led by the king, who was himself the embodiment of tribal values as the “ shaykh of shaykhs.” The national media loyally portrayed King Hussein’s dual images as the modernizing, Westernizing monarch, dressed in suit and tie, and the tribal shaykh rejoicing on festive occasions with the tribes, dressed like them in traditional Bedouin garb.141 On the other hand, tribalism and tribal practices and customs were also seen by some, Jordanians and Palestinians alike, as archaic obstacles to progress and were at times the object of derision. When they were attacked in the local press for being incompatible with modern times, Hussein was quick to defend the tribes and to admonish those who had denigrated their traditions. He expounded upon his own tribal heritage, noting that he was the descendant of the House of Hashim and the tribe of Quraysh, “the proudest Arab tribe,” which God had honored by choosing one of its sons, the Prophet Muhammad, as his messenger. Attacking the tribes, he said, was offensive to the state and to the monarchy.142 Abdallah II followed in his father’s footsteps, referring to all the people of Jordan as “my family and my tribe” (ahli wa-ashirati) or, alternatively, taking pride in the tribes of Jordan as his “family and

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great tribe” (ahli wa-ashirati al-kabira). There was no greater honor than to serve them and “to sacrifice for dear Jordan.”143 Jordan—family, tribe, nation, and state—were all interwoven into one, and the state’s education system and political literature situated tribalism as the “crux of Jordanian identity.”144 Jordanian nationalism was nurtured by painting it in tribal colors, and tribal values and Bedouin heritage were “hailed as the core values of the nation.”145 Jordan’s noble Bedouin past was thus intrinsically linked to the Hashemite regime “leading the nation into the modern, independent period.”146 The alliance, however, was not problem-free. While the regime sought to include all Jordanians of whatever origin within the one great “Jordanian family,” the vision of East Bank nationalism tended to marginalize the Palestinians. The identity of the tribes was phrased by tribal nationalists in indigenous genealogical terms that excluded the Palestinians (even though it was not uncommon for East Bank tribes to be offshoots from or to have historical origins in or blood ties with tribes in Palestine).147 References to Ahl al-balad (the people of the country), Urdunni Urdunni (Jordanian Jordanians), or Urdunniyyin asliyyin (original Jordanians) were all made to emphasize the authentic origin of the tribes and to formulate an “exclusively tribal, antiPalestinian model of Jordanian nationalism.”148 Such tribal centrality also excluded the Circassians and the Chechens (who emigrated to the East Bank from the Caucasus only in the late nineteenth century). But East Banker exclusionist sentiments were directed far less toward the Circassians and the Chechens than toward the Palestinians, numerically the obviously greater challenge.149 All the same, the Circassian minority, “lost amidst the plethora of identities,” created their own “tribe” to assert their inherent right to be considered “the indigenous children of Jordan’s terrain.” This was deemed necessary to ensure that their minority status would not prevent their access to resources usually monopolized by Jordanians.150 The process of state formation in the Middle East has led to the weakening of tribal authority and the erosion of old tribal loyalties. This has resulted in the emergence of new groupings that retain certain tribal characteristics but are also significantly “shaped by other factors, including class, ethnicity and even nationalism.”151 This is all especially true in Jordan. The tribe as liaison between the individual and the state has given way to the state itself, which has direct access to the individual tribesmen through the wide range of services it offers. Concomitantly, the settled tribes have developed a greater vested interest in the state,152 further reinforced by the central role the state plays in the allocation of financial resources.153

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The tribes, it should be emphasized, were not simply co-opted into the state structure as docile appendages of the existing political order. The power of the state was never absolute. The tribes were, after all, invited by the state authorities at an early phase to participate in the process of state formation. The tribes and their leaders, therefore, also increased their political participation and were to become “formidable actors on the Transjordanian political scene,” as the state realized that it would be much wiser to continue to cooperate with the tribes than to confront them.154 New forms of tribal identity evolved over time, and as opposed to common perceptions of traditional tribalism, they were far from antithetical to the state. Moreover, the state sought to recognize and amplify the active role the tribes had played in the creation of the state. Various textbooks published after the 1988 disengagement highlighted the part of Jordan’s tribes in the Great Arab Revolt of 1916, including special reference to the large and influential confederacies of the Huwaytat and the Bani Sakhr.155 The tribes had become full participants in the state and were, generally speaking, perceived as the archprotectors of the political order, committed to the continuity and welfare of the country. The tribes adapted as they became intertwined with politics of the evolving state, coupled with the intensified modernizing processes as they acquired new roles for themselves. In the process of modernization and integration, not only did the tribes not disappear, but tribal organization, identity, and ethos remained main features of Jordanian society.156 The distinction between hadari (settled) and asha’iri (tribal) faded away over the years as the great majority of the population moved to the urban environment and only a tiny minority of some 3 percent remained nomadic. Though the tribal population had become predominantly based in the towns and the cities, they continued to take pride in their patrilineal descent and could “recite lengthy genealogies as a means to accentuate their Jordanian identity.”157 Two historical processes, while not simultaneous, converged in the last few generations: the integration of the tribes in the project of Jordanian state formation and the evolution of Jordanianism. In the convergence of these processes, the tribes, while maintaining their traditional identity, eventually also emerged as the standard-bearers of Jordanianism. In the Jordanian case, nationalism and tribalism informed and enhanced one another.158 According to one prominent Jordanian, “Tribalism has now changed into Jordanianism.”159 In the words of another, the youth of the East Bank began to perceive their affiliation to the state as a means of “protection against the Palestinian danger. . . . The state to them is the tribe of the Jordanians versus the tribe of the Palestinians.”160

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The tribes had come “to play a central role in the way the Jordanian nation is imagined.”161 The state has also consciously promoted the country’s tribal heritage as “a symbol of Jordan’s distinctive national identity . . . vis-à-vis its most distinctive other, Palestine.”162 The clothing and customs of the Bedouin have been adopted by the Hashemite state “as part of its program to fill out the national narrative and give it grounding in the Jordanian—non urban—experience. In glorifying this indigenous Jordanian culture, the regime is delineating the difference between Jordanians and the large Palestinian population, solidifying the former’s loyalty.”163 Yet Jordanian national identity was not only a “reactive delineation against others.” It was also evolving toward a positive identification with the institutions, the monarchy, the army, and the political system.164 Tribal solidarity had significant ramifications for Jordanian-Palestinian relations. Since the bureaucracy was still preponderantly staffed by East Bankers, kinship-based patronage naturally favored other East Bankers at the expense of the Palestinians. The Jordanized bureaucracy, or “bedoucracy,” as it has been called,165 tended to perpetuate itself. The ability of East Bankers to obtain favors and jobs under these circumstances was far greater than that of their Palestinian compatriots. In practice an alliance had evolved between the state and its machinery and one of the two communal groups in the country,166 to the extent that a “central part of what it meant for many Transjordanians to be ‘Jordanian’ was associated with employment by the state, especially in security services or the military.”167 “Family and tribe remain two of the strongest institutions in Jordanian society,”168 and many Jordanians saw the enduring tribal structure “as the most purely Jordanian aspect of Jordanian society.”169 This interwoven relationship between tribalism and the state was actually very complex. On the one hand, the emphasis on tribal genealogy and identity was an attempt to define the Jordanian identity, while on the other hand, tribal identities conflicted with the Jordanizing efforts of the state. The state sought to “co-opt, supersede, and sometimes even replace popular attachments based on allegiance to family and kin” in order to forge an identity embraced equally by all Jordanians.170 Yet tribal, sectarian, and regional loyalties still competed with loyalty to the state, which had yet to achieve a level of social integration that replaced other loyalties and cleavages.171 When tribal identities were still significant social markers, tribal clashes were not uncommon. Abdallah II noted his dismay at the violence172 that was especially rife among the younger generation on university campuses.173

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In Jordan’s prolonged economic downturn, since the late 1980s, increasing segments of the East Banker population have been disappointed by the declining ability of the state to meet their economic needs. There was a tendency to seek the protection and security of the family, tribe, and sect when it appeared that the state as provider was failing. Tribes in Jordan were “a kind of social safety net for their members.”174 Tribal solidarity, therefore, not only formed the backbone of Jordanianism but was simultaneously divisive, contributing to the kingdom’s fractures, not only between Jordanians and Palestinians but between the East Bankers themselves and even between East Bankers and the monarchy. The promotion of the Jordanian identity based on the tribal “logics of lineage and place” could, and at times did, exclude not only the Palestinians but even the Hashemites too.175

Notes

1. Maddy-Weitzman, Century of Arab Politics, 33. 2. Gershoni, “Arab Nation,” Part 1, 2 (Hebrew). 3. Dawn, “Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology,” 74. 4. Gershoni, “Arab Nation,” Part 1, 6, 8–9. 5. Gershoni, “Arab Nation,” Part 1, 12–13; Teitelbaum, “Sharif Husayn ibn Ali and the Hashemite Vision of the Post-Ottoman Order,” 103–122. 6. Broadhurst, “Introduction,” 13. 7. Minutes of meeting in Raghadan Palace on November 28, 1950, between King Abdallah and Syrian prime minister Nazim al-Qudsi, in King Abdallah of Jordan, My Memoirs Completed, 30. 8. Gershoni, “Arab Nation,” Part 1, 16–17. 9. Podeh, “Jordan Preserving Invented Traditions.” 10. Podeh, “Jordan Preserving Invented Traditions.” 11. Gershoni, “Arab Nation,” Part 2, 165–170 (Hebrew). 12. Dawn, “Formation of Pan-Arab Ideology,” 69. 13. Salibi, The Modern History of Jordan, 93–95; Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 43, 53. 14. Mahafza, Al-fikr al-siyasi fi al-Urdunn, 278; Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, chap. 2. 15. al-Madi and Musa, Ta’rikh al-Urdunn fi al-qarn al-ishrin, 1900–1959, 269– 270; Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan, 64–65; Fathi, Jordan, 92–94; Mahafza, Al-fikr al-siyasi fi al-Urdunn, 280–281. 16. Mahafza, Al-fikr al-siyasi fi al-Urdunn, 278–282. 17. Alon, Making of Jordan, 117–118. 18. Anderson, “Duality of National Identity,” 239–240. 19. Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 54. 20. Salibi, Modern History of Jordan, 94; Katz, Jordanian Jerusalem, 35. 21. Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 27, 68; Anderson, “Duality of National Identity,” 243. 22. Brand, “Palestinians and Jordanians,” 51. 23. Katz, Jordanian Jerusalem, 38.

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24. Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 42. 25. Fischbach, State, Society and Land in Jordan, 3, 77, quoted in Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 58–59. 26. al-Madi and Musa, Ta’rikh al-Urdunn fi al-qarn al-ishrin, 1900–1959, 321– 323, 326–327; Ayalon, Press in the Arab Middle East, 102. 27. al-Madi and Musa, Ta’rikh al-Urdunn fi al-qarn al-ishrin, 1900–1959, 361; Alon, The Making of Jordan, 15. 28. Maddy-Weitzman, Crystallization of the Arab State System, 1945–1954, 38–44. 29. Pipes, Greater Syria, 81–82; Wilson, King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan, 140. 30. Pipes, Greater Syria, 74,76. 31. King Abdallah of Jordan, Al-Takmilah, 30–33; Gershoni, “Arab Nation,” Part 2, 169. 32. Katz, Jordanian Jerusalem, 40. 33. British Legation Amman, “Annual Report on the Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan for 1951,” January 26, 1952, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 535. 34. Ambassador in Iraq to Department of State, August 8, 1951, FRUS (1951), Vol. V, Near East and Africa, 785.00/8-851. 35. Maddy-Weitzman, “Jordan and Iraq,” 65–75. 36. Department of State to Embassy in Jordan, May 20, 1958; Embassy in Jordan to Department of State, June 30, 1958, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Documents 165 and 168; Dann, King Hussein and the Challenge of Arab Radicalism, 78–81. 37. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 65. 38. Satloff, From Abdullah to Hussein, 75. 39. Anderson, “Duality of National Identity,” 245. 40. Katz, Jordanian Jerusalem, 86–91. 41. Maddy-Weitzman, Century of Arab Politics, 69. 42. Anderson, “Duality of National Identity,” 247–248. 43. Wasfi al-Tall quoted in Filastin (Jerusalem), May 8, 1966. 44. See, e.g., letter of appointment to the premiership from King Hussein to Wasfi al-Tall as published in al-Difa’ (Jerusalem), January 28, 1962. 45. Podeh, Politics of National Celebrations. 46. Filastin (Jerusalem), May 2, 1965. This was changed in later years when the “Arab Cold War” was over and it no longer mattered who commemorated worker solidarity. After the rise of Islamist politics and the fall of the Soviet Union, it became a nonissue. 47. Katz, Jordanian Jerusalem, 12, 55–66, 100, 107, 110–111, 113. 48. Winter, “Arab Self-Image as Reflected in Jordanian Textbooks,” 207–220. 49. Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 196–198. 50. Anderson, “Writing the Nation,” 12–13. 51. Fruchter-Ronen, “Palestinian Issue,” 285–286. 52. Tall’s letter of appointment, al-Difa’ (Jerusalem), January 28, 1962. 53. Mahafza, Abhath wa-ara’ fi ta’rikh al-Urdunn al-hadith, 67. 54. Fruchter-Ronen, “Palestinian Issue,” 286. 55. Maddy-Weitzman, Century of Arab Politics, 101. 56. Smith, Nationalism, 148; Smith quoted in Litvak, “Introduction,” in Palestinian Collective Memory, 11. 57. Litvak, “Constructing a National Past,” in Palestinian Collective Memory, 125. 58. Musa, Ta’rikh al-Urdunn fi al-qarn al-ishrin, 2:260.

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59. Speech by King Abdallah II on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Karama, King Abdallah’s official website, March 19, 2008, at www .kingabdullah.jo. 60. Fruchter-Ronen, “Black September,” 247. 61. See, e.g., Jordanian Ministry of Education, Ta’rikh al-Urdunn al-hadith walmu’asir, 280–286. 62. Hussein’s speech from the throne to parliament on December 2, 1970, alDustur (Amman), December 3, 1970. 63. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 189. 64. Quandt, Jabber, and Lesch, Politics of Palestinian Nationalism, 140. 65. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 191– 192, 199. 66. Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan, 156–159. 67. Brand, “Palestinians and Jordanians,” 53. 68. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 215. 69. Alon, Making of Jordan, 156. 70. Smith, Nationalism, 154; emphasis in the original. 71. Sivan, “Arab Nation-state,” 21–30. 72. Nasser, “Exclusion and the Making of Jordanian National Identity,” 245. 73. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 5. 74. Peake, History and Tribes of Jordan. 75. Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 221–223. 76. Litvak, “Introduction,” in Palestinian Collective Memory, 8–9. 77. Fruchter-Ronen, “Palestinian Issue,” 287. 78. Maffi, “New Museographic Trends in Jordan,” 208. 79. Baram, “Territorial Nationalism in the Middle East,” 439. 80. Maffi, “New Museographic Trends in Jordan,” 219. 81. Fathi, Jordan, 71–72. An examination of Jordanian postage stamps, from the foundation of the emirate to the present, clearly shows the shift of emphasis from general Arab to Jordanian-Palestinian and then to more purely Jordanian themes. See Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue, 272–318. 82. As quoted by Sharnoff, “Maps of the West Bank,” 52. 83. Har-Zvi, “From Abdallah to Abdallah,” 242–246 (Hebrew). 84. Sharnoff, “Maps of the West Bank,” 52. 85. “Jordan (page 1/57),” StampWorld. 86. The terminology is borrowed from Anderson, Imagined Communities, 178, 182. 87. See King Hussein’s website (www.kinghussein.gov.jo). 88. Al-Dustur (Amman), March 27–28, 1983. 89. Al-Ra’y (Amman), December 21, 2002. 90. The term is borrowed from Fouad Ajami who used it in the Egyptian context; see Ajami, Arab Predicament, 105. 91. Susser, “Jordan,” 17:452. 92. Jordan Times, June 28, 1988. 93. Kramer, “Arab Nationalism,” 171–206. 94. Hattar was assassinated in September 2016 by a Muslim extremist after posting a cartoon that was widely seen as offensive to God and religion. 95. Sivan, Radical Islam, 32–43 (Hebrew). 96. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 55. 97. This term is from Charles Tilly, quoted in Smith, Nation in History, 35. 98. Lucas, Institutions and the Politics of Survival in Jordan, 13–23. 99. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 80; Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition; Sivan, “The Arab Nation-State,” 28.

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100. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 178. 101. Maffi, “New Museographic Trends in Jordan,” 212. 102. Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 200–201. 103. From the Aal al-Bayt website (www.aalalbayt.org). 104. Nevo, “Changing Identities in Jordan,” 198. 105. Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, Islam and the Arabs, 133–134. 106. Nusayrat, Al-shakhsiyya al-Urdunniyya. 107. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 250–252; see also Baram, “Territorial Nationalism in the Middle East.” 108. Radio Amman, November 12, 1988. 109. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 254. 110. Jordan Times, January 28 and February 4, 1996. 111. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 185. 112. Nusayrat, Al-shakhsiyya al-Urdunniyya, 286. 113. Lucas, Institutions and the Politics of Survival in Jordan, 41–44. 114. Official Arabic text of the National Charter, Moshe Dayan Center Archives, 15. 115. Official Arabic text of the National Charter, 17. 116. al-Tall, “Al-Ustura wa-su’ al-fahm fi al-alaqat al-Urduniyya-al-Filastiniyya,” 158–159. The author, the nephew of Wasfi al-Tall, was the son of Wasfi’s brother Muraywid and nephew of Wasfi’s other brother, Sa’id; all were, like Wasfi, members of this school. 117. Lewis, “Masada and Cyrus,” 12–13, 18. 118. Official Arabic text of the National Charter, 15–17. 119. Official Arabic text of the National Charter, 51–52. 120. Al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris), July 22, 1994. 121. Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 170, 185. 122. Jordan TV, October 25, 1994. 123. Official Arabic text of the National Charter, 26. 124. See, e.g., Susser, Jordan: Preserving Domestic Order. 125. Singh, “Liberalization or Democratization?,” 68. 126. Susser, “Jordan,” 16:540, 17:456–457. 127. Official Arabic text of the National Charter, 35–36. 128. Roos, History of Modern Poland, as quoted in Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, 44–45. 129. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 102–103, 113–114, 135. 130. On such integration, see Smith as quoted by Gat, Nations, 9. 131. Dann, Studies in the History of Transjordan, 1920–1949, 10; Bocco and Tell, “Pax Britannica in the Steppe,” 108–109; Axelrod, “Tribesmen in Uniform,” 44. 132. Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 88. 133. Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 45. 134. Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 233, 309. 135. Alon, Making of Jordan, 84, 92, 102–103, 107–108; Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 57–58. 136. Dodge, Arabian Prince, 4. 137. Gat, Nations, 56. 138. Fathi, Jordan, 96–97, 127; Layne, “Tribesmen as Citizens,” 128; Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 303–304. 139. Axelrod, “Tribesmen in Uniform,” 27. 140. Axelrod, “Tribesmen in Uniform,” 26; Brand, “In the Beginning,” 153–154. 141. Podeh, Politics of National Celebrations. 142. Susser, “Jordan,” 9:504–505; Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 86–89.

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143. Abdallah in a speech to the nation on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his assumption of power, June 8, 2009, and in a speech to Mu’ta University graduates, June 16, 2013; from King Abdallah’s official website: https://kingabdullah .jo/ar. 144. Yom, “Tribal Politics,” 241. 145. Alon, Shaykh of Shaykhs, 163. 146. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 253. 147. Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 265–275. 148. Alon, Making of Jordan, 157; Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 237–238. 149. Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 269. 150. Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 86. 151. Khoury and Kostiner, Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, 3. 152. Fathi, Jordan, 165, 179–180. 153. Sayigh, “Jordan in the 1980s,” 174. 154. Alon, Making of Jordan, 2, 111. 155. Fruchter-Ronen, “Palestinian Issue,” 290–291. 156. Layne, “Tribesmen as Citizens,” 125, 135–136; Alon, The Making of Jordan, 7, 139. 157. Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 88. 158. Alon, Making of Jordan, 156. 159. Ahmad Uwaydi al-Abbadi quoted in Fathi, Jordan, 259. 160. Abu Awda (Palestinian) quoted in Fathi, Jordan, 264. 161. Layne, Home and Homeland, 105. 162. Layne, Home and Homeland, 103. 163. Anderson, Nationalist Voices in Jordan, 201. 164. Fathi, Jordan, 238. 165. Fathi, Jordan, 185. 166. Brand, “In the Beginning,” 184. 167. Brand, “Palestinians and Jordanians,” 48. 168. Brand, “In the Beginning,” 180. 169. Ryan, “We Are All Jordan.” 170. Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 311–312. 171. Bani Salameh, “Political Reform in Jordan,” 68. 172. Abdallah in a speech to Mu’ta University graduates on June 16, 2013. https://kingabdullah.jo/ar. 173. See, e.g., al-Khalidi, “Tribal Feuds Threaten Jordan’s Stability”; Faek, “Tribal Violence Plagues Jordanian Public Universities.” 174. Ryan, “We Are All Jordan.” 175. Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 326–327.

6

Jordanian Identity and the Palestinians

THE CALCULATED PROMOTION OF A PARTICULAR JORDANIAN NATIONAL identity, resting on the monarchy’s alliance with the East Bankers, was problematic. The monarchy never intended to exclude the Palestinians of the East Bank. The East Bankers, however, had no intention of conceding their patrimony and built-in political supremacy in the kingdom. Considering the historical ties between the two banks and the demographic realities, Transjordanians harbored a constant fear of Palestinian irredentism. East Bankers had held suspicions about Palestinian designs on Jordan, or fears of Palestinian troublemaking on the East Bank, since as far back as the 1930s.1 King Hussein, therefore, was determined, at one and the same time, to bolster a powerful sense of Jordanian identity and to avoid being marginalized in the Arab-Israeli peace process by maintaining a measure of influence and input on the Palestinian diplomatic track. He consequently never excluded the possibility of forming some special relationship with the Palestinian entity or state of the future as an essential means of securing the kingdom on the East Bank. While Jordan distanced itself from the West Bank and recognized the separate identity of the Palestinians and of Palestine, Hussein also asserted repeatedly that Jordan’s Palestinian citizens on the East Bank belonged to the “Great Jordanian family,” united by a shared historical narrative originating in the Arab Revolt and led by their Hashemite father figure. They were therefore fully equal to their East Banker compatriots (even though in practice they were not) and owed their unswerving allegiance to king and country. This had always been Hussein’s official position, 131

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but it was even more emphatically so after the disengagement in 1988 and the subsequent signing of the Oslo Accords in the summer of 1993.2 Anxious that Palestinian advances toward statehood might erode East Bank Palestinian loyalties, or alternatively spur anti-Palestinian sentiment among East Bankers, Hussein made every effort to curb a fractious rise of intercommunal tension. The 1991 national charter grappled with the issue but failed to iron out the inconsistencies inherent in the effort to promote a clear distinction between Jordan and Palestine and between Jordanians and Palestinians, while simultaneously contending that all Jordanian nationals, including the many Palestinians among them, were Jordanians, just like their original East Banker compatriots. The “Arab-Palestinian identity” and the “Arab-Jordanian identity” were not contradictory, according to the charter. On the contrary, they shared common cause in the struggle against the Zionist project.3 Obviously matters were more complicated. Had there been no friction, there would have been no struggle between Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and Jordan would never have been coerced by the rise of Palestinian nationalism to disengage from the West Bank. Denying the contradiction only papered over the intrinsic problématique of Jordanian-Palestinian relations. The Jordanian leadership itself was acutely aware of the realities, public denials notwithstanding. The charter therefore, in a cryptic reference to anti-Palestinian sentiment among radical Jordanian nationalists, expressed the hope that the intricacies of the Jordanian-Palestinian relationship would never be exploited to deny civil rights to one group by the other. Nor should anyone seek to undermine Jordanian domestic stability and thus serve the Zionist plan to “transform Jordan into an alternative for Palestine.” Jordanian national unity was the firm foundation on which to construct a secure relationship between all citizens of the Jordanian state. Just as it was inconceivable to drive a wedge between the citizens of the Jordanian state, irrespective “of their different origins” (ala ikhtilaf usulihim), so it was imperative to guarantee the rights of all citizens without discrimination to fully pursue their legitimate interests and to uphold their constitutional rights.4 In the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, Hussein constantly restated the time-honored formulas on Jordanian-Palestinian unity that had been the king’s staple political lexicon for decades. All the people of Jordan were members of “one family,” united just like the ansar (the Prophet’s supporters in Medina) and the muhajirin (the Prophet’s Meccan companions, who migrated with him to Medina) in the early days of Islam. When addressing the nation, he noted especially that he was speaking to the Jordanian people “of whatever descent and origin” (min shatta al-manabit wal-usul) and warned all and sundry not to tamper with national unity.5

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Despite the king’s warnings, Jordan’s more liberalized political system of the 1990s allowed ultranationalist Jordanian rumblings to enter the public discourse. A Transjordanian right-wing nationalist movement, sarcastically dubbed by its critics the Jordanian Likud (al-Likud al-Urdunni), had clearly taken shape. For its followers, “Jordan was for the Jordanians” and had to be protected from possible Palestinization. They were outspoken in their view that the Palestinians in Jordan (or many of them) should return (not as a matter of choice) to Palestine when Palestinian self-rule became a reality. Latent tensions between Jordanians and Palestinians resurfaced with a “saliency unheard of since the dark days of Black September.”6 The origins of this school of thought indeed lay in the early 1970s, provoked first by the civil war and then by the Rabat resolutions.7 Initially an informal group in the political elite formed around Wasfi al-Tall in 1970–1971 during his last term as prime minister. The group was said, at the time, to have included members of the royal family such as Queen Mother Zayn, Crown Prince Hasan, and Hussein’s uncle Nasir bin Jamil. Of Hasan it was said that he thought the “West Bank [was just] trouble.” The members of the group were considerably more restrained than the “ultras”; they spoke of the need to disengage from the West Bank and to dissociate Jordan from the Palestinian question but not of disenfranchising or expelling the Palestinian citizens of Jordan.8 Hussein’s federation plan of March 1972, though intended by the king as an instrument for continued control of the West Bank, had certain unintended consequences. It conceded that the old unity formula was out of date and also included a suggestion that the Palestinians on the East Bank would vote for their representatives in the Palestinian province. This gave some Jordanian ultranationalists the idea that the Palestinian citizens of Jordan could be demoted from citizens to just residents who could vote in the newly established independent Palestinian entity rather than in Jordan. After the resolutions of the Rabat Arab Summit of 1974 recognizing the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people, the competition and conflict with the PLO continued while the Jordanian nationalist discourse began to develop an exclusivist political lexicon that called into question Palestinians’ loyalty and sense of “belonging” (intima) to the state.9 The disengagement from the West Bank in July 1988 and then the Oslo Accords and the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty emboldened the ultranationalists, who believed that these developments represented a victory for their “East Bank First” vision. Moreover, if, as it seemed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Palestinians were en route to independent statehood, the moment had come to ask whether Jordan was indeed the homeland of Palestinians who were not born there but in the West Bank and Gaza.

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Though they had Jordanian citizenship, could these Palestinians “rightfully call themselves Jordanian”? When Jordan disengaged from the West Bank, Hussein declared unequivocally that the new measures would have no effect on “Jordanian citizens of Palestinian extraction” on the East Bank. They would continue to enjoy all the rights and be bound by all the obligations of citizenship as an integral part of the Jordanian state. Any attempt to infringe upon national unity, he warned, would be seen as assistance to the enemy and its “expansionist policy at the expense of Palestine and Jordan.”10 He made similar statements many times thereafter, but “not everyone [in Jordan] shared his sentiments about inclusiveness.”11 For some of the ultranationalists, the Palestinians in Jordan were comparable to the Zionists in Palestine who had bought land, established settlements, and displaced the indigenous population.12 They were an “alien community whose legal status had to be reconsidered” in order to protect the identity of the Jordanian state.13 Some of the ultranationalists, such as the rather eccentric Dr. Ahmad Uwaydi al-Abbadi, a retired police officer, former member of parliament, and tribal historian, actively campaigned for the disenfranchisement of the Palestinians. He argued that they only “pretended to be Jordanians” (muta’ardinnun). They ought to return to where they came from or even be forced to go back to Palestine.14 For Dr. Ahmad, all true Jordanians were “sons of the tribes.” The “new Jordanian national identity” was reserved for the descendants of the tribes whose territory was historically located in Jordan of today. He stressed tribal identity above all others, as he sought to foster a popular nationalism that would “nationalize the tribal heritage—or . . . tribalize the national heritage” at the expense of nontribal Jordanians. Dr. Ahmad’s arguments were partially self-defeating. They tended to add “potency to the Palestinian identity” in Jordan. Hussein challenged Dr. Ahmad, insisting that Jordan was one family. He, the king, was the head of that family, and he would determine who his subjects were. Any attempt to divide “the big Jordanian family” (al-usra al-Urdunniyya al-kubra) was an insult to the king himself.15 Dr. Ahmad represented a significant segment of tribal sentiment, but not all East Bankers of tribal origin shared his radical point of departure. Many of Jordan’s educated urban East Banker elite regarded tribalism as retrograde and antithetical to the promotion of a unifying Jordanian identity. But just as many East Bankers were commonly motivated by fears of a Palestinian-Israeli conspiracy to establish the future state of Palestine in Jordan rather than on the other side of the river. The notion of the “alternative homeland” (al-watan al-badil) was taken seriously as a possible Israeli right-wing design in all echelons of the Jordanian establishment from the king down. But the ultranationalists like

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Dr. Ahmad went a step further, combining the Palestinians with Israel as complicit surrogates. In this scenario, the Palestinians and the Israelis would collaborate to turn east in order to establish the substitute homeland, “given the fact that the issue of demography is the most threatening in the region, and Jordan is the most susceptible to it.”16 Since there were Israelis who contended that the Palestinians were a majority in Jordan in support of the “Jordan is Palestine” theory, this was consistently denied by the ultranationalists, who generally also tended to minimize the Palestinian contribution to Jordan. The Palestinian role in the economy, they noted, had actually benefitted the Palestinian bourgeoisie more than it served the Jordanian state. They argued that Jordan’s strategic importance derived from its geopolitical centrality in the Fertile Crescent and not from its possible role in a Palestinian settlement.17 Jordan’s official spokesmen, including King Hussein, repeatedly disputed the population figures and claimed that the Palestinians in Jordan comprised less than 40 percent of the total.18 Jordan’s most important modern, semiofficial historian, Sulayman Musa, quoted a 1995 statement of Prime Minister Abd al-Salam al-Majali, who argued that it was “absolutely incorrect” to speak of a Palestinian majority in Jordan. The Arabs from the outset, Jordanians included, had inflated the numbers of 1948 refugees for political and propaganda purposes, according to Majali, and since then no precise census of refugees had ever been conducted.19 In September 2002 Prime Minister Ali Abu al-Raghib claimed that the Palestinians were no more than 43 percent of Jordan’s population, an improbable figure that King Abdallah II also used.20

The “East Bank First” School

A clear distinction had to be made between Jordanian nationalism as promoted by the state and East Banker or Transjordanian nationalism. The state promoted a version that was inclusive of all Jordanian citizens, whether of Jordanian or Palestinian origin. Conversely, Transjordanian nationalism emphasized East Banker tribal origins and excluded Jordanian Palestinians. Some ultranationalists even excluded the Hashemites as their origins were in the Hijaz. East Bankers of this school believed that Jordanians of Palestinian origin ought not to enjoy full political rights pending the resolution of the Palestinian refugee question, which, they contended, would allow large numbers of these citizens to return to Palestine. In the meantime, full equality for all Jordanians, including those of Palestinian origin, would dilute the Jordanian national identity and serve the Israeli argument on Jordan as the “alternative homeland” for the Palestinians.21 The Jordanian nationalists of the so-called East Bank First

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school were divided into three subgroups: the pragmatists, the clan/tribe group, and the radicals.22 The pragmatists, who were the most influential, were part and parcel of the Transjordanian ruling elite and were well placed in the upper echelons of the political order, the bureaucracy, and the security forces. They accepted the Hashemite official historical narrative and similarly believed in the expediency of moderation toward Israel. The most prominent Jordanian political party that represented their views was alAhd (the covenant). The party was led by Abd al-Hadi al-Majali, of the all-powerful Majalis of the southern town of Karak, who was a Speaker of parliament, former minister and chief of staff, and brother of former prime minister Abd al-Salam al-Majali. In their mind, the Hashemite monarchy was an indispensable component of the Jordanian identity, and as “extreme monarchists” (malikiyyin mutahammisin) al-Ahd was widely considered an extension of the state and its unofficial mouthpiece. At times, however, its adherents were more royalist than the king and adopted anti-Palestinian positions that were unacceptable to the monarchy. Like the king they supported the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and also agreed that the Palestinian presence in Jordan was an “intrinsic part of the Jordanian people’s composition.” They accepted all the 1948 refugees, whose origins were in Israel proper and who resided in Jordan, as full Jordanian citizens. This, however, would not apply to Palestinians in Jordan whose origins were in the West Bank and Gaza (i.e., the future state of Palestine). They were Jordanians if they accepted “the political and constitutional essence of the Jordanian state” and demonstrated their loyalty to it. Once a Palestinian state came into being, they would have to choose between Palestine and Jordan. They would be expected to exercise their political rights in Palestine unless they specifically applied to become Jordanian, in which case their request would be considered. But the premise of the party was that Palestinian-Jordanians were first and foremost Palestinians, not Jordanians.23 The clan/tribe group, originating, as its categorization suggests, in the tribes of the East Bank, the backbone of the army and of the Jordanian identity, regarded the Palestinians as the major threat to the tribal character of the country. Its main protagonist was Dr. Ahmad Uwaydi al-Abbadi, the tribal historian mentioned above. Its adherents usually conceded (though at times they did not) that the Hashemite monarchy was an essential ingredient of the Transjordanian identity, but their loyalty was not unconditional, and their positions on the Palestinians were not in line with those of the monarchy.

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In their view, there was an unwritten contract (bay’a) between the monarchy and the tribes, who gave their loyalty to the crown in exchange for economic security. The Palestinians in Jordan were foreigners and inherently disloyal. In the relationship with the Palestinians in Jordan, the Transjordanians had given the Palestinians land, economy, and identity, for which they had received nothing in return. The East Bankers should be entitled to 51 percent of the wealth of the Palestinians, who ought to be denied their citizenship and civil rights in Jordan. After all, Jordanians were Jordanians, and Palestinians were Palestinians, and identity was all about blood and tribe.24 In essence the Palestinians in Jordan were no less foreign than Muslim or Christian pilgrims of the past who traveled through the country or than the British, the former employees of the Iraq Petroleum Company or Tapline for that matter, who had all in their various ways made use of Jordanian territory. The radicals had political and intellectual roots in the ideological left: pan-Arabists, Ba’this, and Communists. Their main mouthpiece was the weekly al-Mithaq, edited by Nahid Hattar, a Christian and a former Marxist. For Hattar the East Bankers were “the real people” of Jordan. The Palestinians had rights, but “their rights [were] in Palestine” and not in Jordan.25 The radicals placed their loyalty to the Jordanian state above their loyalty to the monarchy and developed a historical narrative accordingly. Most of the group’s adherents were young civil servants with tribal connections, professionals, and retired officers. According to their historical narrative, a cohesive Transjordanian society already existed in the mid-nineteenth century. Jordan was in fact ripe for statehood before the arrival of the Hashemites, and its existence was therefore not dependent on them or their regime. Jordan’s existence was in natural opposition to Israel, which threatened Jordan with the expulsion of Palestinians to create “the alternative homeland” in Jordan. They therefore strongly supported a viable Palestinian state and a close association with Syria and Iraq rather than with Palestine, certainly before a fully sovereign independent state of Palestine was established. They opposed normalization with Israel, which would create Jordanian dependency on Israel and allow for undesirable Israeli influence over the country and the region.26 All three trends deeply distrusted their Palestinian compatriots. For the nationalists of the East Bank, Transjordan, as the name of the land suggested, was their exclusive patrimony. They were the real abna al-balad, sons of the country—so much so that popular Jordanian nationalist parlance referred to Palestinians disparagingly as “Belgians” as a way of denoting their complete foreignness.27 Once it transpired that the Oslo Accords and the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty had not

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resolved the Palestinian refugee question, tensions surfaced between East Bank Jordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin. These were exacerbated by the economic restructuring taking place in Jordan. The reforms were designed to reduce the size of the public sector and to encourage private enterprise, which in practice meant a serious loss for East Bankers in government service and potential gain for the Palestinians in the private sector. It was against this backdrop that Abd alHadi al-Majali publicly proposed the notion of “political return” (alawda al-siyasiyya) for Palestinians in Jordan. “Political return” meant the transfer of the political and voting rights of Palestinians who originated in the West Bank and Gaza (i.e., 1967 refugees or migrants from the West Bank since 1948 and not refugees whose original homes were in what became Israel in 1948) to the nascent Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian state-in-the-making, as it was seen at the time. Since dual citizenship was not allowed between Arab states, the Jordanians of West Bank or Gazan origin would have to “clarify their loyalty,” either to Jordan or to Palestine. Jordan, according to Majali, could not tolerate the “dual loyalty” of its Palestinian citizens. National unity, as Fahd al-Fanik put it, depended upon the existence of a “single national identity.” There could not be “two national identities in Jordan.”28 These positions were not accepted by the monarchy. Nor, apparently, were they shared by many or even most East Bankers. Jordanians of Palestinian origin naturally rejected Majali’s ideas outright, not to mention the more extremist views of the others. For the Palestinians, all these were not even worthy of serious consideration. Tahir al-Masri, one of Jordan’s leading political figures of Palestinian origin and a former prime minister, charged that Majali’s fundamental premise was groundless. Identification with the Palestinian cause was by no stretch of the imagination a symptom of disloyalty to the Jordanian kingdom. Moreover, Majali’s proposals were an unconstitutional, illegal, undemocratic, and obviously unacceptable toying with the civil rights of Jordanians who enjoyed their citizenship by right.29 Whatever Abd al-Hadi al-Majali’s personal opinions may have been, his party, al-Ahd, in line with its ultraloyalist credentials, had an official position on Jordanian-Palestinian relations that was far more moderate and very much in accordance with the official position of the regime. The party spoke of the special relationship between the Jordanian and Palestinian peoples, by virtue of their national (qawmi) belonging, reinforced by their common religion, geography, and history. Moreover, “this special relationship [had] become part of the particular nature of the Jordanian homeland and its political and social experience. The Palestinian dimension [was] interwoven in the Jordanian

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dimension on all levels, political, social and economic.” This convergence was reinforced by the merger of Jordanians and Palestinians in the Jordanian arena “by virtue of the union of the two banks and by virtue of the belonging of a large portion of the Palestinian people to Jordan.” As for the relationship with the Palestinian state of the future, al-Ahd believed in the separate Palestinian identity but also in the strict nonintervention of Palestinian political organizations in Jordanian domestic affairs, and vice versa, lest the brotherly relations between the two states be ruined. All Palestinians living in Jordan were Jordanians, but when a Palestinian state actually came into being on Palestinian territory (not in Jordan, of course), the Palestinians in Jordan would have the right (i.e., would not be compelled) to choose to belong to the Palestinian state. These formulations did not quite clarify the party’s position on the refugees, from both 1948 and 1967, particularly whether their Jordanian citizenship impacted upon their rights as refugees. Nor did they entirely clarify why the Palestinians in Jordan, if fully Jordanian, would be offered the right choose their loyalty if and when a Palestinian state were to be established. At the end of the day, the party believed, Jordanians and Palestinians would come together in some form of unionist framework that would respect the “regional particularity of the Jordanian state and its people,” as well as that of the Palestinian state and people, and would be based on the free choice of both peoples.30 Radical Jordanian exclusivism, though far from being the consensus, obtained an increasingly legitimate place in Amman’s political salons fueled by harsh criticism of any ideas of close ties with the West Bank or refugee resettlement in Jordan. The intercommunal tensions that these sentiments reflected were not attenuated by Hussein’s constant portrayal of Jordan as a unified society of Jordanians and Palestinians, referring time and again to his favorite historical theme of the ansar and the muhajirin of the Prophet’s time and to the Jordanians as “our one Jordanian family.”31 In Hussein’s thinking it was imperative to uphold his inclusive integrationist formula of national unity to avoid domestic tension and to offset possible destabilizing Palestinian irredentism. The king’s efforts to keep the Palestinians of the East Bank within the Jordanian fold must have given the Palestinians in Jordan much satisfaction, but they further aggravated the more radical segments of the ultranationalist East Bank constituency, who firmly believed that the king’s integrationist policies would in fact encourage the irredentism that he and they sought to prevent. There was a palpable tension at times between some of the more radical nationalists and the monarchy. Among indigenous Jordanians, who sought to generate a tribal-lineage-based nationalism, not only the

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Palestinians but also the Hashemites did not really belong as they were neither indigenous nor of the tribes.32 Such sentiments were not new. In the late 1950s it was not uncommon to hear among the tribes the view that the Hashemites should never have been installed as the rulers of Jordan in the first place.33 In October 1995 the Jordanian government began to reissue fiveyear passports to West Bankers after their passport validity had been limited to two years following the disengagement. The ultranationalists, their passions immediately inflamed by this “dangerous development,” accused the government of retreating from the decision to disengage. Hussein viciously denounced the critics, and since some writers had again noted the fact that the monarchy was itself foreign to Jordan, the king retaliated with undisguised disdain, arguing that Jordan would not have come to much had it not been for the Hashemites.34 The confrontation, however, never really subsided and, every now and then, would erupt again because of some related development. In the summer of 1997, the ultranationalists condemned a government project to improve living conditions in refugee camps as refugee resettlement (tawtin). The government explained that the project had nothing to do with the final status of the refugees. Once an agreement with Israel was achieved on the refugee question, it would be up to the refugees in Jordan to freely choose whether they wished to alter their status or not. But until such time, since they were Jordanian citizens, they were entitled, just like their compatriots, to enjoy decent living conditions as a civil right.35 For the radicals any hint of resettlement was an ominous step toward the decisive shift of the demographic balance in favor of the Palestinians, thereby threatening the preeminence of the Jordanians in their own country. It was mainly for this reason that the radicals, as opposed to the more pragmatic nationalists, rejected the peace treaty with Israel. In their view, the treaty was just a phase toward resettlement, since it had failed to impose the “right of return” on Israel.36 Rivalry and mistrust between East Bankers and Palestinians penetrated every level of Jordanian society and impacted upon every facet of daily life. As of the late 1980s, during the first Palestinian intifada, Jordanian students on the campuses of the public universities made a point of disrupting Palestinian students staging Palestinian nationalist events and of publicly celebrating typically Jordanian nationalist occasions such as the king’s birthday, Jordan’s independence day, and the anniversary of the Great Arab Revolt. It was not uncommon for groups of Jordanian and Palestinian students to face off on campus, hurling verbal nationalist broadsides at one another.37

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Off campus, soccer matches between Jordan’s two major clubs, alFaysali (East Bank Jordanian) and al-Wahdat (Palestinian), often turned into brawls between the Jordanian and Palestinian fans of the two teams, which had come to personify the conflicting national sentiments.38 When Jordan won the Arab soccer cup in 1997, the public was ecstatic, and King Hussein praised the players for their performance, which had brought them into the “heart and soul of every Jordanian.” But some Palestinians were quick to point out that most of the players were actually of Palestinian origin. Skirmishes and fistfights between Jordanians and Palestinians soon ensued.39 Though much was said by the king about national unity, there was obviously no consensus on the matter, and soccer matches between al-Faysali and al-Wahdat remained a permanent venue for violent Palestinian-Jordanian exchanges.40

The Socioeconomic Fallout of Jordanian-Palestinian Rivalry

Internal strains between Jordanians and Palestinians were exacerbated by the functional cleavage that continued to divide them. Since state policy had always been to absorb the Palestinians, and because their place was generally not to be found in the employ of the government, they tended to excel in the private sector and established their prominence in the county’s economy. Economically, Palestinians were well integrated into the state and the fabric of society, and many had willingly thrown in their lot with the Jordanian kingdom. Some Palestinians, especially refugee camp dwellers (about 20 percent of the total refugee population, of some 2.4 million, and some 10 percent of the total Palestinian population in Jordan, of around 5 million) were reluctant to renounce their affiliation to Palestine. Their socioeconomic circumstances offered only a limited chance to leave the camps. Their nonassimilation was also “part of their identity building,” which provoked mirror-image reactions among Transjordanians.41 It was these Palestinians (mostly 1967 refugees) whom many Jordanians, the government included, would have liked to see returning to the Palestine of the future. As for the rest of the Palestinians, many—especially among those who had sought refuge in 1948–1949—had made it to the middle, upper-middle, and upper classes of Jordanian society and had acquired a real stake in the continued stability and security of the regime.42 The rapid growth of the Jordanian economy in the 1970s allowed for the incorporation of Palestinian businessmen and merchants. More economic elites now saw their material interests “as linked to the stability

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of the throne.”43 Moreover, significant segments of this Palestinian community had been alienated from the PLO by the civil war.44 A variety of regional changes tended to reinforce this trend of Palestinian acceptance of and loyalty to the monarchy and the Jordanian state. A “sea change” of sorts had occurred. First of all, the major irritant in Jordan’s relations with its Palestinian citizens was mitigated considerably. In the more distant past, the Palestinians had perceived Jordan’s relative moderation toward Israel as inimical to their most basic interests and aspirations. However, in an era when the PLO was as much a full participant in the peace process as Jordan, this was no longer so. Furthermore, a number of Hussein’s major policy decisions had endeared him to his Palestinian subjects: disengagement from West Bank, which had finally opened the way for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state; the measured political liberalization set in motion in 1989; and Jordan’s nonparticipation in the US-led coalition against Iraq in the Gulf War.45 Jordan’s peace with Israel and the subsequent shift away from Iraq, though less popular, had not markedly altered the generally favorable appraisal of many Palestinians of their lives as Jordanians. Certainly, in comparison to the lot of Palestinians elsewhere, their experience in Jordan under King Hussein had, for the most part, been secure, benevolent, prosperous, and difficult to improve upon elsewhere in the Arab world, including in an independent Palestine. This was so much the case that even the younger generation of Palestinians was far more “likely to express loyalty to Jordan, or at least Hussein, than ever before.”46 This greater Palestinian willingness to integrate was not reciprocated with a welcoming embrace by East Bankers. Many East Bankers remained suspicious of the Palestinian presence. Since Palestinian loyalty to the Jordanian state was questioned and the domestic security organs had been de-Palestinized, “a self-perpetuating divisiveness” was triggered as the Palestinians became eternally suspect.47 Palestinians, on the other hand, though seeking acceptance and integration, showed low levels of participation in the Jordanian political process. The system was in many ways structured against them. Election districts were gerrymandered in favor of East Bankers, leading Palestinians to assume that their participation would be meaningless anyway. They also probably believed, like many East Bankers, that high-profile Palestinian involvement in Jordanian politics would justify the argument that “Jordan is Palestine” and might reverberate against the Palestinian refugee “right of return” and/or compensation. Higher education as of the 1970s was governed by an unofficial policy of affirmative action for East Bankers, which systematically discriminated against Palestinians in the public universities on admission quotas,

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scholarships, tuition fees, and faculty appointments. Through a process of makrumat malakiyya (royal favors), the palace allocated preferential quotas for East Bankers at the expense of Palestinian candidates. This did not change significantly under King Abdallah II, and the proportion of Palestinians in the public universities declined consistently from over 90 percent of students and faculty in the 1970s to less than 50 percent in the first decade of the twenty-first century. As Palestinians prospered in the private sector, it was not surprising that as higher education expanded in Jordan, Palestinian entrepreneurs established private universities that attracted many of the Palestinian faculty and students who were unable to find places in the public institutions. The private universities therefore were soon to become “a Palestinian phenomenon”: Palestinian-owned institutions with relatively high proportions of Palestinian students and faculty.48 On rare occasions, Palestinians did rise to positions of high political prominence. One such example was Tahir al-Masri, previously foreign minister in a number of cabinets in the late 1980s, who was appointed prime minister by Hussein in June 1991. Masri’s government continued liberalization legislation and led Jordan to the Madrid peace conference, policies that aroused considerable domestic opposition spanning from the secular left to the religious right. But the East Banker conservative establishment was especially active in engineering Masri’s ouster through aggressive parliamentary opposition. Masri lasted less than six months as prime minister and was replaced by the king’s cousin, Zayd bin Shakir, in November 1991.49 Studies published in Jordan and the West Bank in the mid-1990s on the Jordanian-Palestinian cleavage revealed a series of perceived impediments to the advancement of domestic cohesion. On the Jordanian side complaints could be divided into two kinds: those made by official sources in private and off the record and those voiced by the general public. On the official level, the key publicly unspoken suspicion was that the Palestinians were not really loyal citizens and that their true sense of belonging was to Palestine and to Palestinian political organizations or parties. Another undeclared official source of anxiety was that the Palestinians in Jordan, willingly or not, would become active participants in the solution of the Palestinian problem, at Jordan’s expense, through their resettlement (tawtin) in Jordan. History would repeat itself, and just as hundreds of thousands were forced out of the West Bank in 1967 and again from Kuwait in 1991, this could happen again if Israel really sought to implement the “alternative homeland” plan. Some Jordanians argued that this was already happening as no less than 1 million Palestinians, in their estimation, had been pressured to leave the occupied territories since 1967 in a slow-paced, gradual, but deliberate policy of the Israelis.

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On the popular level, Jordanians, like their official counterparts, suspected their Palestinian fellow citizens of dual loyalty because of their affiliation to and dependence on Palestinian organizations and their relative noninvolvement in the domestic battles of Jordanian politics against corruption and economic deprivation, for example. Jordanians tended to be critical of the concentration of the private business sector in the hands of citizens of Palestinian origin. They were similarly unhappy with what they felt was Palestinian ingratitude toward Jordan despite the privileges and benefits accruing from their long-standing Jordanian citizenship. During the flush years of the Jordanian economy in the 1970s and early 1980s, government investments in Amman and its infrastructure exacerbated resentment felt in the towns of the East Bank periphery, which were becoming increasingly marginalized as the capital expanded to the benefit of its predominantly Palestinian population.50 The complaints of their Palestinian compatriots that were related primarily to the consequences of what they regarded as the sweeping “Jordanization” of the bureaucracy, and state institutions in general, intensified since the disengagement from the West Bank in 1988. Palestinians were excluded from senior positions in the civil service, the army, public security (police), the mukhabarat, the media, universities, and other key institutions. It was not just a question of sensitive security-related positions but across the board in government and semigovernment institutions. As a corollary of “Jordanization,” Jordanians of Palestinian origin felt they were “second-class citizens.” They believed that their personal, professional, and economic security were at risk as long as their loyalty was questioned. East Bankers were accorded preferential treatment by the bureaucracy in all spheres as a matter of course. Palestinians complained of the Jordanian ultranationalists, the so-called Jordanian Likud, who sought to discriminate between segments of the population on regional grounds. The Palestinians accused them of being “fascist” in their self-assigned role as “protectors” of Jordan against “the Palestinian danger.” Palestinians were provoked to forge a similar form of “Palestinian Likud,” thus exacerbating tensions on the popular level between Jordanians and Palestinians in the country.51 The Palestinians’ sense of alienation was reflected in their low levels of voter participation in general elections, while those who did participate tended to vote heavily in favor of the major opposition party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Within the IAF, the more radical “hawks” were usually Palestinians, while the more dovish members of the party and of the Muslim Brotherhood in general were usually original Jordanians. The Muslim Brotherhood and the IAF, with their web of connections with Hamas,

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increasingly morphed into the main vehicle for the expression of Palestinian political disaffection with the domestic political status quo.

The Functional Cleavage and Its Political Impact

The functional cleavage, whereby Jordanians controlled the machinery of state and Palestinians were predominant in the economy, had clearly evolved as a fundamental feature of Jordanian society and a “main source of the fears, anxieties and concerns of Jordanians and Palestinians.”52 With time the cleavage was exacerbated. The measured political liberalization as of the late 1980s gave the Palestinians a more audible voice in Jordanian politics, while economic liberalization tended to cut back on the size and allocative nature of the public sector. Both processes had potentially negative consequences for a sizeable proportion of East Bank Jordanians.53 In the late 1980s the Jordanian economy faltered as the “years of plenty,” spurred by Arab oil wealth, came to an end. As oil prices dropped, economic aid to Jordan from the wealthy Arab oil producers was cut back dramatically, remittances from Jordanians working in the Gulf also declined sharply, and the economy crumbled. In the early 1990s Jordan became “the unfortunate holder of the title of ‘one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world.’”54 The state was now left with a bloated bureaucracy and a massive security apparatus with little ability to continue to fund them.55 The government had no choice but to slash its own spending, and those on the government payroll (i.e., mainly East Bank Jordanians) began to suffer in comparison to many of their Palestinian compatriots. Moreover, the return of more than 200,000 Palestinians to Jordan from the Gulf after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War (1990–1991) introduced additional strain into an already sensitive equation. Most Jordanian migrant workers were of Palestinian extraction. Their departure reduced competition in the local job market and lessened the potential for tension or conflict.56 Their return aggravated an already serious unemployment problem, strained state services, and drove up food and house prices.57 Many of the returnees from the Gulf, who had accumulated sufficient wealth, established their own businesses in Jordan. They were considerably better off than Jordanians who continued to work for the government, particularly when there were cutbacks in government spending.58 Jordanians feared becoming “economic, political and social losers” in their own country, resulting in “a much broader sense of Transjordanianness reminiscent of the ‘East Banker First’ surge in the wake of Black September.”59 On the other hand, to avoid discrimination by the

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bureaucracy, Palestinian businesspeople from the Gulf sought partnerships with Transjordanians whose real job was to get through potential bureaucratic obstruction. The exclusion of Palestinians from the public sector also meant depriving them of the fringe benefits that went with government jobs, such as health insurance and subsidized food, clothing. and appliances to which military, security, and civil service personnel were entitled. This was cause for resentment among lower-middle-class Palestinian families, just as their lower-middle-class Transjordanian compatriots resented the rations that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency distributed to Palestinian refugees.60 The Palestinians acquiesced in the annexation of the West Bank by Jordan after the 1948 war, accepting the explanation that it was “transitory.” The “emphasis on the temporary duration” of the presence of the refugees in Jordan made the new reality “easier to digest for the new and suspicious Jordanian citizens” until such time as they could return to their former homes in Palestine.61 In the 1990s, however, the shoe was very much on the other foot. The East Bankers who had come to accept the Palestinian presence because of its temporariness, were losing their patience with the refugee problem. The solution, despite the Oslo Accords and the Israeli-Jordanian treaty, was nowhere in sight. The Palestinians in Jordan wanted their status to be given greater permanence, and the Transjordanians were not interested.62 Hussein’s regular references to the essential solidarity between the ansar (the Transjordanians) and the muhajirin (the Palestinians), with the East Bankers in the role of the hosts and the Palestinians as their guests, was intended to serve as a psychological cushion to polarization. But in the end the formula backfired. It tended to emphasize temporariness, while for many East Bankers their Palestinian “guests” had long overstayed their welcome. Therefore, when the time came to reorganize the Jordanian house after the 1988 decision to disengage from the West Bank, Palestinian institutional representation suffered accordingly. In 1989 the parliament was reconfigured to represent just the East Bank. In the outgoing parliament, the East and West Banks had been represented by thirty seats each. The number of seats for the new East Bank parliament was raised to eighty. Since the seat distribution between the constituencies was gerrymandered to secure Palestinian underrepresentation, Palestinians could not possibly win any more than 25 percent of the seats despite the fact that they comprised at least half the population. In practice they won even less. “Jordanian geography was used to emasculate Palestinian demography as a safeguard against the Palestinian-Jordanians achieving political domination through democratic means.”63

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The economic reforms of the late 1980s and the early 1990s required structural adjustments that altered the state’s welfare regime and effectively deprived large segments of the hitherto privileged East Banker population. The principal aims of the 1989 program were shaped by the ideological components of neoliberalism, according to which the “state was no longer the primary addressee of people’s moral and material entitlements.”64 The program, therefore, was to reduce the level and scope of state intervention in the economy and bring government revenues and expenditures into balance. While this program engendered considerable popular resistance among East Bankers, it won high praise from Jordan’s predominantly Palestinian business community.65 The Palestinians in Jordan had essentially looked after themselves all along, organizing collectively in the private sector, also relatively well funded by the remittances from their kith and kin working in the Gulf. When the structural adjustment was initially imposed, it was the Jordanians who were “dropped by the state,” and it was largely they who took to the streets in protest, and less the Palestinians, who were not seriously affected by the downsizing of government.66 Social provisioning was now limited to the military and to the security establishment, both totally dominated by East Bankers. For them social welfare was maintained and even considerably enhanced. Though obviously crucial for regime stability, they represented only part of the East Banker population, much of which was now excluded from welfare that could no longer be provided to the general population. At the time of the structural adjustment, in the rural towns of the south—Karak, Tafila, and Ma’an—90 percent and more of the domestic labor force was employed in the public sector. The rural south was therefore especially hard hit by the economic reforms. Set in motion after negotiations with the International Monetary Fund in 1989, the restructuring included the removal of subsidies, the privatization of public-sector investments, and cuts in state employment, all of which had a devastating effect on East Bankers especially in the south. By the year 2000, poverty had reached 30 percent of Jordan’s population. Most of the poor were located in the Amman region, where the majority of the population resided, but in relative terms the highest ratios were in the East Banker rural periphery from Mafraq in the north to Karak and Ma’an in the deep south. Special welfare programs created by the state to target the poor were largely ineffective, particularly in reaching the poor in the rural areas.67 In the late 1980s and through the 1990s, rioting frequently erupted in the tribal south following repeated price hikes for basic commodities. The core of the troubles was usually in the towns of Ma’an, Tafila, and Karak, traditionally the bedrock of support for the regime.

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Ma’an had turned into a flashpoint of pent-up discontent after the Iran-Iraq War drew to a close in 1988. During the war Ma’an had thrived on the transit trade from Aqaba to Iraq. There was a sharp downturn in trade after the war and even further after the imposition of international sanctions on Iraq in 1990. Ma’an’s economy was brought “to a virtual standstill.”68 Riots in Ma’an, in later years, became routine. Ma’an had become a symbol for widespread disaffection shared in other parts of the country but not quite so militantly expressed. A major reason seemed to be that the Ma’anis were worse off than most. Literacy and income levels were lower in Ma’an than the national average; poverty levels were therefore higher. Ma’anis also tended to be more religious and conservative. There was an activist armed Islamist presence in Ma’an, which thrived on the social malaise and serious problems of law enforcement. At times there was a complete breakdown of law and order in the town.69 Ma’an was an extreme case, but in an era of prolonged economic difficulty, the regime’s patronage role and image among East Bankers were being steadily eroded. These were issues that had begun to surface with increasing manifestations of East Banker public discontent in the last decade of Hussein’s reign. They reached unprecedented new heights under King Abdallah II. A head-on confrontation evolved between the monarchy and the East Bankers as disapproval of the new king mounted. But all of that did not mean that Jordanians and Palestinians had no common ground. Tensions aside, the great majority of Jordanians and Palestinians were Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims, with a small minority of Arab Christians (mainly Orthodox) on both sides. They had more in common in terms of religion, language, and culture than the divisions implied by their relatively recent territorial identities, which for many were no more than a skin-deep veneer. “Mixed” marriages between Jordanians and Palestinians were commonplace,70 Muslims with Muslims and Christians with Christians. Religion was a much more significant fault line for many of the common folk than their newly acquired national identity, which tended to fire the imagination of certain segments of the intelligentsia far more than it did among the lesser-educated classes. Opinion surveys conducted in the mid-1990s showed that elite opinion leaders were more resolute Jordanian or Palestinian territorial nationalists than were members of the general public. All the same, almost two-thirds of opinion makers and more than two-thirds of the general public were open to various ideas of eventual Jordanian-Palestinian unity (merger, federation, or confederation). Yet the radical nature and the vocal public prominence of the Jordanian ultranationalists guaranteed that the issue of national identity would remain one of the more volatile and disruptive issues in Jordanian politics.71

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1. Gelber, Jewish-Transjordanian Relations, 34, 78, 138–139. 2. The eclecticism, ambiguities, and unavoidable inconsistencies were described as “fuzzy nationalism” by Frisch, “Fuzzy Nationalism.” 3. Official Arabic text of the National Charter, 49. 4. Official Arabic text of the National Charter, 50. 5. Susser, “Jordan,” 17:471–472, 18:438. 6. Susser, “Jordan,” 18:438; al-Majalla (London), June 30, 1996. 7. Fathi, Jordan, 213–214. 8. Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan, 161; Memo of Conversation Between US Team Led by Walter Mondale and Egyptian Team Led by Mohamed Ibrahim Kamel, Camp David, September 7, 1978, FRUS (1977–1980), Vol. IX, Arab-Israeli Dispute (August 1978–December 1980), 2nd rev. ed., Document 35. 9. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 203–207. 10. Hussein in a speech to the nation, July 31, in al-Ra’y (Amman), August 1, 1988. 11. Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 105–106; Muasher, Arab Center, 76. 12. Jordanian Palestinian (1) in conversation with the author, Amman, June 3, 1997. 13. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 194. 14. Al-Shihan (Amman), June 29, 1996; al-Majalla (London), June 30, 1996; alQuds al-Arabi (London), July 24, 1996. 15. Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 215; Shryock, “Dynastic Modernism and Its Contradictions,” 68–70; Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 241. 16. Khalid al-Karaki, chief of the royal court, in a lecture at the Jordanian War College in December 1994, quoted in Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 214. 17. al-Tall, “Al-Ustura wa-su’ al-fahm fi al-alaqat al-Urdunniyya-al-Filastiniyya,” 159–160. 18. Hussein at press conference on August 7, 1988, Jordan TV, August 8, 1988; Le Monde, December 16, 1988. 19. Musa, Ta’rikh al-Urdunn fi al-qarn al-ishrin, 2:379n22. 20. Sayigh, “Palestinian Strategic Impasse,” 17; King Abdallah II, Our Last Best Chance, 153. 21. Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 94–97; Muasher, “Jordan’s Identity Question.” 22. This section is based largely on al-Tall, “Al-Ustura wa-siwa al-fahm fi al-alaqat al-Urdunniyya-al-Filastiniyya,” 158–159; Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 241–248; Nusayrat, Al-Shakhsiyya al-Urdunniyya, 408–411. 23. Ahmad Ubaydat, comments in “Al-Milaff: al-alaqat al-Urdunniyya al-Filastiniyya; Madiyan wa-hadiran wa-mustaqbalan,” 93, as quoted in Frisch, “Fuzzy Nationalism,” 97; similarly, Jordanian East Banker in conversation with the author, Amman, June 5, 1997. 24. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 245; Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 111. 25. Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 172–173. 26. al-Tall, “Al-Ustura wa-su’ al-fahm fi al-alaqat al-Urdunniyya-al-Filastiniyya,” 161. 27. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 228, 255, 257. 28. Al-Ra’y (Amman), al-Dustur (Amman), January 21, 1997; al-Tall, “AlUstura wa-su’ al-fahm fi al-alaqat al-Urdunniyya-al-Filastiniyya,” 154–155. 29. Tahir al-Masri in al-Ra’y (Amman), January 27, 1997. 30. Nusayrat, Al-Shakhsiyya al-Urdunniyya, 408–411. 31. See, e.g., Jordan TV, May 26 and July 16, 1996; Jordan Times, June 2, 1996; al-Majalla (London), June 30, 1996; Radio Amman, June 8, 1997.

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32. Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination, 8. 33. Letter from the US Chargé in Amman to the Director of the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Department of State, October 10, 1958, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Document 349. 34. Jordan Times, October 19–20, 23, and November 4, 1995; Jordan TV, November 9, 1995; al-Hayat (London), November 11, 1995. 35. Radio Amman, June 8 and December 4, 1997. 36. Jordan Times, May 17 and June 8, 28, 1997; Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 112, 118–119. 37. Reiter, “Higher Education and Sociopolitical Transformation in Jordan,” 160. 38. E.g., Jordan Times, October 20, 1996. 39. Nevo, “Changing Identities in Jordan,” 202. 40. Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 126–127. 41. Fathi, Jordan, 220; Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 176. 42. Fathi, Jordan, 221. 43. Singh, “Liberalization or Democratization?,” 77. 44. Sayigh, “Jordan in the 1980s,” 173. 45. Brand, “Palestinians and Jordanians,” 54. 46. Brand, “In the Beginning,” 159. 47. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 198. 48. Reiter, “Higher Education and Sociopolitical Transformation in Jordan,” 137–164; Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 180. 49. Lucas, Institutions and the Politics of Survival in Jordan, 51–53; Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 187; Susser, “Jordan,” 15:491–494. 50. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 107. 51. “Domestic Dimension,” 12–13; Abd al-Rahman and al-Hurani, Marahil tatawwur al-alaqat al-Urdunniyya-al-Filastiniyya, 33–39. 52. “Domestic Dimension,” 16. 53. Brand, “In the Beginning,” 185. 54. Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 163–164; Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 107. 55. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 107. 56. Fathi, Jordan, 173. 57. Brand, “Palestinians and Jordanians,” 56. 58. “Domestic Dimension,” 15–16. 59. Brand, “In the Beginning,” 160; Brand, “Palestinians and Jordanians,” 56. 60. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 198. 61. Plaskov, Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, 1948–57, 45; Mishal, West Bank/East Bank, 115. 62. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 235. 63. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 229– 232, 257. 64. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 108. 65. Greenwood, “Jordan’s ‘New Bargain,’” 250, 252. 66. Baylouny, “Militarizing Welfare,” 279–281. 67. Baylouny, “Militarizing Welfare,” 281–282, 285, 292–303. 68. Susser, “Jordan,” 22:374; Baylouny, “Militarizing Welfare,” 292–293; Schwedler, “Occupied Ma’an.” 69. Schwedler, “Occupied Ma’an”; Schwedler, “Red Alert in Jordan”; “Ma’an.” 70. Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 174. 71. Susser, “Palestinians in Jordan,” 105–107; Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 129–130, 137.

7

The Politics of Peace with Israel

For the Arabs to make peace with Israel is to accept their historical defeat. To expect them to normalize with Israel is to ask of them not only to acquiesce in their misfortune, but also to enjoy it. —Palestinian-Jordanian writer

THE SHORTCOMINGS OF THE ARAB-ISRAELI PEACE PROCESS WERE NOT only a function of political mismanagement, poor decisions, and faulty priorities of Israelis and Arabs. For Muslims and Arabs, the making of peace with Israel was an extremely difficult transition. For centuries the world of Islam had been at the forefront of human civilization and achievement. Suddenly, the balance of power changed. With the advent of the New Learning, the Europeans advanced by leaps and bounds, “leaving the scientific and technological and eventually the cultural heritage of the Islamic world far behind them.” A series of military defeats in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries drove home the message that Muslim superiority no longer existed and that Islamic civilization had been irrevocably overtaken by the West.1 Centuries of Muslim self-assurance and belief in the inherent superiority of their faith and civilization had been irreparably eroded. The West was never quite forgiven for having upset the cosmic order, and the Zionist endeavor in Palestine, initially established by Europeans, was seen from the outset as a bridgehead of intrusive and hostile foreigners. Zionism and Israel were therefore an encapsulation of a much larger historical struggle. The Zionist enterprise was understood by Muslims 151

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and Arab nationalists as yet another test of their capacity to cope with the West and its version of modernity. The humiliating defeats of 1948 and 1967 at the hands of a relatively minor power were painful failures for the Muslims and the Arabs, far more so than earlier defeats at the hands of greater European powers like the Russians, Austrians, British, or French. Israel and the Jews were deeply resented for their inflictions upon the Arabs and their selfesteem. Arab popular opinion and the positions articulated by public intellectuals and the intelligentsia were all “informed with a sense of defeat.”2 For decades the notion of peace with Israel was “equated with capitulation and betrayal.”3 The intellectuals, as the guardians of the Arab collective memory, were the most acutely conscious of this sense of historical humiliation, dispossession, and loss of former greatness. It was the intellectuals, Arab nationalist and Islamist, who set the tone of opposition to and rejection of peace and normalization with Israel. The intellectuals had thus become the keepers of “a deep historic enmity” and a “sacred legacy.”4 Normalization (tatbi’ , meaning acceptance of Israel as a “normal” or “natural” member of the Middle Eastern family of nations) was as difficult for the Arabs to accept as it was important for the Israelis to obtain. Normalization and what it meant to the parties touched upon the very core of the conflict between the Arabs and the Zionist movement. The Israelis desperately sought recognition and acceptance of the legitimacy of their national endeavor in the eyes of their Arab neighbors. Such acceptance of Israel would signify the end of the conflict and reassure the Israelis of their long-term security. For the Arabs, however, it was precisely this legitimacy of Israel that they, for the most part, found so difficult to accept. Israel, after all, in their mind was anything but a “normal” or “natural” member of the neighborhood. It was a foreign intruder that had imposed itself on the Arabs by force. Israel was a settler state (istitani) and a product of imperialism (isti’mari), and as such it was hardly a normal or natural member of the club. It was one thing to grudgingly accept Israel for pragmatic calculations of the balance of power; it was quite another to embrace the Israelis as legitimate. Such perceptions obviously had a profound impact on Israeli thinking. If the Arabs could accept Israel only unwillingly, as a dictate of the balance of power, the Israelis would have to make sure that, for as long as possible into the future, the balance of power would remain in their favor. The Israelis were driven to what at times seemed like obsessive extremes in the name of security. These, in turn, convinced the Arabs that Israel sought not long-term peace and security but hegemony and domination. The Arabs, it followed, could not seriously consider “normalization” with

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such an inherently aggressive and domineering neighbor, a conceptual vicious circle that seemed unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. The Israelis clamored for reassurance that any peace settlement would be “definitive and final, not open-ended.” The Arabs for their part tended “to deny Israel that very asset” which it so earnestly sought: “a reassuring sense of finality.”5 Israel’s ideas of normalization, for many of the Arabs, were all about “invasion” (ghazw), economic, political, and cultural. Even the term “Middle East” became suspect in the eyes of the opponents to normalization. The “Middle East,” as opposed to the Arab or Muslim world, could be inclusive of Israel. Sharq awsatiyya (Middle Easternness) thus became a pejorative term to be frowned upon by Arab nationalists and Islamists. Accepting the description “Middle East” as opposed to “Arab” meant “abandoning the normative dimensions of the Arab state,” suggesting that “there would be no difference between the Arab and the non-Arab state.”6 Rejection of normalization was expressed by two different groups. The first were the Arab nationalists and their Islamist colleagues who rejected the notion in principle, regarding Israel as illegitimate to the core. The second were those for whom normalization was conditional upon Israel’s behavior. For them it would be feasible if Israel fully withdrew from the occupied territories (and, for some, it also required Israel’s acceptance of the Palestinian “right of return”).7 From the onset of negotiations at the Madrid conference in October 1991, well before the signing of the peace treaty and long before anyone could have known how an Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty would work out or how Israeli-Palestinian post-Oslo relations would develop, there was strong public opposition in Jordan to peace and normalization with Israel. The rejectionists came especially from the ranks of the ardent Arab nationalists on the secular left and the Islamists on the religious right. As peace with Israel became more likely, King Hussein gradually retreated from the liberalization policies that had been in place since 1989 and embarked on a series of new measures all designed to constrain the opposition.8 Rather surprisingly, considering the atmosphere, opinion polls during the run-up to the peace treaty showed a large majority in support of the peace process.9 How reliable these polls were is hard to determine, but real opposition became ever-more vociferous after the signing of the treaty when disappointment set in with the unfulfilled expectations for a Palestinian-Israeli final accord and for an economic windfall for Jordan. However, it is important to note that opposition to peace with Israel was strong well before the treaty was signed and long before anyone had a chance to be disappointed with the outcome. Shattered expectations

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certainly fueled the opposition and made it easier for the rejectionists to have their way, but they do not explain the phenomenon of widespread rejection in principle, which contributed to the unfulfilled expectations.

Normalization and Its Malcontents in Jordan

The relative willingness of Jordanians to accept peace with Israel was in large measure a question of identity. Like other Arabs and other peoples in general, Jordanians tended to share, in varying degrees and orders of priority, a multidimensional set of identities. At one and the same time, Jordanians were Jordanians, Arabs, and Muslims (or Christians). Among the intellectuals, who were far more conscious of their collective identity, the distinctions were less blurred, more clearly expressed, and thus more discernable. Among the intelligentsia, the Islamists, the pan-Arabists, and the Jordanian territorial nationalists were readily identifiable. Their views and respective identities, whether Jordanian, Arab, or Islamic, were well formulated and well articulated. But such clearly defined identities were mostly an elitist phenomenon. Among the rank and file, collective identities were generally less precise and more fluid. In the general Jordanian, Arab nationalist, and Muslim public, the relative weight of each of these components tended to fluctuate from time to time. National, subnational, and supranational identities were in “a state of continuous adjustment, if not reconstruction.”10 Egyptian territorial nationalists—the avid westernizers like Louis Awad, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Nagib Mahfuz, and Husayn Fawzi—supported their country’s peace with Israel, though they had no special sympathy for the Zionists.11 A similar phenomenon was apparent in Jordan. Jordanian identification with the territorial state and state interest tended to produce the highest level of accommodation with Israel. The vision of the Middle East as a collection of nation-states was similarly conducive to the acceptance of Israel as one of this heterogeneous mosaic of Middle Eastern countries. Conversely, supraterritorial identities of Arabism and Islam clashed head-on with Israel and the idea of normalization, which conflicted with the notion of the region as a homogeneous Arab or Muslim world of which the Israelis were certainly not a “natural,” “normal,” or legitimate part. Overall, the Jordanian nationalists of the pragmatic pro-establishment school supported the peace treaty, like the king himself, out of their realistic perception of Jordanian geopolitical and economic state interest. Fahd al-Fanik, in his columns in al-Ra’y, was the most consistent and articulate representative of this approach.12 Indeed Fanik explicitly accused the peace opponents from the ranks of the pan-Arabists or the

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Islamists of taking stands at “Jordan’s expense.” They spurned the treaty, even though it was unquestionably in accordance with Jordan’s strategic interests. In essence they were acting in the service of other political priorities that were not specifically Jordanian, and as Fanik concluded rhetorically, “Jordan is first, isn’t it?!”13 In Fanik’s mind their position was one of “impotent rejection.” Such negativist behavior was irrational and dangerous and, throughout the annals of the Arab-Israeli conflict, had cost the Arabs dearly. The Jordanians could not possibly allow this mode of thinking to inflict its damage on the homeland (watan) again.14 As opposed to people like Fanik, most Jordanian ultranationalists, whose origins were in the secular Arab nationalist Left, joined the opposition when it came to the peace process. They were firm opponents of Israel and of the peace treaty, which they feared would expose Jordan to Israeli hegemonic design or eventually drag the kingdom against its will into an undesirably close association with both Israel and the Palestine of the future. Hussein’s efforts to preserve national unity and full civil rights for the Palestinians in Jordan reinforced the ultranationalists’ skepticism, adding to their opposition to the normalization with Israel that Hussein was seeking to foster. If peace with Israel would mean the ultimate permanent resettlement of the Palestinian refugees in Jordan, that would only make matters infinitely worse from their point of view.15 However, in Jordan, like in Egypt, the opposition to peace with Israel was spearheaded by the Islamists and the pan-Arabists. At the helm were the Muslim Brotherhood, their party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), the pan-Arab and leftist parties, and the professional associations, where the Islamists and the pan-Arab leftists were in control, as was the case in the intelligentsia as a whole. Opposition to the process gathered momentum as the talks in the Jordanian-Israeli track forged ahead. Opposition, therefore, peaked in July 1994 when Hussein and Yitzhak Rabin signed the Washington declaration and again in October with the signing of the treaty. From the outset the Islamist and leftist opposition made it abundantly clear that they were opposed to peace, any peace, with Israel as a matter of principle. The very notion of peace with Israel was, in their minds, fundamentally illegitimate. In May 1994, almost six months before the signing of the peace treaty, eight political parties—the IAF and seven smaller left-wing and pan-Arab parties—and some prominent independent personalities established the Popular Arab Jordanian Committee for Resisting Submission and Normalization (al-lajna al-sha’biyya al-Arabiyya al-Urdunniyya li-mujabahat alidh’an wal-tatbi’), which, as its name suggested, appealed to all and sundry to boycott Israel completely.16 Professional associations, such as those of the writers, journalists, doctors, dentists, pharmacists, engineers,

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lawyers, and others, issued strict instructions to their memberships to abstain from any form of normalization with the “Zionist enemy.”17 The parties of the opposition did not have the power to confront the government directly and force it to abandon the peace process. They chose therefore to focus on the fight against normalization and the “coming Zionist invasion of our culture.”18 If they could not prevent the government from signing peace agreements, they could at least make every effort to empty them of substance and constrain the people from participating in the building of peace, just as the opposition in Egypt had done.19 As for the government, it was not all-powerful either. It could conduct high policy as it saw fit, but it could not coerce the public to normalize with Israel. Generally, treaty supporters did not dare to wage a countercampaign in favor of peace with Israel, even though they may very well have been the “silent majority,” as some commentators argued in the early days of the peace negotiations.20 A public opinion poll conducted by Jordan University’s Center for Strategic Studies indicated that some 80 percent of the public supported the peace negotiations with Israel.21 After the signing of the peace treaty, according to what seemed a very realistic assessment by George Hawatma, editor of the Jordan Times, 20 percent of the people supported the treaty just as they supported the regime on most other issues; another 20 percent, particularly the Islamists, rejected the treaty in principle; and in the middle were the majority, the 60 percent who were giving the treaty a chance to succeed in fulfilling their expectations for economic benefit and progress toward a comprehensive peace that would include the Syrians and the Palestinians.22 Many in the opposition were displeased with the fact that the “right of return” of the refugees had not been secured in the treaty and had been left for later negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and other Arab parties.23 In fact, the refugee issue aroused concerns even among Jordanians who, as stalwart supporters of the monarchy, actually supported the treaty in general but, in terms of their Jordanian nationalist sentiments, were keen to see as many Palestinians as possible returning to Palestine. But the visceral opposition in principle to the treaty by the Islamists (and the Arab nationalists) unquestionably dominated the discourse—so much so that Jordan’s first ambassador to Israel, Marwan Muasher, a scion of one of Jordan’s great historical Christian families, agonized at length before finally accepting the appointment. One of the concerns of his family was that the entire Christian community in Jordan “would be placed at greater odds with the Islamist opposition,” which might very well have claimed that the king could not find a Muslim to take the job. Muasher’s acceptance,

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they feared, “might suggest that Christian Jordanians were less loyal to the Palestinian cause than Muslims.”24 Even in the established daily press, in the period immediately preceding the signing of the peace treaty and thereafter, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish prejudice was pervasive.25 Israel and the Jews were vilified by the opponents of peace. Jews had certain essential characteristics and a unique mentality. They were insidious, obstinate, and driven by a “Talmudic fortress mentality” according to which the Jews were God’s chosen people. Israel had not abandoned its war mentality and sought to impose its own security doctrine on the Arabs. In such circumstances the transition to the phase of real peace was like “a blind man looking for a black cat in a dark room.”26 Jordan’s professional associations, which represented some 80,000 doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, writers, and other professions, led the anti-normalization campaign. The associations were extremely politicized after having filled the vacuum left in the wake of the ban on political parties in Jordan that had been in force between 1957 and 1992. Their strident opposition to the treaty made popular normalization virtually impossible.27 In November 1995, following an appeal by Hussein to the “silent majority” to come forward and express their support for peace, some 200 engineers staged a march in Amman protesting the “minority’s abuse of power.” The demonstrators also urged the government to curb the political, as opposed to professional, activities of the associations. This rather feeble effort had no lasting impact.28 In the aftermath of Rabin’s assassination, the runoff in the Israeli elections between Shimon Peres and Binyamin Netanyahu in early 1996 was interspersed with a spate of Hamas suicide bombings in Israeli cities. By now the peace process was in a shambles. In the Jordanian media it was obvious that the peace process had gone sour because of Israel.29 As the process ground to a halt, even leading Jordanian columnists, such as Fahd al-Fanik and Sultan al-Khattab, who had consistently made the case for the peace treaty and, albeit cautiously, even for normalization, began to backtrack. It was becoming publicly impossible to support the peace with Israel. The Israelis, so they argued, could not have their cake and eat it too. They could not make peace with a nation on whom they imposed counterinsurgency security measures, like checkpoints and curfews, which were essentially a form of collective punishment, “starving and abusing” an entire people for the admittedly despicable acts of a few. Israel’s “Grapes of Wrath” campaign against Hizballah in southern Lebanon in April 1996 was the last straw for many Jordanians. Condemnation was extreme, uniform, and universal.30 The election of Netanyahu and a right-wing government in Israel in May 1996 only made matters

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worse. The columnists who had defended the peace treaty now also argued that normalization was no longer a realistic option.31 Public opposition to normalization only grew with time, and any motivation the regime may have had at the outset to fight the popular trend gradually dissipated. As opposed to the needs and interests of the state, which were at least partially tolerated by the general public, private interaction with Israel was regarded as illegitimate and met with widespread public disapproval. The anti-normalizers clearly had the upper hand.32 Amid the torrent of opposition, there were other voices too, and on occasion more favorable references were made in the press to the forthcoming “peace of generations” (salam al-ajyal) and for the need to give peace a chance.33 These, however, were few and far between. The hegemonic discourse was one of skepticism and reservation, representing a pessimistic expectation for the continuation of the “conflict of civilizations” (al-sira’ al-hadari) with Israel. War was not a rational choice because of Israel’s military superiority, but acceptance of Israel was not an option either.34

Hussein Fights for “The King’s Peace”

The fight for normalization was waged almost single-handedly by King Hussein himself. Two points were worthy of special note in this regard: (1) The king was on his own as no public or popular force (as opposed to a small number of individuals) was prepared to take a stand. (2) Hussein, though at the peak of his reign and accepted and revered as the father of the nation, still lost the battle. The lack of popular enthusiasm for the peace treaty was so pervasive that it became standard practice to refer to it as “the king’s peace.” The opposition to the peace treaty incensed Hussein. With the growing institutionalization of the anti-normalization movement, the regime felt compelled to curtail political liberties by limiting manifestations of popular discontent over the peace with Israel. In contrast to the situation in Egypt, the leadership in Jordan did indeed make a concerted effort to quell the opposition to the peace treaty and lay the groundwork for a so-called warm peace.35 Hussein argued that once the majority, as represented in the institutions of state, the government, and both houses of a parliament, had made its decision, the minority had no right to denigrate those who had legitimately opted for peace.36 He suggested that the professional associations should be reformed as it was unacceptable for a radical minority to monopolize the leadership positions in the associations and exploit them for political purposes that had nothing to do with their original

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mandate. Politics had to be left to those who had been “freely elected by the people to represent them” in the Chamber of Deputies.37 The problem with Hussein’s argument, as every Jordanian knew only too well, was its detachment from reality. Elections were never entirely free, and they certainly did not adequately represent public opinion, in which the antinormalizers were the majority and not the so-called radical minority. Hussein’s assault on the professional associations was accompanied by a vicious attack on the press. In Hussein’s view, the state media—that is, the daily press—were supposed to be actively engaged in defending government policies. They, however, were not doing their job, and as a result there were no media “to defend the country.”38 As for the weeklies, they drowned out the voices of moderation by “foretelling havoc, destruction, despair and frustration.” In the king’s opinion there had to be “restrictions [and] deterrents.”39 The ideas for legislation to curb the professional associations were eventually dropped by the government, but more restrictive legislation on the press went ahead. This too was not so much about protecting the peace treaty as it was about muzzling the regime’s critics. In May 1997 a new press and publications law was introduced by what was known in Jordan as “temporary legislation.” This was legislation passed by royal decree when parliament was in recess, to be ratified by parliament when it reconvened. The regime frequently abused the enactment of “temporary legislation,” turning it into a transparent tactic to circumvent the Chamber of Deputies and the constitution in order to introduce controversial legislation. The new press law prohibited the reporting of anything that could be deemed offensive to the monarchy or to leaders of friendly states and imposed much heavier penalties on offenders. A minimum capital requirement was established for both dailies (JD 600,000) and weeklies (JD 300,000). This posed no problem for the dailies but was an insurmountable obstacle for many of the weeklies and was deliberately intended to put them (particularly the more sensationalist tabloids) out of business, a mission that it indeed accomplished. Even the mainstream press and journalists protested against the “draconian measures.” Needless to say, the opposition denounced the law as an instrument to muzzle the critics of Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel. The king and the government, however, stood their ground and refused to rescind the amendments.40 Yet, in an extraordinary turn of events and in answer to a suit filed by some of the weeklies that had been forced to cease publication, Jordan’s Supreme Court ruled in January 1998 that the law was unconstitutional. The monarchy would not let that pass. The key judge in the case was retired, and Hussein instructed the government to draft another law to deter those misleading writers who abused Jordan’s democracy.41

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The new law was no less restrictive in defining what the press was entitled to publish. But the capital requirements imposed on the weeklies and the penalties for violations of the law were considerably less severe. When first brought before the Chamber of Deputies for approval, the draft was met with scathing criticism and denounced as a form of “martial law.”42 That, however, did not prevent the chamber from passing the law a few weeks later. The weeklies gradually began to reappear, and the government was, in the end, rather lenient in its actual imposition of the law. The authorities presumably relied more on the self-censorship of the journalists, now fully aware of what was expected of them. The limitations of Jordanian democracy were carefully calibrated by the regime. Though Hussein often restated his unswerving commitment to the democratic process, he simultaneously reminded his subjects that freedom meant “responsible freedom” limited by the “red line [of] higher national interest.”43 Independent Islamist Layth Shubaylat, the enfant terrible of Jordanian politics and a fierce critic of the peace treaty from the outset, was arrested in December 1995. Charged with defaming the monarchy and instigating sedition (fitna), he was sentenced to three years in prison in March 1996 (but pardoned by Hussein in November). Shubaylat had attacked the treaty from day one, but the last straw was a series of public lectures that he delivered after Rabin’s assassination in November 1995. Shubaylat was provoked by the sensitive, emotional, and most respectful eulogy delivered by Hussein at Rabin’s graveside. He accused Hussein of having exposed the “Zionist face” of the Hashemites44 and was consequently detained. Shubaylat, however, was immensely popular. A committee of thirty-four lawyers, doctors, engineers, politicians, and human rights activists rallied to his support, and a team of forty lawyers came together to defend him. Protesters gathered in front of the Chamber of Deputies, protesting his detention, when his trial began in January 1996, and in February, while still in custody, Shubaylat ran for reelection as head of the Engineers Association. Much to the embarrassment of the authorities, he won by a landslide. Shubaylat’s extraordinary popularity cast doubt on the veracity of Hussein’s oft-repeated assertions to the effect that there really was a socalled silent majority in favor of peace and normalization. After Rabin’s assassination in November 1995, Hussein’s determination gradually dissipated. His own health was deteriorating, and he eventually lost the energy to persevere in what increasingly looked like a lost cause. While the monarchy determined the boundaries of Jordanian democracy, it could not compel the public to do its bidding on every issue, especially not on such emotionally and symbolically charged issues as the peace with Israel. Even authoritarian rulers like Hussein

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had their limitations in executing a pragmatic foreign policy without an adequate basis of legitimacy. This was particularly true in an era of growing alienation between secularizing westernized elites and an increasingly Islamized society.45

Hussein and Netanyahu: The Mirage of “Warm Peace”

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 removed Hussein’s key partner and close personal friend from the scene of peacemaking and peacebuilding. The Israeli prime ministers who replaced Rabin, first Shimon Peres and then Binyamin Netanyahu, failed to establish a similarly intimate rapport with the king. Hussein so distrusted Peres46 that when Peres ran against Netanyahu in the May 1996 Israeli elections, Hussein actually preferred Netanyahu. But after no more than a few months, the king was totally disillusioned with Netanyahu, and their relationship was in tatters. Within a little more than a year, Israel’s relations with Jordan had deteriorated from a remarkable high of warmth and mutual understanding between the leaders of the two countries to an abysmal low, where they could hardly speak to each other. Things began to turn sour in the early months of 1996, before the Israeli elections. A series of Hamas suicide bombings in Israel led to the imposition of harsh security measures in the occupied territories, which were widely condemned in the Jordanian press. Jordanian expressions of displeasure were amplified further in April when, in retaliation for Hizballah rocket attacks, Israel launched “Operation Grapes of Wrath” in southern Lebanon. King Hussein himself denounced the “treacherous Israeli aggression and the criminal military operations” against the Lebanese people.47 Netanyahu’s victory in the Israeli elections and the ensuing policies of his government swelled the ranks of the opponents to the peace treaty in Jordan. At first, however, Hussein continued to counsel against pessimism, and Jordan was said to be “trying hard to mitigate a premature Arab reaction” to Netanyahu’s victory.48 Jordan’s economic difficulties added fuel to the fire of general public discontent and to the sense of unfulfilled expectations for the peace treaty’s “economic dividend.” In August 1996, following an increase in bread prices, thousands took to the streets in unusually violent riots centered in the southern town of Karak. The lack of progress in the negotiations on the other tracks became increasingly difficult to explain away. It did not take very long for commentators in the Jordanian press to begin to argue that Jordan could not be taken for granted and could not continue to promote warm peace

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irrespective of the impasse in the Palestinian and Syrian tracks.49 Matters came to a head in late September after violent clashes between Israeli and Palestinian forces that erupted in the wake of the opening by the Israelis of the Hasmonean Tunnel near Temple Mount in Jerusalem. King Hussein and Crown Prince Hasan condemned Israel for what they regarded as a blatant provocation of Muslim sentiment. By its unilateral actions in Jerusalem, the Jordanians contended, Israel was ignoring its own recognition of Jordan’s special role in regard to the city’s Muslim holy places, as agreed to in the peace treaty. The Jordanians expected to be consulted on such matters, and by its failure to do so, Israel was violating its treaty obligations, they argued.50 In early October 1996, President Bill Clinton convened a mini Middle Eastern summit in Washington, DC, attended by Hussein, Netanyahu, and Yasir Arafat, in an effort to get the peace process back on track. Hussein was unusually blunt in his criticism of Netanyahu. He admonished the Israeli prime minister in the presence of all the other participants for his failure to show more flexibility on the Palestinian track and urged him to “seize the moment,” for the sake of all concerned. Hussein, however, left the meeting “muttering that Mr. Netanyahu just didn’t get it.”51 There was an unquestionable deterioration in the relationship between the two countries, and a personal crisis of confidence between Hussein and Netanyahu had an especially corrosive effect on the very foundations of the Jordanian rationale for peace with Israel. Jordan had hoped to use its relationship with Israel as a lever for “an influential role in overall peacemaking in the Arab world.”52 This was particularly true in reference to progress on the Palestinian track, which the Jordanians believed impacted directly on their own national security. Under Netanyahu the strategic rapport of the Rabin era disappeared. When Israel proceeded with construction plans for a new residential area in the Har Homa/Jabal Abu Ghanayim area in Jerusalem, relations approached the breaking point. Hussein sent a message to Netanyahu on March 9, 1997, which was released in full by the royal court two days later. The king accused Netanyahu of making peace look like “a distant elusive mirage.” Israeli policies, the king continued, seemed deliberately designed to humiliate the Palestinians and drive them into “inevitable violent resistance.” This might eventually result in a major IsraeliPalestinian confrontation that would create “yet a fresh exodus of hapless Palestinians” from their homeland. In such circumstances, Hussein asked of Netanyahu in obvious desperation, “How can I work with you as a partner . . . when I sense an intent to destroy all I have worked to build between our peoples and states?”53

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Netanyahu replied that Jordan and Israel could not allow their relations to become hostage to the Palestinian question. However, as the Jordanians never tired of explaining, the Israelis had to appreciate that they could not deal with Jordan as if it were “an isolated entity.”54 Shimon Shamir, Israel’s first ambassador to Jordan, noted that “it was actually the Palestinian issue, on which Netanyahu had been tempted to believe that, beneath the surface, he and the king saw eye to eye, that became the main stumbling block in his relations with Jordan.”55 Jordanian-Israeli relations were now at their lowest ebb since the peace treaty. As if matters were not bad enough, just two days after Hussein’s publicized admonition of Netanyahu, on March 13, a Jordanian soldier, Ahmad Daqamsa, opened fire on a group of Israeli schoolgirls who were on a day trip in the Baqura/Naharayim area, on the border between the two countries at the confluence of the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers. Seven of the girls were killed. The Jordanian leadership, King Hussein, and Crown Prince Hasan were genuinely shocked by what they both decried as a “heinous crime.” Hussein believed that the incident called for an extraordinary gesture of conciliation, if not to Netanyahu then to the people of Israel. Hussein paid his respects, visiting the bereaved Israeli families in their homes, a gesture that earned the king overwhelming plaudits in Israel. But at home in Jordan, the visit did not go down well at all. Hussein’s act of condolence was intended as an act of leadership by example, to convey the message to the Jordanian people in general and to the opposition in particular that peace with Israel, despite all the outstanding problems, was indeed the defining feature of a new era in the human relations between Jordanians and Israelis. The addressees of the message, however, were not impressed. The professional associations, particularly the Bar Association, expressed their solidarity with the soldier who had shot the girls. More than 200 lawyers volunteered to defend him. The killing of the schoolgirls was not publicly condoned and was in fact widely condemned, but members of the opposition, as well as some columnists, were quick to come to the soldier’s defense to explain what they felt was the essential broader context. After all, they noted, the real criminals were “the Jews, Zionist gangs and the Jewish state” that had perpetrated “endless crimes” against the Arabs. Moreover, had the situation been reversed, Netanyahu would never have followed Hussein’s example; nor would he have been welcomed in Jordan if he had.56 Daqamsa was sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was commuted, and he was released twenty years later, in March 2017.57 The trough of Jordanian-Israeli relations had hardly been overcome when crisis struck again. In late September 1997, two Mossad agents

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were apprehended by the Jordanians after having botched their mission to assassinate Hamas leader Khalid Mash’al in broad daylight in downtown Amman. Hussein was enraged, but he permitted a deal with the Israelis. The agents would be returned to Israel in exchange for the release of the founding father of Hamas, Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, who had been imprisoned by the Israelis since 1989. By now Hussein’s confidence in Netanyahu had “all but evaporated,” and the king found it “impossible to deal” with him. In the king’s mind the Mossad operation was “an irresponsible act by a party that [did] not believe in peace.” As in the past, however, Hussein continued to distinguish between his unquestionably poor relationship with the Israeli prime minister and Jordan’s overall relationship with the State of Israel and its people. They, after all, the king noted, shared the aspirations of all peoples for a better future for themselves and their neighbors.58 On completion of his term as Israel’s ambassador to Jordan, Shimon Shamir observed at the end of 1997 that while the treaty between the two states was stable, the hopes for great change and “warm peace” had waned. Instead of becoming an asset to the regime, the peace with Israel had turned into a liability, especially after the crisis of confidence with the Netanyahu government.59 In historical perspective, Shamir concluded, it was during Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister that “the vision of ‘warm peace’ which Husayn and Rabin had initially promoted with such great optimism was finally buried.”60 If, in the early days after the peace treaty, polls in Jordan showed widespread public support for the accommodation with Israel, a poll published in January 1998 revealed that 80 percent of the people still viewed Israel as the enemy.61 Not only had the peace dividend not materialized, but Jordanians now also tended to blame Israel and the peace treaty for their economic trials and declining living standards. Oddly enough, precisely those most radically opposed to the peace treaty from the outset, like the professional associations, were also the most vociferous in their condemnation of the treaty’s disappointing benefits. After all, it was they who strictly prohibited their membership (lawyers, engineers, and other providers of essential services) from any interaction whatsoever with Israeli businesspeople, thus making transactions extremely difficult to implement and contributing directly to the very same failure of which they complained.

The Fruits of Peace: A Mixed Bag

Jordan’s economy was, in fact, considerably better off than it had been before the treaty was signed. The upturn was at least in part directly related to the peace with Israel. The United States became Jordan’s

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leading export market, a reorientation that was largely a consequence of Israeli investment in the qualified industrial zones (QIZs) that were established in Jordan as of 1998. Furthermore, in 2000 Jordan became the first Arab state to sign a free trade agreement with the United States. These were to become the engines of the growth in Jordan’s exports and the overall relatively rapid growth of the economy in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In 1996 the US Congress passed legislation offering free access to the US market for companies located in the QIZs, such as those established in Jordan after the peace treaty. The inauguration of the QIZs brought about a huge increase in Jordanian exports to the United States, from an insignificant $2.4 million in 1998 to $1.95 billion in 2017.62 The United States also forgave Jordanian debt of some $700 million and urged other countries to do likewise. Generous debt relief was given to Jordan by the United Kingdom and Germany, debt rescheduling was extended by numerous countries and international banking institutions, and concessional balance-of-payments support was provided by Japan and the European Union following the treaty. Jordan again became a major recipient of economic and military aid from the United States, which also designated Jordan as a major non-NATO ally in November 1996. US aid to Jordan jumped from $37 million in 1995 to $237 million in 1996 and consistently increased well into the first quarter of the twenty-first century, from $665 million in 2011 to $1.63 billion in 2020.63 The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund also aided Jordan in rescheduling the kingdom’s debts. This aid, however, was linked to economic reforms that included the reduction of subsidies on basic commodities, thereby increasing the public’s perception of economic hardship.64 The peace treaty committed Israel to supplying Jordan with 50 million cubic meters of water per year, and Israel did so even in years when drought made this a heavy burden on its own resources.65 Israel and Jordan also developed significant cooperation in tourism and industry, especially in textiles. All the same, it did not take long for widespread complaints to emerge about the disappointing “peace dividend.” It was very common for Jordanians to argue that the peace treaty ought to have brought the Jordanian man in the street more tangible economic gain. The fact that the lot of the average Jordanian did not noticeably improve made it more difficult for the regime to effectively counter the “growing anger and dismay towards Israel” when expected progress on the Palestinian track did not materialize.66 There was a distinctly pragmatic reasoning for peace and an expectation for equally practical results. The treaty was not signed because Jordan “fell in love with the eyes of Rabin and Peres” but because it

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was suffering from the imposition of sanctions on Iraq, from the millstone of foreign debt, from a shortage of water, and from the fate of the country being in the hands of Israeli leaders like Ariel Sharon, who believed in “imposing peace with tanks.”67 Such instrumental reasoning was indeed encouraged by the Jordanian government, which sold the peace treaty to the people as a means to jump-start the kingdom’s ailing economy. In the popular imagination it was expected that trade, investment, and aid would flow into Jordan.68 A quarter century after the signing of the peace treaty, most Jordanians would probably summarize the relationship as a disappointment. It did not turn out exactly as the Israelis had expected either. Trouble was apparent from the very beginning as political, diplomatic, and economic expectations proved to have been unrealistic on both sides.69 Even the QIZs, which by 2007 already employed over 46,000 workers, were criticized by Jordanians. Many of the workers were actually lowpaid foreigners and not Jordanians, and the impact on the local labor market was said to be minimal.70 Long-standing mutual interests between Jordan and Israel and the special relationship that developed on the personal level between Rabin and Hussein led to the widely held belief that Israeli-Jordanian peace would be a “warm peace” as opposed to the “cold” version that governed relations between Israel and Egypt. These expectations never materialized. The confidence that reigned between the security establishments of both countries was extraordinary. That was true even before the peace treaty and was only enhanced since. But one could hardly say the same about relations in other spheres. Rabin’s assassination in November 1995 and the death of Hussein in February 1999 removed the two stalwarts of the imagined “warm peace” from the scene. Their successors did not share the same sense of historic mission that drove the two elder statesmen. Nor did they share the same celebrated “chemistry” and mutual trust of the highest order. The belief that peace with Israel would save the Jordanian economy from its woes had been promoted by the leaders on both sides, but these predictions were never well founded. Peace with Israel could not have realistically been expected to magically transform the Jordanian economy, which suffered acutely from structural problems rooted for many years in the chronic imbalance between relatively rapid population growth and rather meager resources. At the same time the rejection of normalization with Israel was itself a significant obstacle to economic benefit from peace with Israel. All the same, the state conducted its affairs with the Israelis in the service of its national interests. Jordan had vital interests in the Pales-

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tinian settlement and was anxious to be in the loop with both the Israelis and the Palestinians. There were also various forms of security cooperation with the Israelis, as well as ongoing negotiations over water that Israel supplied to Jordan according to the peace treaty. As for bilateral economic cooperation and trade relations, these developed gradually but did not become particularly important facets of the economies of either Jordan or Israel. In the first few years after the peace treaty, standards of living in Jordan continued to decline as they had done since the mid-1980s. Jordan’s economic development was described as “ruthless growth” that benefited the few and excluded the many, swelling the ranks of families living in chronic poverty.71 People’s expectations had been raised beyond reason. Unemployment would decline, “poverty would disappear overnight,” and the standard of living would rise accordingly. Not only did none of these materialize, but there was a pervasive, and apparently justified, sense that the people were generally worse off. Occasional rioting, as an expression of profound disaffection resulting from economic deprivation, particularly in the southern periphery, became a permanent feature of the kingdom’s domestic politics. The economic hardships were a direct result of the country’s economic restructuring programs, which were unrelated to the peace with Israel. But in popular opinion, peace had not delivered and had clearly not contributed to the creation of a new era of economic prosperity.72 The major so-called mega-projects, which the Israelis had proposed and were supposed to have introduced impressive economic development and an upgrading of the general well-being of the people, were not implemented. These regional “mega-projects” for infrastructural development included the Integrated Development of the Jordan Rift Valley, the “Red Sea Riviera,” the joint Aqaba-Eilat airport, joint road and railway networks, joint electricity grids, the Red Sea–Dead Sea project, and more.73 Each project was more impressive than the next. The brilliant imagination and boundless promise on paper were matched only by their failure to come to anything, primarily because the necessary funding was not available. Jordan and Israel signed a “historic” water-cooperation agreement in February 2015. According to the new deal, which was one of the original “mega-projects,” a 200-kilometer pipeline would divert water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea. A desalination plant would be constructed just north of Aqaba, and the high-salt-content water left over from the desalination process would be streamed into the Dead Sea, thereby restoring the sea after decades of steady contraction.74 For the Jordanians this “Red-Dead project” was of critical importance. It was

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supposed to have supplied the country with 575 million cubic meters of desalinated water per year, which would have gone a long way to mitigating Jordan’s acute water shortage. But the project never left the drawing board, primarily because of its prohibitive cost of at least $5 billion.75 In the eyes of the Jordanians, however, this was just another example of Israeli ill will at a time when Jordan was in desperate need. Jordan had also counted on expanding trade with the West Bank, which at first did not take place either. The Jordanians blamed Israel for impeding trade with excessive security measures, its trade agreements with the Palestinian Authority, and an unwillingness to give up some of its own “captive market” in the West Bank.76 Jordanian exports to the West Bank were way below the kingdom’s expectations and amounted to a meager $20 million in the late 1990s in comparison to Israel’s $2 billion.77 In more recent years Jordanian-Palestinian trade increased significantly due to improvements made by the Israelis in the infrastructure and services at the border crossing into the West Bank. But the Jordanians still complained that Israel piled too many obstacles in the way of their exports to the West Bank, which was a natural market for them.78 Though there were important achievements in macroeconomic terms, they had little trickle-down effect to the Jordanian man in the street. Nor were they ever duly recognized as dividends of peace, either by the general public or by the government. They were not uppermost in people’s minds and could not grab the headlines when other political and economic uncertainties continued to unsettle the region, from Iraq to Lebanon and Palestine. The economic gains of the treaty could hardly counter the negative effects of drastic increases in oil and food prices. The structural imbalance between population and resources kept on catching up with the Jordanian economy. The massive influx of over 1 million refugees from war-torn neighbors like Iraq (after the US invasion in 2003) and Syria (after the eruption of civil war in 2011) made matters considerably worse. In the quarter century since the signing of the peace treaty, the regional strategic context that the Jordanians had expected to emerge after the agreement did not materialize. That, needless to say, had an impact on their overall assessment of the pros and cons of the peace process. The Jordanians had expected the treaty to create a more stable region that would facilitate increased trade with such major trading partners as Syria and Iraq. That did not happen, not because of anything to do with Israel but due to their respective domestic upheavals. The Jordanians had initially hoped to see Saddam Hussein’s Iraq return to the fold of the international community and have its sanctions removed. That would have allowed Jordan to resume normal trade rela-

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tions with Iraq. Since the Jordanian economy was still heavily dependent on Iraq at that time, the Jordanians believed that trade with Iraq would also help to pave the way to recovery. But the United States occupied Iraq in 2003, overthrew the Ba’th regime, and thrust the country into a state of perennial chaos. The overthrow of the Ba’th radically altered the historic balance of power in the Arab East between Sunnis and Shi’is in favor of the Shi’is, as Iraq was transformed into the first Shi’ite-dominated Arab state. Not only was Iraq destabilized, but in early 2011 Syria descended into a ruinous civil war, leading to a dramatic decline of trade with Syria and through Syria with other destinations. Iran’s regional stature was in the ascendant as its influence in Shi’ite Iraq and Alawi-controlled Syria increased as the Sunni Arab states plunged into further decline. Iran moved rapidly from the periphery of the region into the Arab core as the former gatekeeper to the Arab East, Saddam’s Iraq, was crushed. It was these ominous developments that drove King Abdallah II to speak at the end of 2004 of the “crescent” of Shi’ite Iranian influence79 stretching from Tehran, through the Fertile Crescent, to Beirut. In these new circumstances Jordan found itself at the very heart of regional turmoil, with a disintegrating Iraq to the east, a crumbling Syria to the north, and a chaotic Palestine to the west, quite the opposite of its post–peace treaty evaluations and expectations. In retrospect, the Jordanians had failed to achieve the regional peace and prosperity they had bargained for, and the Israelis never obtained the normalization they had desired. But in the uncertain neighborhood that Jordan and Israel inhabited, their peace treaty remained a stable anchor for both states to hang on to and maintain, despite their respective disappointments with the so-called peace dividend.

Hussein and the Faltering Israeli-Palestinian Track

Jordan had vital interests in the final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The Jordanian position was crafted with much caution so as to register the Jordanian interest, on the one hand, while not appearing to encroach upon the representative status of the Palestinian national leadership, on the other. The Jordanians therefore made a crystal-clear differentiation between the revival of Hashemite dynastic ambition in Palestine, which they explained was not their goal, and the protection of the national interests of the Jordanian state on the East Bank, which was their legitimate concern. All the critical outstanding issues on the Israeli-Palestinian track— borders, settlements, Jerusalem, refugees, security arrangements, and water—had direct implications for Jordan. After all, Jordan hosted

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more Palestinian refugees (from the 1948 and 1967 wars) than any other country and possibly as many as the Palestinian Authority. It had a long border with Israel and the future state of Palestine, and Jordan had special interests, recognized in its treaty with Israel, in the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. It hoped for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state at peace with Israel. A stable two-state solution, in the Jordanian mind, would put an end to their fears of a massive Israeli-Palestinian conflagration that might have disastrous implications for the kingdom. In the end Jordan’s nightmare scenario threatened to become a reality. On the Palestinian front, not only did Israel and the Palestinians fail to arrive at a permanent status agreement as envisaged in the Oslo Accords, but in September 2000, with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, Israelis and Palestinians hurled themselves at each other in the worst round of armed conflict and bloodshed between them since 1948. The Jordanians did not intend to actually be at the negotiating table, but they did expect to be consulted and to be actively engaged in coordinating positions with both the Israelis and the Palestinians. As Prince Hasan put it, Jordan “would endeavor to be a center of gravity.” It had a vital interest in these negotiations and “could not afford to shoulder the political costs of a collapsing peace process.”80 There was perhaps only one scenario that could have been worse for the Jordanians than a Palestinian-Israeli agreement from which they were entirely excluded: a failed process that ended in no agreement at all. As Netanyahu and Arafat drifted apart and the peace process seemed to falter in the late 1990s, Hussein complained that “Rabin’s departure [had] changed the equation.”81 After a brief sense of selfassurance in the immediate aftermath of the peace treaty with Israel, Jordan’s worst fears came back to life. Stalemate on the Israeli-Palestinian track, continued Israeli settlement policy, and the Palestinians’ ineffectiveness in their state-building enterprise, coupled with their incapacity to satisfy the Israelis on security matters, was a recipe, so the Jordanians feared, for renewed violence on a large scale between Israelis and Palestinians and the possible mass migration or expulsion of Palestinians to Jordan.82 Jordanian self-interest dictated that whenever they could, the Jordanians would intervene to keep the peace process on track. They mediated between the parties prior to the signing of the agreement in January 1997 for Israel’s withdrawal from Hebron. The United States tended to keep the Jordanians in the loop of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and President Bill Clinton requested Hussein’s assistance again in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians that were held at Wye plantation near

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Washington, DC, in October 1998. Though visibly frail and physically exhausted from the chemotherapy that he was undergoing at the time in the United States, King Hussein actively participated in the talks.83 He made what seemed like a Herculean effort to appeal to the parties to rise above petty politics and forge ahead for the sake of future generations and conclude an agreement on yet another phase in the implementation of the Oslo Accords. Initially the talks at Wye between Arafat and Netanyahu were going nowhere, and deadlock was reached after a few days of badtempered exchanges. Hussein’s emotional last-minute appeal made a difference, and agreement was finally reached.84

The Death of Hussein: The End of an Era

King Hussein passed away on February 7, 1999, after nearly forty-six years on the throne. He succumbed to lymphatic cancer after a prolonged struggle at the age of only sixty-three. It is intriguing to recall, after such an illustrious reign, which created modern Jordan as we know it, that Hussein’s ascension to the throne had not been entirely self-evident. Hussein’s father, Tallal, King Abdallah I’s eldest son and heir, was mentally ill with schizophrenia. After Abdallah’s assassination in 1951, there was a real possibility that he would not be succeeded by Tallal but by Nayif, Tallal’s younger half brother. Nayif’s succession would have ruled out Hussein as a future king and possibly sent Jordan on an entirely different course. In his later years it was clear that Abdallah was grooming the young teenager Hussein as his eventual successor. Key figures in the Jordanian elite and the influential British minister, Alec Kirkbride, all shared the opinion that Hussein was the most suitable. Tallal therefore was to follow Abdallah, albeit briefly, despite his illness, just to pave the way for Hussein.85 Tallal was installed as king in September 1951 and remained on the throne until August 1952. He was replaced by a regency council that substituted for the king until Hussein (born in November 1935) came of age (by the Muslim calendar) and ascended the throne in May 1953. The preference for Hussein proved to have been prophetic. Britain’s ambassador at the time of Hussein’s ascension, Geoffrey Furlonge, observed that the year 1953 had brought Jordan “a young and promising” king. Though he was prone to impulsiveness and lacked experience, Hussein was “surprisingly mature” for his age. He was intelligent and had a “high sense of public duty.” All the indications were that Jordan was “fortunate in her ruler.”86 Hussein was quick to justify the confidence that had been placed in him. When he was hardly twenty, during the Baghdad Pact crisis in late 1955, he demonstrated fortitude and resolution under pressure and was

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said to have born himself “courageously and steadfastly in the crisis.”87 Though he was not always “over-wise,” personal courage and resolve were the hallmarks of his long reign. Within less than a decade it was clear that he had become “the pivot on which Jordan [was] balanced and the instrument of its progress or decay.”88 Under his leadership, Jordan weathered many a storm as it morphed into an institutionalized, modern, and generally stable state. The country developed an efficient military and security establishment, a large (perhaps too large) functioning bureaucracy, and a mass education system with a diverse network of colleges and universities, while absorbing its large Palestinian population, refugees and nonrefugees alike. The kingdom was “held together and given patriotic substance”89 by the monarch, as both state and nation builder. US President Richard Nixon said of Hussein that he was “without question a world leader rather than simply a parochial monarch of a small country,” and Henry Kissinger described him as “one of the most attractive political leaders” he had ever met. For many Jordanians Hussein had become a father figure.90 King Abdallah II often spoke endearingly of Abdallah I as the “Founding Forefather” (al-jadd al-mu’assis) and of his father as “Hussein the Builder” (Hussein al-bani).91 And builder he was. His passing was the end of an era. The process of succession was unexpected. Crown Prince Hasan, Hussein’s younger brother and heir apparent for some thirty-four years, was pushed aside at the last minute. Though there were persistent rumors of an imminent change in the months before Hussein’s death, the decision still came as a shock. Just two weeks before his death, Hussein replaced Hasan with his eldest son, Abdallah. Years before, in the summer of 1996, Hussein had spoken directly of his determination to right the wrong he had done to Abdallah in removing him from the line of succession.92 But Hussein’s own attitude to the succession was constantly evolving.93 It remained unclear until the very end whether he was thinking about replacing Hasan or of securing the line of succession after Hasan. It was often said that Hamza, Abdallah’s younger half brother and Hussein’s “beloved eldest son”94 from his marriage to his fourth wife, Queen Nur, was the apple of his father’s eye. Hussein had groomed him for the throne in a way that Abdallah was not (on the assumption that he would play a leading role in the military). Hussein had also tried to convince Hasan to agree in advance to appoint one of Hussein’s sons, Abdallah or Hamza, as Hasan’s successor, when the time came. But Hasan would not commit. Hussein was increasingly displeased with the manner in which Hasan handled affairs of state during the king’s prolonged absence for

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treatment in the United States. He returned to Jordan in January 1999 with his mind finally made up to remove Hasan.95 The constitution determined the successor as one of two: the king’s eldest son or one of the king’s brothers. Hamza was neither. There were reports then that Hussein had considered amending the constitution but realized that he did not have the time.96 Moreover, Hamza was not really an option at this juncture because of his youth. Hussein’s life had come to an end sooner than he had expected. Hamza was not yet nineteen (born in March 1980), and Abdallah, who had just turned thirty-seven (born in January 1962), was preferred. The king, acutely aware of the deficiency of youth in power, opted for his more experienced eldest son, who also had the advantage of a long army career, in which he had risen to the rank of major-general after having commanded the Jordanian army’s special forces.97 Abdallah, by his own account, was surprised by the decision and initially quite taken aback. He needed time to adjust.98 Hussein instructed Abdallah to appoint Hamza as his crown prince and heir apparent. Abdallah did as he was told, but then removed Hamza in November 2004 to make way for his own son, Prince Hussein (born June 1994), whom he appointed as heir to the throne in July 2009. Hamza, like Hasan before him, was marginalized by Abdallah from the outset. Despite the last-minute shake-up and Abdallah’s own repeated fears that there were “many outside the country, and some inside, who were watching and waiting for [him] to falter,”99 the transition was smooth, thanks in no small measure to Hasan’s own dignified and restrained acceptance of his brother’s brutal decision. The stable transition was no doubt also a function of more profound structural and strategic factors, such as the continued cohesion of the family and the East Bank political elite, the loyalty of the security establishment, and the support of external powers for Jordanian stability, as an essential component of the regional order. If Hussein had hoped to bequeath to his people a prosperous kingdom at peace with its neighborhood, such lofty objectives were not attained in his lifetime. The peace with Israel was disappointing, and the last decade of his rule was characterized by economic recession and the stirrings of social disquiet. It was left to his successor, the new, untested, and unprepared monarch, to contend with the fallout of IsraelPalestine and general regional disorder and to grapple with the political and socioeconomic consequences of a faltering economy. The new king faced a tall order of challenges that required a great deal of courage, political acumen, diplomatic finesse, and good luck. Hussein was endowed with an unusually bountiful share of all four. Abdallah II was somewhat less fortunate.

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Notes 1. Lewis, What Went Wrong?, 3–7, 15–22. 2. Rabinovich, Waging Peace, 191. 3. Rabinovich, Road Not Taken, 3–4; Rabinovich, Waging Peace, 175. 4. Ajami, Dream Palace of the Arabs, 281, 285. 5. Rabinovich, Waging Peace, 199. 6. Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 226. 7. Salem, “Path to Peace.” 8. Lucas, Institutions and the Politics of Survival in Jordan, 70–72. 9. Mufti, “King’s Art,” 11. 10. Brand, “Palestinians and Jordanians,” 47, as quoted in Frisch, “Fuzzy Nationalism,” 94. 11. Ajami, Dream Palace of the Arabs, 286–288. 12. E.g., al-Ra’y (Amman), July 29 and August 2, 21, 1994. 13. Fahd al-Fanik, al-Ra’y (Amman), November 5, 1994. 14. Fahd al-Fanik, al-Ra’y (Amman), February 19, 1995. 15. al-Tall, “Al-Ustura wa-su’ al-fahm fi al-alaqat al-Urdunniyya-al-Filastiniyya,” 156. 16. Jordan Times, May 16, 1994. 17. Jordan Times, May 16, July 7–8, 23, and October 24, 1994; al-Majd (Amman), July 25, August 1, and October 3, 1994; al-Ra’y (Amman), August 18 and October 28, 1994; Nevo, “Professional Associations in Jordan,” 176–179. 18. Jordan Times, October 18, 1994; Jordan TV, October 25, 1994; Sawt alSha’b (Amman) and al-Bilad (Amman), October 26, 1994; Scham and Lucas, “‘Normalization’ and ‘Anti-normalization’ in Jordan,” 60. 19. Sela, “Politics, Identity and Peacemaking,” 34–35. 20. See, e.g., Sultan al-Khattab in al-Ra’y (Amman), July 3, 1994; Fahd alFanik in al-Ra’y (Amman), August 21, 1994. 21. Jordan Times, August 25–26, 1994. 22. “Normalization in the Kingdom of Warm Peace.” 23. Lucas, “Jordan,” 96. 24. Muasher, Arab Center, 36–37. 25. This is based on a systematic perusal of editorials and op-ed pieces in Jordan’s leading daily, al-Ra’y, over a period of nearly three years from July 1994 to March 1997. I am indebted to my research assistant, Zahavit Ohanna, who helped me collect the material. 26. Editorial in al-Ra’y (Amman), July 20, 1994; Ahmad Muslih, al-Ra’y (Amman), August 14 and November 9, 1994, February 18 and March 8, 1995; Tariq Masarwa al-Ra’y (Amman), August 22, 1994; Ibrahim al-Abassi, al-Ra’y (Amman), September 20, 1995. 27. Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 215–216, 220–221. 28. Susser, “Jordan,” 19:393. 29. See, e.g., Husni Ayish, al-Ra’y (Amman), April 2, 1996. 30. Sultan al-Khattab, al-Ra’y (Amman), April 16, 18, 1996; Muhammad Ahmad al-Qudah and Editorial in al-Ra’y (Amman), April 19, 1996; Mahmud alRimawi, al-Ra’y (Amman), April 24, 1996. 31. Fahd al-Fanik and Sultan al-Khattab, al-Ra’y (Amman), May 31, 1996. 32. Scham and Lucas, “‘Normalization’ and ‘Anti-normalization’ in Jordan,” 64. 33. Editorials in al-Ra’y (Amman), August 9, 10, 1994; Alam Kharbat, al-Ra’y (Amman), November 2, 1994; Ahmad al-Tall, al-Ra’y (Amman), November 10, 1994. 34. Editorial in al-Ra’y (Amman), July 31, 1994.

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35. Jordan Times, February 16–17, 1995; Jordan TV, May 1, 1995. 36. Jordan TV, June 12, 1995; similarly, in a speech to army officers on October 10, Jordan Times, October 11, 1995; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 547. 37. Jordan Times, October 11 and November 11, 1995; al-Sharq al-Awsat (London), October 12, 1995; Jordan TV, November 9, 1995. 38. Jordan TV, June 12 and November 9, 1995. 39. Jordan TV, November 9, 1995. 40. Jordan TV, al-Dustur (Amman), and Jordan Times, May 18, 1997; Jordan Times, May 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 1997; al-Ra’y (Amman), June 5, 1997. 41. Jordan Times, February 24 and April 16, 23, 1998; al-Shihan (Amman), February 28, 1998; al-Bilad (Amman), March 4, 1998; Jordan TV, April 19, 1998. 42. Jordan Times, June 22, July 12, and August 6, 10, 11 1998. The initial draft of the law was published in al-Ra’y (Amman) on June 16, 1998,and the final version in al-Dustur (Amman), September 2, 1998. 43. E.g., in a speech at Mu’ta University, Radio Amman, June 1, 1996; speech from the throne, Jordan Times, November 20, 1996; speech to Arab political parties conference in Amman, Jordan Times, December 17, 1996. 44. al-Ahali (Amman), November 9, 1995; Radio Monte Carlo, December 9, 1995; al-Safir (Beirut), December 30, 1995. 45. Sela, “Politics, Identity and Peacemaking,” 34. 46. Muasher, Arab Center, 38. 47. Jordan TV, April 18, 1996; Jordan Times, April 18–19, 1996. 48. Jordan Times, June 6–7, 15, 18, 20–21 and July 13, 1996. 49. Rami Khuri and Musa al-Kaylani in Jordan Times, August 6 and September 21, 1996. 50. Jordan Times, September 25 and October 1, 2, 8, 1996; Radio Amman, September 26, 30, 1996; Jordan TV, September 26, 1996. 51. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times published the details of the conversation that were subsequently corroborated by official Jordanian sources. International Herald Tribune, October 10, 1996; Jordan Times, October 13, 1996. 52. Musa al-Kaylani in Jordan Times, October 12, 1996. 53. Jordan Times, March 12, 1997. 54. Musa al-Kaylani in Jordan Times, May 17, 1997. 55. Shamir, Rise and Decline of the Warm Peace with Jordan, 388 (Hebrew). 56. Jordan Times, March 17, 18, 20–21, 1997. 57. New York Times, March 12, 2017. 58. Al-Ra’y (Amman), October 5, 1997; Jordan Times, October 5 and November 30, 1997; Ha’aretz, October 5, 8, 1997; Financial Times, October 12, 1997; Jordan TV, November 2 and December 13, 1997. 59. Jerusalem Post, October 6, 1997; Ha’aretz, October 22, 26, 1997. 60. Shamir, Rise and Decline of the Warm Peace with Jordan, 390. 61. Jordan Times, January 7, 1998. 62. Rivlin, Arab Economies in the Twenty-First Century, 170–171; “Jordan,” OEC. 63. Plotkin, Jordan-Israeli Peace, 15, 33; Rivlin, Arab Economies in the Twenty-First Century, 164; Riedel, Jordan and America, 129, 166. 64. Lucas, “Jordan,” 108–109. 65. Stewart, Good Neighbourly Relations, 62, 64. 66. Stewart, Good Neighbourly Relations, 114. 67. Tariq Masarwa, al-Ra’y (Amman), March 6, 1995. 68. Scham and Lucas, “‘Normalization’ and ‘Anti-normalization’ in Jordan,” 59; Lucas, “Jordan,” 94.

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69. Plotkin, Jordan-Israeli Peace, 12. 70. Mitha, “Jordanian-Israeli Relationship.’” 71. Jordan Times, April 7, July 28, August 22–23, 27, September 8, 15, and October 6, 1996. 72. Brand, “Effects of the Peace Process on Political Liberalization in Jordan,” 61. 73. For a detailed analysis, see Shamir, Rise and Decline of the Warm Peace with Jordan, 503–551. 74. “Israel and Jordan Sign ‘Historic’ Water Deal to Save Dead Sea.” 75. Mitha, “Jordanian-Israeli Relationship.” 76. Jordan Times, February 23, 25, September 2, and October 26, 1997. 77. Jordan Times, August 31, 1998; al-Ahram (Cairo) and al-Dustur (Amman), December 3, 1998. 78. Gal, “Israel-Jordan Cooperation 2019.” 79. Washington Post, December 8, 2004. 80. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 588. 81. Jordan TV, May 20, 1998. 82. al-Sharq al-Awsat (London), February 8 and April 26, 1998; Jordan TV, February 21, 1998; al-Aswaq (Amman), April 22, 1998. 83. Muasher, Arab Center, 77, 81–82. 84. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 588–591; Muasher, Arab Center, 86; Shamir, Rise and Decline of the Warm Peace with Jordan, 384–385. 85. Kirkbride, From the Wings, 140–145; Satloff, From Abdullah to Hussein, 16–41; see also Minister in Jordan to Department of State, July 5, 1951, FRUS (1951), Vol. V, Near East and Africa, 785.00/7-551. 86. British Embassy Amman, “Political Review of Jordan for 1953,” January 25, 1954, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 638–639. 87. British Embassy Amman, “Jordan: Annual Review for 1955,” July 27, 1956, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 738, 740. 88. British Embassy Amman, “Jordan: Annual Reviews for 1961 and 1963,” January 11, 1962, and January 9, 1964, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 880, 918. 89. The Times (London), January 20, 1999. 90. Muasher, Arab Center, 79; Lunt, Hussein of Jordan, 164–165. 91. Abdallah in a speech to the nation on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his assumption of power, June 8, 2009; in a speech in Amman on January 31, 2012; in a speech to the nation on the occasion of Jordan’s seventieth independence day, King Abdallah’s official website, May 24, 2016, all at www.kingabdullah.jo. 92. Satloff, “Why King Abdullah Is King.” 93. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 587. 94. Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 582. 95. Muasher, Arab Center, 80–87. 96. Al-Hayat (London), January 23, 1999. 97. Andoni, “Report from Jordan,” 80. 98. Abdallah in an interview with Mikhail Gusman of ITAR TASS News Agency, King Abdallah’s official website, February 13, 2018, www.kingabdullah.jo; Shlaim, Lion of Jordan, 601–603. 99. King Abdallah II, Our Last Best Chance, 123, 126, 130.

8

King Abdallah II Inherits the “Cold Peace”

UNDER KING ABDALLAH II, JORDAN’S RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL DEVELoped a complex pattern of their own. On the one hand, the kingdom relied on Israel for the strategic supplies of water and energy, and Israel and the United States served as the anchor of last resort for Jordan’s regional defense against the various forces of potentially destabilizing radicalism, from Iran to the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and other forces of jihadist Islam. On the other hand, the stalemate on the Palestinian track, for which the Jordanians blamed Israeli intransigence, gave rise to Jordanian fears of an unavoidable Israeli-Palestinian confrontation that could have potentially existential spillover effects on the kingdom of the East Bank.

The Anxieties of a Stagnant Peace Process

Abdallah did not possess the gravitas of his father. Even if he had, that alone would not have sufficed to bridge the gulf between the Israelis and the Palestinians on such critical final-status issues as borders, settlements, Jerusalem, and refugees. The failure of the Camp David negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in the summer of 2000 under the auspices of President Bill Clinton and the subsequent outbreak of the Second Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza were the realization of Jordan’s worst nightmare. It was as if the peace treaty with Israel had never been signed. Amman saw the potential spillover effect of Israeli-Palestinian violence as threatening not only to the peace treaty

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with Israel but to the stability of the regime itself. The intifada hurt the Jordanian economy as tourism and investment in Jordan declined sharply. Tensions heightened on the East Bank as Palestinians strongly identified with the struggle of their brethren across the river, and the parties of the opposition generally sought ways and means to express their solidarity with the fight against Israel. In such a charged atmosphere, the king thought it prudent to dissolve parliament in June 2001 and to postpone the general elections, which were held after a two-year hiatus in June 2003. On the external front the Jordanians did their level best to jumpstart the Arab-Israeli peace process as a means of restoring some modicum of stability to Israeli-Palestinian relations in an effort to keep Jordan safe from the potentially disastrous fallout of the spiraling bloody confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians.1 Jordan played a critical role in the formulation of what eventually became the Arab Peace Initiative (API) launched by the Arab Summit in Beirut in March 2002.2 The Jordanians were immediately supportive of what started as a Saudi initiative and played an important role in achieving an Arab consensus on the plan, though not without difficulties and concessions that seriously detracted from the potential appeal of the initiative to the Israelis. Much to the disappointment of the Jordanians, the Lebanese in particular would not rest unless the initiative included explicit references to the right of refugee return to make it abundantly clear that the Palestinian refugees would never finally be resettled in Lebanon. Once the Lebanese took such a firm position, the Jordanians could not be left far behind lest the ultra-Jordanian nationalists accuse the regime of acquiescing in Palestinian refugee resettlement in Jordan.3 The final text of the API, as approved at the Beirut Arab Summit in March 2002 and reaffirmed at the Riyad Summit of March 2007, included a key statement on the refugee question, the two halves of which were irreconcilable. The proposal referred to the need to arrive at a “just and agreed solution” to the refugee question on the basis of UN Resolution 194, with no specific reference to the “right of return,” but simultaneously “rejected all forms of resettlement [tawtin].”4 The Israelis, as the Jordanians had feared from the outset, balked. If refugee resettlement was completely ruled out, on what grounds would an “agreed solution” be reached with Israel? This addition, which the Jordanians had sought to avoid, was precisely the kind of detail that they feared “might kill” the initiative. Indeed, it proved to be the initiative’s undoing from the Israeli point of view.5 As fighting between the Israelis and the Palestinians escalated in the West Bank, Jordan urged the United States to pressure Israel to withdraw

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from the West Bank cities they had reoccupied in their Defensive Shield operation, launched in the wake of a spate of suicide bombings in the early months of 2002. But above and beyond the immediate problem of reoccupation, Jordan sought to convince the United States to issue “a specific, detailed, time-lined action plan” defining a Palestinian-Israeli endgame of full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories and the creation of an independent Palestinian state.6 Together with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and in coordination with the Palestinians, the Jordanians were instrumental in convincing the George W. Bush administration to eventually present a “road map” in June 2003. The presentation of the “Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” called for a final and comprehensive settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 2005. Unfortunately for the Jordanians, however, the road map never went anywhere. Being performance based, the plan could never get beyond its first phase. The initial stage of the road map required that an end be put to “terror and violence” between Palestinians and Israelis and demanded of the Palestinian side that it “undertake an unconditional cessation of violence.” Yasir Arafat, however, failed to deliver on this front, thus allowing both Israel and the United States to do little “to place the Road Map into gear.”7 This first phase, therefore, was nowhere near implementation before it was overtaken by a series of other events. By September 2003 the peace process was being eclipsed by the deteriorating regional situation following the US invasion of Iraq. Israeli thinking under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, having lost any remnant of confidence in the Palestinian leadership, was becoming increasingly unilateralist. In December 2003, Sharon publicly declared the intention of his government to proceed to disengage from the Palestinians. Israel, Sharon noted, sought direct negotiations to implement the road map and supported the creation of a democratic Palestinian state, but it would not be held hostage by the Palestinians and would “not wait for them indefinitely.”8 Other events followed in rapid succession with similarly negative fallout for the prospect of fruitful Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Arafat died in November 2004, Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in August 2005, Hamas scored a historic victory in the Palestinian elections in January 2006, and Israel and Hizballah went to war in July of that year. These developments made the Israelis far more reluctant to move ahead with concessions of any sort, especially to a Palestinian Authority (PA) that seemed to have lost much of its legitimacy, credibility, and decisionmaking capability. It was also on Sharon’s watch that Israel began to build the security barrier along the border between Israel and the West Bank. The barrier

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was to serve the dual purpose of disengaging Israel from the West Bank and preventing the infiltration of suicide bombers, who had wreaked havoc in Israeli towns since the outbreak of the Second Intifada in September 2000. The barrier was constructed partly along the old Green Line and partly protruded into the West Bank to include major Israeli settlement blocs, thereby including some 8 percent9 of the West Bank on the Israeli side of the barrier. The very existence of the barrier, declarations to the contrary notwithstanding, “implied recognition by the Israeli government of the continuing relevance of the 1967 border.”10 But that was not the way Jordan saw it. As Marwan Muasher, Jordan’s foreign minister at the time, put it, the construction of the security barrier, “coupled with Sharon’s unilateral move to disengage from Gaza, had made clear to Jordan that the Israelis were moving away from a two-state solution.” This meant that “other much more threatening alternatives—especially the alternative homeland policy option—had found their way back onto the table, whether by default or by design.” A Palestinian state on Palestinian soil had been the core of Jordanian foreign policy for over a decade and had guided all Jordan’s recent efforts in Arab-Israeli peacemaking. “Any deviation from that objective was thus detrimental not only to the interests of the Palestinians but for those of Jordan.”11 In April 2004 Prime Minister Sharon and President Bush exchanged letters in which Sharon outlined his plan for Israeli unilateral disengagement and which Bush welcomed as real progress toward the eventual realization of the US vision of two states: a “viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent” Palestinian state alongside Israel. Expressing US appreciation for the risk Israel was taking, Bush reassured Sharon that the United States remained steadfast in its commitment to Israel’s security and to its “well-being as a Jewish state.” Bush noted further, again in line with Israel’s position, that “an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.” Moreover, on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Bush noted, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.”12 The Palestinians denounced Bush’s support for Israel as no less than “the Second Balfour Declaration.”13 The Jordanians were not far behind. King Abdallah immediately sought a corrective in an exchange of letters

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of his own with President Bush. In early May, the king received a letter from President Bush reiterating US preference for negotiations over unilateralism. The United States, the letter stated, would “not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations and all final status issues must still emerge from negotiations between the parties.” Furthermore, the president assured the king that the United States viewed “Jordan’s security, prosperity, and territorial integrity as vital, and [would] oppose any developments in the region that might endanger [Jordan’s] interests.” King Abdallah replied to President Bush that Jordan believed that “a viable, sovereign, independent Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders is also in Jordan’s national interest. Failing to achieve such an outcome would invoke other options, all of which will endanger [Jordan’s] interests and those of the region. This is one of the reasons why Jordan insists on a two-state solution and why it supports the road map as the mechanism to get there.”14 Jordan’s proactive diplomacy continued unabated, and it was none other than the Jordanians who led the Arab campaign against Israel’s construction of the security barrier, which they similarly interpreted as a threat to Jordan’s national security. In the Jordanian mind the real purpose behind Israel’s security barrier was less to keep out the suicide bombers than to determine Israel’s new borders unilaterally, while simultaneously making living conditions for the Palestinians behind the barrier “so difficult as to drive them out of the West Bank.” The Jordanians argued that the barrier would include some 17 percent of the West Bank on the Israeli side (the Israeli figure was less than half that—see above) and would effectively cantonize the West Bank, thereby “killing the prospects for the emergence of a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous defensible borders.”15 This Jordanian assessment was contrary to the actual facts on the ground. The Israelis, by building the barrier, were indeed taking a major step toward the unilateral delimitation of their border with the West Bank. But there was no point in the Israelis seeking to expel the population that would remain on the other side of the “new border,” outside Israel. In practice, the barrier did not inflict the kind of hardships on the Palestinians in the West Bank that the Jordanians had expected and did not provoke any mass emigration eastward. The barrier actually contributed significantly to Israel’s domestic security, but the Jordanians were never convinced by these Israeli arguments. Their repeated contention remained that if Israel sought its own security, it should build the barrier entirely on its own territory. Good fences made good neighbors, the Jordanians conceded, but only when the fences were erected on one’s own property rather than on the land of one’s

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neighbor. Jordan used every available diplomatic channel to fight the construction of the barrier, thus driving a deeper wedge into the already deteriorating Jordanian-Israeli relationship.16 In December 2003, the Arab states obtained a UN General Assembly resolution to refer the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The Jordanians led the Arab charge again, and much to their satisfaction the ICJ ruled in the Arabs’ favor. The court rejected Israel’s argument for the barrier in the name of self-defense and ruled that self-defense was a right exercised against another state and not in a territory under the control of an occupying power. Jordan had scored an important moral victory over Israel, but this did not change much on the ground. Israel continued to build the barrier regardless of the ruling of the ICJ. However, since the barrier never caused the hardships that Jordan had initially feared, it ceased to be an issue of great concern. The Jordanians had other, more urgent problems.

Jordan’s Sense of Strategic Suffocation

The US invasion of Iraq in April 2003 and the consequent perennial threat of Iraqi disintegration, coupled with growing Iranian influence in Iraq and in the region as a whole, severely compounded the Jordanian sense of strategic suffocation. The destabilization of Iraq also meant the loss of Jordan’s uniquely convenient oil supply. Jordan depended exclusively on Iraq for its oil needs, half of which were supplied free of charge and half at discounted rates.17 The invasion forced Jordan to scramble for alternative oil supplies, which were more expensive, eventually forcing Jordan into a very unpopular gas deal with Israel. Even more troubling than Iraq to the east was the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum to the west. The Jordanians found themselves sandwiched between two poles of regional instability, hardly the regional order that they had bargained for after the peace treaty with Israel. Israel had drawn its own conclusions from the failure of the Oslo process. They were, primarily, that the Palestinians were not ready for an end-of-conflict agreement that did not encroach upon Israel proper. The issue with the Palestinians went beyond the occupied territories, particularly because of the Palestinian demand for the implementation of some substantive element of the “right of return” of the 1948 refugees. The Israelis countered with a demand of their own: that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people” as a guarantee against substantive, as opposed to symbolic, refugee return. This demand, initially made by the government of Ariel Sharon in 2003, has been repeated by all Israeli governments ever since.

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The Binyamin Netanyahu governments upped the ante by demanding such recognition as a precondition for Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state. For the Jordanians, not only was the new Israeli position an obstacle to an agreement with the Palestinians, but it threatened to permanently saddle Jordan with a huge Palestinian population and thereby raise the specter of the “alternative homeland” scenario. The positions of Jordan and Israel were now diametrically opposed on an issue that for both sides was existential.18 On occasion, Abdallah dismissed the “alternative homeland” idea as no more than an exercise in “political delusion and an impossible fantasy. Jordan is Jordan, and Palestine is Palestine.”19 The ideas of Israeli hardliners “who imagined the possibility of emptying the Palestinian territories of their people, and driving them into Jordan” were illusions. “The international and objective situation, Jordanian nationalism, the Jordanian state and its established institutions, and Palestinian nationalism are all the rock on which these illusions would be shattered.”20 There was much logic in Abdallah’s cool-headed analysis. But at the same time, the Jordanians, Abdallah included, were genuinely troubled by the “alternative homeland” scenario. Netanyahu’s return to the premiership in early 2009 resulted in a further deterioration of Jordan’s relations with Israel. The lack of progress in negotiations with the Palestinians, settlement expansion, and attempts to change the demographic character of East Jerusalem aggravated the Jordanians. King Abdallah told the Wall Street Journal in April 2010 that “for the first time” since his father had made peace, the relationship with Israel was at rock bottom.21 For the Israelis to achieve “the enduring security they seek,” there had to be an end “to occupation and confrontation . . . to settlement-building . . . to unilateral actions in Jerusalem.” Israel could not persist as “Fortress Israel” if it were to be accepted by the neighborhood.22 The API would not last forever. “Geographic and demographic changes” were threatening the essence of the initiative: the two-state solution.23 The one-state alternative was not an option. The Palestinians would eventually become the ruling majority unless Israel opted for an apartheid system and lived with all the consequences, the potential threats and predictable violence. That would hardly be a stable proposition for either Israel or its neighbors.24 Progress, therefore, had to be made before it was “too late for the two-state solution.”25 Jordan and Israel had been driven by similar interests for decades. But as opposed to the past when these interests converged, leading the two countries into a covert strategic understanding to jointly contain Palestine between them, in more recent times their common fear of being overwhelmed by Palestinian

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demography was actually driving Jordan and Israel apart.26 The Jordanian interest in significant refugee repatriation clashed head-on with Israel’s rejection of the Palestinian “right of return.” Jordan’s position on refugees was actually becoming one of the more strident in the entire Arab world. According to Jordanian prime minister Ma’ruf al-Bakhit, a Palestinian state without a guarantee of the “right of return” and a just solution for the refugee issue would not suffice.27 In fact, the Jordanians were even concerned that the Palestinian Authority might concede to Israel on the refugee question to Jordan’s detriment.28 As Jordan grappled with the fallout of regional chaos, the kingdom’s relations with Israel, despite all the difficulties, were still the only relatively reliable component in the strategic environment. As the region seemed to be falling apart around them, with the US war in Iraq, the civil war in Syria, the rise and fall of ISIS, and the regional expansion of Iran, Jordan and Israel were equally dependent on the well-being and stability of the other. For Israel, a stable Jordan was still an essential buffer to the east. For Jordan, Israel remained the strategic ally of last resort. Jordan’s relationship with Israel, therefore, vacillated between strategic cooperation in matters related to defense, trade, and natural resources, on the one hand, and frustration in Jordan with Israeli policies on Palestine, on the other. Security cooperation between Jordan and Israel was of much mutual benefit and related to issues such as countering jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq and extending Israel’s deployment of drones on Jordan’s borders to provide intelligence for the Jordanians. There were also reports that Israel had built electronic fences along Jordan’s borders with Iraq and Syria.29 The ISIS threat from Iraq moved Jordan and Israel closer together on security matters—and Israel made clear that it would not hesitate to act if ISIS entered Jordan.30 In 2014, Israel supplied Jordan with sixteen Cobra helicopter gunships, adding to the existing Jordanian fleet of twenty-five Cobras engaged in securing Jordan’s borders against ISIS infiltration from Iraq. The two countries similarly cooperated in securing Jordan’s border with Syria after ISIS forces deployed in southern Syria during the civil war there in 2016–2017. Cooperation between the two armies along their common border was exemplary. Due to the clandestine nature of the security facet of the relationship, it had no impact on the public discourse on the ties with Israel, which remained negative throughout.31

The Defeat of the “Normalizers”

By the time Abdallah became king in February 1999, any euphoria about peace had dissipated long before. Abdallah “cooled his father’s warm

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embrace of Israel,”32 and from the very beginning of his reign, policy toward Israel was pursued on a deliberately low key. Abdallah showed little enthusiasm for visits to Israel, and matters did not improve with the passage of time. When the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations failed in the summer of 2000, leading to the outbreak of the Second Intifada, the antinormalization campaign gathered momentum.33 The intifada lent more weight to the arguments of the anti-normalization activists and provoked an outpouring of popular solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians.34 In late 2000, in the heated atmosphere, Israeli diplomats in Amman were shot at and wounded by unidentified gunmen, leading to the evacuation of all the families of Israel’s embassy staff in Amman. Massive antiIsraeli demonstrations and protests, with tens of thousands of participants, were staged all over the kingdom demanding the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. A petition in a similar vein was signed by thirty members of the Chamber of Deputies, while some members of the chamber went even further, demanding the abrogation of the peace treaty. The authorities resorted to an iron-fist policy against the unrest. A ban on demonstrations was imposed after rallies in early October 2000 led to a shooting death and property damage. The security forces broke up the “Return March” of thousands of participants organized by the professional associations later in the month in the Jordan Valley in support of the Palestinian right of return.35 In November, after some eighteen months of procrastination, the anti-normalizers went ahead and published their blacklist of Jordanians engaged in normalization with Israel. To most Jordanians it now appeared that dealing with Israel or consorting with Israelis was an anti-Arab or anti-Islamic act. The “anti-normalizers [had] routed the normalizers.”36 In its radical opposition to peace with Israel, the anti-normalization movement was seen at times by the regime to be overstepping the bounds of legitimate rejection of what were, after all, the policies of the government. During the years of the Second Intifada, antinormalization activists were frequently arrested, and the government imposed comprehensive bans on public demonstrations. In November 2002 the government formally banned the Anti-Normalization Committee for organizing unauthorized protests and for posting the blacklists of Jordanians doing business with Israelis.37 Anti-normalization activities, however, continued and became a routine component of Jordan’s political landscape. Calls to sever relations with Israel or to expel the Israeli ambassador were commonplace and issued regularly from various quarters of the Jordanian body politic, from parliamentarians to political activists of different political stripes, Islamist and otherwise. As the Second Intifada continued to escalate, King Abdallah chose to formally distance Jordan from Israel by not

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immediately replacing Jordan’s ambassador when he completed his term in Israel in November 2000. More than four years later, when the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians had receded somewhat, a Jordanian ambassador was returned to Tel Aviv in February 2005. Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza against Hamas upset diplomatic relations yet again. In January 2009 Jordan’s ambassador to Israel, who had been in Amman before Israel’s “Cast Lead” campaign was launched, did not return to his post in protest. A new ambassador was appointed only in September 2012, again after almost four years. Such prolonged downgradings of diplomatic relations were consistent with the popular mood. According to a 2011 poll, 52 percent of Jordanians thought that Jordan ought to cancel its peace treaty with Israel.38 But it was also true, at least in terms of social media traffic, that a majority of younger-generation East Bankers supported the peace treaty in appreciation of its strategic importance for Jordan and its contribution to the country’s stability.39 When Israel launched another campaign against Hamas in the summer of 2014, King Abdallah held Israel entirely responsible for the fighting and for the heavy civilian casualties in Gaza.40 But no action was actually taken, even though thousands of protesters took to the streets of Amman and some provincial towns, demanding that the government “end all relations with the Zionist enemy.”41 Jordan’s pressing economic needs actually forced matters in the opposite direction, toward greater dependence on Israel. From early 2011 onward, gas supplies from Egypt to Jordan were constantly disrupted by acts of sabotage by ISIS sympathizers on the pipeline traversing the Sinai Peninsula. By the summer of 2012 Jordan faced the crushing impact of steadily rising energy and food prices, leading also to violent public protests. As Abdallah put it, “Nothing could be worse for a country that imports 96 percent of its energy and 87 percent of its food.” The loss of Jordan’s gas supply from Egypt doubled the kingdom’s energy bill and “made [Jordan’s] budget deficit sky-rocket.”42 In February 2014 a private US-Israeli consortium signed an agreement to sell at least $500 million worth of gas to Jordan from the Israeli Tamar gas field in the eastern Mediterranean. In January 2017 Israel started exporting the gas from Tamar to Jordan’s Dead Sea industries. In September 2014 a much more significant initial deal was made for the supply of gas from Israel’s Leviathan gas field to the Jordanian National Electric Power Company. The agreement was for a $10 billion supply of gas over fifteen years. This was the largest collaboration ever between the two countries and made Israel into Jordan’s chief gas supplier. Jordan’s energy imports cost about one-fifth of its gross domestic product, and cheaper sources of energy were of critical importance to

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Jordan’s struggling economy.43 The critics argued that Jordan would become beholden to Israel in a deal that would be pumping billions of dollars into the Israeli treasury, which, in turn, would finance Israel’s suppression of the Palestinians. As of early March 2015, demonstrations against the deal were held under slogans such as “The gas of the enemy is treason” or “The gas of the enemy is occupation,” suggesting that Jordan was not only subsidizing Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians but simultaneously subjecting Jordan itself to a form of Israeli occupation, due to the controlling influence Israel would now have over Jordan’s energy supply. Protests of various forms continued unabated, but in September 2016 Israel and Jordan finalized the deal, popular disapproval notwithstanding.44 The first delivery of natural gas from the Leviathan field was received in January 2020. Because of the vehement opposition, the gas supply was conducted by a US company to avoid the appearance of a direct deal between Israeli and Jordanian companies.45 The ruse had little effect, and the protests did not subside. From the outset the Chamber of Deputies had expressed its unrelenting disapproval, urging the government to scrap the gas deal entirely.46 The Constitutional Court, however, ruled twice, in September 2019 and again in May 2020, that the chamber had no standing in the matter and that such agreements, ostensibly between private companies, could not be cancelled by an act of parliament.47 The declaration of intent between Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the supply of solar energy from Jordan to Israel in exchange for desalinated water from Israel, signed in November 2021, aroused similar popular protest. The mainly Islamist opponents regarded the deal as an “agreement of shame” founded on unwarranted dependence on Israel.48 The protests represented widespread disaffection with state policy toward Israel, but they had little impact on decisionmaking on matters relating to the kingdom’s strategic interests.

The Jerusalem Conundrum

Israel’s refusal to redivide Jerusalem and the constant tensions between Israelis and Palestinians in the holy city were seen by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority as a major impediment to the attainment of a twostate solution.49 As for Jordan, its great fear was that tensions in Jerusalem could detonate a chain reaction of escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict with far-reaching ramifications for the kingdom’s national security. In Abdallah’s mind Jerusalem was “a tinderbox that could go off at any time,”50 and he feared that “continued attacks on Jerusalem and its holy sites [could] ignite the entire region.”51

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Hussein had never finally given up his ambition for a special role for the Hashemites in the determination of the future of Arab Palestine, especially in the protection of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. He consequently made an effort to secure Israel’s agreement for Jordan’s special status in this regard in the peace treaty signed in 1994. While Hussein had been driven by Hashemite dynastic ambition, rather than just narrowly defined state interest,52 King Abdallah II had less of a sense of historic mission. He was five years old when Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel in the 1967 war. He was not emotionally tied to the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem to the extent that his father had been; nor was he motivated by a sense of guilt for having lost it to the Israelis in a war that he might have avoided. Abdallah noted that his father had “always retained a special place in his heart for Jerusalem,” but he did not say the same of himself. The Hashemites had their unique ties to the holy city, and Abdallah was, of course, bound to take pride in Sharif Hussein’s leadership of the Arab Revolt in World War I, in his devotion to the Arabism of Palestine, and in the sanctity of Jerusalem and its holy places. The sharif, Abdallah observed, was the “friend of al-Aqsa” in his lifetime and (buried on the haram al-sharif) the “neighbor of al-Aqsa” after his death. Abdallah took very seriously his own “responsibility to preserve the Arab identity of Jerusalem and protect its holy sites” in the face of “Israeli unilateral measures.” These, he said, were intended to “drive Muslims and Christians out of the city.”53 Abdallah, therefore, did his honorable duty as custodian of Muslim and Christian holy places.54 Jordan contributed to the restoration and renovation of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (2008–2016), as well as the Dome of Ascension and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (2016). But this was more about keeping the peace and Jordan’s prestige than about dynastic ambition. Shortly after his ascension to the throne, in May 1999, Abdallah made his first visit to the PA for talks with Arafat in Gaza. Abdallah reportedly assured Arafat that Jordan had no regional aspirations, including no special claims to Jerusalem and its holy places. Later in the year, Abdallah, Prime Minister Abd al-Ra’uf al-Rawabda, and other senior officials issued a series of statements affirming more unequivocally than ever that Jordan intended to cede its “traditional” rights over the holy places to the PA when the “time was right.” The fate of Arab Jerusalem was for the Palestinians to determine. 55 This was a significant retreat from Hussein’s position, which had constantly demanded a special role for Jordan in respect to the Muslim holy places. As Adnan Abu Awda put it, Jerusalem was “no longer an internal Jordanian affair.”56

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In March 2013 King Abdallah and Mahmud Abbas signed an agreement whereby the PA formally recognized Abdallah as the custodian of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. The king would make every effort to protect these sites and represent them in the international arena. There was nothing new in the agreement. It did not alter the status quo, but it did serve as a pragmatic recognition by Abbas of Jordan’s existing superior status and leverage in the relationship with Israel and in the international arena, in comparison to the relative weakness of the PA. Leaning on Jordan would strengthen the hand of the PA in the ongoing struggle with Israel over Jerusalem and its holy places. As noted by a Palestinian source, Jordan had the “power, capability and influence” internationally to forestall attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which the PA, in comparison, was “powerless to defend.”57 Like the PA, Abdallah was genuinely concerned about Jerusalem and the city’s destabilizing potential. Abdallah and Abbas, therefore, shared a common cause on Jerusalem, undisturbed by the old rivalries and endless suspicions of Hashemite ambition that had characterized the relationship between Hussein and Arafat.58 The agreement with the PA recognized that the Government of Palestine shall have the right to exercise sovereignty over all parts of its territory, including Jerusalem, and also noted that the two parties would consult and coordinate with each other on all matters concerning the holy places.59 Abdallah complained of repeated attempts by Israel and extremist Jewish groups to alter the status quo in Jerusalem, including efforts to violate the rights of the Arab residents, to make their lives difficult, and to induce them to leave. As the custodian of Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, Jordan was committed to protect them.60 Jordanian diplomatic action against Israel on Jerusalem was therefore usually strident and immediate. In October and November 2014 tensions peaked in Jerusalem when serious clashes took place between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police. Since 1967, as a rule, Jews were not allowed to pray on Temple Mount (al-haram al-sharif), despite its holiness to their faith, in consideration of Muslim sensibilities. Trouble began as some right-wing Israelis, including a few parliamentarians, campaigned to alter the status quo on worship on the Mount. Jordan’s reaction was more severe than its response to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza just a few months earlier. Temple Mount was of greater concern than an Israeli assault on Hamas, whom the Jordanians themselves treated with great suspicion, and the Temple Mount controversy provoked Jordan’s decision to withdraw its ambassador from Israel in November 2014.61 After matters cooled down, the ambassador was returned to his post in February 2015.

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Following the spread of persistent rumors among Palestinians that Israel intended to alter the status quo on worship on Temple Mount, violence erupted again between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem in October 2015. There were numerous fatalities on both sides, and an agreement was subsequently brokered between Israel and Jordan by US Secretary of State John Kerry, whereby Israel reiterated its commitment to the status quo. Prime Minister Netanyahu issued a statement confirming that Israel would “continue to enforce its longstanding policy: Muslims pray on the Temple Mount; nonMuslims visit the Temple Mount,” and he denied any intention to change this practice.62 In July 2017 two Israeli policemen were killed by three ArabIsraeli gunmen on Temple Mount. The Israeli authorities immediately ordered the placement of metal detectors and cameras at the entrances to the Mount, resulting in days of violent Palestinian protests against what they and the Jordanian government felt was an unwarranted imposition on their freedom of worship. A few days later, in an unrelated incident, a security guard at the Israeli embassy in Amman shot and killed two Jordanians. The Israelis explained the shooting as an act of self-defense against an attacker. Israel and Jordan were now forced into a major diplomatic crisis. Again, with US mediation a deal was struck according to which the Israeli ambassador, the embassy staff, and the guard in question were all returned to Israel.63 The metal detectors were removed from the Mount, and Israel subsequently issued a formal apology for the deaths of the two Jordanians. The Israeli embassy was reopened, and a new ambassador assumed his post in Amman in April 2018.64 Regular formal complaints by the Jordanians against Israeli actions in Jerusalem became a permanent feature of the relationship. These were related mainly to statements, actions, or protests by Israelis, usually of the political and/or religious Right, campaigning for Jewish rights to worship on the Mount. For the Jordanians such actions were all part of calculated “Zionist aggression in Jerusalem and al-Aqsa” designed to “alter the historical and legal status quo of Islamic and Christian sites in the city.”65 In August 2019 tensions between Jews and Arabs on Temple Mount and repeated clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinians were accompanied by comments by an Israeli cabinet minister in favor of a negotiated change in the status quo that would allow Jews to pray on the Mount. The Jordanian foreign ministry warned of grave consequences for any change. The Jordanian Chamber of Deputies, not for the first

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time, called for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador, the withdrawal of Jordan’s ambassador from Israel, the halting of all forms of normalization, and the reassessment of the peace treaty.66 No such actions were actually taken, but Jerusalem and Temple Mount remained a source of tension in the Jordanian-Israeli relationship. No formal change was made in the status quo on the Mount, but it was steadily eroded by groups of Jews, large and small, predominantly of the religious/settler Right. They visited Temple Mount regularly with Israeli police protection to make a demonstrative political statement and also to engage in prayer, which the Jordanians saw as an unnecessary provocation.67 Israeli negotiations with Saudi Arabia on normalization in the summer of 2023 aroused suspicions in Jordan that Israel might offer the Saudis a role in Jerusalem’s holy places at the expense of the Hashemites.68 King Abdallah made it very clear that under Hashemite custodianship of the holy places, Jordan remained committed to safeguarding the city’s identity.69 As all-out war raged between Israel and Hamas in Gaza at the end of the year, Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawna warned that Jordan would view any Israeli effort to alter the legal or historical status quo in the Islamic or Christian holy sites in Jerusalem as the crossing of a “red line” that would have the most serious consequences.70 In Israel it was often argued that official expressions of Jordanian displeasure with Israel on Jerusalem or on the broader Palestinian issue were driven by the need to placate the large Palestinian population and the popular mood in the kingdom—that is, that they were a form of lip service to the street. In fact, they reflected very real Jordanian anxieties that stemmed from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The continuation of Israel’s occupation in general, and control of Jerusalem in particular, had potentially existential ramifications for the Hashemite Kingdom. Jordan’s demand that Arab Jerusalem serve as the capital of Palestine was no less than a “strategic imperative, a linchpin to a stable and just resolution” of the conflict.71 The Jordanians, therefore, firmly rejected the December 2017 decision of the Donald Trump administration to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to transfer the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They warned of the negative impact on the chances for peace, stressing that the sharing of Jerusalem was crucial for the achievement of the two-state solution. If Israel and the Palestinians did not solve their dispute, the Jordanians feared, it would only be a matter of time before the situation exploded in large-scale violence that

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would culminate in more “demographic aggression” that would wreak unbearable political and socioeconomic havoc in the kingdom.

The “Deal of the Century” and Deteriorating Relations with Israel

King Abdallah’s frustration with Prime Minister Netanyahu “was intense; they barely spoke with each other.”72 Abdallah blamed the Israelis for the stalled peace process, and as President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” began to take shape, Abdallah complained that the Jordanians were being kept in the dark.73 The Jordanians cautiously expressed their disapproval, considering the kingdom’s heavy dependence on the United States for crucial military and economic aid,74 but the American moves were extremely unpopular in Jordan. The relationship with the United States entered into “a deep slump, probably the worst” since the Gulf War in 1991.75 In August 2018, Jordan’s former foreign minister, Marwan Muasher, published an article in al-Ghad, a leading local daily, clearly representing the disillusionment of the Jordanian political establishment. Discussing the “Deal of the Century,” Muasher argued that Jordan had to take action to prevent the imposition of a solution at Jordan’s expense. Muasher suggested various measures, which mostly represented a downgrading of Jordan’s treaty with Israel, to highlight Jordan’s disapproval of the current process: (1) discontinuing all forms of normalization with Israel, including security cooperation; (2) cancelling the gas agreement with Israel; (3) exercising the right not to renew the special land-use76 arrangements for Israelis in Jordanian territory, which were included in the peace treaty with Israel; and (4) cooperating with the Arab states in supporting Palestinian steadfastness on their land to prevent the “Judaization of Arab lands” and to provide jobs for Palestinians.77 The land-use arrangements had become a highly contentious issue in Jordan, and there was a widespread public demand for their discontinuation. In October 2018 King Abdallah announced that Jordan would not renew the two land-use arrangements, regarding Baqura (Naharayim) and Ghumar (Zofar, in the Arava region).78 These arrangements had been made for twenty-five years, to be “renewed automatically for the same periods, unless one-year prior notice of termination [was] given by either Party.”79 In Jordan the Trump plan was portrayed as a form of conspiracy, possibly intended to transform Jordan into the “alternative homeland” by pressuring the kingdom into assuming responsibility for those parts of the West Bank that would not be annexed by Israel or by forcing Jordan to permanently resettle the 1948 and 1967 Palestinian refugees

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in Jordan.80 In late June 2019, Jared Kushner unveiled the US plan for an investment fund for Palestinian and regional development, according to which donor nations and investors would contribute some $50 billion to the region, including $7.5 billion for Jordan. The plan met with derision from many Jordanians, who suspected that the sizeable sum was intended to “take the sting” out of the plan’s requirement for Jordan “to take in more West Bank Palestinians, settle them and give them citizenship.”81 The publication of the details of the “Deal of the Century” coincided with the political deadlock in Israel that produced four election campaigns in just two years, between April 2019 and March 2021. Intensive electioneering generated much talk by Netanyahu and the Right on the new opportunities for annexation of the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank if he was reelected.82 The annexation discourse was often accompanied in Israeli right-wing circles by discussions in the press of variations of the “Jordan is Palestine” theme. Confronting the question of Palestinian civil rights in areas to be annexed by Israel, right-wing pundits suggested that Jordan would or should eventually become a Palestinian republic. That would solve the issue of civil rights for Palestinians in the West Bank, who could vote in Jordan for the Jordanian parliament and not in Israel.83 King Abdallah warned that annexation would “have a major impact” on the relationship with Israel, implying that annexation could affect the status of the peace treaty.84 Marwan Muasher contended that in its opposition to the two-state solution, Israel was “actively working against Jordan’s national interest.” Israel did not want a Palestinian state on Palestinian soil; nor did it want a Palestinian majority under its control. Expulsion, therefore, was a realistic possibility. If in the past Jordanians might have argued that such an expulsion of millions was not possible in this day and age, the Syrian example, Muasher explained, had just proved otherwise. “One can create the circumstances for something like this to happen.”85 The Trump proposals were published on January 28, 2020. They provided for the annexation of the Jordan Valley and the existing Jewish settlements (some 30 percent of the West Bank) by Israel, leaving a number of disjointed enclaves for the future Palestinian state (in the remaining 70 percent of the territory). Jerusalem would remain the undivided capital of Israel, and Jordan’s special role in the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem, as recognized in the Israel-Jordan treaty, was not even mentioned. On refugees the plan did not recognize a Palestinian “right of return” and proposed that the Palestinian refugees be either absorbed into the future state of Palestine, integrated into their current

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host countries (that is, permanently resettled), or accepted in individual member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.86 The “deal” was rejected by both the Palestinians and the Jordanians, and Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, warned of the “dangerous consequences” of unilateral annexations by Israel, reiterating that the two-state solution, along the 1967 lines, remained the only basis for a just peace.87 King Abdallah described relations with Israel as “at an alltime low,”88 as he had already done a decade earlier. Israel’s annexation plans were, in his mind, the beginnings of a one-state solution, which could only mean “more chaos and extremism in the region.” Israeli annexation of the West Bank, he said, “would lead to a massive conflict with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.”89 In November 2019 the Jordanian army had actually conducted maneuvers simulating defensive military operations against an invasion “by the occupying entity across the river”—an especially ominous sign of the times.90 When it appeared that relations could hardly be worse, in March 2021 Crown Prince Hussein, who was assuming a higher profile in the kingdom’s diplomacy, was scheduled to make his first-ever visit to Jerusalem as part of an effort to reaffirm Jordan’s custodianship over the Muslim holy places in the city. The visit was cancelled, apparently over a disagreement with the Israelis on the composition of Hussein’s security detail, a minor issue that could easily have been resolved if relations between the two countries had been closer to normal.91 After new general elections in Israel held later in March 2021, Netanyahu was unable, for the fourth time running within just two years, to form a coalition. This time, however, unlike in the three previous elections, the domestic Israeli deadlock was broken. A broad left-to-right alternative coalition was formed in mid-June by Prime Minister Naftali Bennet, ousting Netanyahu and his Likud party after twelve years in power. Trump’s defeat in the November 2020 US elections and the removal of Netanyahu in Israel paved the way for a new chapter in Jordanian-Israeli relations. No sooner had the new government been formed in Israel than regular contacts were resumed at the highest level between Israeli and Jordanian leaders, including the king, the prime minister, and senior ministers on both sides. (Since their last meeting in June 2018, Abdallah had rebuffed requests to see Netanyahu and was even said to have refused to take his calls.) In early July, Israel and Jordan signed a new agreement, which doubled the amount of water supplied by Israel to Jordan from 50 million to 100 million cubic meters a year, while boosting exports from Jordan to the West Bank from some $160 million to $700 million a year.92 In November 2021 Israel and Jordan signed a letter of intent for their largest-ever partnership. Jordan would supply Israel with about

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600 megawatts of electricity generated by solar energy in exchange for up to 200 million cubic meters of desalinated water per year, redoubling the quantity supplied by Israel. The partnership, brokered by the UAE, was agreed in Dubai, and a UAE firm would construct the solar energy facility in Jordan.93 Israeli-Jordanian relations appeared to be on the mend. But in November 2022 Netanyahu finally won new elections in Israel, resulting in the formation of the most right-wing coalition in Israel’s history. Netanyahu made a surprise visit to Amman in January 2023. But anxieties heightened in Jordan all the same as pessimism and fear for the future became increasingly apparent in Amman. The unexpected war between Israel and Hamas would unfold as the severest test yet of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.

The Israel-Hamas War: Jordan Considers a “Radical Reassessment”

On October 7, 2023, Hamas dealt Israel its most stunning and humiliating defeat ever since the foundation of the state in 1948. Thousands of Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fighters broke through Israel’s border defenses in the Al-Aqsa Flood (Tufan al-Aqsa) operation. They caught the Israeli forces off guard and within hours killed 1,200 Israelis, mainly civilians, raped scores of women, and abducted 253 men, women, and children to Gaza. Israel retaliated with an intensive all-out air and ground war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Reliable figures were hard to come by, but in the space of four months, Israeli forces had reportedly killed over 20,000 Palestinians, of whom approximately one-third were said to have been Hamas and PIJ fighters and the rest civilians. The regime in Jordan had no sympathy for Hamas, consistent with its general attitude toward the Muslim Brotherhood, which it treated with suspicion and, at times, undisguised hostility. Much to the concern of the government, Hamas’s popularity and prestige soared in Jordan, as elsewhere in the Arab world, after the outbreak of war. Hamas leader Khalid Mash’al, located in Qatar, appealed over the heads of the Jordanian authorities to the tribes of Jordan to join the struggle against Israel. In Amman there were fears of rising Hamas influence in the kingdom, especially ahead of elections scheduled in 2024 in accordance with a new, more liberal election law.94 While the regime would most probably have quietly welcomed a Hamas defeat, both the government and the public at large genuinely sympathized with the Palestinian people and their collective predicament. The press was generally sympathetic toward Hamas, and massive

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demonstrations in Amman and elsewhere in the kingdom, usually on Fridays after prayers, mainly organized by the Islamic Action Front (IAF), in support of Hamas and in condemnation of Israel’s military action, rocked the kingdom for months. “All of Jordan [was] Hamas.” Tens of thousands of East Bankers, including many among Jordan’s Bedouin tribes, and Palestinians regularly demonstrated in support of the organization. The government made a constant and well-publicized effort to supply humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, including the operation of two field hospitals there.95 According to a Jordanian poll, 66 percent of the people strongly supported the Hamas actions in the October 7 attack.96 Protesters demanded the abrogation of the peace treaty, the closure of the Israeli embassy, and the termination of all relations with Israel. East Bank Jordanians and Palestinians alike were gripped by outrage and fear that Israel might exploit the conditions of war to expel Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt and from the West Bank into Jordan.97 In mid-December the largest general strike ever since “Black September” in 1970 paralyzed the country in identification with Hamas and the Palestinian people. From the outset King Abdallah asserted that the war was proof that the region would never be secure without the implementation of a twostate solution, with an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the June 1967 lines.98 In the Jordanian view the outbreak of war was only to be expected in a situation in which the Palestinians had no political horizon. The Israeli notion that the Abraham Accords (signed between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain in September 2020) illustrated that peace was possible without coming to terms with the Palestinians under occupation, was a myth that had “now been shattered.”99 For Jordan, according to Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, the only way forward was toward a two-state solution.100 Jordan opposed the reoccupation by Israel of any part of the Gaza Strip; it similarly rejected the notion of buffer zones and would not accept the separation of the fate of Gaza from the West Bank.101 Prince Hasan, the elder statesman of the Jordanian political establishment, noted that the “horrific Hamas attack . . . and the ongoing, belligerent Israeli response on Gaza” had “reopened deep wounds for both peoples: for Israeli Jews of the Holocaust; for Palestinians [of] the Nakba.” In these circumstances the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative had to be urgently revived and “energetically promoted from within the region to the Israeli and Palestinian people,” both of whom needed “credible assurances of their safety, security, and acceptance in the region that— in the end—is their home.”102 In the eyes of Marwan Muasher, in order to avoid the pitfalls of the past, a credible process would require that the United States first and

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foremost clearly define the objective as the ending of the Israeli occupation within a specific time frame of three to five years. Precise borders would be based on the 1967 lines with minor and reciprocal land swaps, while the United Nations would issue a resolution recognizing a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders. Negotiations would then be focused on the steps needed to reach the final objective rather than on what the endgame ought to look like. “In this framing, the issue of who rules Gaza would become a step on the road to ending the occupation rather than an endgame in itself: in questions of governance, Gaza and the West Bank should be treated as one.”103 King Abdallah warned time and again of attempts by Israel to expel Palestinians to neighboring countries and appealed for an immediate end to the war. For the Jordanians, Israel’s military operations in Gaza were illegitimate. On October 19 the king joined President Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt in denouncing what they referred to as Israel’s policy of collective punishment in Gaza “including siege, starvation or displacement.”104 Shortly thereafter, at the Cairo Summit for Peace, the king described Israel’s actions as a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and as a war crime.105 Queen Rania, who did not usually make political statements, was most outspoken. In interviews with CNN, she accused the West of a “glaring double standard” and “deafening silence” when it came to Israel’s actions in Gaza. When there is bombing in a densely populated area like Gaza, she said, “civilian death is not incidental. . . . [I]t is a foregone conclusion, and that makes it a war crime.”106 Ayman Safadi, often the hardest hitter of Jordanian spokespeople, claimed that Israel, as an occupying power, did not even have the right to self-defense.107 The regime and the public shared the general assessment that Israel’s actions were a serious threat to Jordan’s own well-being, especially as they saw the “messianic Far Right” in Israel asserting greater political influence. There were frequent reports in the Israeli press and elsewhere of armed Jewish settlers in the West Bank who regarded the war as a historic opportunity to harass the Palestinians with the object of driving them off their land,108 and news in this regard was given prominent frontpage coverage in the Jordanian press.109 In the Jordanian analysis, Israel’s stated goal of dismantling Hamas increased the likelihood of a regional war that might “contribute to demographic engineering and the mass expulsion of Palestinians to Jordan and other countries.”110 At the beginning of November, Jordan recalled its ambassador to Israel in protest against the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. The Jordanians also requested that Israel not return its ambassador to Amman after his temporary recall for security reasons. Later in November, Prime

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Minister Bisher al-Khasawna noted that any forced displacement of Palestinians to Jordan by Israel would be considered “a declaration of war and a material breach of the peace treaty,” which explicitly disallowed the involuntary movement of population.111 The Jordanians, however, were clearly in no hurry to abolish the treaty, and Khasawna clarified that there was no immediate threat to the country. But, he said, if such a threat of displacement were to materialize, a new “state of nonpeace” would prevail.112 The Chamber of Deputies initiated a review of the peace treaty and all other agreements with Israel, and the government refused to finally endorse the solar-energy-for-water letter of intent with Israel that had been initially approved in November 2021. As Foreign Minister Safadi put it, no Jordanian minister could actually sign such a deal “while Israel is killing our people in Gaza.” Israel had created an “environment of hatred and enmity” that made normal relations impossible.113 In the public and media discourse, Israel’s actions in Gaza were commonly referred to as harb al-ibada (a war of genocide or extermination).114 Even the term “holocaust” (mahraqa) was used.115 Over 70 percent of the population thought that the term “genocide” best described Israeli operations in Gaza,116 and Safadi argued that Israel’s war aim was to empty Gaza of its people, an objective that met “the legal definition of genocide.”117 In early January 2024 Jordan was one of the few countries that officially supported the South African application to the International Court of Justice formally accusing Israel of committing genocide.118 Jordan’s relations with Israel had entered their worst crisis ever since the signing of the peace treaty. According to Marwan Muasher, a “radical reassessment” (muraja’a jidhriyya) of postwar relations with Israel was already under way. Since Israel, according to Muasher, was determined not only to demolish Hamas but to expel the Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and from the West Bank to Jordan, the relationship after the war would not be one of friendship and cooperation.119 As Muasher explained, once marginal opinions in Israel were now represented by ministers in the Israeli government, who believed not only that the West Bank and Gaza belonged to Israel but that the Palestinians had no right to be there in the first place. The settler violence, largely unchecked by the Israeli authorities, created the impression that the radicals in the government saw the war in Gaza as “an opportunity for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.” But East Bankers were determined not to admit more Palestinians into the country, which would further dilute the Jordanian identity, and their red line on this matter remained “unlikely to change.”120 Though the political establishment was obviously troubled by the fear of expulsion, a Jordanian opinion poll noted that only 16 percent

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of the people really believed that Israel’s priority was the displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank.121 High-level intelligence and other military coordination between Israel and Jordan continued. But more than ever before, Israel was simultaneously seen as a potentially hostile predator and an existential challenge to the kingdom in posing the threat of expulsion (tahjir) and eviction (tatfish) of Palestinians to Jordan.122 As violence escalated between settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, Jordanian reinforcements were deployed in November 2023 in the border area with Israel. The main reason given was the need to prevent the displacement of Palestinians by Israel.123 The reinforcements may also have related to the government’s decision to prevent pro-Hamas demonstrations in the border zone or to intercept arms smuggling into the West Bank. The infiltration of proHamas volunteers from Jordan or other (Iranian-backed) militia fighters into the West Bank from neighboring countries like Syria or Iraq was another problem the Jordanians had to bear in mind. Israel’s multifront war was turning the kingdom’s geopolitical centrality into a strategic liability, as Jordan feared that it might “find itself in the crossfire of a larger regional war.”124 As the war progressed, various security problems arose on Jordan’s borders with other Arab states. In late October Iraqi Shi’ite militiamen temporarily blocked oil tankers from crossing the Iraqi border into Jordan. Missiles and drones launched by the Houthi rebels in Yemen toward Israel’s southern port of Eilat endangered the neighboring Jordanian port of Aqaba (and its various food storage and energy facilities). A cruise missile, launched by the Houthis toward Eilat in October, crashed in southern Jordan, prompting the Jordanians to ask the United States to deploy Patriot air defense systems in the kingdom.125 Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea interrupted traffic not only to Eilat but to Aqaba as well. A drone fired from southern Syria in early November hit a school in Eilat after avoiding Israeli detection by flying through Jordanian air space. Similar attempts by an Iran-backed Iraqi militia were intercepted by the Jordanians. A serious direct challenge to Jordanian security came from smugglers operating across the Syrian-Jordanian border. These had been in operation for a long time, but there was a surge in their activities after the outbreak of war, especially in an effort by Iranian-supported groups to smuggle weapons, including machine guns and rockets, through Jordan into the West Bank.126 In late December 2023 and early January 2024, there were numerous reports of escalation on the border with Syria due to armed clashes with smugglers.127 By far the most serious incident occurred at the end of January 2024, when the Iranian-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq fired a drone into

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Tower 22, an American base in northeast Jordan adjacent to the borders with Syria and Iraq, killing three US soldiers and injuring over thirty more. A few days later the US retaliated with air strikes against Iranianbacked militias in Iraq and Syria, in which F-16 aircraft of the Jordanian air force were also said to have taken part. These reports, though immediately denied by the Jordanian authorities,128 were probably true. The Jordanians had demonstrated their loyalty to the kingdom’s critically important regional alliance with the United States, while simultaneously seeking to minimize unnecessary friction with their Arab neighbors. Israel’s deterrence versus enemies like Hamas and Hizballah and others further afield had been undermined by the surprising success of the Hamas attack in October. Israel’s prolonged preoccupation with a potential multifront war of attrition could give rise to doubts in the Jordanian security establishment with regard to Israel’s long-standing informal role as a strategic anchor of last resort. This was not a sudden development. The erosion of Israeli deterrence had actually begun before the outbreak of war and was undoubtedly a factor in the Hamas decision to launch its October attack. The Netanyahu government’s judicial reforms initiated in early 2023 provoked an unprecedented domestic crisis in Israel. The government faced a massive protest movement that rejected the reforms as instruments designed to undermine Israel’s democratic values. In Arab public opinion, Israel’s domestic disarray was widely seen as a “process of internal erosion” (masar al-ta’kkul al-dakhili) that was sapping the “sources of strength that had empowered [Israel] since its foundation.” The Arab press throughout the region was awash with similar analyses of Israel’s political turmoil and diminishing deterrence.129 All of the above could not have gone unnoticed in the security establishment in Amman. Indeed, Netanyahu was warned by Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence, in March and again in July 2023, that Israel was projecting an image of weakness to the neighborhood and was possibly emboldening its enemies to escalate or even to launch a multifront attack.130 Concerns and disappointments aside, it was doubtful that the Jordanians would annul the peace treaty, which remained in the kingdom’s vital interest. But in the new circumstances, the treaty seemed to be losing important elements of its substantive content. At one and the same time, Israel was beginning to look more like an existential threat and less like a reliable strategic ally.

Notes

1. Lucas, “Jordan,” 110–111. 2. Muasher, Arab Center, 108–114.

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3. Muasher, Arab Center, 128. 4. Al-Nahar (Beirut), March 29, 2002; al-Sharq al-Awsat (London), March 31, 2007. 5. Jordan’s point man in these presummit negotiations was Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher, who had also been Jordan’s first ambassador to Israel. Muasher was well aware of Israeli sensitivities on the refugee issue. Muasher, Arab Center, 122–128. 6. Muasher, Arab Center, 137–146. 7. Muasher, Arab Center, 172, 196. 8. Address by Prime Minster Ariel Sharon at the Fourth Herzliya Conference, December 18, 2003, in www.mfa.gov.il. 9. Eiland, Regional Alternatives to the Two-State Solution, 33. 10. Wasserstein, Israelis and Palestinians, 149. 11. Muasher, Arab Center, 202–203. 12. Letter from US President George W. Bush to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, April 14, 2004, in www.mfa.gov.il. 13. Headline in al-Ayyam (Ramallah), April 15, 2004. 14. Muasher, Arab Center, 206, 212–214. 15. Muasher, Arab Center, 217–219. 16. Muasher, Arab Center, 220. 17. Muasher, Arab Center, 180–183. 18. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 194. 19. Quoted in al-Ra’y (Amman), September 11, 2011. 20. Interview by Abdallah with Ghassan Sharbil in al-Hayat (London), King Abdallah’s official website, March 22, 2014, www.kingabdullah.jo. 21. King Abdallah in an interview with Jay Solomon of the Wall Street Journal, King Abdallah’s official website, April 6, 2010, www.kingabdullah.jo. 22. Abdallah in a speech to Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, April 24, 2009; in a speech at World Economic Forum, Dead Sea, Jordan, May 15, 2009; in an interview with Steve Inskeep on National Public Radio, September 22, 2011, all on www.kingabdullah.jo 23. Abdallah in a speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies Regional Security Summit, Manama, Bahrain, King Abdallah’s official website, December 4, 2010, www.kingabdullah.jo. 24. Abdallah in interviews with the chief editors of al-Ghad (Amman), March 24, 2010, and with Joby Warrick in the Washington Post, King Abdallah’s official website, June 16, 2011, www.kingabdullah.jo. 25. Abdallah in an interview with Sara Daniel of Le nouvel observateur, King Abdallah’s official website, January 12, 2013, www.kingabdullah.jo. 26. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 194. 27. Ammonnews, May 4, 2011, as quoted in MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series no. 738, September 15, 2011. 28. Urayb al-Rantawi, in al-Quds (Jerusalem), August 17, 2011. 29. Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 131. 30. Israel’s Channel 2 as quoted in “Israel Tells US It Will Act if IS Reaches Jordan.” 31. Podeh, From Mistress to Known Partner, 131; Podeh, “Silver Jubilee of Israel-Jordan Peace Brings Exaggerated Disappointment”; Gal, “Israel-Jordan Cooperation 2019.” 32. Lucas, “Jordan,” 110. 33. Ryan, Jordan in Transition, 113. 34. Sela, “Politics, Identity and Peacemaking,” 30; Kilani, “Boycott Fever in Jordan,” 25. 35. Braverman, “Jordan,” 343; Lucas, “Jordan,” 111.

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36. Braverman, “Jordan,” 342–343; Scham and Lucas, “‘Normalization’ and ‘Anti-normalization’ in Jordan,” 67. 37. Lucas, “Jordan,” 101; Greenwood, “Jordan, the Al-Aqsa Intifada and America’s ‘War on Terror,’” 92, 104; Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 125. 38. Schenker, “Twenty Years of Israeli-Jordanian Peace.” 39. Dekel and Perlov, “Question of Identity in Jordan.” 40. Jumana Ghnaymat interview with His Majesty King Abdallah II, al-Ghad (Amman), August 10, 2014. 41. Freij, “Thousands of Jordanians Protest Against Israeli War on Gaza.” 42. Abdallah in an interview with Ahmad al-Khatib of Agence France-Presse, King Abdallah’s official website, September 12, 2012, www.kingabdullah.jo. 43. Milton-Edwards, “Protests in Jordan over Gas Deal with Israel Expose Wider Rifts.” 44. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 83–85. 45. Gal, “Israel-Jordan Cooperation 2019.” 46. Omari, “MPs Demand Scrapping Israeli Gas Deal.” 47. Jordan Times, September 16, 2019; MEMO Middle East Monitor, May 14, 2020. 48. Kuttab, “Jordanian Public Unhappy with Israeli Water Deal”; al-Khalidi and Freij, “Jordanians Protest Against Water-for-Energy Deal with Israel.” 49. Muasher, Arab Center, 222–227. 50. Abdallah to Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2010. 51. Abdallah to al-Ghad (Amman), March 24, 2010. 52. Mufti, “King’s Art,” 12, 20. 53. King Abdallah II, Our Last Best Chance, 192; Abdallah in a speech to the nation on Jordan’s seventieth independence day, May 24, 2016, www.kingabdullah.jo. 54. Strictly speaking, Israel recognized Jordan in Article 9 of the Peace Treaty solely as the custodian of the Muslim holy shrines, though King Abdallah and other spokespersons often referred to Jordan’s “moral and legal responsibility as custodians of the Muslim and Christian holy sites” in Jerusalem (see, e.g., King Abdallah II, Our Last Best Chance, 261). 55. Al-Hayat (London), August 31, 1999; al-Watan al-Arabi (Paris), September 10, 1999; Jerusalem Post, October 19, 1999; al-Wasat (London), November 15, 1999; Katz, Jordanian Jerusalem, 149. 56. Lynch, “Jordan’s Identity and Interests,” 46. 57. Al-Bayadir al-Siyasi (Jerusalem), April 27, 2013, as quoted in MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series no. 987, June 24, 2013. 58. See, e.g., Frisch, “Jordan and the Palestinian Authority,” 52–71. 59. See text of the agreement at https://en.lpj.org/2013/04/04/full-text-of-the -jordanian-palestinian-agreement-on-holy-places-in-jerusalem. 60. Interview by Abdallah to Muhammad Hasan al-Tall of al-Dustur (Amman), August 15, 2016. 61. Jordan Times, November 5, 2014. 62. New York Times, October 24, 2015. 63. New York Times, July 24, 2017. 64. Times of Israel, October 8, 2018. 65. Times of Israel, April 4, 2018; Jordan Times, May 15, 2018; al-Jazeera, August 18, 2019; al-Ghad (Amman), August 20, 2019, as quoted in MEMRI. Special Dispatch 8236, August 22, 2019. 66. Al-Ghad (Amman), August 14, 2019; al-Ra’y (Amman), August 20, 2019, as quoted in MEMRI, Special Dispatch 8236, August 22, 2019. 67. Ha’aretz, September 15, 2021, and May 30, 2022. 68. Zvi Barel in Ha’aretz, October 1, 2023; David Hearst in Middle East Eye, November 29, 2023.

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69. Abdallah Before the UN General Assembly on September 19, 2023, https:// kingabdullah.jo. 70. Interview on al-Mamlaka TV (Jordan) as quoted in Jordan Times, November 27, 2023. 71. Shehab al-Makahleh in the Jordan Times, November 22, 2023. 72. Riedel, Jordan and America, 166. 73. Abdallah in interviews to Bret Baier on FOX News, September 26, 2018, and Mark Perelman on France 24, King Abdallah’s official website, January 13, 2020, www.kingabdullah.jo 74. al-Sharif, “Why Jordan Was So Quick to Reject Trump’s Peace Plan”; Riedel, Jordan and America, 166. 75. Riedel, Jordan and America, 174. 76. The correct terminology is “land use” and not “leasing” as often mentioned in the media. During the peace negotiations the Jordanians very deliberately did not use the term “leasing” because of its colonial connotations, in reference to the Suez Canal, for example. 77. al-Muasher, “Safqat al-qarn: ladayna khiyarat.” 78. New York Times, October 21, 2018. 79. Jordan-Israel Treaty of Peace, Annexes 1(b) and 1(c). 80. Al-Ra’y (Amman), March 14, 17, 20, 21, 27, 2019; al-Ghad (Amman), March 20, 27, 2019; al-Dustur (Amman), March 21, 2019. 81. Shahin, “Jordan’s Angry Tribes.” 82. New York Times, September 10, 2019. 83. Susser, “Peace with Israel,” 451; Elyakim Ha’etzni to Carolina Landsman in Ha’aretz, August 16, 2018; Arieh Eldad in Ma’ariv, December 7, 2019; Karni Eldad in Makor Rishon, January 5 and 19, 2020. Israeli right-wing activists constantly referred to a Palestinian majority of 70 or 80 percent in Jordan to strengthen their argument though the figure had no basis in fact. The real figure was probably between 50 and 60 percent, though precise data were not available. 84. King Abdallah II in interviews on MSNBC, September 24, 2019, and France 24, January 13, 2020, https://kingabdullah.jo. 85. Marwan Muasher in an interview with al-Mamlaka TV (Jordan), November 7, 2019, MEMRI TV, Clip #7587. 86. See Jordan-Israel Treaty of Peace, Article 9(2), 10; “Peace to Prosperity.” 87. Jordan Times, January 23, 28, 2020. 88. Abdallah in a Washington Institute interview, Washington Institute press release, November 27, 2019. www.washingtoninstitute.org. 89. Abdallah in an interview with Der Spiegel, May 15, 2020, www.kingabdullah.jo. 90. “Jordan Conducts Military Maneuvers Simulating War with Israel”; Susser, “Peace with Israel,” 451. 91. Riedel, “Jordan’s Crown Prince Steps to the Fore amid Strained Relations with Israel”; Susser, “Netanyahu and the Jordanians.” 92. “Jordan, Israel Agree to Water Deal.” 93. “Israel, Jordan Sign Huge UAE-Brokered Deal to Swap Solar Energy and Water”; Udasin, “Israel, Jordan, UAE Sign Pivotal Deal.” 94. Ersan, “Israel-Palestine War”; al-Sharafat, “What Does the War in Gaza Mean for Jordan’s National Security?” 95. Al-Ghad, December 12, 2023; Jordan Times, December 17, 2023; Ayesh, “War on Gaza.” 96. Jordan News, December 4, 2023. 97. Hearst, “Israel-Palestine War.” 98. Abdallah in speech from the throne, King Abdallah’s official website, October 11, 2023, https://kingabdullah.jo.

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99. Muasher, “Arab Perspectives on the Middle East Crisis.” 100. Jon Gambrell, “Jordan’s Foreign Minister Offers Blistering Criticism,” Associated Press, November 18, 2023. 101. “King, Egypt President Reaffirm Rejection of Attempts to Liquidate Palestinian Issue.” 102. El Hassan and Klug, “Middle East Paradox.” 103. Muasher, “Greater Goal in Gaza.” 104. Jordan News Agency (Petra), October 19, 2023. 105. Abdallah in speech at Cairo Summit for Peace on October 21, 2023, King Abdallah’s official website, https://kingabdullah.jo. 106. Queen Rania in interviews on CNN with Christiane Amanpour on October 24 and Becky Anderson on November 5, 2023, Queen Rania’s official website, https://queenrania.jo. 107. Jordan Times, November 30, 2023. 108. See, e.g., Jessica Buxbaum in New Arab, October 19, 2023; Amira Hass in Ha’aretz, October 29, 2023; Yaniv Kubovitz in Ha’aretz, November 12, 2023; Amos Harel in Ha’aretz, November 24, 2023; Zafrir Rinat in Ha’aretz, December 6, 2023. 109. See, e.g., al-Ghad (Amman), December 24, 2023. 110. Badarin, “Israel-Palestine War.” 111. Interview with Al-Arabiyya News as quoted in Jordan Times, November 22, 2023. 112. Interview with al-Mamlaka TV (Jordan) as quoted in Jordan Times, November 27, 2023. 113. New Arab, November 14, 2023; Jordan Times, November 17, 2023. 114. See, e.g., Nidal Mansur in al-Ghad (Amman), November 20, 2023; Ahmad Thougan Hindawi in Jordan Times, November 26, 2023. 115. Mahmud al-Khatatba in al-Ghad (Amman), January 1, 2024. 116. Jordan News, December 4, 2023. 117. Al-Jazeera, December 10, 2023. 118. New Arab, January 5, 2024. 119. Marwan Muasher in Ammonnews, November 29, 2023. 120. Muasher, “Jordan’s Red Line on Admitting Palestinians is Unlikely to Change.” 121. Jordan News, December 4, 2023. 122. Samih al-Mu’ayta in al-Ghad (Amman), December 10, 12, 2023. 123. “Jordanian Army Reinforcements on the Border with Palestine”; “Jordan Strengthens Army Presence Along the Borders with Israel, amid Israeli Assault on West Bank.” 124. Ryan, “Jordan Sees the War on Gaza in Existential Terms.” 125. Hayek and Sharawi, “Jordan’s Escalating Border Threats.” 126. Ali Hamada in al-Nahar (Beirut), November 29, 2023, as quoted in MEMRI, Special Dispatch 11034, December 21, 2023. 127. Al-Sharq al-Awsat (London), December 18, 2023; Jordan Times, January 6, 2024; al-Ghad (Amman), January 18, 2024; Hayek and Sharawi, “Jordan’s Escalating Border Threats.” 128. Jordan Times, February 3, 2024. 129. Akram Atallah in al-Ayyam (Ramallah), February 12, 2023; see also, e.g., Yahya Dabuq in al-Akhbar (Beirut), March 28, 2023; Abu Amir as quoted in Mideast Mirror, April 11, 2023; al-Masri as quoted in Mideast Mirror, April 12, 2023; Muhammad Nadir al-Umari in al-Watan (Damascus), April 13, 2023. 130. Haim Levinson in Ha’aretz, November 20, 2023.

9

The King and the East Bankers: An Uneasy Relationship

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.1 —William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II

WHEN KING HUSSEIN ASCENDED THE THRONE IN MAY 1953 AS A young man who had yet to turn eighteen, he professed no regional expansionist ambition like that of his grandfather King Abdallah I. In an unsettled Middle East where so-called revolutionaries or progressives, the pro-Soviet officer regimes, were pitted against their “reactionary” rivals, the pro-Western monarchies, Hussein sought no more than to survive in power. His primary objective was to maintain the integrity of his kingdom as he had inherited it on both banks of the Jordan River.

Abdallah II and “Jordan First”

For Abdallah II, the question of Palestine was of supreme importance, but only insofar as it affected the security and the stability of the Hashemite Kingdom on the East Bank. For him, the kingdom’s political and economic well-being was the single paramount concern. King Hussein had already laid the foundations for a shift toward a “Jordan First” vision in the last decade of his reign. His decision to disengage from the West Bank in 1988 and to sign the peace treaty with Israel in 1994 were essential building blocks of Jordanian statism and of the Jordanian nation- and statebuilding project.

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Abdallah II, with no expansionist ambitions in Palestine, had no incentive to meddle in Palestinian internal politics, a penchant that his father, Hussein, had never entirely overcome. The difference between them, both in policy and style, was immediately apparent. For Hussein the official Hamas presence in Jordan was a card to play in his occasionally subversive competition with Yasir Arafat. Indeed, Arafat suspected that Hussein collaborated with Hamas against him. Hamas leaders had offices in Amman on the premises of the Muslim Brotherhood and were generally allowed to operate without undue harassment by the mukhabarat.2 For Abdallah, the Islamists were a threat to the throne and an ideological impediment to the inculcation of a particularly Jordanian sense of collective identity. After all, in their worldview, Jordanians and Palestinians were all members of the Muslim ummah (community of believers) and any political distinction between them was an artificial remnant of a colonial dictate. From the outset, the Muslim Brotherhood had opposed Jordan’s disengagement from the West Bank, and the organization’s links to Hamas suggested an alternative collective identity and rallying cry for the Palestinians in the kingdom instead of loyalty to king and country. The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, like its sister Hamas, was also firmly opposed to the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine that Jordan envisioned as a supreme strategic interest. For Abdallah the presence of the Hamas leadership in Jordan was an irritant as well as an undesirable obstacle in relations with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). Within his first year on the throne, they were expelled from the kingdom. On November 21, 1999, Khalid Mash’al and a few other members of the Hamas politburo were unceremoniously placed on a flight to Qatar and banished from Jordan. The government made the incredulous explanation that the measure was taken in response to the request of the Hamas leaders themselves to be “allowed to leave the country.” Needless to say, this was flatly denied by Mash’al.3 The promotion of Jordanian uniqueness, the unwillingness to meddle in Palestinian politics, and the suspicion toward Hamas, in the mind of King Abdallah II, were never intended to marginalize the Palestinian citizens of Jordan on the East Bank. On the contrary, just like Hussein before him, he repeatedly emphasized that all citizens, irrespective of their origins, were full-fledged Jordanians.4 Abdallah quoted Hussein’s stern warning on the subject, that anyone tampering with national unity would be his enemy until “the day of judgment.”5 Abdallah’s vision of Jordan in the long run was of a kingdom whose Palestinian citizens would be fully integrated, loyal, equal, participating Jordanians. Once the Palestinians achieved their own right to statehood, Jordanians of

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Palestinian origin would be free to choose to become “Palestinian citizens and move to Palestine.” But all Jordan’s citizens who chose to remain in Jordan “whatever their background or origin, [would] remain Jordanian citizens” loyal to the Jordanian flag.6 Unlike his predecessors, Abdallah II was not motivated by a Hashemite pan-Arab mission or a historical role in Palestine as legitimizing tools of the monarchy. Abdallah was motivated by a deeply conscious desire to ensure the stability of the kingdom in its rather turbulent environment. In particular this meant protecting Jordan from the potential fallout of instability on the country’s borders, such as in Iraq and Palestine. From the moment of his ascension to the throne, Abdallah attached great importance to the kingdom’s economic development. He clearly believed that the economic well-being of the population, assuring the people a good life of prosperity, was the key to securing the stability of the country and the legitimacy of the monarchy. In his mind, therefore, the focus was on neoliberal economic development, privatization, free trade, and foreign investment as the vital components of the kingdom’s modernization and long-term prosperity.7 The modern Jordan that Abdallah had in mind included a substantive shift away from Hussein’s political style. Hussein had engaged in tribal politics, showered expensive gifts on political loyalists, and “allowed state enterprises to be run like fiefs” in the cultivation of the monarchy’s base of popular support. Abdallah, on the other hand, sought to advance his kingdom toward “a modern meritocracy.”8 Abdallah’s vision required the full integration of the kingdom’s Palestinians, both as a matter of principle and also as a practical necessity, considering their prominence in the country’s educated class and in all spheres of the economy, in finance, services, commerce, and industry. Abdallah initiated economic reforms such as subsidy cuts, privatization, and administrative reforms, even though these measures invariably affected the support of the traditionally ultraloyalist East Bankers. It was they who suffered from cutbacks in government jobs, it was the poorer population in the southern periphery of the country who felt the pinch of subsidy cuts more than others, and it was more often than not Palestinian entrepreneurs who were potentially in line to profit from the privatization of government enterprises. The conservative East Banker elite, fearing for their long-standing positions of political privilege, were often very effective in constraining Abdallah’s reformist inclinations and thereby preventing a possible erosion of their hitherto unrivalled primacy in the Jordanian political order. In such circumstances rising tensions between Abdallah and the veteran loyalists were unavoidable, and they were to overshadow much of his reign.

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King Abdallah’s initial effort to introduce comprehensive political and economic reform was the “Jordan First” initiative, which he set in motion in late 2002. The raging Al-Aqsa Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza and the fear of impending war in Iraq in the wake of 9/11 created an acute sense of urgency. Jordanian officials feared the “nightmare scenario of an Israeli mass expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank,” and from the east they similarly feared that they might be dragged into a US-Iraqi war or that massive numbers of Iraqi refugees might flow westward into Jordan.9 Abdallah sought the enhancement of domestic cohesion as a solid foundation for the kingdom’s collective identity and stability, at a time of regional upheaval, by launching an initiative for extensive political and economic reform. In a letter to Prime Minister Ali Abu al-Raghib at the end of October 2002, the king spoke of the conditions in the region that made it incumbent upon him to introduce the “Jordan First” plan of action, which would “fuse the Jordanians together in a united social fabric [nasij ijtima’i muwahhad] that would enhance their sense of belonging to their homeland and their pride in their national identity [wataniyyatihim10], their Arabism and their Islamic identity in a climate of freedom, democracy, pluralism, tolerance and social justice.” The “Jordan First” initiative was to serve as an instrument to mobilize the entire nation to create a successful, inclusive, healthy society and as a common denominator for all Jordanians irrespective of their different origins (min mukhtalaf usulihim).11 As Abdallah and Jordanian textbooks clarified too,12 “Jordan First” was not about isolationism but rather a tool for the mobilization of the entire society’s potential for the sake of the country and all of its people. But it did represent a clear break with the formerly dominant ideology of pan-Arabism, which had been in steady decline for decades. Jordanians were only now openly declaring what most Arabs had done increasingly ever since 1967 in emphasizing their territorial state identities rather than Arab nationalism or Arab unity. A National Commission on “Jordan First” was appointed by the king, and the final document it produced on December 18, 2002, claimed rather ambitiously that the initiative would represent a new social contract that would redefine the relationship between all the citizens, on an equal footing, and the state.13 An intensive public debate developed on the “Jordan First” initiative in the press, in social media, in political salons, on television, and in the street. Two fairly clearly defined camps emerged. One camp was that of “the new liberals” composed of the younger westernized economic elite—some of them East Bankers (Muslims and Christians) and many others of them Jordanians of Palestinian origin—who held important positions in the decisionmaking process and

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firmly believed in greater pluralism. The other camp was that of “the conservative political elite” composed almost entirely of Muslim East Bankers well represented in the government, in parliament, and in the media. In the eyes of the conservatives, the reformist, pluralist (integrationist and merit-based) components of the “Jordan First” initiative threatened to undermine the existing power structure and thus the very essence of the kingdom and the patron-client relationships that governed the country’s politics.14 After many years of calculated promotion of the Jordanian identity, “Jordan First” came naturally to Jordanians. The notion that Jordan’s interests came first was self-evident. For East Bankers this was obvious, and it also meant that Jordan was not an artificial colonial creation but their very real political patrimony, which, quite naturally, belonged to them. But for the neoliberals, many of whom were of Palestinian origin, “Jordan First” was a formula for sociopolitical reform and inclusion. “Jordan First,” therefore, had the effect, quite unintended by King Abdallah, of actually exacerbating Jordanian-Palestinian tensions in the kingdom.15 The discussion of “Jordan First” soon turned into a major domestic power struggle between the palace and the neoliberal elite, on the one hand, and the conservative elite on the other. The initial promise of the campaign actually inspired negative acts of discrimination by East Bankers against their Palestinian compatriots, resulting in a cool reception on their part, the intended demographic of the campaign from the start.16 At the end of the day, “Jordan First” was disappointing.17 The grand design to unify the Jordanian people of all extractions and to launch a wide-ranging reformist initiative that would liberalize both politics and the economy was a very tall order. There were no brilliant formulations on how precisely this was to be achieved. A sense of Jordanian identity was widely accepted among East Bankers. Having the Palestinians in the kingdom share in such a collective identity would have required a dramatic correction of Jordanian-Palestinian relations in the country and the promotion of an assimilationist approach on the part of East Bankers. But such an approach was not generally forthcoming.

The East Bankers and the Future of Palestine

A key guiding principle of Jordanian policy in defense of the kingdom of the East Bank was noninvolvement in the politics and administration of the West Bank. Spokespeople for the regime declared repeatedly that Jordan had no intention of reasserting its former role in Palestine. King Abdallah not only rejected the idea of delegating control of the West Bank to Jordan but saw it, as did many others, as part of a scheme to

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transfer the Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan.18 The establishment of an independent Palestinian state was therefore a Jordanian strategic interest and a condition for regional stability.19 A viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza would also reaffirm the reality of a unique Jordanian identity on the East Bank. Ever since Jordan’s disengagement from the West Bank in 1988, the regime had sought to form a national consensual identity that included the Palestinian citizens of the East Bank, without undermining the prerogatives of the East Banker elite. “Amid this tenuous balance of forces and identities,” any talk of resuming a Jordanian role in the West Bank was “political dynamite.” For Jordanian nationalists such a role for Jordan “would be the first step down the slippery slope of a silent Palestinian takeover of real power within the kingdom.”20 Anyone with expectations that the Jordanians would take upon themselves new responsibilities in the Palestinian-populated West Bank would first have to be cognizant of the nature of the Palestinian question for Jordan as a domestic political issue. Bringing some 3 million Palestinians back into Jordan’s political orbit could have very concrete implications for regime stability due to the highly combustible Jordanian-Palestinian political and socioeconomic dichotomy that ran through every facet of Jordanian society. All the same, Jordan’s reluctance to get directly involved in the West Bank did not rule out the possibility of a closer relationship in the more distant future with an independent state of Palestine. The idea of confederation had been part of the Jordanian and Palestinian discourse since the early 1970s. Despite the very real cleavages between Jordanians and Palestinians, they also had a lot in common in terms of language, religion, and culture. Historically, the secular nationalist divide between Jordanians and Palestinians was a late-twentieth-century phenomenon, considerably more recent than the sectarian division between Sunnis and Shi’is or Muslims and Christians that originated in the seventh century. Most Jordanians and Palestinians tended to believe that the two countries would eventually share a special relationship— though some in the Jordanian political elite and intelligentsia still totally rejected the idea. Fahd al-Fanik, one of the most widely read columnists of Jordan’s al-Ra’y daily and one of the country’s leading nationalist intellectuals, spoke the minds of many East Bankers when he dismissed notions of federation or confederation as Israeli machinations to solve Israel’s own Palestinian problem by putting an end to “Jordan’s Jordanianism” (Urdunniyyat al-Urdunn).21 As far as he was concerned there was no place for any such confederation, “not now, not later,” because of the potential impact it could have on Jordan’s own demographic composition.22

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Public support for some type of union tended to reaffirm the relative historical shallowness of the communal division between East Bankers and Palestinians. Arab and Muslim cultural ties and common heritage united Jordanians and Palestinians, and historical ties between the East and West Banks had existed for centuries. Jordanians and Palestinians, probably to a greater extent than any other two Arab peoples, were tied together by a web of historical affinity and intimacy. It was in this context that Hamas posed a threat to the Transjordanian nationalists by emphasizing the oneness of Muslims on both banks of the Jordan and well beyond, disputing and diluting the unique Jordanian identity of the East Bankers. Some radical Transjordanian nationalists would have readily disenfranchised their Palestinian compatriots; others might have even sought their removal to Palestine.23 The monarchy, however, had never adopted such positions under either Hussein or Abdallah II. Being “supra-communal, supra-tribal, supra-regional and supra-sectarian,”24 the monarchy’s concept of Jordanianism was never exclusionary. Moreover, Jordan and the Palestinian national movement were both products of the British Mandate in Palestine, and their respective fates were molded inseparably by the struggle for Palestine and by the Arab-Israeli conflict and its consequences. As two seasoned Jordanian observers (one Palestinian and the other Jordanian) noted, “It would be a historical anomaly, and an almost impossible nation-building challenge, for Jordan and Palestine to try to develop as independent states separated by the sorts of borders and socio-economic barriers that define relations amongst most Arab countries.” Jordanians and Palestinians were “more like Siamese twins.” They had never been separated, and to do so would “spell an end to both: culturally, nationally and economically, but foremost of all, politically.”25 Distinctive, authentic Jordanian and Palestinian identities had evolved, but historical ties, geographic proximity, and demographic realities were difficult to ignore. Jordan’s 1991 national charter, while fully cognizant of the distinctive Jordanian and Palestinian identities, simultaneously elaborated upon the extraordinary historical association between Jordan and Palestine. The charter asserted that some future unionist relationship between the states of Jordan and Palestine would be inevitable, provided that Jordanian national unity (between Jordanians and Palestinians on the East Bank) was maintained and there was no contradiction (tanaqud) between the Palestinian and Jordanian identities.26 This meant that such a future relationship should not transform the Palestinians in Jordan into a bridgehead for the “alternative homeland,” as the hard core Jordanian nationalists seriously feared. The 1985 agreement

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between Hussein and Arafat on a confederation between Jordan and the future state of Palestine came to naught at the time. Nevertheless, it established the terms of reference for the debate on future JordanianPalestinian ties. “Overwhelming majorities” of Palestinians and Jordanians were said to support the idea.27 But both Hussein and Abdallah II made clear that such an arrangement would only be possible after the Israelis and the Palestinians had concluded their own final-status agreement. The agreement, signed at the end of March 2013 between King Abdallah and the PA president Mahmud Abbas, emphasizing the joint Jordanian-Palestinian effort to defend Jerusalem, led some commentators to speculate that the accord might have been a first step toward confederation.28 Palestinian and Jordanian spokesmen dismissed the idea as premature, which indeed it was. All the same, in late April 2013 an angry manifesto was signed by no less than 1,000 Jordanian personalities, from across the entire political spectrum from left to right, denouncing “plots to undermine [Jordan’s] sovereignty” and its identity as a state and flatly rejecting confederation or any effort by Israel to exercise a “Jordan option” in solving the Palestinian question at Jordan’s expense.29 On the other side of the river, many Palestinians believed that the West Bank’s future could not be determined in isolation from Jordan and Jordanian interests. The Oslo agenda on security, borders, refugees, and the status of Jerusalem was as vital a concern for Jordan as it was for Israel and the Palestinians. Moreover, in recent years, with the withering of the institutions of the Palestinian national movement, the tendency of West Bankers “to see Amman as their social, political, and economic metropolis” had only grown.30 A survey taken in the West Bank in June and July 2019 suggested that large majorities in the West Bank and Gaza voiced favorable opinions of King Abdallah. Jordan was also favored for a “major role” in the future of Palestine by 63 percent of West Bankers and 51 percent of Gazans. Very few, however, wanted a confederation with Jordan.31 In light of the monarchy’s efforts to carefully calibrate domestic political sensitivities between Jordanians and Palestinians in the kingdom, as well as its dependence on the staunchly nationalist East Banker elite, the king would be unlikely in the extreme to accede to the suggestion, coming from some on the Israeli right, that Jordan immerse itself in running those parts of the West Bank that Israel chose not to annex in order to forestall the creation of a Palestinian state for Israel’s sake.32

The “Old Guard” and the Palestinians

As much as many East Bankers may have resented the fact, Palestine and the Palestinians were woven into the very inner fabric of Jordanian poli-

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tics and society. King Hussein and King Abdallah II sought the inclusion and integration as equals of Jordan’s Palestinian citizens as loyal Jordanians, rather than having them develop into an estranged, alienated, and potentially irredentist opposition.33 Hussein’s third wife, Queen Alya, of the well-known Tuqan family from Nablus, had died tragically in a helicopter accident in February 1977. On the occasion of Abdallah’s coronation, in June 1999, Queen Rania, also of Palestinian origin, was presented with Alya’s crown by Princess Haya, Alya’s daughter, no doubt as a symbolic gesture of Palestinian inclusion. Queen Rania, more than her predecessors, was intensively involved in state ceremonies, “with the avowed purpose of integrating the Palestinians into the Hashemite ‘family.’”34 But Abdallah did not possess the monarchical presence and authority that his father had earned in his many years on the throne. A systematic policy of inclusion and integration, while simultaneously promoting the Jordanian identity, may have passed with Hussein, but Abdallah encountered fierce resistance. Moreover, it was a matter of not just personalities but also politics and economics. The Jordanian-Palestinian cleavage was exacerbated by domestic economic change, in which East Bankers were often left holding the short end of the stick, and by the lack of progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track, which heightened fears among East Bankers that there would be no refugee return and they would be saddled with the large Palestinian presence in the kingdom for many years to come. Integrationist policies called for especially deft political tightrope walking, and, as Marwan Muasher noted, “not everyone shared sentiments about inclusiveness.”35 Palestinians in Jordan were generally more willing to integrate than the East Bankers were disposed to absorb them. Palestinians were also generally more supportive of democratization and economic liberalization, which would give them greater opportunity to exert political influence commensurate with their demographic weight and economic power.36 The East Bankers, for the most part, who dominated the political order, had no intention of conceding. Abdallah’s twin policies of distancing Jordan politically from the West Bank while integrating the Palestinians of the East Bank and of speeding up market reforms fueled a power struggle between the “old guard traditionalists,” East Bankers in the main, and “the new guard reformists,” many of whom were Palestinians.37 The economic reforms of the 1990s included two critical elements that presented a serious dilemma for the monarchy: privatization and bureaucratic reform. On the one hand, both policies were strongly supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), foreign investors, and the local business community. On the other, privatization and bureaucratic reform were adamantly opposed by East

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Bankers, who feared that both policies would eliminate many of the government jobs they had come to depend on for their livelihoods. Privatization focused at first on carefully selected public enterprises for sale to “strategic investors.” These were usually extremely wealthy Jordanians who enjoyed social and political ties to the palace. The palace thereby sought to avoid the perception that it was selling public assets to the Palestinian-dominated private sector to avert “a politically volatile clash” between East Bankers and Palestinians. King Hussein carefully managed economic liberalization measures in order to win the support of the IMF and the local business community, while also ensuring that these measures did not alienate the East Bankers.38 Abdallah had very firm neoliberal convictions that Hussein had never possessed. He tended to tread with less sociopolitical sensitivity and caution than his father. Abdallah went ahead even if reform meant the incorporation of Palestinians in large numbers into the upper echelons of the ruling elite. He persevered with privatization of the economy from which the Palestinian-dominated private sector might mostly benefit, despite the fact that the East Banker elite was liable to resist. Indeed, King Abdallah II often found his reform initiatives stymied by conservative East Banker resistance that, in the end, he could not afford to ignore. Palestinians and East Bankers were constantly competing for resources in the dichotomous reality where the East Bankers dominated the public sector and were naturally opposed to seeing assets shift into the Palestinian-dominated private sector. The economic dichotomy heightened the sense of disparity and discrimination in both communities, each one feeling deprived relative to the other.39 Generally speaking, tensions between Jordanians and Palestinians were palpable and pervasive and surfaced regularly in a variety of different contexts. As we have seen, Jordan’s two leading football clubs, al-Faysali (Jordanian) and al-Wahdat (Palestinian), were bitter rivals, and it was commonplace for their fans, naturally Jordanians and Palestinians, respectively, to exchange national insults and to generally provoke and fight with each other. More importantly, East Bankers tended to take exception to any manifestation of what appeared to them to be excessive Palestinian economic or political influence. Palestinian entrepreneurs had established dominance in Jordan’s private sector due to their superior education, their professional skills, and their more extensive and long-standing occupational links with the wealthy Arab economies in the Gulf, in comparison to their East Banker compatriots.40 When the government approached the issue of privatization in the Jordanian public sector, a move that threatened to undermine longstanding East Banker privilege, the East Banker elite was quick to react,

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making every effort to prevent accrual of any further advantage to the already predominant Palestinian mercantile class. King Hussein was a man of foreign policy and international affairs. Foreign affairs had an “irresistible glamor” for the young king.41 These were the issues that preoccupied him for a lifetime. For Hussein, Jordan’s survival was a function of its ability to skillfully maneuver between its Middle Eastern neighbors and the great powers. He was “notoriously uninterested in economic matters.”42 He had little real understanding of economic affairs and, in the words of one British ambassador, even seemed “unable, or unwilling, to do his financial homework,” turning his “Nelsonic . . . eye” on the country’s finances.43 Hussein had reluctantly engaged in the IMF reform program after Jordan’s economy crashed in 1989. He was especially cautious about privatizing state industries,44 and by the time of his death in 1999, he had not gone very far. King Abdallah, on the other hand, was more determined and quite convinced that Jordan’s stability and long-term survival depended on economic development and on its ability to provide for its rapidly growing population. He was dedicated to economic reform and to neoliberal solutions.45 Abdallah told reporters on the first anniversary of his father’s death that the “new generation and the new culture [was] the global economy.”46 Abdallah focused his attention on the economy and on plans to privatize state-owned companies, to encourage foreign investment, to downsize the bureaucracy, and to end subsidies. Such plans, which had languished for years under Hussein, were rapidly implemented by Abdallah,47 setting him directly on a collision course with the East Banker political elite and the regime’s traditional tribal base. It was clear from the outset that Abdallah tended to underestimate or overlook the social costs of his economic reforms for the majority of Jordanians. Within months after his ascension to the throne, Abdallah was personally involved in the most concentrated economic restructuring in Jordan’s history.48 His preference for neoliberal economics encouraged him to seek the formation of an alternative constituency of like-minded elites, often Palestinians, in order to challenge the entrenched traditional East Banker elite of state managers. Abdallah’s coalition shuffling pitted the traditionally dominant and largely Transjordanian military bureaucratic elite against what one East Banker called “an upstart coterie of younger, more entrepreneurial digitals—urban-based, [Palestinian] globalized rivals with ties to capital networks in the Gulf.”49 Jordan’s socalled antiquated elite was determined to resist.50 In April 1999, Abdallah appointed Adnan Abu Awda as his political advisor. Abu Awda had served King Hussein for decades in various ministerial, advisory, and diplomatic posts and was one of Jordan’s

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most prominent and accomplished Palestinian members of the ruling elite. Abu Awda had very firm opinions about the need for a much more inclusive policy toward the Palestinians in the kingdom and argued that the time had come for Palestinians to be full partners (shuraka) in government and in all walks of life and not just experts (khubara) serving the regime in a rather limited capacity.51 He had written a most insightful and penetrating book (in English) on the subject,52 and Abdallah would have been fully aware of Abu Awda’s opinions on Palestinian underrepresentation when he appointed him. However, when Abu Awda made his opinions known to the general public at a lecture cited in one of Jordan’s most widely read dailies (alDustur) in January 2000, he was forced to resign and subsequently also lost his seat in the Senate (a body appointed by the king). Jawad alAnani, also of Palestinian origin and a former cabinet minister and chief of the royal court, was similarly forced out of the Senate in 2001 after publishing an article critical of Palestinian exclusion.53 In removing Abu Awda and Anani, Abdallah was bowing to the pressure of the conservative East Banker elite, who were being allowed unprecedented sway over royal prerogative. There would be more to come. Almost every government appointed by Abdallah was instructed to engage in meaningful political reform. The reform was generally intended to create a more inclusive political system, which would gradually undercut the privileges of the “small elite class” of the East Banker elite in favor of a system based more on merit than on origin and patronage. But precisely these objectives aroused the determined resistance of the entrenched East Banker political and bureaucratic establishment, whose members dutifully fulfilled their self-appointed role as the “guardians of the state” who believed that “they alone should decide” how the country ought to be run, stifling any “policies that threaten[ed] their interests.”54 The king sought the enactment of a more modern and more representative election law, obviously intended to enhance Palestinian representation in parliament. But his directives were simply not implemented. Prior to the parliamentary elections held in June 2003, the amendments to the election law were virtually meaningless. They included an increase in the number of deputies from 104 to 110 and a quota of six seats for women, leaving intact the system that had been deliberately crafted to keep Palestinian representation to a bare minimum.55 The election districts were still gerrymandered in favor of provincial and rural constituencies with predominantly East Bank Jordanian populations and against the large urban centers like Amman, Zarqa, and Irbid with substantial Palestinian populations, thereby ensuring Palestinian underrepresentation. Many conservative East Bankers

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were determined to maintain this obviously lopsided seat distribution, arguing that Palestinian empowerment would serve the “alternative homeland” argument of the Israeli Right.56 It was abundantly clear that the country’s political elites were deeply divided between some, including the intelligence services, who continued to see democratization as a threat to stability, and others who saw it as the only way to ensure Jordan’s long-term security. The political reform process, largely instigated from above, was going nowhere.57 With the passage of time, it became increasingly obvious that Abdallah’s own vision of political reform was very limited. He favored greater Palestinian inclusion in the domestic political process, but real democratization was never part of the plan.

The Rise and Fall of the National Agenda

East Bankers tended to regard demands for liberalizing reforms, whether political or economic, “as an attempt by the Palestinian-Jordanian elite to pull the rug out” from under their feet and to strengthen the role of Palestinians in political decisionmaking. It was becoming ever-more apparent that the East Bankers within government institutions—the old guard—firmly rejected any inclination toward political and economic liberal reform. Their aim was to protect Jordanian national identity and its “main stronghold, the public sector” and to subvert the emergence of any powerful force promoting liberalization.58 Perhaps the most revealing example of the East Banker constraint on reformist politics was the conservative opposition to King Abdallah’s most determined and clearly conceptualized reform program known as the National Agenda, which was launched in early 2005. The National Agenda included a series of recommendations for far-reaching reform designed to promote greater Palestinian integration in the political order and the economy. The agenda aroused fierce opposition in the ranks of the East Banker elite in parliament, in the media, and among intellectuals, who argued that such policies threatened to dismantle the structure of the Jordanian state by eroding its national identity.59 The Chamber of Deputies was a conservative stronghold against any serious political reform. The election law was deliberately crafted to favor conservative East Bankers, and attempts by the opposition to amend the law repeatedly ended in failure. The original version of the current law came into force in 1993 following the stunning success of the Islamists in the 1989 elections. They had won thirty-two to thirtythree of the eighty seats in the Chamber of Deputies and, together with leftist opposition parties, actually commanded a majority.

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In the run-up to the 1993 elections, initial projections pointed toward another Islamist victory. There was even talk of a “landslide.”60 The regime did not have the slightest intention of allowing that to happen. The election law was therefore amended by royal decree. The new system was based on “one person, one vote,” which sounded flawless but was actually designed to achieve an antidemocratic purpose. The new system allowed voters to cast one ballot only for one candidate running in their constituency. In the previous system voters could cast a number of ballots equal to the number of deputies in each particular constituency. This allowed voters to split their votes between candidates they supported because of family and tribal loyalties and others whom they supported for more political or ideological reasons. As the Muslim Brotherhood was by far the most well-organized group, they could mobilize their supporters to vote en bloc for their candidates to an extent that their competitors could not equal. The new system was deliberately designed to prevent a repetition of this performance. As voters were now restricted to one vote only, in a society where family, clan, and tribal allegiances were the most powerful of all political bonds, the people tended to prefer family affiliations to ideological inclinations. As intended, the ideological and religious candidates fared worse in subsequent elections, and the Islamists were never able to repeat the success of 1989. Independent candidates, relying on kinship and/or regional affiliations, regularly won the majority of the seats. The number of seats won by the Muslim Brotherhood fell in the 1993 election despite the fact that the number of votes and the share of the vote earned by its political party, the IAF, were actually higher than in 1989. The figures indicated just how important the new electoral law was in weakening the Brotherhood’s ability to win seats in parliament and in strengthening the control of conservative East Bankers.61 Since the constituencies in Jordan had always been gerrymandered at the expense of the more politicized Palestinian-populated urban centers, parliaments were invariably packed with loyal and conservative East Bankers bent on the preservation of their political preeminence. The regime’s determination to undercut the political efficacy of the Islamists also undermined Palestinian representation. There was a strong link between the fact that the power centers of the Islamists were in the densely populated cities of Amman, Zarqa, and Irbid and the fact that these had large Palestinian populations. The executive authority, through the minister of interior, had full control over the determination of electoral districts. These were systematically designed to overrepresent the loyalist, strongly tribal south in Karak, Tafila, Ma’an, and Aqaba, at the expense of Amman, Zarqa, and Irbid, in accordance with the interest of

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the regime to weaken the Islamists and party politics in general.62 Repeatedly over the years, the opposition attempted in advance of general elections to have the one-person, one-vote system abolished and to alter the constituency structure, but to no avail. Under King Abdallah II the government made various cosmetic changes from campaign to campaign. The number of deputies was increased from 80 in 1989 to 104 in 2001, 110 in 2003, and then 120 in 2010 (for more, see below and Chapter 10). The voting age was reduced from nineteen to eighteen. A quota for women members of parliament was introduced, at first set at six and subsequently raised to twelve. As if to add insult to injury, elections were also rigged at times to further ensure that they could not possibly produce undesirable results.63 Not surprisingly, the public had little respect for or trust in the parliamentary process, and the levels of participation in elections were relatively low. Just over half of Jordan’s registered voters tended to participate, but since only about two-thirds of the citizenry of voting age were actually registered, that meant that only some 40 percent of the voting-age populace actually bothered to have a say in the electoral process.64 This was especially true for Palestinians, who sensed that a vote could actually change little in a system designed to underrepresent them. Turnout rates for rural East Bankers were much higher than those for urban-based Palestinian voters. The rural bias of the Jordanian electoral law and the 1993 amendment of this law signaled to the rural areas “that tribalism and patronage were the vehicles for people’s upward mobility.”65 In the parliamentary debate on Abdallah’s National Agenda in the summer of 2005, the conservative bloc threatened to vote no confidence in the government. One of the opposition’s main complaints was against the appointment of the Palestinian Basim Awadallah as minister of finance. He was an economist with a PhD from the London School of Economics and one of the key architects of King Abdallah’s reform project. Despite Abdallah’s military background, his closest associates were neoliberal technocrats or like-minded entrepreneurs. The pace of neoliberal reform quickened under the influence of Awadallah, who was the most prominent adviser to the palace and chief economic planner. Awadallah oversaw the dismembering of publicly owned mining, energy, and telecom firms. These sectors had been dominated by large public enterprises whose entitlements had “formed one of the main pillars of mukhabarat patronage,” binding the large class of educated East Bankers to the monarchy.66 While Awadallah was the politician most associated with Jordanian Palestinians, the lightning rod for resentment was Queen Rania. For

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many East Bankers, her rise (and the specter of her son Hussein’s eventual coronation) seemed to confirm the transformation of Hashemite Jordan from a regime based on an East Banker asabiyya (tribal group solidarity) into what they already saw as “an alternative Palestinian homeland.”67 The conservatives would not yield unless Awadallah was dismissed. King Abdallah and his prime minister, Adnan Badran, succumbed to the pressure and accepted Awadallah’s resignation in June 2005.68 This was the beginning of the end of the entire reform project. Another of the key figures in the reform effort, Marwan Muasher, who was chair of the steering committee for the National Agenda and also deputy prime minister in charge of reform, was, like Awadallah, an outsider to the “old guard” East Banker elite. Muasher, though an East Banker, was a Christian and another of the Western-educated reformists, decried by the conservatives as “neoliberals,” who had to go.69 Muasher was dropped from the cabinet in November 2005. He was appointed to the Senate for two years, in a posting of more prestige than power, and as of 2007 he spent much of his time in positions outside the country. The king appointed Awadallah to the even more important post of chief of the royal court in April 2006 but was forced by the East Banker elite to get rid of him again two years later, in September 2008.70 In July 2006 the National Agenda was dealt its coup de grâce when the plan to change the election law and introduce proportional representation was finally shelved.71 The political liberals were lobbying to introduce a mixed electoral system, whereby each voter would be given two votes: one for a constituency-based candidate and the other for a national list that would be based on proportional representation and thus encourage the emergence of political parties with representation in parliament. The percentage of seats given to party lists versus districts would gradually increase in each election cycle to allow Jordanians to get accustomed to such a system by gradually moving away from tribal-based politics and transitioning to a stronger, party-based parliament. For the conservatives, a system that might provide opportunities to talented Palestinians was a threat to their long-standing privileged status. Since they would not attack the king directly, they attacked the reformers instead. No countervailing force existed to match the influence of the traditional elite, and their fierce opposition led to the demise of the National Agenda before it had a chance to make any headway.72 One of the most telling examples of the political elite’s position involved a meeting between some of the major figures in the traditional elite—all members of the Senate, the appointed upper house of parliament—and the king in early June 2005.

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Abdallah was concerned that much of the criticism leveled against the National Agenda had originated in this group, and he argued in favor of the comprehensive reform program. In response, one senator told the king that the real problem began with the group around him, which was prioritizing “merit over loyalty”—suggesting that the two were mutually exclusive—and indicated that he and his group could not support such an agenda. Nowhere was this fundamental difference more prominently displayed than during the discussions surrounding the proposed new election law. The “old guard” would countenance no more than cosmetic reforms that would retain the flawed one-person, one-vote formula. The king’s directives aside, the East Banker elite was unprepared to relinquish power and proceeded to mount a fierce campaign in the press against political liberals, portraying them as economic neoliberal reformers who were unconcerned with the devastating social effects of economic liberalization. They also accused the liberals of participating in a conspiracy to weaken the Jordanian state. Buttressed by the support of most of the state’s political and military institutions, the elite once again invoked the argument of stability versus reform and painted the entire plan as both premature and dangerous.73 In early November 2005 three shocking bomb attacks on prominent Amman hotels by an arm of al-Qaida in Iraq claimed the lives of some sixty Jordanians. A new government was appointed at the end of November headed by Ma’ruf al-Bakhit, a retired major general and a stalwart of Jordan’s East Banker security elite, one hardly enamored of reform projects such as the National Agenda, of which he had been one of the most vocal opponents. In November 2007, Bakhit presided over probably one of the most fraudulent elections ever held in Jordan. The old guard continued to exploit prevalent security concerns to drive home their argument that the time was not ripe for reform—which, they contended, would be used to empower the radicals. The National Agenda had served as the ultimate battleground for reform, and the “old guard” had prevailed. The “first holistic, inclusive, and measurable reform program in the Arab world was dead on arrival, shelved just as soon as it was completed.”74

Abdallah and the East Bankers: Issues of Personality

As the years went by, an unprecedented crack appeared in the edifice of the traditionally loyalist elite and among the rank and file of the regime’s tribal support. Two cardinal issues drove the wedge between Abdallah and the East Bankers: the monarch’s assimilationist attitude

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toward the Palestinians, refugees included, in the kingdom and his belief in neoliberal economic reform, which eroded the historical social contract with the East Bankers.75 That King Abdallah II was married to a Palestinian did not make matters any easier. There were other personal matters as well. His mother was English. He had spent much of his life, from early childhood well into his twenties, abroad, where he also received his education, in England and the United States. He was more comfortable in his first language, which was English.76 He was “steeped in American culture” and spoke a less-than-flawless Arabic. He lacked the image of intimacy with the tribes that characterized his father. He “sat stiffly among them” and was said to feel more comfortable in the company of foreigners. All of the above contributed to many in the East Banker traditional tribal base viewing him as an outsider.77 Abdallah, at times, treated members of the East Banker tribal elite with disdain, dismissing them disparagingly as “dinosaurs.”78 Hussein had some similar issues, but never to the same degree. Queen Nur was American, Hussein was bilingual and bicultural, and he was well regarded in the West. These did Hussein as much harm as good. “They contributed to a kind of external identity that enhanced the king’s panache and power,” but they were also “morally contaminating in the eyes of many Jordanians.”79 Still, there was really no comparison between the two in terms of their presence and relative natural intimacy with the people. Thus, for example, Abdallah’s speeches to the nation were few and far between compared to Hussein’s. Possibly because of his imperfect Arabic, Abdallah made two or three a year, usually including a speech on Independence Day, another on a Muslim holiday like Id al-Fitr, and the speech from the throne opening parliament. These were invariably brief, and even the speech from the throne would be rather short, delivered in fifteen minutes or so. Hussein’s speeches from the throne were usually detailed and informative hourlong “state of the kingdom” addresses on local, regional, and international affairs in an Arabic that his people admired. Hussein made approximately twenty speeches a year to the nation on Muslim and national holidays, at regional events, at a wide variety of venues, like graduation ceremonies from universities or military and police academies, at scientific, medical, and academic conferences, on occasions like teachers’ or workers’ day, and so forth. Hussein always gave the impression of being a communicator in touch with the common people. In contrast, most of Abdallah’s substantive and detailed addresses were made abroad to foreigners in English rather than in Jordan to his own people in Arabic.80 Years after King Hussein’s passing, the people still adored the former monarch, and East Bankers appeared to “extend that nostalgic glow” to

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Prince Hamza rather than to Abdallah. In Amman, it was often said that if King Hussein had lived a few years longer, he would have made Hamza, not Abdallah, his successor.81 Many tribesmen, who still insisted on their loyalty to the monarchy, “flaunt[ed] their preference” for Hamza as an alternative. Hamza would be better than Abdallah, they thought, because King Hussein had trained him to be king. Growing up Hamza was often sent to move among the tribesmen, to polish his Arabic, and to work on the common touch that his father had. Hamza’s “rich Arabic lilt (acquired during a youth living with tribesmen)” endeared him to East Bankers, in contrast to the foreign-educated Abdallah, who was “sometimes derided for being more fluent in English than in Arabic.” During the 2011–2012 protests of the Arab Spring, there was a “popular outcry” for Hamza in the newly formed East Banker protest movement, deeply rooted in the younger generation of the tribal hinterland and known as the Hirak.82 During the Arab Spring, King Abdallah’s unpopularity was such that in political salons and coffeehouses, as well as among diplomats, the question of his abdication became a hot subject, discussing whether he ought to surrender the throne to Hamza or to his son, the current crown prince Hussein. In Ajlun, for example, people openly discussed whether Abdallah II should be Jordan’s “last king,” while others debated whether he should be replaced by a different Hashemite. East Bankers sought the restoration of the old social contract and “were musing about which Hashemite might be better to deliver it.” An autocratic incumbent expected to reign for life “was already cast as a political failure in language that, just a few years prior, would have elicited harsh repression.”83

The Monarch and the Elite: On a Collision Course

The tensions of personality were closely interrelated with matters of high politics such as political reform, the place of the Palestinians in the kingdom, and the economy. These created cyclical manifestations of discord, which became a permanent feature of the political scene in the second decade of King Abdallah’s reign. Tribal loyalty to the crown, cultivated since the 1920s and 1930s, gradually created a heavy dependence of the tribes on government employment in the bureaucracy, the military, and the security agencies, providing the manpower that secured the fledgling authoritarian regime. The more consistent neoliberal policies under Abdallah steadily reduced the flow of public funds and goods to tribal communities, which also had rapidly growing populations. Civil and military institutions could no longer satisfy the rising labor demands, and privatization of state-owned enterprises often resulted in downsized workforces, which only aggravated unemployment.

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Initially, Abdallah had been more cautious and selective in the institution of economic reform, protecting the monarchy’s East Bank social base. Privatization of government enterprises did not pass over royal allies, and the regime was careful about laying off bureaucrats and downsizing the armed forces.84 But as time went by, the new king launched an accelerated privatization drive, deepening the neoliberal state to an extent that King Hussein had avoided. East Bankers, especially from the poorer south, began to complain that the regime’s neoliberal economic reforms had shifted Jordan’s economy from the public to the private sector. New allegiances were becoming noticeable as traditional ones shifted. As East Bankers became more critical of the regime, “Palestinians in Jordan’s business community found themselves in the role of defenders of the monarchy.”85 Free market capitalism, privatization, and fiscal austerity, as required of Jordan by the IMF and the World Bank, came at the expense of the bloated public sector, in which East Bankers were overrepresented. Restraining government expenditure eroded social safety nets, welfare services, and subsistence-level incomes, which also tended to hurt East Bankers more than their Palestinian compatriots.86 Large areas of the East Bank periphery were impoverished. Many East Bankers “watched in dismay as billions poured into gleaming megaprojects and upgraded infrastructure in Amman, Aqaba and the Dead Sea resort area,” while privatization was perceived to be disproportionately benefitting the Amman-based Palestinian bourgeoisie.87 But even after a decade of neoliberal reform under Abdallah, the government and the armed forces still employed more than half the national labor force.88 The military and the various security services were actually increased in size and power, creating what Anne Marie Baylouny has described as “militarized liberalization” or “militarizing welfare,” of which East Bankers were the main beneficiaries.89 These measures notwithstanding, the economy could not keep up with the rapidly growing population and increasing demand for employment. Generally, in comparison to Hussein, Abdallah and his palace bureaucracy were less attentive to tribal sensibilities and concerns. Senior military appointments were determined more by merit than by the tendency to balance tribal affiliations. Tribal land disputes did not elicit the personal intervention of the king as they had in Hussein’s time. Abdallah was more interested in creating an efficient capitalist urban economy than in “mediating messy tribal conflicts.” East Bankers frequently interpreted Abdallah’s standoffishness as an affront.90 The fact that many of the technocrats and officials involved in the reform process were of Palestinian origin only added to East Banker resentment and sense that they were being “marginalized in [their] own country.”91

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Another cause of tension between the king and the East Bankers related to the presence of the large number of Palestinian refugees in Jordan. Many East Bankers were concerned that these refugees, and perhaps other Palestinians too, from Lebanon, for example, might be settled in Jordan permanently, at the long-term expense of the original Jordanians. Whenever infrastructure projects were conducted in refugee camps, as part of their essential maintenance and to ensure reasonable living conditions for the people there, the government had to provide public assurances that such projects were not part of a scheme to permanently resettle the refugees in Jordan.92 In the summer of 2009, the king was compelled to launch an intensive media campaign to counter rumors that Jordan was giving up on the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees. Jordan, so the rumors also suggested, was being pressured by the United States and Israel to acquiesce in massive refugee resettlement in Jordan in order to transform Jordan into the “alternative homeland” for the Palestinians. King Abdallah emphatically denied the accusations and reaffirmed Jordan’s unwavering support for the “right of return” and for compensation (that is, not return or compensation). These kinds of rumors were symptomatic of the extreme sensitivity and apprehension among Jordanians on the refugee question,93 especially among the ultranationalist East Banker elite. The fact that they and Abdallah repeatedly found themselves on opposing sides of the political battle lines did not bode well for the monarchy. On May 1, 2010, the National Committee of Retired Servicemen, a representative body of retired army veterans, speaking for some 140,000 members, published a manifesto criticizing the monarchy and the country’s Palestinian citizens. The manifesto was authored by two very well-known East Bank Jordanian nationalists, Tariq al-Tall (an Oxford-trained academic and the son of Wasfi al-Tall’s brother, Muraywid) and Nahid Hattar (the prominent writer, journalist, and commentator).94 It warned of a possible solution to the Palestinian question that was promoted by Israel and would entail the forced emigration (tahjir) of Palestinians from the West Bank and the massive long-term resettling of Palestinian refugees in Jordan. Far too many Palestinians were being given citizenship in Jordan, and coupled with the notion of a proportionally representative political system, this was all designed to foster a political order dominated by a Palestinian majority. Palestinians were being appointed to sensitive positions in the highest ranks of the administration, and such vulnerabilities were exacerbated by the state’s policy of privatization, which tended to further empower the (untrustworthy Palestinian) forces of big business, corruption, and

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“suspect investments.” These developments led to a spiraling increase in the public debt, budget deficits, and bankruptcy and to the “spread of poverty, hunger and unemployment,” which all tended to dispossess original Jordanians. All of the above occurred at a time when the centers of power and the “ruling families” (i.e., the royal family and a few others) were the real decisionmakers, who appointed governments and thus “prevented the Jordanian people” from really exercising their right to selfdetermination and from “defending their homeland and interests.”95 The veterans called for strict observance of the constitution, which, they argued, did not allow for anyone other than the king himself, irrespective of title or relationship to the king (i.e., not people like Queen Rania), to exercise the authority of the monarchy. Such monarchical authority was to be wielded through a government that enjoyed the confidence of parliament and genuinely “represented the Jordanian people” rather than (Palestinian) centers of influence, ruling families, or big business. In an effort to ensure the irreversibility of the 1988 decision to disengage from the West Bank, they called for its incorporation into the constitution (dastarat fakk al-irtibat). This was designed, so they said, to put an end to any interference in West Bank affairs or to West Banker input in Jordanian affairs through the professional associations or other organizations or political parties, an implicit reference to the Muslim Brotherhood and various parties in which Palestinians were particularly influential. Most critically they explicitly advocated the eventual disenfranchisement of many or possibly even most of the Palestinians in the kingdom. Those Palestinians who were presently unable to return to their original homes (in Israel of today) would remain Jordanian citizens until such time as UN Resolution 194 was fully implemented and they would be allowed to exercise their right of return. Others who could return (to the West Bank) should be given Palestinian citizenship and ought to exercise their political rights in their own country, that is, in Palestine and not in Jordan. Jordan ought to have a nationalist and patriotic government that should defend the country, launch a campaign against corruption, resume public ownership of strategic sectors of the economy, introduce a progressive system of taxation based on social justice, and initiate a development policy that would give priority to the rural and desert areas, that is, the areas where Transjordanians comprised the major part of the population. The kingdom also ought to strengthen the armed forces and heighten their preparedness to face the Israeli threat. Lastly, they called for a reevaluation of the “Jordanian national identity” in all spheres. This meant allowing freedom of political organization and

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action to the Jordanian National Movement and striking at the forces connected to the “Zionist Plan,” a rather oblique reference to the overall need to reduce Palestinian influence, direct and indirect, in all walks of life throughout the kingdom, from the palace down.96 The petition was an extraordinary example of opposition from within the inner sanctum of the East Banker elite. The veterans spoke for a significant segment of East Bankers who felt that the weight of Palestinian numbers and influence was a form of dispossession,97 so much so that among East Bankers it was not uncommon for some to equate themselves with the “Red Indians.”98 This acute sense of dispossession was exacerbated even further by the influx of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and by the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees (1 million and more according to the regime but only some 675,000 according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees99) who fled the civil war in Syria after 2011. The kingdom, these East Bankers feared, was losing its Jordanian identity as the original Jordanians were becoming “an endangered species.”100 The response to the army veterans came from an unlikely source. A counterpetition drafted by former prime minister and director of the mukhabarat Ahmad Ubaydat was circulated and signed in mid-May 2010 by thousands of Jordanians and Palestinians alike. Coming from all walks of life and including Arab nationalists, leftists and Islamists, and former government officials,101 they were as representative as the veterans, if not more so. Ubaydat was no stalwart of the regime either and had been a long-standing critic ever since the peace treaty with Israel, which he had firmly rejected. The fact that the king could mobilize no one more wholeheartedly supportive was indicative of his own relative plight. Ubaydat’s statement spoke of Jordanian-Palestinian amity but had nothing to say in favor of the monarchy. Ubaydat’s statement called for democratic reform and especially for a change in the controversial election law. The main focus, however, was on Jordanian-Palestinian relations. It condemned those who stirred up narrow-minded regionalist sentiments in an effort “to convert the conflict with the Zionist enemy into a conflict between the sons of the one [Arab Jordanian] people.” The statement proposed to base Jordanian-Palestinian relations on the relevant section of the Jordanian National Charter of 1991, which underscored the especially intimate historical association between Jordanians and Palestinians. In the words of the charter, as repeated in the statement in full, The Arab Palestinian identity was an identity of political struggle [hawiyya nidaliyya siyasiyya], and was not, and should not be, in

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contradiction to the Arab Jordanian identity. The contradiction was solely with the Zionist imperialist scheme. Just as the national Palestinian identity is antithetical to the Zionist scheme and is waging a struggle to destroy it, so the Jordanian national identity . . . is similarly antithetical to the Zionist scheme serving to fortify Jordan against the Zionist designs and its various pretensions.102

All Jordanian citizens therefore, of whatever origin, should be devoted to the cause of national unity to protect the kingdom’s national security and to guarantee that all Jordanian citizens, without any discrimination, should exercise their constitutional rights in full equality.103 The uproar on the refugee question resulted from the fact that King Abdallah really did have a credibility gap on this issue. Abdallah believed in the two-state solution, and it was clear to the Jordanian government, as it was to the general public, that Israel would not likely accept any more than a symbolic return of Palestinian refugees. UN Resolution 194 dealing with refugee return was not mentioned in the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty. In the treaty the parties had agreed that the refugee problem would be resolved, inter alia, through the “implementation of agreed United Nations programs and other agreed international economic programs . . . including assistance to their settlement [that is, not return].”104 That the Jordanian government did not really believe there would be much refugee return to Israel proper was also evident in the demand made by Jordan in the late 1990s that the kingdom receive as a host state over $5 billion for “infrastructure compensation.” The Jordanians hoped that such compensation would help not only to absorb the refugees and to upgrade the infrastructure in the camps but also to counter East Banker resistance if it were to be understood that the economy stood to benefit substantially.105 Conversely, the government succumbed to pressure from East Bankers when thousands of West Bankers in Jordan who did not possess Israeli residency permits for the West Bank lost their Jordanian citizenship. This was said to be a means of blocking Israeli designs to transfer Palestinians to Jordan but was really intended to reduce the number of Palestinians in the kingdom.106 In February 2010 Human Rights Watch published a report claiming that over 2,700 Jordanians of Palestinian origin had lost their citizenship between 2004 and 2008. They had returned to Jordan after being expelled from Kuwait in 1991, that is, after Jordan’s 1988 disengagement from the West Bank, which provided the legal loophole for officials to strip them of their citizenship.107 In August 2012, the Jordanian Initiative for Equal Citizenship, which included many prominent Palestinian Jordanians from the political, intellectual, and economic elites, sent a letter to King Abdallah complaining of the exclusion and marginalization felt by Jordanian

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Palestinians. They were treated with suspicion and were systematically underrepresented in parliament. They were discriminated against in university admissions, and in employment in the civil service and the judiciary, and the security authorities kept tabs on Palestinian citizens by noting origin and descent in civil records and registers. Generally, they argued, they suffered various forms of discrimination and were treated like “second-class” citizens.108 These ever-present Jordanian-Palestinian sensitivities, never allowing the two to fully cooperate against the regime, were a critical dimension of the Jordanian version of the Arab Spring that hit the streets of the kingdom in early 2011.

Jordanians, Palestinians, and the Arab Spring

Massive demonstrations rocked Tunis and Cairo at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011,109 leading to the downfall of two of the longest ruling “presidents for life”110 in the Middle East: Tunisian president Zayn al-Abdin bin Ali in December 2010, followed shortly thereafter by Egyptian president Husni Mubarak in February 2011. The revolutionary events were the harbingers of what became known as the Arab Spring, which spread like wildfire throughout the region, including Jordan. The Arab Spring emboldened the opposition in the kingdom by eroding the deterrent effect of the notorious “fear of government” (haybat al-sulta), just as it had elsewhere in the Arab world. For some two years, Jordan experienced almost weekly demonstrations, led by the Muslim Brotherhood and other opponents of the regime. They demanded political reform and decried the pervasive corruption in the country, which they argued was the major cause for the depletion of the state’s resources and the declining living standards of the general public. On the one hand, the continuous demonstrations reflected the perseverance and determination of the opposition and the depth of popular disaffection; on the other hand, they also demonstrated the staying power of the regime and the relative ineffectiveness of its fractious opponents. Like other Arab states, Jordan faced structural economic difficulties that resulted in high levels of poverty and unemployment, exacerbated by steadily rising food and fuel prices. Making matters worse from the regime’s point of view, in the years prior to the Arab Spring members of the loyalist East Banker community had increasingly vented their misgivings about Jordan’s domestic politics, and cracks had begun to appear even in the upper echelons of the political establishment. Generally speaking, according to various local sources, as 2010 drew to a close, there was considerable “political anxiety” in Jordan.

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In addition to strategic concerns about the stagnant Arab-Israeli peace process and the impact of the global economic downturn, Jordanians were also becoming more concerned about the “culture of corruption that [was] socially sanctioned and condoned.” Corruption was deemed to be rampant, as it filtered down from the “high profilers” to “all levels of government.” Jordan’s underdeveloped political system was said to be in urgent need of reform. The country’s underrepresentative parliament and its largely subservient media, which were “micromanaged by the government,” resulted in an absence of avenues for popular expression and participation and led in turn to occasional outbreaks of violence on the part of those seeking redress.111 But on the eve of the Arab Spring, irrespective of any such residue of public anxiety, all seemed like business as usual in the Hashemite Kingdom. The regime periodically generated expectations for reform. Parliamentary elections were held at more or less regular intervals, and frequent cabinet replacements or reshuffles repeatedly created an illusion of imminent change that never fully materialized. The modus operandi of governance in Jordan was in effect an endless process of treading water, continually offering an array of essentially cosmetic reforms, that had reinvented itself for decades. King Abdallah had dissolved the Chamber of Deputies in November 2009, only halfway through its term. Elected in November 2007, in elections that had been notoriously rigged, the outgoing chamber enjoyed little public credibility. New elections were held in November 2010 in accordance with the existing election law, which was still based on a voting system that was tilted against political parties and reflected an unfair distribution of seats in favor of the rural tribal vote and against the predominantly Palestinian urban constituencies. Here the Muslim Brotherhood and their political party, the IAF, enjoyed considerable support. Since the law was custom designed to contain the Islamists, the IAF—not for the first time—boycotted the 2010 elections. The chamber that was elected was, as could be expected, filled to the brim with stalwart conservative supporters of the regime. Prime Minister Samir al-Rifa’i (son of former prime minister Zayd al-Rifa’i and grandson of another former premier, Samir al-Rifa’i), who had been in office since December 2009, was entrusted by the king at the end of November 2010 to form another cabinet. In late December the new government received an unprecedented 111–8 vote of confidence from the 120-member Chamber of Deputies.112 This was an arrogant vote of detached disregard for the general public that the deputies would live to regret. They soon became the target of ridicule and scorn, vented on social media and by the general public.113

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With wide sectors of the population suffering from economic hardship and vociferous disaffection apparent even within the ranks of the establishment, Jordanian democracy was being exposed as a sham. The men at the helm, ostensibly in a position of unlimited power and manipulative control, were complacent enough to continue as always with their vacuous politics of routine deception. Precisely at this juncture, at the conclusion of yet another cycle of cosmetic change, the crisis in Tunisia broke, rapidly followed by the breathtaking events in Tahrir Square in Cairo. Yet the force and intensity of the protests in Amman and elsewhere hardly compared with the whirlwind of events that shocked some of the neighboring countries. Demonstrators numbered in the hundreds, occasionally in the thousands, and for the most part called for reform rather than for the overthrow of the regime.114 Even so, the local unrest was cause for much concern for King Abdallah and his government—particularly in light of the combination of potentially destabilizing trends that had been at work in Jordan for decades, ever since the late 1980s. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the local protest movement was significantly hampered by Jordan’s identity politics. All were united in the demand for greater democratization of the political system. But East Bankers also feared that a more representative and accountable political process might be self-defeating. In all likelihood, it would serve the Palestinians (and thus the Islamists too) by undermining the East Banker political advantage grafted into the existing structure. Jordanians and Palestinians joined forces at times in expressing their opposition to the regime, but they were frequently at loggerheads with each other, often operating at cross-purposes. Palestinians were represented in the main through the Muslim Brotherhood, of which they were the key constituents, while Jordanians were represented in a motley assortment of generally uncoordinated regional groupings, especially of the younger generation in the provincial south of the kingdom. The trouble started in early January 2011 in the especially underprivileged rural periphery south of Amman, which had been the focus of social unrest in recent years. In demonstrations and riots in places like Dhiban in the Madaba Governorate just south of Amman and in the towns of Karak and Ma’an further south, protesters decried unemployment, price hikes, newly imposed taxes, and general economic distress and called for the removal of the Rifa’i government.115 Ostensibly frustrated in his efforts to advance reform, King Abdallah claimed to have seen the Arab Spring as “the root shock” that he needed “to move the process forward.”116 In fact, his ideas on political reform were conservative, but he directed the government to take “immediate and effective steps to mitigate the impact” of the severe economic conditions on the

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people’s standard of living.117 The government announced aid packages reducing taxes on fuel, raising subsidies, and offering cost-of-living allowances. But these steps did not mollify the opposition; instead, protests, in downtown Amman and in other towns as well, steadily gained momentum. A set pattern of usually peaceful weekly demonstrations after Friday prayers developed in late January and continued almost unabated for two years. The protesters condemned the neoliberal economic policies of the government and criticized the privatization of state enterprises and the corruption that came with it. They called for the dismissal of the government, for the dissolution of parliament (whose credibility was at rock bottom), and for new elections to be held under a revised election law.118 The opposition was now determined to obtain real and not cosmetic reform that would include the weakening of the powers of the monarchy through amendments to the constitution. In early February, King Abdallah dismissed Prime Minister Samir al-Rifa’i, who was replaced by Ma’ruf al-Bakhit, the former major general who had served a previous term as prime minister (2005–2007). The king directed him “to take speedy practical and tangible steps to unleash a real political reform process that reflects [Jordan’s] vision of comprehensive reform, modernization and development.”119 Bakhit’s appointment, however, highlighted the king’s own dilemma. For the opposition he was clearly not the answer. As the IAF immediately pointed out, his public image was hardly that of a reformer. Bakhit was the prime minister who had overseen what were commonly known as the “forged elections” (intikhabat al-tazwir) of 2007. If anything, Bakhit represented precisely those East Bankers who were the major obstacle to real reform. Abdallah seemed to be trying to square the circle by appointing a stalwart of the security establishment to ensure peace and quiet, on the one hand, and to institute reform that the East Banker establishment would not resist, on the other.120 The crisis lingered on, and the Brotherhood and other opponents of the regime, both from the Left and from the nonaligned younger East Banker generation of protesters, now sought formal limitations on the monarch’s prerogatives. Governments, they argued, as in Western-style constitutional monarchies, should be directly responsible to parliament and not to the king. The majority in parliament, and not the king, they contended, ought to choose the prime minister from one of its number, and the upper house of parliament, the Senate, should be elected by the people and not appointed by the king, as was the case at present. As the demands escalated Abdallah was dealt another painful blow from within the traditional establishment. In early February, a group of

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thirty-six tribal figures published a harshly critical statement against the monarchy, similar in many respects to the statement issued by the military veterans in May 2010. The very existence of such brazen public challenges “would have been unthinkable” in King Hussein’s time.121 The statement of the tribal leaders spoke of a “crisis of governance” and called for stern action against the pervasive corruption by means of which certain “power centers [an oblique reference to the queen and to other Palestinians] are plundering the country.” The signatories demanded true democratic reform that would put an end to the present system of injustice and oppression, according to which governments were appointed by the king instead of being elected by the people. They categorically rejected the policy of privatization of state assets—which, they complained, was at one and the same time a main cause of both corruption and national indebtedness, as the public coffers were “looted” by the practitioners of unbridled criminality. As Tunisia and Egypt had shown, they argued, the power of the people was invincible, and if the regime did not move in the right direction, the immunity enjoyed by the monarch might “not be extended.”122 As Tariq alTall put it, the statement “gave notice that the compact between Jordanians and the Hashemite dynasty, once based on a mutual partnership, was being violated.”123 The regime reacted with a combination of rage and panic. Government hackers deleted the statement from the Jordanian website that published it, only to provoke another mini-furor over freedom of expression.124 The authorities immediately organized mass statements of loyalty to the king that were widely publicized in the local media. Three thousand public personalities from all walks of life and the leaders of no less than seventy-five tribes signed statements reiterating their pledge of allegiance (bay’a) and loyalty (wila) to the Hashemite monarchy.125 In March, as the protests continued, huge demonstrations of tens of thousands of regime loyalists were organized in Amman and other towns to suggest that, comparatively speaking, the opposition had no more than marginal popular appeal. King Abdallah was also careful at this juncture to hold a series of high-profile meetings with a wide spectrum of retired servicemen, during which activists were allowed to air their grievances with unusual candor.126 In warding off the opposition, Abdallah professed a willingness to seriously engage in reform—the extent of which, however, he would seek to control. In his letter of appointment to Bakhit, Abdallah had urged the revival of the reformist National Agenda, which the conservatives had stymied in 2006. In particular he instructed the government to draft a new election law that would be the outcome of inclusive and

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“comprehensive national dialogue” and would also enhance the role of political parties.127 Both directives looked like concessions designed to appease the opposition, especially the IAF. All the same, in the more independent press and from within the opposition, the regime was frequently criticized for dragging its feet and playing for time or, alternatively, for being obstructed by the reactionary forces of corruption within the political elite.128 Finally, in mid-March, more than two months after the crisis began in Jordan, the government announced the formation of a fifty-twomember National Dialogue Commission. The commission was to be headed by Speaker of the Senate and conciliatory former prime minister of Palestinian origin Tahir al-Masri and included representatives of the various political parties and inclinations in the Jordanian body politic.129 The commission was given three months to complete its deliberations. The IAF, which had previously threatened the government with a protracted campaign of civil disobedience,130 immediately announced that it would not participate in the activities of the commission, which it regarded as flawed from its very inception: its agenda related solely to amending the laws regarding elections and political parties and did not extend to constitutional reform. The commission’s critics generally argued that it did not represent all segments of society: it underrepresented Palestinians and members of the opposition and did not, therefore, promise true reform.131 But the Islamists had overplayed their hand. The regime, which had been especially conciliatory to the IAF and the Brotherhood, was now incensed. When the opportunity arose, the government pulverized the Brotherhood. The king’s patience with the opposition was wearing thin as the protesters increasingly focused on the most provocative issue of constitutional reform, which was designed to clip the wings of the monarchy. The security forces now responded with an occasional, albeit camouflaged, resort to brute force. The first indication of what was possibly in store was an incident during the Friday demonstrations of February 18. A protest rally in downtown Amman was attacked with belts, sticks, and stones by “a group of thugs [baltajiyya]” who arrived at the rally from a parallel demonstration by regime loyalists and proceeded to injure eight people. Though the government immediately denounced the use of force, it was widely believed that the domestic security services had deliberately instigated the violence, for which the government was naturally held responsible.132 Far more serious were the events of March 24–25. Deliberately escalating the level of provocation, the 24th of March Youth Movement (shabab 24 adhar) organized an ongoing sit-in at an encampment at a

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major downtown intersection in Amman. The symbolism of their action, following in the footsteps of Egypt’s Youth of 25 January, who had spearheaded the sit-in protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, was obvious— and the regime’s response was decidedly violent. Hundreds of East Banker regime supporters (the baltajiyya again), aided and abetted by the gendarmerie forces at the scene, descended on the protesters at their downtown encampment on the second day of their sit-in, on March 25, with rocks and clubs. The assault resulted in the death of one of the protesters (who the police said had died of heart failure) and the injuring of more than 100 people, including scores of security personnel. The Jordanian public seemed to have been genuinely appalled by the events. The various fault lines of Jordanian society had burst into the open as hundreds of East Banker regime loyalists clashed with hundreds of protesters, who included East Bankers and Palestinians. (Many Islamists were Palestinians, and for much of the Jordanian media, Islamist invariably meant Palestinian.133) The media were awash with talk of internal dissension (fitna) and chaos (fawda) and even of civil war (harb ahliya). Some accused the government of deliberately overstating the Palestinian identity of the protesters (who actually included many East Banker Jordanians) in order to incite other East Bankers against them.134 While many Jordanians chose not to reinforce the old Jordanian-Palestinian fault lines, some of the conservatives in the corridors of power, who resisted any form of change, did quite the reverse. They deliberately exploited these cleavages to portray all demands for reform as “Palestinian” or “Islamist” or both, seeking to delegitimize any and all reform as inherently un-Jordanian or unpatriotic.135

The Arab Spring: Phase Two—Escalation

The opposition in Jordan, whether Islamist or otherwise, for the most part did not call for the downfall (isqat) of the regime in the first phase of the Arab Spring. They demanded reform (islah) leading to the formation of a truly constitutional monarchy, which would shift the center of power from the palace to a fully representative parliament. There were some exceptional moments, however, when protesters did cross the line between reform and revolution. Thus, in September 2011, by just hissing, demonstrators left people guessing whether their collective “isss” was for “isss . . . lah” (reform) or “isss . . . qat” (downfall).136 At times the tone of protest was more radical. Layth Shubaylat, the outspoken East Banker and independent Islamist critic of the regime from way back in the 1980s and 1990s, resumed his unbridled assault on the monarchy. Shubaylat, a very popular former

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member of parliament, in and out of prison for repeatedly condemning the monarchy, had become the regime’s nemesis in Hussein’s time. In October 2011 Shubaylat spoke at a rally of some 3,000 people in the town of Sakib, north of Amman, near Jarash. As he addressed the issue of reform and accused the king of being corrupt, hundreds of stone-throwing men attacked the rally. The rally organizers were sure that the attackers were thugs dispatched by the authorities to silence Shubaylat. In the days and weeks that followed, both Islamist and tribal protesters, in demonstrations in various locations in Amman and elsewhere, openly questioned the legitimacy of the Hashemites and even threatened to topple the regime. Spokespeople from the leading tribal alliances in the country, such as the Bani Sakhr or the Bani Hasan, were also especially outspoken. One of their major complaints was the claim that state lands previously in their use had been transferred by the regime to private developers as part of the king’s policies of privatization.137 Another maverick opponent of the regime from the Hussein era, Dr. Ahmad Uwaydi al-Abbadi, was again one of the monarchy’s harshest critics. At a demonstration of army veterans demanding a raise in their pensions outside the prime minister’s residence in January 2012, Abbadi threatened the regime with armed rebellion. In a subsequent interview he called for a republican regime in Jordan. By repeating his contention that the Hashemites were outsiders and that the country “must be liberated” from their occupation, Abbadi had obviously overstepped the mark. He was arrested in early February and released a month later. While in prison he was visited by Shubaylat, who took the opportunity to declare that disaster and revolution would soon strike Jordan if the king did not accede to the people’s demands.138 As some of the rhetoric escalated, the mass protests actually dwindled. The people were obviously tiring, and the pace of reform slowed down accordingly. In October 2011 King Abdallah appointed Awn alKhasawna, a respected international jurist and a judge in the International Court of Justice, as prime minister. Khasawna, with his impeccable “Mr. Clean” credentials, returned home to lead Jordan’s legislative, political, and electoral reform effort. Khasawna’s most notable initiative was his outreach to the IAF to ensure their participation in future elections and thereby to avoid another IAF boycott and possible mass opposition movement. Upon taking over the premiership from Ma’ruf al-Bakhit, Khasawna launched an in-depth dialogue with the IAF designed to reach agreement on a new election law. Khasawna’s opening to the Brotherhood was not well received in the security establishment.139 He suddenly resigned in April 2012, apparently in protest against the untoward meddling of the mukhabarat

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in the government’s business, especially in the efforts to amend the election law.140 The key reform eventually introduced by the regime was a new election law, finally passed in July 2012. It raised the number of seats in parliament from 120 to 150, of which the allotted women’s quota was increased from 12 to 15. Of those 150 seats, 27 (18 percent) were to be elected on the new basis of countrywide party lists; the rest would be seated in accordance with the existing one-person, one-vote system. For the IAF the new law was no more than window dressing. The Islamists demanded a radically different election law— including, above all, the abolition of the one-person, one-vote system, which was deliberately designed to hurt their chances at the polls. In their quest for a more representative parliament, the Brotherhood also called for correction of the current gerrymandered seat distribution.141 The Brotherhood demanded that half, not just 18 percent, of the seats be elected proportionately on the basis of countrywide lists, which would favor them as not only the most organized but the only really countrywide political party.142 Most East Bankers, including the critics of the monarchy among them, strongly opposed notions of proportional representation. Some of the critics even suspected the monarchy itself of surreptitiously endorsing the idea. After an extended period of relative calm, during the summer of 2012 it transpired that US and Saudi funds would not suffice to compensate for rising energy costs. The government was forced to enter into another bailout agreement with the IMF for $2.1 billion, which, as usual, required subsidy reductions. Several food and fuel subsidies were reduced in June and again in September, leading to widespread protests. Then, in November, subsidies on fuel and electricity were slashed again. This was the last straw. The price-hike protests resulted in nationwide violence and vandalism that became known as the habba, or uprising, of November. Pictures of Abdallah were burnt, and angry chants of large crowds in various locations explicitly called for the overthrow of the monarchy.143 The popular slogan of the Arab uprisings elsewhere—“The people want the fall of the regime”—was now heard all over the country. Moreover, the riots were so violent that they even shocked the opposition. The Muslim Brotherhood and other groups were quick to dissociate themselves from the vehemence of the protests and to reassert their support for reform rather than for revolution.144 The ebb and flow of the regional revolutionary tide also had its effect on Jordan, with the regime and the opposition alternating in drawing encouragement or anxiety as the fortunes of the revolutionaries rose and fell in other arenas. Since the euphoric apogee of the overthrow of Mubarak in February 2011, for the most part the revolutionaries

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elsewhere in the Arab world had made few gains. Following the countercoup by the military in Egypt in July 2013, enthusiasm diminished in Jordan for major political reforms.145 Ruthlessly confronted in Syria and Yemen, thwarted for months by Muammar Qadhafi’s men in Libya, and quashed in Bahrain by a Saudi-led invasion in mid-March 2011, the Arab uprisings were by and large contained. The Hashemites were given a breather, and the opposition was disheartened. The power of the masses was not unstoppable after all.146 More than 8,000 protests, marches, and strikes occurred between January 2011 and August 2013.147 The Arab Spring had initially emboldened the opposition, but the outcomes of the revolutions in countries like Egypt and Libya, and especially the bloodbath in Syria, horrified most Jordanians. Activists did not drop their demands, but many “toned them down, at least temporarily, while warily watching the violence across Jordan’s borders.” Many Jordanians were deeply concerned by the violence in the neighboring countries, fearing that “these dynamics might spill over” into their own society.148

The New Tribal Challenge to the Monarchy: The Hirak

The Arab Spring in Jordan produced newly formed East Bank urban coalitions, in which younger-generation Palestinians and East bankers tended to work in unison, such as the Jordanian Campaign for Change (al-hamla al-Urdunniyya lil-taghyir); We Are Coming to Make Change (jayeen min ajl al-taghyir), nicknamed “Jayeen”; or the 24th of March Youth Movement, which combined various new opposition factions that shared the modest reform approach of the more established opposition. As the inconsistency of the names suggests, it was never quite clear exactly who all these groups actually spoke for or what real organizational structure or following they possessed. Not long after the March 24–25 events, the Jayeen gradually disbanded over internal disagreements on the direction of the movement.149 Consequently, this disjointed mobilization of urban protest did not pose a serious threat to the regime. The elitist East Banker National Front for Reform (al-Jabha al-wataniyya lil-islah), led by former prime minister and director of the mukhabarat Ahmad Ubaydat, was established in May 2011 to provide an organizational umbrella for all the various opposition groups.150 But it never really did so. “Everyone seemed to be protesting something, but not in coordination or with a united message.”151 The largest protests were in Amman, but the most worrisome for the regime were in the East Bank tribal areas. Some of the more impressive

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radical manifestations of disaffection and emerging opposition actually came from within the traditionally stable tribal support base of the regime. The protests gave rise to a new phenomenon represented by a variety of locally based grassroot East Banker movements collectively known as the Hirak (movement). These comprised younger groups of tribal activists from many different localities advocating democratic change in defiance of both state repression and the communal pressures of tribal elders. The Hirak groups differed in various respects from their elders. They tended to shy away from anti-Palestinian xenophobia, cooperated at times with Palestinians, and were far more determined to obtain genuine liberalizing political reform rather than just to extract economic payoffs in the form of jobs and services from the regime. For the most part they were educated and employed citizens calling for a constitutional monarchy, a fairer electoral system, and an end to endemic corruption. In no uncertain terms, the Hirak vision of reform targeted the king himself and what Sean Yom has called the “duopoly of power” held by the king and the mukhabarat. They believed in fundamental political reform that would safeguard their voice in a future no longer defined by institutionalized tribal privilege. By ensuring their political participation, they sought a new way to engage and influence the regime and to protect their interests on a level playing field with the largely Palestinian urban classes of Amman.152 The Hirak came from all over the country, from Karak, Tafila, and Ma’an in the south and from northern towns like Irbid, Jarash, Mafraq, and Zarqa. Their discourse was generally more confrontational toward the monarchy. Some condemned the king and his entourage as “Ali Baba and the forty thieves” and hurled other personal insults “crossing all previous red lines.” Slogans compared Abdallah to the dictators who had been overthrown in other Arab states, such as bin Ali, Mubarak, and Qadhafi, and called explicitly for the downfall of the regime or for the king’s abdication.153 The Hirak represented a far greater threat than the Islamists and other opposition groups. They delivered their more radical message “from the heart of the tribal countryside historically allied with the crown.” Thus, while the regime largely tolerated the Islamists’ protests, the suppression of the Hirak was considerably more vicious.154 As of late 2011 the police and the mukhabarat had arrested hundreds of tribal protesters, who were said to have been targeted for physical abuse due to their “perceived disloyalty” as fellow tribesmen. It was not uncommon to find members of the same family among the protesters and in the security forces suppressing them.155 The Hirak failed to create a unified leadership or to agree on a national program. They operated independently of each other, taking

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their direction instead from local coordination committees bound together by loose networks of mostly young activists using social media. Social media were not only an asset in organizational terms but also an obstacle. Many Hirak groups “lacked organizational permanence.” Social media facilitated rapid mobilization but also precluded the establishment of enduring institutional structures.156 The opposition was also split between the critics from the East Banker elite, on the one hand, and the Hirak, the Muslim Brotherhood, and many Palestinians, on the other, who had very different views about reform. While both the Islamists and the Hirak groups called for greater inclusion and democratization, the East Banker elite actually had serious misgivings about reform. They wanted more influence in determining how wealth and power were distributed, but they were hardly interested in a democratization process that would almost certainly empower the Islamists and the Palestinians at their expense. Many conservative East Bankers feared that reform was not about democratization but Palestinian empowerment at the expense of “Jordan’s very identity.” For them Jordan was a tribal, East Banker nationalist, and Hashemite state, which others sought to dilute, or even to overrun, in the guise of reform.157

Notes

1. In 1962, after less than a decade on the throne, King Hussein published Uneasy Lies the Head, an early autobiography about his trials and tribulations. 2. Lynch, State Interests and Public Spheres, 182–183. 3. Al-Hayat (London) and Jordan Times, November 22, 1999; al-Sharq alAwsat (London), November 23, 1999. 4. E.g., interview by Abdallah to the Kuwaiti al-Siyasa, reprinted in full in alRa’y (Amman), June 29, 2002. 5. Abdallah in a speech to the nation celebrating his ascension to the throne, the Great Arab Revolt, and Army Day, King Abdallah’s official website, June 8, 2010, www.kingabdullah.jo. 6. King Abdallah II, Our Last Best Chance, 154. 7. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 68. 8. Goldberg, “Learning How to Be a King.” 9. Ryan, “Jordan First,” 54. 10. There were different versions of the text. The above is from King Abdallah’s official website. But in a collection of documents prepared by al-Khatib and alRantawi, Al-Urdunn Awalan, 9, the term that appears in this place is “Jordanianness” (Urdunniyyatihim). 11. Text of King Abdallah’s letter to Prime Minister Ali Abu al-Raghib, King Abdallah’s official website, October 30, 2002, www.kingabdullah.jo/index.php /ar_JO/royalLetters/view/id/245.html. 12. See, e.g., Jordanian Ministry of Education, Ta’rikh al-Arab wal-alam almu’asir, 241–245. 13. al-Khatib and al-Rantawi, Al-Urdunn Awalan, 14. 14. David, “Civil Society and Public Space in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” 206, 212 (Hebrew).

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15. David, “Civil Society and Public Space in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,” 215–217. 16. Gandolfo, Palestinians in Jordan, 267–268. 17. Muasher, Decade of Struggling Reform Efforts in Jordan, 7–8. 18. See, e.g., King Abdallah’s interview with Randa Habib, Agence France-Presse, May 16, 2009, and with La Republica, October 19, 2009, www.kingabdullah.jo. 19. King Abdallah’s interviews with Ghassan Sharbil in al-Hayat (London), Part II, November 10, 2009; and the editors of al-Ghad (Amman), March 24, 2010, in www.kingabdullah.jo. 20. Lynch, “No Jordan Option.” 21. Fahd al-Fanik in al-Ra’y (Amman), January 22, 1995; Susser, Two-State Imperative, 196. 22. Fahd al-Fanik quoted in Ryan, Jordan in Transition, 129. 23. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 276. 24. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 279. 25. Rami Khouri and Musa Kaylani quoted in Susser, “Jordan,” 17:469–470. 26. Official Arabic text of the National Charter, 49–50. 27. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom, 280. This was corroborated by a poll published in the Jordan Times, January 7, 1998. 28. Abd al-Bari al-Atwan in al-Quds al-Arabi (London), April 2, 2013, as quoted in MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series no. 987, June 24, 2013; “‘Custodianship’: First Step to Palestinian Confederation?” 29. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 108–109. 30. Agha and Khalidi, “Palestinian Reckoning,” 137–138. 31. Pollock, “Most Palestinians Approve of Jordan.” 32. Susser, Two-State Imperative, 194. 33. See, e.g., Abdallah in a speech to public personalities (shakhsiyat), King Abdallah’s official website, October 23, 2012, www.kingabdullah.jo. 34. Podeh, Politics of National Celebrations. 35. Muasher, Arab Center, 76. 36. Reiter, “Palestinian-Transjordanian Rift,” 92. 37. Andoni, “Report from Jordan,” 77. 38. Greenwood, “Jordan’s ‘New Bargain,’” 262–263. 39. Reiter, “Palestinian-Transjordanian Rift,” 91. 40. Reiter, “Palestinian-Transjordanian Rift,” 74. 41. British Embassy Amman, “Jordan: Annual Review for 1961,” January 11, 1962, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 886. 42. Mufti, “King’s Art,” 2. 43. Ambassador Roderick Parkes in his annual review for Jordan in 1963, January 9, 1964, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 921. 44. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 98. 45. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 68. 46. Andoni, “Report from Jordan,” 81. 47. Muasher, Arab Center, 75, 100. 48. Andoni, “Report from Jordan,” 85. 49. Al-Tall, “Early Spring in Jordan.” 50. Ryan, Jordan in Transition, 116, 124. 51. Palestinian Jordanian (2) in conversation with the author, Amman, April 7, 1999. 52. Abu-Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashemite Kingdom. 53. Ryan, Jordan in Transition, 126–127; Reiter, “Higher Education and Sociopolitical Transformation in Jordan,” 145. 54. Muasher, Decade of Struggling Reform Efforts in Jordan, 1–4. 55. Muasher, Decade of Struggling Reform Efforts in Jordan, 6–7.

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56. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 98–99. 57. Muasher, Decade of Struggling Reform Efforts in Jordan, 9–11. 58. Abu Rumman, “Political Stagnation in Jordan,” 78. 59. “Al-sahafa wal-islah – niqash al-hawiyya wal-musharaka al-Filastiniyya”; Lynch, “In Jordan, the Knives Are Out.” 60. Jordan Times, March 1, 4–5, 1993; Financial Times, April 30, 1993. 61. Greenwood, “Jordan’s ‘New Bargain,’” 256–257. 62. Bani Salameh and Aldabbas, “Electoral Districts’ Distribution in Jordan,” 3, 10, 12–14, 19. 63. Susser, Jordan: Preserving Domestic Order. 64. Ryan, Jordan in Transition, 39–40. 65. Greenwood, “Jordan’s ‘New Bargain,’” 258. 66. Al-Tall, “Early Spring in Jordan”; Susser, Two-State Imperative, 191–192. 67. Al-Tall, “Early Spring in Jordan.” 68. Letter from King Abdallah to Prime Minister Adnan Badran, in Royal Speeches and Letters, King Abdallah’s official website, June 16, 2005, www .kingabdullah.jo. 69. Muasher, “Jordan’s Future Agenda,” 48. 70. A few months later Abdallah dismissed the director of the mukhabarat, Muhammad Dhahabi, a stalwart of the East Banker elite, as a way of settling scores and preserving his authority. 71. Sabbagh-Gargour, “Jordan.” 72. Muasher, “Jordan’s Future Agenda,” 48–49. 73. Muasher, Decade of Struggling Reform Efforts in Jordan, 13–14. 74. Muasher, Decade of Struggling Reform Efforts in Jordan, 15. 75. Abdallah continued to speak publicly in favor of merit in appointments and against connections (wasta) and favoritism (mahsubiyya). See, e.g., his speech at the University of Jordan in Amman, King Abdallah’s official website, December 10, 2012, www.kingabdullah.jo. 76. Riedel, Jordan and America, 4. 77. Goldberg, “Learning How to Be a King”; Jillian Schwedler, “Jordan’s Austerity Protests in Context”; Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 152. 78. Goldberg, “Modern King in the Arab Spring.” 79. Shryock, “Dynastic Modernism and Its Contradictions,” 60. 80. See King Abdallah II’s official website, https://kingabdullah.jo; Mahafza, Ashara a’wam min al-kifah wal-bina . 81. Goldberg, “Learning How to Be a King.” 82. Kirkpatrick, “Jordan Protesters Dream of Shift to King’s Brother”; Schwedler, “Jordan’s Austerity Protests in Context”; “King Abdullah of Jordan Fears That Old Allies Are Ditching Him.” 83. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 182; Yom, “New Landscape,” 284. 84. Yom, “Jordan,” 156–157. 85. Yom, “Tribal Politics,” 238–239, 242; Yom, “New Landscape,” 291; Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 152. 86. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 24–25, 59–60. 87. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 152–153. 88. Yom, “New Landscape,” 297. 89. As quoted in Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 164. 90. Yom, “Tribal Politics,” 238–239, 242; Yom, “New Landscape,” 291. 91. Ryan, “We Are All Jordan.” 92. Nevo, “Changing Identities in Jordan,” 204. 93. All the Jordanian dailies for a few days in early August 2009 carried numerous reports and analyses of the king’s remarks made at the army headquarters on

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August 4; see, e.g., al-Ra’y, al-Dustur, and al-Arab al-Yawm, August 5, 8, 2009; Jordan Times, August 6, 7, 2009; Susser, The Two-State Imperative, 192–193. 94. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 158. 95. Kull al-Urdunn, May 9, 2010, http://allofjo.net.web/?c=153&a=20972. 96. Kull al-Urdunn, May 9, 2010, http://allofjo.net.web/?c=153&a=20972. 97. Barari, “Retired Military Declaration Speaks Volumes.” 98. Idrees, “How Social Media Can Help in Destabilizing Jordanian Society”; Smith, “In Jordan, Young People Are Finding Ways to Practice Politics.” 99. Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2023, Jordan, 13. 100. Francis, “Jordan’s Refugee Crisis,” 11, 14, 19; Bar’el, “In Jordan, Massive Refugee Influx”; Schwedler, “Jordan’s Austerity Protests in Context.” 101. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 159. 102. Text of a lecture by Ahmad Ubaydat in Madaba, May 17, 2010, www .chapter7jordan.org/index.html. 103. Text of a lecture by Ahmad Ubaydat in Madaba, May 17, 2010, www .chapter7jordan.org/index.html; David, “Revolt of Jordan’s Military Veterans.” 104. Article 8, Treaty of Peace between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the State of Israel, October 26, 1994 (“settlement” in the Arabic version was translated as tawtin, which in Arab political discourse was the opposite of return: awda); Susser, Two-State Imperative, 193. 105. Jordan Times, October 6, 1999; al-Quds al-Arabi (London), as quoted in Mideast Mirror, November 10, 1999; al-Hayat (London), November 15, 1999. 106. Slackman, “Some Palestinian Jordanians Lose Citizenship.” 107. Europa Regional Surveys of the World, Middle East and North Africa 2015, 599. 108. Jordanian Initiative for Equal Citizenship, Letter to King Abdallah II, August 2, 2012 as cited in Bani Salameh and El-Adwan, “Identity Crisis in Jordan,” 996–997. 109. This section is also based on two papers that I wrote previously for the Crown Center at Brandeis University; see Susser, Jordan 2011; Susser, Is the Jordanian Monarchy in Danger?. 110. See Owen, Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life. 111. Murad, “Political Anxiety”; al-Rasid, “Milaffat adida tantathir lil-hukuma.” 112. Al-Ra’y (Amman), December 24, 2010. 113. Luck, “Parliament Facing Credibility Crisis.” 114. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 26. 115. Barari, “Culture of Protest Rears Its Head.” 116. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 21. 117. Al-Ra’y (Amman), January 11, 2011. 118. Jordan Times, January 17, 30, 2011; al-Ghad (Amman), January 25, 2011. 119. Muasher, Decade of Struggling Reform Efforts in Jordan, 3. 120. Ayasira, “Hal yastati’ al-Bakhit ithbat al-aks.” 121. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 30. 122. “Statement by National Figures Warns of Dangers to Jordan if Reform Is Not Implemented Fast.” 123. As quoted by Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 166. 124. “Statement from Ammon News Team”; New York Times, February 7, 2011. 125. Ammonnews, February 14, 2011; al-Ra’y (Amman), February 15, 2011. 126. al-Tall, “Early Spring in Jordan.” 127. Royal letter of designation to Ma’ruf al-Bakhit, in al-Ra’y (Amman), February 2, 2011. 128. See, e.g., al-Khitan, “Khitat al-hukuma lil-hiwar al-watani”; al-Dar’awi, “Al-risala al-malakiyya wa-quwa al-shadd al-aksi.” 129. Al-Ra’y (Amman), March 15, 2011. 130. Ghwairi, “IAF Official Warns of Civil Disobedience, Open Protests.”

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131. See, e.g., Ayasira, “‘Tahir al-Masri’ sum’atak ala al-mahik”; al-Rantawi, “An al-hiwar al-watani . . . lajna wa-ajinda”; Wardam, “Al-Islamiyyun yarfudun al-hiwar wa-yatamassakun bi-haqq al-naqd”; Hazaimeh, “National Dialogue Panel Faces Risk of More Walkouts”; interview by Muslim Brotherhood general guide Hummam Sa’id in al-Dustur (Amman), March 30, 2011. 132. Al-Arab al-Yawm (Amman), February 19, 2011; Jordan Times, February 20, 25, 2011. 133. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 33. 134. See al-Khitan, “Siyasa khatira taqud al-bilad ila al-majhul”; al-Sabbagh, “Ba’d mawqa’a al-jum’a al-ma’iba hal yatajaha al-Urdunn ila al-fawda wal-fitna.” 135. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 112. 136. Pelham, “Jordan Starts to Shake.” 137. Varulkar, “Arab Spring in Jordan: King Compelled.” 138. Varulkar, “Arab Spring in Jordan—Part II.” 139. Satloff, “Jordanian Premier’s Sudden Resignation Points to New Political Strategy.” 140. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 166–167. 141. The governorates of Amman and Zarqa, predominantly Palestinian, constituted the kingdom’s metropolitan center and were home to over 50 percent of the total Jordanian population. The southern governorates of Karak, Tafila, Ma’an, and Aqaba had a combined population of slightly less than 10 percent of the total (see Government of Jordan, Department of Statistics, Statistical Yearbook [2012], Table 2.6, 12). Of the 150 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, 27 were allocated to countrywide lists and 15 to the women’s quota. The remaining 108 seats were elected in the constituencies of the various districts. Amman and Zarqa together had 36 seats—that is only 33.3 percent of the total, that is, about two-thirds of their ratio in the population. The southern governorates together had 20 seats, that is 18.5 percent, or nearly twice their ratio in the population, which is an overrepresentation of about 3:1. 142. Interview with Muslim Brotherhood secretary-general Hammam Sa’id in alDustur (Amman), March 30, 2011. 143. Ghayshan, “Where Are We Heading?”; Warrick and Luck, “Jordanian Protesters, Police Scuffle as Amman Demonstrations Continue”; “Jordan Protesters Want Regime Reform, Reject Price Hike”; “Protest at Interior Ministry Demands Reform and Fight Against Corruption”; Dekel and Perlov, “Challenges and an Internal Balance of Deterrence”; Yom, “New Landscape.” 144. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 187; Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 36. 145. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 194. 146. Kheetan, “Protests Peter Out as Activists Take Wait-and-See Approach.” 147. al-Tall, “Early Spring in Jordan,” 9. 148. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 22, 42. 149. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 173. 150. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 31, 57, 61–66; Yom, “Tribal Politics,” 232; Yom, “New Landscape,” 294–295. 151. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 182. 152. Yom, “Tribal Politics,” 229–233, 242; “New Landscape,” 294–295; Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 177. 153. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 29, 71; Yom, “Tribal Politics,” 234. 154. Yom, “Tribal Politics,” 230, 235. 155. Yom, “New Landscape,” 293. 156. al-Tall, “Early Spring in Jordan”; Yom, “Tribal Politics,” 236, 247. 157. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 153–155.

10

Wrestling with an Obsolete Social Contract

THE SPEEDING UP OF THE “DEREGULATION” OF THE JORDANIAN ECONomy under Abdallah II was never accompanied by genuine reform of the political system. In the turmoil of the Arab Spring, the message to the protesters was unmistakable: the monarch’s prerogatives were off the table. Already in early March 2011, during the confidence debate on the Ma’ruf al-Bakhit government in the Chamber of Deputies, the prime minister ruled out any constitutional reform.1 In a letter to Bakhit later in March, Abdallah referred to many areas of necessary reform but made no mention of constitutional change. On the contrary, he spoke only of the need to “protect the state and the constitution.”2 At the end of March, parliament was even more unequivocal than the king in “totally rejecting” the notion of constitutional reform, accusing those who supported the idea of seeking the “dissolution [taftit] of the Jordanian state.”3 The monarchy’s line in the sand was plain for all to see. There could be meaningful reform in the legislation that governed elections and political parties—extending, as the king subsequently conceded, to amendments to the constitution if necessary for the redrafting of these two laws.4 In other words, change was feasible within the framework of the existing order, but the regime would not allow any tinkering with the monarch’s powers. Addressing the nation in June 2011, Abdallah presented his vision for the future, which was for the Jordanian people to march forward under “their constitution and their firmly established monarchical parliamentary regime.”5 He could have 245

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referred to a constitutional monarchy (mulukiyya dusturiyya), but he did not. In Abdallah’s scheme of things, what was “firmly established” would remain. It was the monarch who was “the guarantor of the constitution” and not the constitution that constrained the powers of the king.6 Jordan, like so many other Arab countries, was ruled by an authoritarian regime that had never regarded political liberalization as “anything more than an occasionally useful tactic in the endless struggle to hang onto power.”7 In Abdallah’s mind, the Hashemite monarchy deserved, by right and performance, to continue to play the dominant role in the Jordanian body politic. His mandate as monarch was “to be the umbrella for all political groupings,” never challenged and always above the fray.8

Reform and Abdallah’s Authoritarian Mind-set

Abdallah’s “philosophy of government” and liberal-minded pronouncements were embedded in a strictly authoritarian mind-set in which ultimate power rested with the state—that is, the duopoly of the monarchy and the mukhabarat. Human rights and freedom of expression, Abdallah explained, did not mean that anyone was above the law. The state had the power to apply the law to all at any time, and “no one was stronger than the state.”9 The guarded liberalization of Jordanian politics that Hussein had set in motion in the wake of the 1989 economic crisis was already in phased reversal in the mid-1990s. Abdallah picked up where his father had left off. In Abdallah’s early years, as Curtis Ryan and Jillian Schwedler observed, one could hardly argue that Jordan was “engaged in a meaningful process of democratization, regardless of the rhetoric that emanate[d] from the highest offices.” Indeed, they concluded, Jordan resembled “not so much a country on the road to democracy as a new hybrid of the sort described as ‘liberalized autocracy.’”10 The Arab Spring changed very little, if anything, in this regard. Abdallah had led the way in reducing the role of the state in the economy. On political reform he published seven discussion papers between December 2012 and April 2017. He called for “developing the right practices for democracy” through an incremental approach. The path toward “a uniquely Jordanian model of democracy,” according to Abdallah, “[lay] in moving toward parliamentary government, where the majority coalition in parliament forms the government.” But reform had to be an “evolutionary transformation [that would] avoid jumping into the abyss.” Gradually more authority would shift from the monarchy to a multiparty parliament. That would require the development of “a mature political party system” with parties of the Left, Right, and Center that would compete with the Islamists.

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Following elections, parliamentary blocs and groupings with varying platforms would emerge and, encouraged by the monarchy, eventually evolve into political parties. Such progress would “require several parliamentary cycles to develop and mature,” Abdallah maintained. The population, after all, had no tradition of party politics, and 90 percent of the people, he contended, rejected the idea of joining parties. The king’s discussion papers constantly emphasized the notions of transition, gradualism, work in progress, and “milestones we need to achieve.” It would be “a long and evolutionary journey,” recognizing that “political maturity comes from experience.”11 The impression was hard to escape that these were no more than repetitive verbal exercises suggesting “camouflage, procrastination, and a thinly veiled attempt to hide the reality of the continued status quo.”12 The king’s vision was fraught with internal contradiction. It was difficult to see how parties could really develop in conjunction with election laws that were deliberately designed from the outset to stifle party politics.13 Abdallah obviously did not have the slightest intention of paving the way for Islamist control by reforming the Hashemites out of power. The Muslim Brotherhood’s ostensible restraint notwithstanding, the king was convinced that the reforms they demanded were designed in the long run to deny the monarchy any genuine authority and, eventually, to oust the Hashemites altogether.14 On the surface, reforms at times appeared impressive. At the end of April 2011, the king appointed the Royal Committee on Constitutional Review, which by August had proposed no less than forty-two amendments to the constitution, which were duly passed by parliament. These included the establishment of a Constitutional Court (al-mahkama al-dusturiyya alHashimiyya) and an Independent Election Commission (al-hay’a al-mustaqilla lil-intikhabat). Abdallah made a commitment to appoint prime ministers only in consultation with the elected parliament; as already mentioned, a new election law was passed in July 2012, and a new parties law, which liberalized the process for party registration, was approved in June 2012 and again in June 2015.15 In fact, the constitutional amendments were relatively minor and did not affect the monarch’s prerogatives.16 Abdallah claimed that Jordanian society was “heading towards democracy and active citizenship,”17 but in reality reform was all about an “autocratic monarchism with a veneer of democratic practice.”18 Jordan, after all, remained no more than a “relatively benign police state.”19 In May 2016 another series of constitutional amendments was passed without any serious parliamentary debate and actually reinforced the executive powers of the king, whereby he had the sole power to make a series of key

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appointments without any countersignature of the prime minister or other ministers concerned. This referred to the appointment of the crown prince, the regent, the chair and members of the Constitutional Court, the Speaker and members of the Senate, the commander of the armed forces, and the heads of the intelligence services and security forces.20 The Islamic Action Front (IAF) and many others across the political spectrum, including the press and social media, condemned both the content of the amendments and the procedure by which they were adopted, having been rushed through parliament without any serious debate. Expanding the king’s powers rather than reducing them, the critics argued, was a step toward absolute monarchy rather than democracy and stood in stark contradiction to the suggestions for reform made by the king himself in his own discussion papers.21 Moreover, in some other spheres, such as freedom of expression, instead of progressive reform, there were regressive efforts of control. In September 2012, an amendment to the press and publications law was passed in what was described as a “draconian” effort to gag websites critical of government excesses.22 Subsequently hundreds of websites were shut down by the authorities. Many in the press feared that these measures represented “a major retreat in media and internet freedoms in the kingdom.”23 Like his father, Hussein, before him, Abdallah spoke of the need to protect “responsible press freedoms.”24 Everyone, he said, had to realize that the “ceiling of freedom ended with the ceiling of responsibility and the supreme national interest.”25 All these were nothing but code words for strict state supervision of the media, which had been an integral part of the Hashemite state structure from the outset.26 Working in Abdallah’s favor against the motley array of critics was a powerful constituency of loyal supporters, albeit one somewhat less cohesive than in the past. At a moment’s notice they would come out in large numbers to express their loyalty in what was invariably a noteworthy demonstration of effective mobilization by the regime. The fact that the regime could not only mobilize thousands of prominent figures and the leaders of scores of tribes to publicly reaffirm their loyalty but, on more than one occasion, summon tens of thousands of demonstrators to do the same was not solely a function of organizational prowess on the part of the government. Nor could it be attributed to coercion. Rather, such rallies amounted to impressive displays of genuine popular support. There were many opponents of the king from within the East Banker elite, but, with few exceptions, even they were not ideological antimonarchists. Most Jordanians, including the great majority of those in the opposition, sought to preserve the monarchy as a unifying symbol of sta-

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bility and continuity. Even the Shura Council of the IAF went to the trouble of announcing the party’s belief in the legitimacy of the Hashemites, noting that it was a religious duty to preserve the stability of the kingdom.27 Although much of the East Banker “old guard” shared at least some of the criticism of the monarchy, the same “old guard,” well represented in the security establishment and especially in the mukhabarat, was equally indisposed toward genuine reform. Abdallah claimed that the Arab Spring was a “much-awaited opportunity to overcome internal resistance to change and [to] embark on an unprecedented political reform process.”28 He often complained of “the existence of certain powers that deem[ed] reform a threat to their interests.”29 While such statements were probably intended to deflect criticism directed at him, they also had the unintended consequence of detracting from Abdallah’s own image, as they suggested that he was not entirely in charge. In the words of a Jordanian political scientist, as in other parts of the Arab world, “the deep state” in Jordan had “swallowed up society” and “buried all attempts at reform.” The judiciary was “shackled by [the deep state’s] agenda,” and the domestic security services were generally empowered at the expense of civilian institutions.30 Throughout the country, the rising power of the mukhabarat was felt, from the very first days of Abdallah on the throne.31 Its members “played a very large role in public life” and were a “major obstacle to reform.”32 As the years went by, however, it became increasingly clear that Abdallah’s own authoritarian mind-set also left very little room for genuine reform. On the other hand, Jordan was not an oppressive “monarchy of fear.” 33 The hundreds of thousands of Syrians who sought refuge in Jordan, like the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis before them, strengthened the hands of those who sought to contain reform. Supporters of the regime could ask what Jordanians had to complain about, living in their oasis of security and stability—which, unlike some of its neighbors, did not have a reputation for brutal repression. Abdallah could claim with much justification that people did not disappear in Jordan; nor were lives routinely taken for political reasons, as was the case in other parts of the region. 34 In some two years of demonstrations (2011–2012), the security forces, under the strict orders of the king himself against the excessive use of force, killed less than a handful of protesters.

The Assault on the Islamists

Though the regime was not a “monarchy of fear,” tolerance of the opposition was not its hallmark either. The relative ease with which the

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country had weathered the Arab Spring provided the authorities with the confidence and the opportunity to crush the Islamists, the most effective arm of the opposition. Since the late 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood, with its mainly Palestinian base and its political party, the IAF, had been the largest, best organized, and most consistent component of the opposition. The Brotherhood in Jordan, however, had traditionally exercised relative restraint in its relationship with the monarchy, reflecting very different rules of engagement vis-à-vis the regime than those that had characterized the Brotherhood in countries like Syria and Egypt. In the heyday of revolutionary antimonarchist Arabism, in the 1950s and 1960s, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Hashemites were allies against the secular, pro-Soviet radicals. The Brotherhood also stood by the regime in its major domestic crises, in 1957 against the Nasserists and in the 1970 civil war against the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The Hashemites even enjoyed a measure of Islamist legitimacy as descendants of the Prophet. Despite all of their differences, the monarchy and the Brotherhood had no “blood account.” They had never engaged in violent conflict. But with the rise of political Islam throughout the region, the Brotherhood and the monarchy were no longer on the same side of the ideological divide. Palestinian nationalism in its more secular form, as reconstructed, articulated, and represented by the PLO, had lost its monopoly over Palestinian politics by the first decade of the twenty-first century. Hamas had come to the fore, as shown by its impressive victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority general elections, driving the Palestinian nationalists onto the defensive before the forces of political Islam. After the death of Yasir Arafat in 2004, without the successful consummation of the Oslo process, or the “armed struggle,” the national movement “had no clear ideology, no specific discourse, no distinctive experience or character.”35 With the PLO in historical crisis, Jordan increasingly faced the specter of Hamas in the Palestinian arena. The Jordanians would have preferred a Palestinian nation-state in the West Bank standing in contradistinction to the Jordanian East Bank, as opposed to an Islamized irredentist Palestine that might make no distinction between itself and the Muslim state of Jordan. The Jordanians were extremely sensitive to the web of connections between Hamas and the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood (some Jordanians of Palestinian origin were members of both organizations), and the Jordanians strongly disapproved of what they feared to be the potentially subversive links between the two.36 Khalid Mash’al, head of the Hamas politburo, sought to reassure them that Hamas had no interest in meddling in Jordan’s internal affairs.37 But Mash’al’s statements only disturbed the Jordanians further. Suggesting that Hamas would not

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engage in subversion in Jordan, Mash’al was also intimating that Hamas might do otherwise. The Jordanian objection to any connections between Hamas and the (largely Palestinian) Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood was now even more determined. King Abdallah noted that Hamas was not a Jordanian party, and the Jordanians would not permit the operation of any non-Jordanian movement in the kingdom.38 In the early phases of the Arab Spring, the Brotherhood, with its predominantly Palestinian leadership and rank and file, played a key role in the mobilization of public protest against the monarchy. Its stature seemed to be on the rise as its fellow Brotherhoods were doing well in Egypt and Tunisia and in the initial stages of the Syrian revolution. The Brotherhood behaved as if the future were theirs. As the unsettling year of 2011 drew to a close, the regime sought to appease the Brotherhood in a constructive dialogue. Prime Minister Awn al-Khasawna met with representatives of the movement and even invited them to join his government. They declined. The government also held contacts with Hamas, mediated by Qatar,39 after relations had been severed with the organization in 1999, shortly after Abdallah II’s ascension to the throne. When it seemed like the Muslim Brotherhood was still on a regional roll, after rising to power in Tunisia and, more importantly, in Egypt, Mash’al made his first visit to Jordan in twelve years. He met with King Abdallah in January 2012, in what looked like the beginning of a possible rapprochement.40 But the Brotherhood treated the regime with disdain. In January 2013, Hammam Sa’id, the (Palestinian) secretary-general of the movement, went so far as to declare in a speech at a rally in downtown Amman that Jordan would soon become part of the Islamic Caliphate.41 Before the government’s feelers for accommodation had produced any concrete results, the fortunes of the Brotherhood in the region began to change. The revolutionary tide began to recede especially after the ouster of Muhammad Mursi in Egypt in June 2013 and the deterioration of the revolution in Syria into a bloody civil war. The Brotherhood’s popular appeal in Jordan declined perceptibly. The regime no longer had any use for reconciliation. The Brotherhood’s decision to boycott the January 2013 elections was counterproductive. Despite their efforts, voter turnout was reasonable by Jordanian standards at 56.7 percent of registered voters.42 The Islamic Centrist Party (al-Wasat al-Islami)—moderate Islamists who were not affiliated with the Brotherhood (and who were in the good graces of the regime)—ran and did well, winning seventeen seats.43 As the Brotherhood continued to lose ground, the deep mistrust between the regime and the Islamists surfaced in open hostility. Generally speaking, Abdallah was “less tolerant of Islamists” than his father, Hussein,44 and

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in an interview published in April 2013, Abdallah described the Brotherhood as a “Masonic cult . . . run by wolves in sheep’s clothing.”45 In the new circumstances internal turmoil plagued the organization, developing into the most serious crisis the Jordanian Brotherhood had ever faced since its foundation in 1946. Historically, as East Bankers had dominated Jordanian politics, the Muslim Brotherhood provided a political home for Palestinians. The IAF had grown solid roots among East Bankers too, but the party enjoyed especially strong support from Palestinians. For decades there had been deep divisions within the Brotherhood between “hawks” and “doves” with respect to their attitude toward the regime: Palestinian “hawks” were generally more aggressive than their “dovish” Jordanian counterparts in their demands for reform that would significantly curtail the power of the monarchy. These differences reflected a more substantive divide in the movement between “cultural Islamists” and “political Islamists.” The “cultural Islamists” were usually East Banker “doves,” whereas the “political Islamists” were mostly Palestinian “hawks.” The “cultural” group tended to focus on moral and social issues, such as the banning of alcohol, segregating the sexes, and the Islamizing of school curricula, and were also more solidly pro-Hashemite. The “political” group were predominantly Palestinian and generally less supportive of the monarchy.46 The Palestinians also tended to take a more hawkish position on Palestine, as expressed by the Brotherhood’s firm support for Hamas. “Doves” accused “hawks” of running for positions in the organization in the name of Hamas, and some alleged that Hamas had actively interfered in internal elections in the Jordanian Brotherhood on behalf of specific candidates.47 The long-standing differences between Jordanians and Palestinians within the Brotherhood offered fertile ground for the government to meddle in the affairs of the organization. In November 2012, a moderate faction of mainly Jordanian “doves,” known as the “Zamzam” initiative,48 led by a former senior IAF official, Rahil al-Gharaiba, emerged from within the Brotherhood. With the probable blessing of the regime, they urged the Brotherhood to adopt a generally more conciliatory position on Islamic ideological matters as well as toward the government. Seen as an effort to “Jordanize” the organization against the backdrop of the internal discord that had plagued the Brotherhood for years, the initiative split the organization. Even though the leaders of the initiative repeatedly clarified that secession was not their objective,49 in early 2015 the “Zamzam” leaders and some fifty other members were suspended by the official leadership of the Jordanian Brotherhood. The suspension was soon followed by the formation of an alternative Brotherhood organization led by its own general guide, Abd al-Majid Dhunaybat, a former

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general guide of the original Jordanian Brotherhood and one of those suspended for their association with the “Zamzam” initiative. Dhunaybat condemned the official leadership of the Brotherhood as “illegitimate,” while the hardliners dismissed the “Zamzam” initiative as a “coup” that had undermined the organization. The divisions steadily widened between the two factions as the Jordanian Brotherhood descended to the all-time low point of its history.50 In March 2015 the new alternative organization was declared by the government to be the formally recognized Brotherhood in Jordan. In February 2016 the government outlawed the original Brotherhood, claiming it lacked the appropriate license and accusing it of being illicitly beholden to a foreign leader (a reference to Muhammad Badi’, the general guide of the Egyptian Brotherhood). The “Zamzam” group severed its ties with the regional Muslim Brotherhood and formed a new Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood Society (jam’iyyat jama’at al-ikhwan al-muslimin), which in March 2016 received the formal approval of the government as the legal Brotherhood in the kingdom. Dhunaybat’s group seized the main offices of the Brotherhood and part of their financial assets, leading some among the “hawks” to accuse them of working with the authorities for personal gain.51 In April the government began closing down the offices of the now unlicensed version of the Brotherhood throughout the country. Activists of the original Brotherhood were convinced that the mukhabarat had engineered the split in the organization, and indeed the government did appear to have played a key role in the organization’s dismemberment.52 The personal, political, and ideological divisions that had plagued the organization for years were at the root of the domestic crisis in the Brotherhood, and government meddling and machinations had not created the internal dissension. But the authorities certainly exploited and accelerated the crisis that ended with the Brotherhood splitting into no less than six separate Islamist organizations.53 The political overlap between the Palestinians in Jordan and the Brotherhood was generally reflected in the professional associations as well. Many of the associations had large Palestinian memberships and were also under the political control of the Muslim Brotherhood. Of these, the relatively new Jordanian Teachers Association was a special case. It had only been established in 2011, as a concession by the government, against the backdrop of the Arab Spring. The fact that no such association had been allowed before was indicative of the circumspection with which the regime treated the large community of teachers (with some 140,000 members, the largest of all professional associations) with their daily access to the millions of students in the

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schools. In April 2012 the Brotherhood won the first-ever elections in the Teachers Association by a landslide, adding to the long list of professional associations under its influence.54 However, in tandem with the declining fortunes of the Islamists in other countries and the regime’s machinations against the Brotherhood in Jordan, pressure was also brought to bear on the professional associations. Internal elections in various associations resulted in successive losses for the Islamists. In March 2016 the hold of the Islamists was weakened in internal elections in the Teachers Association, and in early 2018 they lost the elections in the Jordan University student union and the powerful Engineers Association, which they had controlled for twenty-six years. This came after losses in other student unions and in the Bar Association.55 Although it seemed as if the Brotherhood was in steady decline, the Islamists made a comeback of sorts in early 2019 and won again in the Teachers and Doctors Associations and in some important student unions.56 But then, in July 2020, the regime delivered another blow. The Brotherhood had appealed to the Court of Cassation (the supreme court) to retrieve its properties taken over by the “Zamzam” group. The court ruled against the Brotherhood and ordered that it be dissolved.57 And there was more, hitting at the professional associations where the Brotherhood was still strong. In September 2019 the Teachers Association launched a prolonged and successful strike against the government with the public support of the IAF.58 State media made a direct connection between the Brotherhood and the Teachers Association, claiming that the Brotherhood was using the association as a front in its confrontation with the regime.59 When the teachers challenged the government again and resumed their protest in late July 2020, the authorities retaliated with repression, and the Teachers Association was shut down for two years. The problems between the association, the Brotherhood, and the regime remained unresolved. For the regime the Brotherhood had become state’s “enemy number one,” and the organization in Jordan suffered “unprecedented repression” under Abdallah II. The IAF, however, despite the misfortunes of the Brotherhood, still performed relatively well in elections and obviously retained a firm base of popular support. But there was nothing left of the former unofficial alliance between the Brotherhood and the regime. That, it was said, had “ended for good.”60

The “New Normal”: Crisis Control

At the end of the day, the demonstrations in Jordan’s Arab Spring by the various branches of the opposition were ineffective. Usually mobiliz-

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ing no more than a few thousand protesters—often less—and on very rare occasions maybe as many as 10,000, the protests eventually began to look like a benign routine. Demonstrations in Jordan were more massive and violent when economic hardships hurt most, like those against the skyrocketing prices of fuel in November 2012. The problem for the regime was that improving the material well-being of the people and providing for the influx of refugees depended on the goodwill and generosity of others, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States, the European Union, Japan, the Saudis, and the other Gulf states, and they too were not as wealthy as they had once been or as caring as the Jordanians would have liked. In the eyes of many Jordanians, endemic corruption was the root cause of the country’s economic woes. The problem was hardly new. Way back in the early days of Hussein in the 1950s and early 1960s, British diplomats referred repeatedly to “ubiquitous corruption” that had “always been an element in Jordanian life.” The young King Hussein committed himself publicly to the “eradication of corruption,” but to no effect, even within the narrow confines of the royal family itself.61 Some of Abdallah’s critics blamed him and the queen directly for the scourge. For many others, corruption charges were tied into identity politics. East Bankers blamed neoliberal Palestinian-Jordanian technocrats, while Palestinians accused the East Banker tribal-based elite and the security establishment for lining their pockets with public funds. The king took various symbolic steps to mollify the critics, including the arrest in late 2011 of former mayor of Amman Omar Ma’ani on charges of corruption and fraud. In early 2012, none other than former director of the mukhabarat Muhammad al-Dhahabi was detained on charges of money laundering.62 Ninety percent of the public was said to believe that financial and administrative corruption were systemic at all levels of governance. Bribery, graft, and kickbacks “lubricated relations” between bureaucrats and businessmen, ministers and investors, the mukhabarat and parliamentarians. In December 2013 Abdallah unveiled the Charter of the National Integrity System, the framework for the war against corruption, as a cornerstone of his “white revolution.”63 But this was just another of the king’s empty gestures and had no influence at all on public perceptions of widespread corruption or on the curse itself.64 Jordan’s precarious economy posed a constantly debilitating political challenge. With over half the national budget consumed by publicsector salaries and very few of the citizens paying income tax, the economic structure was unsustainable. Constant demands made by the IMF and the World Bank for austerity measures and cutbacks in government

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spending in exchange for essential loans fueled endless social disquiet and discontent. The fact that Jordan had to import 90 percent of its energy needs and was one of the most water-poor countries in the world made matters even more desperate.65 The kingdom had weathered the Arab Spring protests, but the economy was hit hard by the regional unrest. The fuel bill rose exponentially as the National Electric Power Company plunged into massive debt, first following the loss of free oil from Iraq and then of subsidized natural gas from Egypt, where the Sinai pipeline was disconnected by repeated sabotage. Jordan was eventually forced into a very unpopular gas deal with Israel. The IMF signed a $2 billion standby agreement with Amman for 2012 to 2015, which the kingdom implemented successfully, at the price of serious domestic unrest. In 2016, Jordan and the IMF sought to address the budgetary shortfalls with a $773 million program that extended to 2019 but required Jordan to impose additional taxes.66 The taxes were extremely unpopular—all the more so because of the widely held perception that the general public was being made to pay while the political and business elites lined their pockets with public funds that could have been better spent for the general good. In the words of the protesters, “Al-fasad [corruption] = al-ju’ [hunger].” In January 2018, a 10 to 16 percent sales tax was imposed on popular consumer goods such as cigarettes and clothes as subsidies on bread were reduced. By May fuel prices had risen on five occasions since the beginning of the year, and electricity bills had increased by 55 percent. All the same, the government went ahead with new income tax legislation as part of a package of measures required by the IMF. The income tax was the last straw and provoked public outrage. Despite the fact that the new taxes would not apply to the large majority because of the law’s high income threshold, they still drew widespread condemnation. In late May and early June 2018, some of the largest protests seen in years took place in Amman and a number of provincial towns against the implementation of the IMF-backed reforms. Thousands of protesters, representing a broad spectrum, were led by over thirty labor unions and professional associations, joined by some of the Hirak and other civil society groups, as well as many normally docile middle-class citizens. The protesters, overwhelmingly peaceful over eight days of demonstrations, complained of price rises, on the one hand, and stagnant salaries on the other. They condemned the government for surrendering to the IMF and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Hani al-Mulqi. In the face of the popular anger, the king backed down. Mulqi, who had been appointed two years earlier, at the end of May

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2016, to combat poverty and unemployment,67 resigned on June 4. He was replaced by Omar al-Razzaz, the former education minister. Abdallah’s letter of designation to Razzaz urged him to launch “a project for comprehensive national awakening [nahda]” to harness the energies of the Jordanians, generate jobs, review the tax system, and provide social security for the underprivileged, all within the contours of a clearly delineated social contract (aqd ijtima’i).68 Razzaz suspended the new tax law and restored the fuel subsidies.69 A few months later he introduced a slightly amended version of the tax law, raising the income threshold (from JD 8,000 to JD 9,000 per year), thereby exempting about 90 percent of the population from paying any income tax at all. In November 2018 parliament approved the law by a narrow margin (54–50), bringing hundreds (not thousands this time) of protesters back into the streets of the capital. A social media campaign called for “reform before tax” (al-islah qabla al-dariba),70 as critics dismissed the amendments as cosmetic. They complained of the absence of measures to cut waste and curb corruption, instead of squeezing the middle class with taxes. Angry Jordanians traveled from all over the kingdom to join the protest in Amman. The demonstrations morphed into a weekly protest downtown, near the prime minister’s office, that continued unabated for months, but the numbers diminished to no more than a few dozen.71 If Razzaz’s appointment was supposed to have made a difference, it did not. Instead of a nahda, there was a prevalent mood of despair. At the beginning of February 2019, a young unemployed man marched with twelve members of his family all the way (170 kilometers) from Tafila to join the protesters in Amman. Epitomizing public frustration with the economy, they were soon joined by hundreds more on “the march of the unemployed,” walking to Amman from as far south as Aqaba (336 kilometers), Ma’an (216 kilometers), and some closer northern parts of the country. The protesters camped outside the royal court for weeks on end, demanding employment. They received sympathetic coverage in the local press and from popular protest movements as well, including the Muslim Brotherhood. In mid-March 2019 the government gave in and promised the protesters 750 jobs to bring the standoff to an end.72 The marches continued all the same throughout 2019 and into 2021, halted only temporarily by the Covid-19 shutdown. Camping outside the royal court directed the protesters’ complaints at the king, holding him personally responsible for the failure to provide the people with the basic means for a dignified existence.73 The regime faced an impossible predicament. On the one hand, it was under pressure from the IMF to reduce expenses. On the other hand, it faced the anger of hundreds of thousands of unemployed

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who demanded jobs that did not exist or government employees demanding pay rises from budgets that had to be slashed. As Jordan strained to cope with the crisis, it was usually successful in obtaining the required increases in foreign aid to prevent collapse.74 The United States and Saudi Arabia were clearly disturbed by the regional unrest. When the Arab Spring broke, they increased their support for Jordan. By the end of 2011, Jordan had been promised more than $1.44 billion in grants, which was more than twice the amount obtained in a typical year.75 But the Jordanians were in dire straits. The kingdom’s national debt was 95 percent of its gross domestic product. The country had a deteriorating infrastructure, and its economic challenges had produced “an army of unemployed.”76 Unemployment was said to be 22.3 percent but was actually much higher, and youth unemployment was reported to be as high as 41 percent. The World Bank defined Jordan’s poverty line as an income of $7.9 per person daily. There were some 4 million people in this income bracket, representing about 35 percent of the total population of 11.3 million.77 There were huge gaps between the haves and the havenots to the extent that there was a real danger of a “hunger revolution.”78 King Abdallah told a group of American visitors that what kept him up at night was not the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) or alQaida but the fact that 300,000 Jordanians were unemployed, and 87 percent of them were young people between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine.79 Very early on in the Arab Spring, Abdallah had voiced the opinion that the events were not about politics; they “started because of economics—poverty and unemployment.” He worried not about political reform but about the economic situation, which could drive people back onto the streets.80 In early 2018, with Jordan facing serious domestic pressures again, the United States was forthcoming with record assistance, providing a package of $6.375 billion over five years ($1.275 billion per year until 2022). In June of that year, the kingdom’s Gulf allies, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), pledged an additional $2.5 billion (of which only a fraction had actually been transferred a year later), which took the form of loan guarantees and deposits in the Central Bank of Jordan with little if any direct budget support. Qatar followed soon after with another $500 million.81 Thanks to these renewed levels of strategic aid, the per capita levels of rent disbursed by the regime still remained higher than those available in countries like Tunisia or Egypt. This allowed the government to paper over Jordan’s yawning budget deficit and to finance salary increases for government pensioners and employees.82

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It was a national imperative for the Jordanians to consistently obtain critical economic support before the impoverishment of the people overflowed into uncontrollable expressions of despair. Jordan still managed, albeit barely, to trade geopolitical centrality for foreign aid. The king was able to leverage the scale of protest and the huge influx of Syrian refugees to call for increased foreign aid to keep Jordan stable. But the aid obtained for the Syrian refugees did not meet Jordan’s needs. According to Abdallah, Jordan had to dig into its own resources to make up the shortfall. For many years, he noted, Jordan had offered shelter to refugees at great cost to Jordan’s own economic progress.83 The “forever on the brink” narrative remained essential to Hashemite state maintenance, even though, in the Jordanian case, constant protest was “not revolution, but repetition,” thanks to the monarchy’s usually restrained response, on the one hand, and the “self-limiting popular mobilization,”84 on the other. In January 2020 the government signed a new $ 1.3 billion fouryear agreement with the IMF aimed at increasing growth and stimulating job creation. The new plan did not require more taxes and focused instead on combatting tax evasion and improving tax collection, while also supposedly ensuring a fair distribution of the tax burden.85 But in early September 2019, unrelated to developments with the IMF, the Jordanian Teachers Association, backed by the IAF, went on strike, demanding a 50 percent salary increase that had been promised by the government way back in 2014. The teachers strike exposed the popular anger with the deep disparities that existed in the “bloated public sector.” The teachers had “fallen behind others in many government ministries and state agencies plagued by graft and nepotism.” The government argued that acceding to the demands of the teachers would cost $160 million and would create an unbearable strain on the country’s heavily indebted finances. After a four-week standoff, the government caved in (again) and agreed to raise the salaries by 35 to 60 precent as of 2020. The government had no choice but “to bend in order to placate.”86 Then, in early 2020, Jordan was struck by the Covid-19 pandemic. Along with the general lockdown imposed in March 2020, the government enacted what the opposition described as “draconian” emergency regulations that were used to limit civil and political rights. The government announced in April that it could not go through with the salary adjustments agreed with the teachers because of the escalating financial crisis. The teachers launched a protest in July that included fierce criticism of the government by the leadership of the Teachers Association. Government retaliation was swift and severe. On dubious legal grounds the

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leadership of the association was arrested, and the Amman attorney general shut the association down for two years on criminal and corruption charges. In December the association was dissolved by a court ruling, which also sentenced its board members to a year in prison. In June 2022 an appeals court reduced the sentences of the board members to three months but upheld the decision to dissolve the association.87 The story of the Teachers Association was a typical example of the limited protection of civil liberties in the kingdom and the virtually unfettered powers of the mukhabarat. In March and April 2022, hundreds of journalists, politicians, and Hirak activists were arrested to prevent antigovernment protests against corruption and the dissolution of the Teachers Association and to commemorate the 2011 Arab Spring.88 Crisis mode continued, and there seemed to be no end in sight. Prime Minister Razzaz was dropped in early October 2020 and replaced by Bisher al-Khasawna. A former political advisor to the king, Khasawna was a long-serving diplomat (the son of Hani al-Khasawna, a former foreign minister). The king’s letter of designation focused on the need to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. He instructed Khasawna to reinforce the social security system and ensure a decent life for all Jordanians, especially in the spheres of health, education, and employment. The letter said nothing extraordinary, except for Abdallah’s noting that Jordan was about to commemorate its centennial—no mean achievement considering the country’s very modest beginnings.89 As it entered its second century, Jordan was battling with an obsolete social contract in conditions made ever-more severe by the Covid19 crisis. In King Hussein’s time the government used foreign aid to subsidize basic commodities and expand the public sector to bolster national employment. In Hussein’s later years, from the end of the 1980s onward, it was becoming increasingly clear that this formula was no longer sustainable. Under King Abdallah II, population growth, the influx of refugees, and difficulties in obtaining external aid further inhibited the regime’s ability to finance the old contract.90 According to Abdallah, the neoliberal reforms that he introduced “were aimed at fostering the emergence of a secure, productive, and confident middle class that could be the cornerstone of Jordan’s development and the backbone of political and economic life.”91 But in practice the middle class bore the brunt of economic reform. The many protesters from the middle and lower classes felt that they were being asked to shoulder a double burden. Long-standing entitlements were being eroded, while the middle class was expected to pay more taxes and the unemployed to remain jobless. As the will and the resources to sustain the old social contract dwindled, no coherent alter-

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native had yet come into being.92 The “secure, productive, and confident middle class” that Abdallah had planned for was nowhere to be seen.

Elections as a Sedative: Voting “for the Homeland”

In the “new normal” of almost continuous socioeconomic and political crisis, regular elections became a sedative for public dissatisfaction. Way back in the early 1960s, a British ambassador had described elections in Jordan as “a distraction” from growing domestic discontent.93 Under Abdallah II they served a similar purpose, through an exercise that entailed much motion and commotion about the vacuous parliament that few really cared about. New general elections were held two years earlier than required in January 2013. The new election law introduced in July 2012 made little difference, and the IAF boycotted the elections yet again. Without the Muslim Brotherhood’s participation, and given the existing election law, the results were a foregone conclusion: political parties remained weak and ineffective, and the elections produced a predominantly loyalist and tribal Chamber of Deputies that was no different from its predecessors.94 In accordance with his prior commitment, Abdallah did indeed consult with members of the newly elected chamber on the selection of a new prime minister. But considering the chamber’s composition, the consultations produced the rather unimaginative reappointment of the incumbent, Abdallah al-Nusur. By the end of 2015 the situation in the kingdom had stabilized to the extent that the regime was ready for yet another round of elections. In February 2016 a new election law was passed again, and elections were held in September. As usual, there was much debate over the new law but no substantial change. The number of seats in the chamber was reduced from 150 to 130 according to the new law, while the numbers of seats allocated to the major urban areas of Amman, Zarqa, and Irbid were all increased. The increases, however, did not correct the underrepresentation of the densely populated Palestinian constituencies and the overrepresentation of the generally loyalist south.95 The seemingly most impressive change was the abolition of the much criticized one-man, one-vote system. This amendment appeared to accede to a long-standing demand of the opposition to allow voters to cast ballots for as many candidates as were allocated to each district. Voting for multiple candidates would enable voters to cast traditional (clan or tribal) votes as well as other votes for candidates representing ideological political parties. Even opposition movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood welcomed the new law as a “step in the right direction.”96 However, the

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new law also did away with the vote for the twenty-seven seats that were elected only once, in the 2013 elections, on the proportional basis of countrywide party lists. The new system included candidate lists, but these were not countrywide and were to function solely at the district level. Voters would be able to vote for multiple candidates, but they would all have to come from the same local district list. The new law therefore deliberately encouraged voters to prioritize traditional loyalties by preventing a split vote between clan and party and thereby undermined the promotion of countrywide party lists, which the opposition had really sought to obtain and the government deliberately impeded.97 The public understood the situation perfectly well and treated the elections with indifference. Turnout was especially low, at 36 percent (that is, of registered voters, which means an even lower proportion, closer to 25 percent, of citizens entitled to vote). The various Islamist parties all participated and did relatively well, though their overall representation remained small. The IAF (running under the banner of the National Alliance for Reform [Islah] of the now unlicensed “hawks” of the Muslim Brotherhood) did well, despite the hounding of the regime. Possibly thanks to the low turnout, they won fifteen seats98 (the largest single party). They clearly still had a sizeable following in the densely Palestinian-populated urban constituencies. Lists affiliated with the Islamist pro-government Wasat party and “Zamzam” (running as the National Congress Party) won seven and five seats, respectively. Other party lists won just a handful of seats, leaving the large majority of the 130 members in the hands of pro-regime independents representing tribal and business interests.99 Elections were held again in November 2020 with an even lower turnout of 29.9 percent (possibly the lowest ever). The elections were said to have been marred by “dirty money” and rampant vote buying100 and, as usual, produced a parliament dominated by pro-regime tribal representatives, businessmen, and retired army officers. The low turnout reflected the general apathy, mistrust of state institutions, impact of Covid-19, and lack of confidence in the parliament’s capacity to influence policy in any meaningful sense.101 In popular discourse, people spoke dismissively of the Chamber of Deputies as the “Hello Chamber,” referring to the fact that the deputies were at the beck and call mostly of the palace and the mukhabarat, which routinely phoned them with instructions.102 Of the political parties participating in the election, only the IAF, running again as Islah, won a sizeable number of seats, ten according to most sources.103 This again was impressive proof of their continued relevance (especially in the cap-

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ital) despite the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. The pro-government Wasat party won six seats, and “Zamzam” did not win any.104 Efforts by new groups to form cross-party coalitions were frustrated by the authorities, in stark contradiction to Abdallah’s public statements ostensibly in favor of nationwide party politics. Several influential liberal-minded secularists, including figures such as former deputy prime minister and foreign minister Marwan Muasher, had begun organizing some three years before the elections. They sought to form the Civil Alliance Party (hizb al-tahaluf al-madani) but were blocked by a combination of internal differences and government machinations and prevented from running in the elections.105 State-sponsored slogans in the public domain carried an authoritarian tone. They urged the people to vote “for the homeland” (al-Urdunn yantakhib min ajl al-watan) rather than for democracy, representation, pluralism, or civil rights. Needless to say, all the voting “for the homeland” had little impact.

Mounting East Banker Disapproval

The phenomenon of the Hirak and the openly expressed disaffection of retired military officers and tribal leaders were all mounting evidence that the pro-regime ultraloyalist political edifice was wearing down. The regime was under increasing pressure to respond to the needs and interests of the East Bankers to maintain this important base of support. As the economy struggled, protest never really dissipated. Austerity and identity politics were constantly on the agenda. The erosion of the old social contract aroused the ire of “Jordan’s angry tribes,”106 and the king’s authority and possibly even the fate of the Hashemite regime remained very much open for discussion.107 In early October 2018, against the backdrop of the income tax protests, the National Follow-up Committee (NFC; lajnat al-mutaba’a al-wataniyya), headed by Amjad al-Majali and Salam al-Falahat, published a scathing critique of the king. Majali was an ex-minister and the son of a former prime minister, Hazza’ al-Majali. (It was ahead of a meeting with members of the Majali clan in 2013 that Abdallah had spoken dismissively of these “dinosaurs”). Falahat was the former general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. The NFC had 143 members, including prominent East Bankers, military veterans, senior officials, and politicians. Similarly harsh criticism of the monarchy had been aired during the income tax protests, and Majali and his associates were picking up on what had become a popular refrain. A key grievance of this East Banker elite was their loss of political influence. The neoliberal economic model

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promoted the transfer of power to the corporate elite, shifting the center of gravity from the bureaucracy that had upheld the established East Banker patronage network to the Palestinian-dominated private sector. This process left the socioeconomically vulnerable without the safety net that had previously been offered by the government.108 Among the groups most severely affected were predominantly East Banker publicsector employees, who had to make do with stagnant incomes and job cuts. For them the political system was becoming less inclusive, giving preference to the Western-educated professional class and the Amman business elite at their expense. East Bankers, who felt that the new elites did not empathize with their predicament, heaped criticism on the decisionmaking process, in which they now had less of a say.109 The NFC statement, signed by over 1,000 people, criticized the king’s abuse of power and demanded that his prerogatives be curtailed. The concentration of all executive authority in the royal court was unconstitutional, they contended. Both houses of parliament ought to be elected instead of the upper house being appointed by the king, and the executive power of the government should be enhanced at the expense of the monarch’s prerogatives.110 In his speech from the throne, opening parliament on October 14, 2018, the king made no more than an oblique reference to the “dissatisfaction” of some. He conceded that there was a certain “weakening of trust between the citizen and government institutions.” But he avoided addressing the constitutional issues at hand and noted rather feebly that countries could not be built on “skepticism and self-flagellation.”111 Not long afterward, the protests against taxes, unemployment, and corruption started all over again (see above: The “New Normal”). Abdallah’s words obviously had little impact. In mid-February 2019 the NFC issued another statement, one even bolder than the first. They repeated all of their previous complaints about misrule and corruption but now demanded a new democratic constitution that would put an end to the current “one-man autocracy.” They accused the king and those around him of being personally responsible for the dangerous fate that awaited the kingdom unless the monarch changed course “before it was too late.”112 The tribes also joined in the fray and went a step further with an even more radical message. The Hirak of the Bani Hasan, one of Jordan’s largest tribal confederacies, historically dominant in the vicinity of Ajlun,113 posted a statement in early March 2019 calling for a “change of [not in] the political system” (taghyir al-nahj al-siyasi). They were supported by others from the Abbad and Bani Hamida tribes from the Balqa region, as they accused the king and queen of direct responsibility for the country’s economic ills and its rampant corruption.

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The royal family, they said, had unconstitutionally monopolized the political system, excluding the Jordanian people from the decisionmaking process. Reform would not suffice, and they demanded the formation of a government of national salvation that would run the country after a comprehensive change of the system of government. Elders of the Bani Hasan hastened to denounce the Hirak’s statement and reaffirm their loyalty to the king. Some of the Bani Hasan and the Abbad even questioned the statement’s authenticity.114 On the other hand, there were those who argued that the regime had bought the loyalty of tribal leaders who did not truly reflect the rank and file.115 Whatever the case, the regime clearly had serious problems with the tribes and the younger generation in particular, as the Hirak had shown for almost a decade. The retired servicemen’s petition from way back in 2010 had already shattered “the glass ceiling that had long protected the monarchy from popular censure.” As Ali al-Habashna, the leader of the retired servicemen, put it, “For Jordanians, the monarchy used to be a sacred issue, but now it is the issue.”116 In the words of another protester, Jordan’s troubles were all the king’s fault. The “real recklessness is that of the king and none other than the king.”117 In this more pervasive mood of disaffection with the monarchy, it was not unusual for protesters to call explicitly for the overthrow of the regime. What in the early days of the Arab Spring had been the exception to the rule was becoming ever-more common. Increasing criticism was also directed against the personality of Queen Rania, accusing her of misusing public funds for personal profit or of having become a fashion icon at the people’s expense. The queen, who in the past had refrained from responding to public criticism, now retaliated with an assault of her own. She accused her critics of abusing the social media to wage a misguided smear campaign without offering a “single shred of evidence.”118 Columnists in the establishment press came to Rania’s defense, warning against dragging Jordanian society into the kind of destructive instability that had plagued other Arab countries.119 It was not as if there had never been any complaints or misgivings about Hussein’s cosmopolitan lifestyle or his involvement in corruption. They had been commonplace “but very hush-hush” and not in the public domain. Moreover, they had had little effect on how people talked openly about Hussein’s public persona as “our king.” As Jordan’s economic troubles steadily worsened in the 1990s, the mood changed. When Hussein departed for the Mayo Clinic in 1998, Jordan’s economy was a shambles, the government’s rapprochement with Israel was unpopular, and flattery of Hussein, a normal part of political conversation in earlier

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years, had virtually disappeared. Political cynicism flourished, even among the Bedouin tribes, who were typically portrayed as knee-jerk supporters of the Hashemite regime.120 However, after his death, Hussein was lionized by the Jordanian people, sealed in their collective memory as the greatest of Jordan’s kings and the architect of the modern kingdom. Any and every comparison between Hussein and Abdallah left the new king lacking and struggling to prove himself in the shadow of his father. The use of social media in Abdallah’s time opened new channels of popular expression and vocal criticism of the regime that had never existed before. “The days when information flowed only from the top down, and Arab governments could control the voices in their countries, [were] long gone. With Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp widely diffused in the Arab world, information now [moved] horizontally and people—using their real names—now [tweeted] the most insulting things at their leaders.” It was increasingly obvious that social networks and cyber tools were making “soft authoritarians, like Jordan, more fragile”121 and Abdallah more vulnerable. While this was all true, it reflected a virtual reality that was only part of the picture. In terms of real power and brute force, the regime was still immeasurably more powerful than its opponents. This remained so as long as the regime had the will to use force if necessary and as long as the critics restricted themselves to protest primarily on social media. The new social media not only provided almost unlimited avenues of expression and platforms from which to hurl unrestrained abuse even at the monarchy but also allowed for the passive option of online protest from a safe distance that did not really affect the balance of power. The new media also enabled the regime’s intelligence organizations to follow, caution, or shut down social media. Moreover, it was never quite clear what real political weight stood behind online statements, whether they represented a large organized political opposition or just a handful of youthful protesters. The regime’s fragility was palpable, but, at the same time, there was a tacit understanding that as long as the people did not attack the security forces “or impugn the monarchy’s legitimacy,” everyone would remain safe. Jordan’s social media generally revealed a widespread preference for evolution rather than revolution. Fears of the kind of violence that had ruined neighboring Iraq and Syria exerted “a natural chilling effect” on any mobilization that threatened “to radicalize public discourse and sow chaos.”122 Furthermore, the monarchy had its stalwarts too. Calls to overthrow the regime elicited firm responses from regime supporters, of whom

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there were many. A member of parliament, Habis al-Fayiz, of one of the most powerful tribal confederacies in the country, the Bani Sakhr, and Senator Hussein al-Majali, a former minister of interior and director of public security, declared their unswerving loyalty to the Hashemite leadership and warned the critics that their opposition was unacceptable and would not be tolerated.123 The denunciation of the Hirak by the tribal dignitaries suggested that the disaffection among the tribes might be limited to the younger generation. While the regime could draw some comfort from that, it was equally important to note that this bedrock of tribal support for the regime was less secure. This was true throughout the kingdom, from north to south, with potentially dangerous ramifications for long-term regime stability. After all, the end of the economic hardship, which was the root cause for resentment of the monarchy, was nowhere in sight, and the younger generation (under the age of twenty-five) made up over half (55 percent) of Jordan’s population. Yet, for the time being, Jordan proved to be “too stable to fail.”124Aggrieved East Bankers were seen to be increasingly activist but “not revolutionary.” They mostly remained “fiercely patriotic as Jordanians and loyal to the Hashemite state.”125 According to a Jordanian scholar, the militarized welfare regime that still sustained many East Bankers continued to function at levels “that made loyalty appear preferable to rebellion, and ensured that the prospect of revolutionary change seemed like a dangerous leap into the unknown.”126

Dissent in the Royal Family: The Hamza Affair

Surprisingly, the kingdom’s ongoing domestic crisis came to a head in an unprecedented clash of sibling rivalry within the royal family.127 In early April 2021, just as Jordan geared up to launch its centennial celebrations, King Abdallah entered into open conflict with Prince Hamza, his forty-one-year-old younger half-brother. Tensions within the family were not entirely new. Hussein, it will be recalled, had dismissed his brother Hasan as crown prince just weeks before he died and appointed Abdallah as heir in his stead. The “Hamza affair,” however, was a clash of personalities and politics that might prove difficult to resolve as it tested Jordan’s historical stabilizing assets in the face of a serious rift within the royal family. There had been a tense relationship between the two for many years. On his deathbed King Hussein had instructed Abdallah to appoint Hamza as his crown prince when he became king. Abdallah obeyed but then removed Hamza in November 2004 to pave the way for his own son, Prince Hussein.

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Many East Bankers were unhappy with this decision.128 Hamza was very popular, especially in the tribal south. In many respects, Hamza was exactly what Abdallah was not. There was a striking physical resemblance between Hamza and his revered late father. They looked alike, and their voices and diction were almost identical. Hamza was brought up in Jordan and had interacted intimately with the tribes since his youth. He knew their ways and spoke the language as they did, in stark contrast to Abdallah’s foreign upbringing, imperfect language, cultural and mental distance, and at times apparent disdain for tribal norms. For many of the tribesmen Abdallah was as an outsider. Hamza, conversely, was one of them. During the early years of the Arab Spring, opposition to Abdallah had rallied around Hamza especially in the Hirak of the tribal younger generation. In more recent years Hamza had become a magnet for critics, tribal and other, of the monarchy and a voice for their grievances, especially on social media. Hamza was in constant direct contact with tribal leaders, visiting them at their invitation, in what appeared like a demonstration of relevance to and intimacy with the common people. The socioeconomic crisis and its attendant resentment, disquiet, and public disaffection coalesced in the representative dissenting personality of Hamza. As the economic crisis in Jordan continued unabated, Hamza often publicly expressed his identification with the critics of the regime, during the income tax protests, for example, and on other occasions. The challenge to Abdallah, though not quite explicit by Hamza, was self-evident. It clearly irked Abdallah, who reacted with force to a challenge that was real, on the one hand, but not dangerous, on the other. On April 3, 2021, Hamza was placed under house arrest, while a score or so of his reputed associates were apprehended. These included a very wellknown personality, Basim Awadallah, the Palestinian economist who was one of the first to be drawn into Abdallah’s inner circle of advisers.129 He had become a very close confidant of the king and, as minister of finance and chief of the royal court (2006–2008), was a most unlikely conspirator. Another was a rather obscure Hashemite prince, Hasan bin Zayd, and then there were some from Jordan’s most powerful tribes and clans (such as the Bani Sakhr, the Huwaytat, and the Majalis). Linking all of these figures together as a cabal of collaborators was odd, to say the least. Awadallah was an exemplar of “the arch-typical Palestinian-Jordanian technocratic and neo-liberal elite” disliked and “almost villainized” by tribal East Bankers.130 Information was circulated by the government about a conspiracy to destabilize the kingdom, ostensibly led by Hamza and supported by

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unnamed foreign parties (hints were dropped about Saudi Arabia and Israel), that had been nipped in the bud.131 The conspiracy version was an exaggeration that most Jordanians found hard to believe, and the claim of foreign intervention was never substantiated. The ostensible overreaction to Hamza’s association with disaffected tribal and other figures seemed an effort to discredit him and to undermine his popularity. The rather clumsy operation was more indicative of Abdallah’s own insecure mind-set than actual subversion by Hamza. The sibling rivalry was temporarily put to rest by Abdallah’s judicious recruitment of his uncle, seventy-four-year-old Prince Hasan, the late King Hussein’s sophisticated, congenial younger brother and presently the family’s respected elder statesman, to arrange the making of amends and to douse the flames. On April 5, at Hasan’s residence and in the presence of a number of key family members of different generations, Hamza signed a letter of allegiance to King Abdallah and Crown Prince Hussein.132 Abdallah published a statement two days later, announcing that the unfortunate discord within the family had been put to rest. But the fight was far from over. Between the above two statements, Hamza released a recording of his angry exchange with the chief of staff, Major General Yusif alHunayti, who had come to his home at the start of the crisis to inform him of his house arrest. In the key passage of the conversation, Hamza retorted that it was he who had been “the crown prince in this country by order from [his] father.”133 Abdallah replied, in his statement the day after, that King Hussein had designated him to serve the Jordanian people “since the day I was born.”134 The issue had obviously not been finally resolved. But the brothers were not yet ready for a final showdown.135 Neither Hamza nor any of the tribesmen were charged with any offence. The two expendables, Awadallah (the Palestinian) and bin Zayd (the minor royal), were tried for sedition. Both were sentenced in July to fifteen years’ imprisonment with hard labor in what Human Rights Watch described as a “sham ‘sedition’ trial.”136 A year after the outbreak of the feud, in April 2022, in a statement on his Twitter account, Hamza declared that he had concluded that the current conduct of “our institutions”—that is, the monarchy—did not correspond with the values and convictions that his father, Hussein, had imparted to him. He would have no part of this and had decided, therefore, to dissociate himself from this untoward conduct of the royal family by renouncing his title of prince. A month earlier, in March, the royal court had published an apology purportedly signed by Hamza asking for Abdallah’s forgiveness for his behavior in the events of the year before, seeking to “turn the page” on this chapter.137

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But the page had not been turned, and the crisis within the royal family continued to fester. Hamza was challenging King Abdallah and Crown Prince Hussein as the legitimate heirs to Hussein’s legacy. In May 2022, Abdallah issued a royal decree restricting Hamza’s movements, residence, and communications. He described Hamza as delusional, seeing only himself as “the guardian of our Hashemite heritage.”138 A hemorrhaging wound had been opened within the Hashemite family the likes of which had never existed.

Emphasizing Continuity

Like the rising tensions with the East Bankers, the crisis with Hamza did not bode well for the monarchy. But for the meantime at least, Jordan’s historic stabilizing factors had all come into play to maintain the status quo. The majority of the political elite, backed by the security establishment, rallied round the king. Of all those apprehended in the initial clash with Hamza, there were no army officers. Generally speaking, the Jordanian public, horrified by the bloodshed in neighboring countries, was grateful for the tranquility they enjoyed, despite all the shortcomings of the regime, of which they were acutely aware. The public was not looking for opportunities to undermine domestic security. Jordan’s Arab neighbors—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Egypt, and others—and international powers, led by the United States, were all quick to reaffirm their support for Abdallah and for Jordan’s stability. Hamza’s challenge had arisen from the fallout of the steadily eroding sociopolitical order since Abdallah’s rise to power. Jordan’s problems—the tensions within the family and the political elite, coupled with the country’s endemic corruption, socioeconomic distress, and popular political disaffection—were far from over. With no new organizing principle or social contract governing the relationship between the regime and society based on a sound formula for economic recovery, the uncertainty and popular disaffection were bound to continue. Such an atmosphere of crisis was conducive to disquiet, dissent, and protest. Further down the road this could pose a serious threat to the regime. Hamza, whose grievances and embitterment remained intact, could be waiting in the wings for an opportunity to build on domestic disarray to augment his own position and to eventually challenge King Abdallah and/or Prince Hussein head-on. Numerous Jordanian commentators urged Abdallah to launch a genuine program of political and economic reform if the kingdom was to avoid greater calamity. In June 2021 the king called upon former prime minister Samir al-Rifa’i to chair a ninety-two-member royal commission

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for political reform that would propose new legislation for elections and political parties. This was the fourth such commission established in the previous thirty years and the third under King Abdallah. Ironically, none other than Rifa’i had been removed from office at the beginning of the Arab Spring, ostensibly for failing to embrace reform. The commission’s recommendations were presented to the king in October. They proposed a 138-member Chamber of Deputies (of which eighteen seats were to be reserved for women). The chamber would be elected in a mixed system (like the one originally proposed in the National Agenda way back in 2005) in which ninety-seven seats would be elected by the existing method through local lists in eighteen constituencies, and forty-one would be allocated in countrywide elections through national political parties. Voters would cast two votes, one for the local list and another for the national parties. The proposals were to be implemented gradually over a ten-year period. During this phase the ratio of seats elected through parties in countywide elections, which started at 30 percent, would gradually rise to 65 percent. Parliament endorsed a new political parties law and the new election law in March 2022.139 Critics complained that the language of the parties law was vague and might therefore allow for arbitrary restrictions and interventions by the security services, especially since party activists were not uncommonly harassed by them.140 The generally skeptical public largely ignored the promised reforms. There was little reason to believe that they would be any more meaningful than all the earlier efforts. As one activist argued, the commission was but a “reincarnation of earlier stunts, basically designed to deflate and absorb politics in Jordan.” Though political reforms were obviously needed, most Jordanians were more concerned about the pressing problems of their daily lives: the flagging economy, the high cost of living, corruption, and their limited personal freedoms.141 Amendments to the constitution passed by parliament in late December 2021 and early January 2022 set the project for political reform in motion. However, the reforms, ostensibly designed to eventually enhance the power of parliament, were immediately offset by an extension of the king’s powers. The reforms, intended to lead over time to a prime minister emerging from an elected parliamentary majority rather than a royal appointment, were balanced by amendments to the constitution that gave the king sweeping powers to appoint and dismiss key senior officials and to establish a National Security and Foreign Policy Council to be headed by the king. Critics questioned the logic of these steps, which were thought to be deliberately designed to detract from the future government’s

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decisionmaking authority by giving even more power to the monarch. A widening credibility gap was emerging between the monarchy and the younger generation in particular, which had lost its patience for “elusive reform promises.”142 What exactly the new reforms would eventually produce remained to be seen. As for affairs within the royal family, they soon appeared to have returned to normal. Crown Prince Hussein married Rajwa al-Sayf of Saudi origin in June 2023 in what the semiofficial media portrayed as an “unconfined joy for all Jordanians,” symbolizing the unity of the Jordanian people around their “noble Hashemite leadership.”143 The celebrations were said to have held “deep significance . . . emphasizing continuity . . . and refreshing the monarchy’s image” after the family feud.144 At the age of twenty-nine, Hussein was gradually filling the shoes of the mature designated successor to the crown. Abdallah systematically groomed him for the role. He joined the king in official meetings with foreign dignitaries as a matter of course and also carried out diplomatic missions abroad. Hussein delivered the Jordanian address to the UN General Assembly (in September 2017) and routinely assumed typical royal responsibilities, making trips, inspections, and speeches throughout the kingdom, meeting local officials, and familiarizing the public with the monarch to be. The wedding was “not just a marriage.” It was the “presentation of the future king of Jordan. . . . [T]he issue of the crown prince [had] been closed.”145 Whether this was really so remained an open question. Jordan had defied the skeptics for generations. The kingdom proudly celebrated its centennial under the slogan of the festivities, which proclaimed, “The March Continues,” and so it did. But a serious corrective movement was desperately needed. If such an initiative was not introduced from the top down, coupled with very generous foreign aid, there was no guarantee that disaffection from below would not eventually upset the Hashemite applecart.

Notes

1. Al-Ra’y (Amman), March 4, 2011. 2. King Abdallah’s letter to Prime Minister Bakhit, King Abdallah’s official website, March 22, 2011, www.kingabdullah.jo. 3. See statement of the Chamber of Deputies in al-Ra’y (Amman), March 28, 2011. 4. Jordan Times, March 30, 2011. 5. Abdallah in speech to the nation, King Abdallah’s official website, June 12, 2011. www.kingabdullah.jo. 6. King Abdallah, “Goals, Achievements and Conventions.” 7. Yom, “Jordan.”

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8. Abdallah in interviews with Ahmad al-Khatib of Agence France-Presse, September 12, 2012, and with Jamal Halaby of the Associated Press, March 20, 2013. Abdallah’s official website-www.kingabdullah.jo. 9. Abdallah in a speech to the nation celebrating his ascension to the throne, the Great Arab Revolt, and Army Day, June 8, 2010, in an interview with Ahmad alKhatib of Agence France-Presse, September 12, 2012; and in an interview with Jamal Halaby of the Associated Press, March 20, 2013. Abdallah’s official websitewww.kingabdullah.jo. 10. Ryan and Schwedler, “Return to Democratization or New Hybrid Regime?,” 138–151. 11. King Abdallah in interviews with Ghassan Sharbil in al-Hayat (London), June 20, 2012, and jointly with Samir Hiyari and Samir Barhum in al-Ra’y (Amman) and the Jordan Times, December 5, 2012; King Abdallah, “Our Journey to Forge Our Path Towards Democracy”; King Abdallah, “Making Our Democratic System Work for All Jordanians”; King Abdallah, “Each Playing Our Part in a New Democracy”; King Abdallah, “Towards Democratic Empowerment and Active Citizenship.” 12. Bani Salameh, “Political Reform in Jordan,” 56. 13. Bani Salameh, “Political Reform in Jordan,” 67. 14. Goldberg, “Modern King in the Arab Spring.” 15. Jordan Times, August 14, 2011; “Jordan Constitutional Amendments 2011”; Jordan Times, June 8, 2019. 16. Bani Salameh and Ananzah, “Constitutional Reforms in Jordan,” 5. 17. Abdallah in an interview with Adil al-Tarifi in al-Sharq al-Awsat (London), King Abdallah’s official website, June 26, 2013, www.kingabdullah.jo. 18. Bani Salameh, “Political Reform in Jordan,” 51, 56. 19. Riedel, Jordan and America, 183. 20. Obeidat, “Jordan’s 2016 Constitutional Amendments.” 21. Harel, “In Jordan, Criticism and Protests Following Constitutional Amendments Expanding King’s Powers.” 22. Kuttab, “Jordanian Website Owners Reject Attempts to Gag Them”; Fox and Sammour, “Disquiet on the Jordanian Front.” 23. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 169–170. 24. Abdallah in joint interview with Hiyari and Barhum in al-Ra’y and the Jordan Times, December 5, 2012. 25. Abdallah in an interview with Ramadan Rawashdeh on Jordan TV, King Abdallah’s official website, July 1, 2012, www.kingabdullah.jo. 26. British Legation Amman, “Annual Report on the Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan for 1951,” January 26, 1952, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 537. 27. Islamic Action Front secretary-general Hamza Mansur to Agence FrancePresse in Jordan Times, February 1, 2011. 28. Abdallah in an interview with Diba Nigar Goksel in Turkish Policy Quarterly, King Abdallah’s official website, March 3, 2012, www.kingabdullah.jo. 29. Abdallah in an interview with Ghassan Sharbil in al-Hayat (London), June 20, 2012. In his conversations with Jeffrey Goldberg (see “The Modern King in the Arab Spring”), Abdallah was surprisingly candid in blaming the mukhabarat for subverting his efforts for reform in collusion with other conservatives in the political elite. 30. Bani Salameh, “Political Reform in Jordan,” 50, 69. 31. Andoni, “Report from Jordan,” 85–86. 32. Muasher, Decade of Struggling Reform Efforts in Jordan, 21–22. 33. Kanan Makiya wrote The Republic of Fear on Saddam’s Iraq.

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34. Speech by Abdallah before members of the executive, legislative, and judicial authorities, King Abdallah’s official website, February 20, 2011, www .kingabdullah.jo. 35. Agha and Khalidi, “End of This Road.” 36. Barari, “Mishal in Amman.” 37. Barari, “Jordan, an Arena for Hamas?” 38. King Abdallah’s interview with Ghassan Sharbil in al-Hayat (London), Part II, November 10, 2009; Susser, Two-State Imperative, 195. 39. Varulkar, “Arab Spring in Jordan: King Compelled to Make Concessions.” 40. Greenberg, “Hamas Leader Khaled Meshal Visits Jordan’s King Abdullah II as Relations Ease.” 41. Associated Press, Amman, “Jordan Election Touted as Start of Democratization.” 42. But only about 39 percent of all eligible voters actually voted. Fewer than 2.3 million of the 3.3 million eligible voters (69 percent) registered to vote, and of these, fewer than 1.3 million (that is, 56.7 percent of registered voters) voted. 43. Sweis, “In Jordan, Progress in Small Steps.” 44. Wagemakers, “Things Fall Apart,” 1. 45. Abdallah in interview with Jeffrey Golberg in The Atlantic, April 2013. 46. Robinson, “Can Islamists Be Democrats?,” 384–386. 47. al-Naimat, “Continued Fragmentation of the Jordanian Brotherhood.” 48. Named after the Zamzam Hotel in downtown Amman, where the first meeting of the people involved in the initiative took place. 49. Wagemakers, “Things Fall Apart,” 2–3, 7–8. 50. al-Sharif, “Zamzam Rattles Jordan’s Muslim Brothers”; al-Daameh, “Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood Split over Zamzam Initiative”; al-Sharif, “Unprecedented Rift Splits Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood”; al-Amir, “Jordan Brotherhood Leadership ‘Illegitimate’”; Schenker and Barnhard, “Implosion of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood.” 51. Schenker, “Amman’s Showdown with the Muslim Brotherhood”; al-Naimat, “Continued Fragmentation of the Jordanian Brotherhood.” 52. Schenker and Barnhard, “Implosion of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood”; Magid, “King and the Islamists.” 53. Wagemakers, “Things Fall Apart,” 12–13. 54. Luck, “Teachers Association Islamists’ Latest Political Weapon.” 55. Kuttab, “Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood Loses Control of Powerful Union After 26 Years”; Yom and al-Khatib, “Islamists Are Losing Support in Jordan.” 56. “Islamists Make a Comeback in Union Elections in Jordan.” 57. “Jordan Top Court Dissolves Muslim Brotherhood”; Hilton, “Jordan Dissolves Muslim Brotherhood Group in Court Ruling.” 58. “Islamic Action Front in Jordan Urges Government to Respond to Teachers’ Demands.” 59. Abu Rumman, Dispute over the New Rules of the Game, 11. 60. Abu Rumman, Dispute over the New Rules of the Game, 15, 24; Wagemakers, “Things Fall Apart,” 12. 61. British Embassy Amman, “Jordan: Annual Review for 1955,” July 27, 1956, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 736 ; British Embassy Amman to Foreign Office, Despatch no. 48, October 12, 1960, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 872; British Embassy Amman, “Jordan: Annual Review for 1961,” January 11, 1962, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 880–885. 62. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 35, 59; Varulkar, “Arab Spring in Jordan—Part II,” Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 179.

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63. Speech by Abdallah in Amman, King Abdallah’s official website, December 9, 2013, www.kingabdullah.jo. 64. Yom, “New Landscape,” 288. 65. Abdallah in a speech in Paris, King Abdallah’s official website, November 30, 2015, www.kingabdullah.jo. 66. al-Omari and Fishman, “Jordan’s Economic Protest.” 67. Abdallah’s letter of designation to Hani al-Mulqi, King Abdallah’s official website, May 29, 2016, www.kingabdullah.jo. 68. Abdallah’s letter of designation to Omar Razzaz, King Abdallah’s official website, June 5, 2018, www.kingabdullah.jo. 69. Schwedler, “Jordan’s Austerity Protests in Context”; Yom, “Jordan’s Protests”; al-Omari and Fishman, “Jordan’s Economic Protest.” 70. Magid, “Jordanians Fed Up with More of the Same.” 71. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 199. 72. Middle East Eye, February 22, 2019; Harel, “Ongoing Protests in Jordan.” 73. al-Sharif, “Hundreds of Jordanians March Toward Capital Demanding Jobs”; Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 206, 280. 74. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 23. 75. Europa Regional Surveys of the World, Middle East and North Africa 2015, 602. 76. Ersan, “After 20 Years of Rule, Jordan’s King Abdullah Stands on Shaky Ground.” 77. al-Tamimi, “Hit Hard by Gaza War, Jordan’s Economy Faces Uncertain Future.” 78. Al-Quds al-Arabi (London), February 27, 2012, as quoted in MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis 806, March 4, 2012; Europa Regional Surveys, Middle East and North Africa 2019, 437; Luck, “Why Jordan’s Young and Jobless Men Are Marching on the Kingdom’s Capital”; “King Abdullah of Jordan Fears That Old Allies Are Ditching Him”; Riedel, “Jordan’s King Abdallah Is Facing New Risks.” 79. Friedman, “Beware the Mideast’s Falling Pillars.” 80. Abdallah in interview with Lally Weymouth in the Washington Post, October 25, 2011. 81. Jordan Times, February 21, 2018; The Economist, June 8, 2019; Al-Quds alArabi (London), June 14, 2018, as quoted in MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series no. 1403, June 25, 2018; al-Omari and Fishman, “Jordan’s Economic Protest.” 82. al-Tall, “Early Spring in Jordan.” 83. Speech by King Abdallah at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, December 13, 2023, King Abdallah’s official website, https://kingabdullah.jo; Yom, “Jordan’s Protests.” 84. Yom, “Jordan’s Protests”; Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 224. 85. Jordan Times, January 30, 2020. 86. Ersan, “After 20 Years of Rule, Jordan’s King Abdullah Stands on Shaky Ground”; Nusairat, “Teachers Protest Challenges Jordanian Status Quo”; al-Khalidi, “Jordan Reaches Deal with Teachers Union to End One-Month Strike.” 87. “Jordan Arrests Leaders of Teachers Union in Opposition Crackdown”; “Jordanian Police Beat and Arrest Protesting Teachers”; “Jordan: Teachers’ Syndicate Closed”; Jordan Times, October 13, 2020; “Jordan Appeals Court Upholds Decision to Dissolve Teachers’ Association.” 88. Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2023, Jordan, 10. 89. Abdallah’s letter of appointment to Bisher al-Khasawna, King Abdallah’s official website, October 7, 2020, www.kingabdullah.jo. 90. al-Ajlouni and Hartnett, “Making the Economy Political.”

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91. Abdallah in interview with Diba Nigar Goksel in Turkish Policy Quarterly, King Abdallah’s official website, March 3, 2012, www.kingabdullah.jo. 92. al-Ajlouni and Hartnett, “Making the Economy Political.” 93. Ambassador Roderick Parkes in his annual review of Jordan for 1962, January 9, 1963, in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Palestine and Jordan, 906. 94. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 134. 95. Amman and Zarqa combined had 42 seats (29 and 13, respectively), that is, 32 percent of the total (130), though they represented over 50 percent of the population. The southern governorates of Karak, Tafila, Ma’an, and Aqabah had 25 seats combined (11, 5, 5 and 4, respectively), that is, 19 percent of the total, though they represented less than 10 percent of the population. Amman and Zarqa received 60 percent of what they deserved, compared to the southern governorates’ 200 percent. 96. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 137. 97. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 140. 98. The exact number fluctuated between ten and sixteen in different sources. The inconsistency resulted from the fact that not all candidates with party affiliations actually registered as such ahead of the elections. The fifteen seats were made up of ten to eleven actual members of the IAF and five others who were tribal and other non-Islamist allies running with Islah. 99. Al-hay’a al-mustaqilla lil-intikhabat, tafsiliyya, (Independent Election Commission, Detailed Report) iec.jo/ar/2016; Jordan Times, September 23, 2016; Magid, “Jordan’s Elections”; European Union Election Observation Mission, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan Parliamentary Election, September 20, 2016, Final Report, November 13, 2016, 45–46; Sowell, “Takeaways from Jordan’s Elections.” 100. “Jordan’s Elections, Marred by Rumours, Dirty Money.” 101. “Assessment of the 2020 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan,” 14–15. 102. Bani Salameh, “Political Reform in Jordan,” 50, 69. 103. Not all IAF members actually ran on Islah lists so counting Islah winners was not straightforward, and numbers ranged from eight to thirteen. 104. “Assessment of the 2020 Parliamentary Elections in Jordan,” 28–30. 105. Haddadin, “‘Civil Alliance’ Amplifies Youth Voice”; Karmel, “Jordan’s 2020 Election Shifts from Landmark Poll to Business as Usual”; “Jordanian Vote Highlights Tribal Factor, Political Parties’ Weaknesses.” 106. Shahin, “Jordan’s Angry Tribes.” 107. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 192. 108. Barker, “Investing in Human Capital.” 109. al-Ajlouni and Hartnett, “Making the Economy Political”; Ersan, “Jordan’s King Facing Mounting Pressure as Tribal Support Ebbs Away”; Shahin, “Jordan’s Angry Tribes.” 110. Harel, “Growing Calls in Jordan to Enact Political Reforms.” 111. King Abdallah speech from the throne, King Abdallah’s official website, October 14, 2018, https://kingabdullah.jo. 112. Harel, “Ongoing Protests in Jordan.” 113. Alon, Making of Jordan, 26. 114. Harel, “Ongoing Protests in Jordan.” 115. Ersan, “Jordan’s King Facing Mounting Pressure as Tribal Support Ebbs Away.” 116. al-Tall, “Early Spring in Jordan.” 117. Abu Sneineh, “In Struggling Jordan, Grassroots Movements Are Demanding Political Change.” 118. Harel, “Concern in Jordan’s Royal Court.”

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119. Muhammad al-Tarawna in al-Ra’y (Amman), October 18, 2019; Hazim Qashu in al-Dustur (Amman), October 27, 2019, as quoted in Harel, “Concern in Jordan’s Royal Court.” 120. Shryock, “Dynastic Modernism and Its Contradictions,” 60. 121. Friedman, “Beware the Mideast’s Falling Pillars.” 122. Dekel and Perlov, “Elections in Jordan”; Yom, “Jordan’s Protests.” 123. Harel, “Concern in Jordan’s Royal Court.” 124. El-Anis, “Jordan in 2018,” 220–223. 125. Ryan, “We Are All Jordan.” 126. al-Tall, “Early Spring in Jordan.” 127. Parts of this section and the one that follows appeared in an article I published previously: Susser, “Still Standing, but Shaky.” 128. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 159. 129. King Abdallah II, Our Last Best Chance, 156. 130. Warrick, Dadouch, and Hendrix, “Nearly 20 Arrested in Alleged Plot Against Jordan’s King Abdullah II”; Sweis, Kershner, and Kulish, “Jordan Arrests High-Profile Figures”; Ryan, “Family Matters.” 131. See press briefing by Deputy Prime Minister Ayman Safadi on April 4 as reported in al-Tarawina, “Al-itaha bil-mu’amarat al-wahimin”; “Prince Hamzeh, Inner Clique’s Attempts to Undermine Security, Stability Foiled-Deputy PM.” 132. “Bayan sadar an al-diwan al-maliki al-Hashimi.” 133. “Jordan: Read the Full Conversation Between Prince Hamzah and Army Chief.” 134. “Al-malik yuwajjih risala lil-sha’b al Urdunni.” 135. al-Rintawi, “Tango on the Brink of the Precipice.” 136. Bulos, “Two Found Guilty of Sedition in Jordan”; Coogle, “Jordan’s Sham ‘Sedition’ Trial Was Another Blow to the Rule of Law.” 137. “Jordan’s Prince Hamzah bin Hussein Renounces Title of Prince”; “Jordan’s Prince Hamzah bin Hussein Renounces His Title.” 138. Iradah Malakiyya [royal decree], King Abdallah’s official website, May 19, 2022, https://kingabdullah.jo/ar/news. 139. Al-Dustur (Amman), March 9, 29, 2022. 140. Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2023, Jordan, 5. 141. al-Sharif, “King Appoints New Commission for Political Reform in Jordan”; Obeidat, “Modernizing Jordan’s Political System”; Kuttab, “Jordan’s Decade-Long Path to Democracy Might Have Just Begun”; Husseini, “Outcomes of Royal Committee to Modernize Political System Promising-Rapporteur”; Ryan, “A New Cycle of Reform in Jordan.” 142. al-Khalidi, “Jordan Parliament Begins Debate on Constitutional Changes”; “Lower House’s Legal Committee Endorses Draft Amendments to Constitution”; “Expansion of King’s Powers Casts Doubt on Political Reform in Jordan”; Davis, “Jordan”; al-Naimat, “Constitutional Amendments in Jordan.” 143. Weldali, “Jordan Comes Alive with Royal Wedding Celebrations”; “Royal Wedding Showcases Jordanian-Arab-Hashemite Culture.” 144. “A Look at Jordan’s Royal Wedding.” 145. “A Look at Jordan’s Royal Wedding.”

11

The Enigma of Hashemite Resilience

JORDANIANS LIVED IN A PERMANENT STATE OF STRATEGIC, POLITICAL, and economic uncertainty. Situated in the heart of a most volatile region, they were engulfed by unrelenting geopolitical crises in their immediate vicinity in Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. Moreover, the Jordanians suffered from a depleted economy, with a rapidly growing population that had swelled even further in recent years due to new floods of refugees from Iraq and Syria. Having to endure an unchanging, almost fossilized political system, Jordanians were frustrated, angry, and pessimistic. King Abdallah II’s vision of a “new Jordan” remained a fiction marked in Amman “by half-occupied skyscrapers, vacant stores, and stalled construction.” The minds of many Jordanians were occupied by “growing inequality, stagnant wages, environmental destruction, water shortages, and outright poverty.”1 Exasperated by their unsavory predicament, they took to the streets every now and then to protest and to vent their anger against the status quo. Protests would naturally subside after a while, despite the fact that nothing really changed and various “reforms” invariably proved no more than window dressing. The “whole country seem[ed] to have slogan fatigue,” as the people continued to wait for “something real.”2 Some reformers remained convinced that the king was, at heart, one of them. They believed that he was being constantly held back, primarily by the old elite, rooted in the bureaucracy and the security establishment he had inherited from his father. At the same time, he was also constrained by the newly entrenched elite of business-oriented technocrats, 279

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East Bankers and Palestinians, largely of his own creation, that had arisen after his accession to the throne. Though King Abdallah may have been more forthcoming on reform than many of those around him, he himself had a basically authoritarian mind-set and no intention of weakening the monarchy in favor of other institutions in the name of democracy. The regime obviously did not have solutions for Jordan’s problems, but nor did the political activists of the opposition have clear ideas about change to the existing political order. In the heyday of the messianic brand of Nasserism in the 1950s and early 1960s, in the first years of the young King Hussein’s reign, a major segment of Jordan’s population, especially among the Palestinian majority of the kingdom, believed in Gamal Abd al-Nasir as the savior of the Arabs, just as they despised and disrespected Hussein and his regime. In an era when the Arab world was clearly divided in the discourse of the day, between the “progressive,” pro-Soviet officer regimes and the “reactionary,” pro-Western monarchies, like the Hashemite Kingdom, the pan-Arab purists in Jordan denied the country’s right to exist and demanded that it emulate or blend with its “progressive” Arab brethren in countries like Egypt, Syria, or Iraq. Such thoughts would hardly enter the minds of Jordanians today. Occupying an island of relative tranquility in a zone of failing states racked by abject poverty, endemic violence, and civil war, they would view joining in with their Arab brethren as nothing less than a nightmare. As unsatisfactory as the monarchy may be, obvious alternatives are nowhere to be seen. Living in peace, Jordanians know only too well that they are considerably better off than their neighbors. The chaos and bloodshed in the immediate vicinity are hardly an inspiration or an example to follow. Abdallah II, therefore, remains fairly secure on his throne. His endurance is obtained, in part, by default and, in part, thanks to the staunch fidelity of much of the East Banker elite and the security establishment. They are still unswervingly loyal to the monarchy, even if not wholeheartedly to the monarch in person. The Hashemites have a substantial support base, despite the mounting dissent among traditional East Banker loyalists. The resilience of Jordan and of the regime should not be underestimated—as has been the case so often in the past. Seasoned observers proclaimed over sixty years ago that the days of the Jordanian monarchy were numbered. Those experts were wrong, and it is they, not the Hashemites, who are long gone. There is no denying, however, that Abdallah is facing the most serious challenge of his reign. But Jordan, as opposed to countries like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, or Yemen, is relatively small in population and thus more manageable than most countries in the region. It has dispropor-

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tionately large security forces and a powerful military, supported by what remains, by and large, a determined and loyal East Banker political elite who are fighting for their political patrimony. They face an opposition that is less determined, far from cohesive, and incapable of mobilizing the necessary force to really threaten the regime. Though the forces of the opposition demand far-reaching reform, even they, for the most part, do not seek to overthrow the monarchy. Popular Arab upheaval had its impact on Jordan, but the fractious opposition has yet to come up with a viable political alternative or a clearly articulated vision for the future. Even opponents tended to see “the Hashemite regime as the thing that holds [the country] all together.”3 The critical turning point in Jordan’s recent history was not the advent of the Arab Spring but the passing of King Hussein. Abdallah II has reigned and ruled for a quarter century—an impressive achievement in the circumstances. All the same, the Hashemite monarchy has enjoyed a “diminished degree of regime security” under Abdallah.4 He is less charismatic, less engaging, and less of a communicator than Hussein. The regime has lost prestige and popularity, as Abdallah has failed to recreate the monarchical presence of his father. Abdallah makes rare televised appearances at home and communicates more regularly with foreign audiences in English than with his own people in Arabic. He evinces a certain distance and aloofness, or perhaps insecurity. He made his first televised address to the nation after the outbreak of the Arab Spring in June 2011, six months after the onset of the crisis. Jordan, as many repeatedly contend, was an artificial creation. Though true, it was far less so than its ostensibly more fortunate neighbors. When the Emirate of Transjordan was founded in 1921, most of the country was an underpopulated and impoverished desert with no natural resources. In contrast, its neighbors in the Fertile Crescent were wealthier, more fertile, and more densely populated, established around capital cities with glorious histories, like Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad. Amman was hardly a village in those early days. Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq seemed far more naturally and fortunately state-like. But that proved to be an illusion. In one critical feature, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon differed markedly from Jordan, and this feature spelled their undoing. All three were heterogeneous conglomerates of multiple sects the likes of which did not exist in Jordan. Jordan was 95 percent Sunni Muslim and Arab. In this respect, it was more similar to homogeneous Egypt than to its heterogeneous neighbors in the Levant, whose sectarian conflicts led to their political breakdown. Jordan was indeed divided between its original East Bankers and its large Palestinian population, but these relatively

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new national identities only took root in the latter part of the twentieth century. They were historically shallow in comparison to the sectarian identities that originated in the early seventh century. Moreover, these new national identities were not social fault lines— in marriage, for example—as sectarian divisions tended to be. Jordanians and Palestinians married each other, generally without crossing the sectarian divide. As a rule, Muslims married Muslims, and Christians married Christians. There were real and palpable tensions between Jordanians and Palestinians, but at a time when political language was being increasingly recodified along sectarian lines,5 sectarian common ground often outweighed the rather novel national divisions. Jordan’s relative stability, despite long-standing tensions with the Palestinians and their national movement, was buttressed by the country’s relations with the Zionists in Palestine and then with Israel, though these ties have also evolved over time. From the outset the Hashemites and the Zionists shared an interest in containing the Palestinian national movement. Under the leadership of the Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Arab movement in Palestine was a serious challenge to the Zionists and to the Hashemites next door. Hajj Amin was to become the bête noire of both Abdallah I and the Jewish community in Palestine. Of the Zionists’ various operating assumptions, some proved wrong. One was that when given the opportunity, many, if not most, of the Jews leaving eastern Europe would choose to go to Palestine/Eretz Israel. But they did not, and the liberal democratic West, especially the United States, proved a much more attractive option. Another was that the Arabs in Palestine would eventually acquiesce in the Zionist project because of the great material benefits of European modernity that the Jewish immigrants would bring to the country and its peoples. But the Arabs of Palestine never accepted this trade-off and were determined to resist Jewish immigration and settlement. The Zionists failed to establish a majority in all of Palestine, and instead of peaceful national redemption in the whole country, they were left with the choice of either giving up the idea altogether or accepting the combustible combination of partition and conflict with the Arabs. After the horrors of the Holocaust, they opted for half a loaf rather than none. Their partners in partition were not the Arabs of Palestine, who rejected the 1947 UN resolution on the matter, but the Hashemites of Jordan, who had vital interests in securing what was left of Arab Palestine for themselves. Abdallah I was determined to expand his desert kingdom and to secure its western flank against the mufti’s brand of Palestinian militancy. Abdallah made up his mind to contain Palestinian nationalism in

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common cause with the Israelis, and the Israelis, for their part, much preferred to have the Jordanians as their immediate neighbors, rather than the implacable mufti. In what became the “West Bank,” thus designated by the Jordanians to “de-Palestinize” Palestine, Israel and Jordan contained the rump of Arab Palestine between them. Jordan formally annexed the West Bank in 1950 to the Hashemite Kingdom, a situation that lasted until the Six-Day War of June 1967, when Israel occupied the area. The Israeli occupation revitalized the Palestinian national movement as it halted the process of “Jordanization” that the Hashemites had sought to impose on their Palestinian citizens after 1948. Palestinian nationalism was re-energized, accelerated, and refocused on resisting the Israeli occupation. In the meantime, in post-1967 Israel, politics steadily shifted to the right. In 1977, in a historical watershed, the right-wing Likud party came to power. For the first time in Israel, the government was controlled by a party that did not support partition (or “foreign sovereignty” in any part of Eretz Israel). Moreover, the Likud included senior figures who believed and argued publicly that “Jordan was Palestine”—that is, that Israel ought to remain in control of all of former British Mandatory Palestine, and Jordan, with its Palestinian majority, should become a Palestinian republic and thereby solve the Palestinian problem. From a partner in partition and containment of Palestine, Israel was, in the Jordanian mind, becoming an existential threat to the Hashemite Kingdom. Since the late 1950s Hussein had argued that “Jordan is Palestine, and Palestine is Jordan” in order to protect Jordan’s role as the inheritor of Palestine and to prevent the creation of an alternative independent Palestinian representation. But by the early 1980s, it was obvious that Jordan could not effectively block the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had firmly established itself as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Palestinian people. At best Jordan might partner with the PLO, but to continue to sound the old slogan of “Jordan is Palestine” could play into the hands of the Israeli Right at Jordan’s eventual expense. From the mid-1980s onward, Hussein consistently voiced a different slogan to suit the new realities: “Jordan is Jordan, and Palestine is Palestine,” he now proclaimed, and he formally announced Jordan’s disengagement from the West Bank in July 1988 to drive home the new message. Jordan became an ardent supporter of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, to make clear to all and sundry that the solution to the Palestine problem should be in Palestine and not in Jordan. Jordan had developed a vested interest in the two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. After the initial shock of the Oslo Accords

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signed between Israel and the PLO behind Jordan’s back in 1993, Hussein came to a strategic understanding with Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The two men reached an informal agreement designed to contain the future state of Palestine between Israel and Jordan. After the October 1994 signing of the Jordan-Israeli peace treaty, in which Israel recognized the kingdom’s borders, the Jordanians were confident that, at long last, they had finally been secured from the “Jordan is Palestine” nightmare scenario. But that was not to be. Rabin’s assassination, the undoing of the Oslo process, and long uninterrupted periods of right-wing governments in Israel put the twostate solution out of reach. Jordanians saw the continuation of the Israeli occupation and settlement activity, the gradual drift into a onestate reality, and the increasing talk of a “one-state solution” as a direct threat to the kingdom’s stability and security. For them, the continuation of the status quo or implementation of a “one-state solution” were formulas for an Israeli-Palestinian explosion that could provoke a massive exodus or expulsion of Palestinians across the river into Jordan. Such an outcome would be an unmitigated socioeconomic and political disaster for the kingdom. At the same time, however, Jordan and Israel still shared common cause on a variety of immediate regional matters, from concerns about Iranian regional expansion, the so-called Shi’ite crescent, as King Abdallah called it, to combating the Islamic State. Jordanian and Israeli security establishments cooperated routinely on a wide range of issues. Israel even supplied Jordan with military equipment and intelligence. But as Jordan and Israel shifted away from their former mutually accepted paradigm of Palestinian containment, their common interests eroded, and tensions between the two states emerged ever-more frequently. In Jordan, a troubling uncertainty and mistrust of Israel’s long-term intentions lingered beneath the surface. In a reality in which the parties no longer agreed on the joint containment of the Palestinians, as they had done in the more distant past, a serious strategic conflict of interest developed between Jordan and Israel as both sought to shift the onus of Palestinian demography onto the other side. Among the Israeli Right, there were those who supported the “Jordan is Palestine” thesis, whereas their opposite numbers on the Jordanian side adamantly demanded the “right of return” to Israel for Palestinian refugees. The Israel-Hamas war that broke out in October 2023 severely aggravated the existing tensions in the relationship and set the stage for the worst crisis between the two countries since the signing of the peace treaty. The popularity of Hamas soared, and fierce public condemnation of Israel spread throughout the kingdom, including the demand to annul

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the peace treaty. That the regime would actually do so was most unlikely, but the mass movement of population in Gaza during the Israeli campaign, coupled with escalating Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, heightened the levels of anxiety on possible Israeli actions to expel Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan. The leadership warned that any such displacement would be a material breach of the treaty and tantamount to an act of war. In the upper echelons of the establishment, some called for a “radical reassessment” of the relationship with Israel after the war. For the Jordanians, fulfillment of the two-state solution was the only way forward in relations with Israel and, in their minds, was the essential precondition for a modicum of regional stability. Jordan’s uncertainty about the future of Palestine also directly impacted Jordanian internal affairs. For decades Hussein had struggled to contain the domestic Palestinian threat to the monarchy. Abdallah II, conversely, was increasingly challenged by the East Bankers. The Palestinians in Jordan were less of a threat to a regime that was no longer under radical Arab nationalist ideological pressure from the neighborhood, as it had been in the days of Abd al-Nasir in the 1950s and 1960s. The Arab world had changed, Arabism had declined and failed, and in the new reality, the void was filled by the enhancement of the territorial state on the one hand, challenged by political Islam on the other. In the pursuit of naked Jordanian raison d’état, Abdallah focused on the country’s economic development, and in this context the Palestinians had become a blessing in terms of their human capital. He eroded the traditional supremacy of the East Bankers, as the Palestinians morphed from an Arab/Palestinian nationalist political burden in much of Hussein’s time into a socioeconomic asset. On the other hand, though the East Bankers remained an indispensable bastion of support, they also became more of a socioeconomic liability. The East Bankers were deeply troubled by this new Palestinian challenge. Palestinian prominence, especially in the economy, was corroding traditional East Banker political supremacy, a process that also heightened their anxieties about a Palestinian takeover in line with the “Jordan is Palestine” scenario. The king and many of the East Bankers clearly had their differences on the desirable role of the Palestinian citizens of Jordan in the country’s economy and political structure. But they were in full agreement on the Islamists and Hamas. The regime and the East Bankers were as one in supporting Palestinian statehood in the West Bank and Gaza (and not in Jordan) in accordance with the official stand of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority after Oslo. For Jordan, Hamas represented a threat. The regime suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood in

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Jordan not only because it represented the most effective opposition but also because of its links with Hamas in Palestine. The more secular brand of Palestinian nationalism could come to terms with the strictly territorial notion that “Jordan is Jordan, and Palestine is Palestine.” For Hamas these distinctions are not self-evident. Hamas has “a different mix of territoriality and identity than Fatah.” Hamas tended to stress “Arab and Muslim elements as much as, if not more than, Palestinian ones”; nor had it committed itself to the twostate solution. The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan opposed Hussein’s disengagement from the West Bank, and Hamas’s meddling in the affairs of the Brotherhood on the East Bank was a red flag for the king, the mukhabarat, and the East Bankers alike. Hamas’s ascendance in Palestinian politics, especially after its sweeping victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, was part of the wider regional trend of rising political Islam. The new trend challenged the regional state system and was as troubling for the Jordanians as it was for many other Arab states.6 Though the king and the East Bankers still shared much common ground, the domestic sociopolitical transformations during Abdallah’s reign exacerbated tensions between the regime and the East Bankers at a time when buying social peace was becoming ever-more expensive. The essential restructuring of the economy led to the wholesale adoption by Abdallah and his advisors of neoliberal approaches to reform. The consequent cutback of the public sector in favor of private enterprise left the East Bankers holding the short end of the stick as they were traditionally more dependent on the government for employment and welfare than their Palestinian compatriots. They now felt increasingly dispossessed, like “Red Indians,” in their own country. Jordan’s traditional Arab supporters in the hitherto oil-rich nations of the Gulf were facing financial difficulties of their own in an era of waning oil.7 The regional stature of the United States was declining too. For more than half a century, since the late 1950s Jordan had enjoyed steadily increasing US economic and military aid, thanks to Jordan’s geopolitical centrality at the heart of the Fertile Crescent. Jordan had no difficulty in convincing the Americans that “because of its strategic location and political role” in the region, Jordan had “special significance” for the United States.8 With the decline of oil, American interests in the Middle East receded as the United States pivoted to other regions. In recent years aid for Jordan was becoming a harder sell on Capitol Hill. There are no miraculous solutions for Jordan’s structural economic problems. These go way beyond corruption, which the general public

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seems to believe is the root cause of all evil, when in fact these issues have far more to do with the underlying imbalance between population and resources. These are the ingredients of heightening tensions and possible additional shockwaves, the outcome of which is anyone’s guess. The situation, for the meantime, remains manageable. As long as the unswerving loyalty of the security establishment lasts, the regime can continue to muddle through. Survival depended more on regional stability and on the kingdom’s ability to muster foreign aid and deal effectively with the economy than on any other single factor, including the pace of political reform.

Notes

1. Schwedler, Protesting Jordan, 282. 2. Ryan, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings, 172–173. 3. Hamid and Freer, “How Stable Is Jordan?,” 4. 4. Yom, “New Landscape,” 285. 5. Doumani, “Palestine Versus the Palestinians?,” 55. 6. Doumani, “Palestine Versus the Palestinians?,” 56–57. 7. Dunne, “As Oil Is Waning, the Times Are Changing,” 372–373. 8. See, e.g., Memo of Conversation Between King Hussein and Prime Minister al-Rifa’i and Senior Officials in US Department of State in Washington, DC, March 24, 1959, FRUS (1958–1960), Vol. XI, Lebanon and Jordan, Document 394.

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Index

Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, 114–115 Abbad (tribe), 264–265 al-Abbadi, Ahmad Uwaydi, 134–136, 236 Abbas, Mahmud, 189, 212 Abdallah I (king): assassination, 21; creation of Jordan and Palestine, 6–8; early state building, 96–101; expansionist ambitions, 7–9; Hashemite Arabism, 103; integrating the Bedouin into the state, 120–121; lack of political legitimacy, 13–14; Muslim Arab nation, 95–96; partition plan, 10–13; succession, 171; territorial expansion and Palestinian containment, 282–283; the War of 1948, 17–18 Abdallah II (king): Arab Spring protests, 229– 238; Arab-Israeli peace process final-status issues, 177–178; commemorative postage stamps, 112; conflict with East Bankers, 221–223, 232–233; economic crisis, 258; education quotas favoring East Bankers, 143; election cycle of 2013, 261–263; evolution of Jordan’s collective identity, 94–96; Hirak tribal protest movement, 238–240; increasing criticism of economic reforms, 223–229; integrating Bedouin into the state, 121–122; integration and inclusion of Jordan’s Palestinians, 212–214; internal tensions and peace with Israel, 2; intolerance of political opposition, 249–254; IsraelHamas War, 196–197; Jerusalem as impediment to a two-state solution, 187– 192; “Jordan First” policy, 205–209; lack

of progress in negotiations with Israel, 183–187; Muslim Brotherhood and, 251– 252; the National Agenda, 217–221; noninvolvement policy in the West Bank, 209–212; political and economic reform, 216–217, 245–249; political security, 279–280; regional political challenges, 286–287; succession process, 172–173; US Deal of the Century, 192–195; US support for a two-state solution, 180–181; the war against corruption, 255–256 Abraham Accords (2020), 196 Abu al-Huda, Tawfiq, 20, 101 Abu al-Raghib, Ali, 135, 208 Abu Awda, Adnan, 188, 215–216 accommodation: Jordan-Israel relations, 36– 40, 85, 154, 164 air defense, Jordan’s, 62 al-Ahd party, 138–139 Al-Aqsa Flood operation (2023), 195 Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000), 170, 177–179, 185– 186, 208 Al-Aqsa Mosque, 96, 104, 188–190 Allon, Yigal, 69–70 Allon Plan, 69 alternative homeland concept, 62–63, 78–80, 217; Abdallah’s opposition to, 183; ArabIsraeli peace negotiations, 180; East Bank First school of thought, 135–137; effect on East Bank-Palestinian cohesion, 143– 144; Israel demanding recognition, 182–183; Israeli expulsion of Palestinians, 143; the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, 88; Jordanian and Palestinian identities, 94; Jordanian-Palestinian confederation,

305

306

Index

211–212; Jordan’s disengagement from the West Bank, 82–83; pressure to resettle refugees in Jordan, 225; Trump’s Deal of the Century, 192–193; ultranationalist view of Jordanian identity, 134–135. See also two-state solution Alya (queen), 213 Amman, Jordan, 8 al-Anani, Jawad, 117, 216 Andrews, Lewis, 11 annexation of the occupied territories, 1; Abdallah’s preferences, 12–13, 18; Israeli acquiescence, 19–20; Israeli expulsion of Palestinians, 78–79; Nasir questioning the legality of, 30; Netanyahu’s discourse, 193; Palestinians’ acquiescence in, 146; US Deal of the Century, 193–194 Arab League, 29–31, 61, 81, 105–106. See also Arab Summits Arab Legion: integrating the Bedouin into the state, 120–121; Transjordanian identity, 98; the War of 1948, 17–18 Arab nationalism: Abdallah I’s early state building, 96–101; fears over Jordan’s demise, 22–23; Jordanian identity and consciousness, 104–106, 113–114; Jordanian national charter, 119; Nasserist threat to Jordan’s stability, 23–28; rejecting normalization with Israel, 152– 156; rejection of the British Mandate, 7; the War of 1967, 106. See also Nasserism; nationalism, Jordanian; nationalism, Palestinian Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM), 34 Arab Palestine, 10–15, 18–20; Jordan’s state building and expansion, 100; Nasserist mobilization, 25. See also West Bank Arab Peace Initiative (API; 2002), 178, 183, 196 Arab Rebellion (1936), 9–11 Arab Revolt (1916), 95–96, 105, 117, 123 Arab Spring, 229–235; Abdallah II’s resistance to political opposition, 250; Abdallah’s response, 249, 281; Abdallah’s unpopularity during, 223; containment of, 237–238; effect on Jordan’s domestic situation, 254–261; escalation in Jordan, 235–238; Jordan’s resistance to constitutional change, 246; Muslim Brotherhood’s relationship with Jordan’s monarchy, 251–252 Arab Summit (Algiers, 1973), 67–68 Arab Summit (Algiers, 1988), 81 Arab Summit (Amman, 1987), 80 Arab Summit (Beirut; 2002), 178 Arab Summit (Cairo, 1964), 31, 33 Arab Summit (Rabat, 1974), 67–68, 71–78, 133 Arab Summit (Riyad, 2007), 178

Arabism, 250, 285; Abdallah I’s early state building, 96–101; Arab Islam, 95–96; Hussein’s attempt to unify Palestine and Jordan, 101–106; Abdallah II’s “Jordan First” plan, 208; Jordanian national charter, 119; normalization with Israel and, 154 Arab-Israeli conflict. See Arab-Israeli War (1948); October War; Six Day War Arab-Israeli peace process, 28, 131, 183–187; Camp David negotiations, 73–76; effect on Muslim self-assurance, 151–152; failure of 1949-1950 negotiations, 19–20; Hussein, Netanyahu, and warm peace, 161–164; international Middle East peace conference, 77–78; Israel-Hamas War, 195–200; Israeli security barrier hampering, 181–182; Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, 87–88; Jerusalem as impediment to, 187–192; Jordan’s economic benefits, 164–169; Madrid peace conference, 83, 85, 87, 153; need for a final settlement, 153; 1990s IsraeliJordanian negotiations, 28; normalization with Israel, 154–161; Palestinian interests, 169–171; Reagan’s Middle East initiative, 75; regional conditions derailing, 179– 180; socioeconomic effect on Palestinians, 142; stagnation and failure on final-status issues, 177–182; US Deal of the Century, 192–195 Arab-Israeli War (1948), 13–15, 17–21, 152 Arab-Jordanian identity, 132 Arab-Palestinian identity, 132 Arafat, Yasir, 250; the Cairo Agreement, 56– 57; Clinton’s mini summit, 162; the disposition of Jerusalem, 188; failure of Bush’s Road Map, 179; Hussein and Hamas, 206; Hussein’s UAK, 61; Oslo Accords, 85; PLO’s partnership with Jordan, 76–77. See also Palestine Liberation Organization archaeology, Jordanization of, 111 Ardanna process, 109. See also Jordanization of Palestine armed forces (Jordan): Battle of Karama, 107– 108; criticizing Abdallah’s neoliberal policies, 226–227; Transjordan’s early Arab Legion, 98 armistice agreement: Israel and Jordan, 19–20 arms sales: US sales to Jordan and Israel, 36–37 al-Asad, Hafiz, 56, 62, 72, 117 assassinations: Abdallah I, 100; DFLP attempt on Hussein, 54 assimilationism, 107. See also integration and inclusion authoritarian regimes, 160–161, 223–224, 263; Abdallah II’s rejection of

Index constitutional reform, 245–246; PLO, 85; political and economic reform, 246–249; reforms under Abdallah II, 279–280; the use of social media, 266 autonomy, Palestinian, 24; Camp David peace accords, 74–75; formation of the UAK, 59–60. See also two-state solution Awadallah, Basim, 219–220, 268–269 Badran, Adnan, 220 al-Bakhit, Ma’ruf, 184, 221, 232–234, 245 Bani Hamida, 264 Bani Hasan, 236, 264–265 Bani Sakhr, 123, 236, 267–268 Bashir, Muhammad, 55 bedoucracy, 124 Bedouin tribes, 119–125 Begin, Menachem, 73–75 Ben-Gurion, David, 23–26, 37 Bennet, Naftali, 194 Bethlehem: terms of partition, 10 Biblical Gilead, 4–5 bin Ali, Zayn al-Abdin, 229 Black September civil war, 1, 55, 58, 108, 145. See also Palestine Liberation Organization Bourguiba, Habib, 62 Britain: end of Jordan’s treaty with, 22; Jordan’s history of corruption, 255; potential dissolution of Jordan, 26; Transjordan’s governmental institutions, 97–98 British Mandate for Palestine: creation of Jordan and Palestine, 6–8; integrating the Bedouin into the state, 120–121; partition, 9–14, 19–20, 62, 282; post-1967 political landscape, 1–2 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 75 Bull, Odd, 42 bureaucracy: Abdallah’s neoliberal reforms, 215, 264; Hussein’s state building, 171– 172; Jordanization of, 15, 109, 119–120, 124, 144; Jordan’s East Bankers’ opposition to reforms, 213–215; Jordan’s economic downturn, 145; outsider rule in Transjordan, 97; pragmatists of the East Bank First school, 136; tribal solidarity, 124, 224 Burns, Findley, 41 Bush, George W., 179–181 Cairo Agreement (1970), 56 Camp David negotiations (1978), 73–76 Camp David negotiations (2000), 177 Carter, Jimmy, 73–76 Chechens, 122 Christian Jordanians: “Jordan First” school, 208–209; peace with Israel, 156–157;

307

protection of holy sites in Jerusalem, 189– 191; territorial nationalism, 113–114 Churchill, Winston, 7 Circassians, 122 citizenship: Abdallah II’s commitment to national unity, 206–207; alternative homeland scenario, 79; East Bank First school, 138; effect of the 1967 War, 48; Jordan’s disengagement, 82–83, 134; reducing Jordan’s Palestinian refugee numbers, 228 civil rights, 132, 137–138, 155, 193, 263 clan/tribe group: East Bank First school, 136– 138 Clinton, Bill, 162, 170–171, 177 commerce. See trade and commerce confederation between Jordan and Palestine, 76, 83, 148, 210–212 Congress of Palestinians (1948), 14 constitutional monarchy, 232, 235–236, 239 constitutional reform (Jordan), 234–235, 245– 249 corruption: Abdallah’s privatization of state assets, 233; Arab Spring protests, 230, 235–236; arrest of anti-government protesters, 260; dissolution of the Jordanian Teachers Association, 259–260; Jordan’s 2020 elections, 262; Jordan’s economic decline, 255–256 Covid-19 pandemic: Jordan’s economic crisis, 259–260 cultural Islamists, 252 culture: museumization of Jordan’s history, 114–116 Daqamsa, Ahmad, 163 Da’ud, Muhammad, 54–55, 57 Deal of the Century (US), 192–195 debt relief: Jordan benefiting from peace with Israel, 165 democracy: Abdallah II’s refusal to embrace, 279–280; Hussein’s tension between monarchy and, 160–161; Jordanian national charter, 117–118; JordanianPalestinian dissatisfaction with Abdallah’s regime, 231; political and economic reforms, 218, 246–249 Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), 48, 53–54, 118 Democratic Party for Progress in Jordan, 118 demographic aggression, Israeli, 78–79, 81, 87–89, 91, 191–192 desalination plant (Jordan), 167–168 Desert Mobile Force (Transjordan), 120–121 al-Dhahabi, Muhammad, 255 Dhunaybat, Abd al-Majid, 252–253 disenfranchisement of Palestinians, 134, 226 disengagement from the West Bank, 82–83

308

Index

Dulles, John Foster, 22, 24 East Bank First, 116–117, 133–141, 145–146 East Bank/East Bankers: Abdallah II’s electoral changes, 219; Abdallah’s reformist vision, 207–208; aftermath of the 1967 War, 47–51; alternative homeland scenario, 79; assault on youth protesters, 235; concerns over demographic aggression, 88; cultural Islamists, 252; geography, politics, and economics, 4–6; Hussein regenerating East Bank identity, 116–119, 131–133; Hussein’s concessions to the fida’iyyun, 53; Hussein’s unification of East and West Banks, 101; identification with the intifada, 177–178; increasing dissatisfaction with Abdallah, 221–229; increasing Jordanian-Palestinian cleavages, 1–3; integration into Jordan, 15; Israel-Hamas War, 196, 198–199; Jordanization of regional history, 111; Jordanization of the bureaucracy and military, 109; Jordan’s concerns over the 1987 intifada, 82; Jordan’s history of corruption, 255; Jordan’s potential Cold War-era dissolution, 23–24; opposing economic and political reforms, 213–217; opposing the National Agenda, 217–221; Palestinian demographic dominance, 89; PLO-Jordanian competition over Palestine, 33; policy of noninvolvement in the West Bank, 209–212; political impact of East Bank-Palestinian cleavage, 145– 148; post-Arab Spring coalition building, 238–239; preserving the monarchy, 248– 249; socioeconomic effect of Palestinian rivalry with, 141–145; supporting the Arab-Israeli peace process, 186; the threat of Palestinian political and economic prominence, 285–287; tribal nationalism excluding Palestinians, 122–125; ultranationalist view of Jordanian identity, 134–135. See also two-state solution “East Banker First” trend, 109 East Jerusalem, 19 Eban, Abba, 24 economic development: Abdallah’s commitment to, 207; Abdallah’s economic reforms, 215–216; Hussein’s anti-PLO offensive, 77; Israel’s National Water Carrier, 36; Kushner’s US investment fund plan, 193 economic downturn, Jordan’s: Arab Spring demonstrations, 229–231, 254–261; Bedouin in the early 20th century, 120– 121; blaming Israel, 164; East Bank-Palestinian cleavage, 145, 148; effect of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, 177–178;

effect of the Gulf War, 86; effect on East Bankers, 213; Hussein’s reluctance to engage in reforms, 215; increasing Jordan’s dependence on Israel after 2010, 186; Jordan’s crises and uncertainty, 279; positive effects of peace with Israel, 164– 169; socioeconomic fallout of Jordanian-Palestinian rivalry, 141–145; tribal solidarity, 125 economic reforms: Abdallah II’s, 207; increasing criticism of Abdallah’s neoliberal policies, 223–229; increasing East Bank-Palestinian cleavages, 147–148; Jordan’s debt relief, 165; Jordan’s privatization and bureaucratic reforms, 213–217 education: Arab Jordan’s identity formation, 98; favoring East Bankers over Palestinians, 142–143; Hashemite Arab narrative, 105–106; Jordanian Teachers Association strike, 259–260 Egypt: Algiers Arab Summit, 68; Arab Union, 27; armistice with Israel, 13; Camp David negotiations, 73–76; countercoup after Arab Spring, 238; creation of the UAR, 23–24; Nasserist threat to Jordan’s survival, 21–23, 27; 1970 cease-fire, 53; October War with Israel, 62–64, 67; outbreak of the 1967 War, 39–42; representation of the Palestinian people, 71–72; separation of forces agreement with Israel, 70; supporting Arab-Israeli peace, 154; threatening Jordan’s existence, 30; Youth of 25 January protests, 235. See also al-Nasir, Gamal Abd; Nasserism Eisenhower, Dwight, 75 election fraud: Jordan’s 2007 elections, 221, 232 election laws: Abdallah’s political and economic reforms, 216–218, 246–249; abolition of Jordan’s one-man, one-vote system, 261–262 elections: Hamas’s ascent over secular nationalism, 250–251; Islamic Brotherhood boycott of, 251–252; Jordan’s distraction from political and economic crisis, 261–263; Muslim Brotherhood 2010 boycott, 230 elections (Israel): Netanyahu’s 1996 victory, 157–158, 161; political deadlock in 2019– 2021, 193; Trump’s defeat in 2020 and Netanyahu’s defeat in 2021, 194 electoral reform: Abdallah II’s attempt to appease the IAF, 236–237 energy exchange, Israeli-Jordanian, 194–195, 198 energy shortage, Jordan’s, 186–187, 237, 255– 257 Eshkol, Levi, 37, 42

Index European powers: early Muslim and Arab defeats, 152 al-Falahat, Salam, 263 al-Fanik, Fahd, 113, 138, 154–155, 157, 210 Fatah, 29–30, 34; effect of the 1967 War, 48– 49; Israel attacks in 1965, 35–36; Jordan’s mobilization against the fida’iyyun, 54; paramilitary deployment following the 1967 war, 48–50; raids on Israel, 37–38 al-Fayiz, Habis, 267 al-Fayiz, Mithqal, 99 Faysal (king): dividing up the Arab territories, 6–8, 94 federation plan: Palestinian-Jordanian, 60–61, 76, 83, 133, 148, 210–212 fida’i movement, 29, 49–50 fida’iyyun, 51–54, 93–94; Battle of Karama, 107–108; importance to Palestinian national revival, 106; the Jordanian state confronting, 106–109; Jordan’s war with the PLO, 54–59. See also Palestine Liberation Organization First Intifada (1987), 50, 80–83, 140 food shortages: Jordan, 186 Ford, Gerald, 69 foreign aid: Jordan’s economic crisis, 260–261 40th Armored Brigade (Jordan), 64 free trade agreements: US and Jordan, 165 freedom of expression: Abdallah II suppressing political criticism, 248 Gaza: Camp David provisions, 74–75; history of Palestine, 3–5, 10, 14; Israel-Hamas War, 195–200; Israeli military campaigns against Hamas, 186; Israel’s 2005 withdrawal, 179–180; Jordanization of Palestine in 1950, 20–21; shifting of PLO centrality, 50. See also alternative homeland concept; Palestine Liberation Organization Geneva Peace Conference (1973), 68 genocide, Israel-Hamas War as, 198 gerrymandering, 142, 146, 216, 218–219, 237 al-Gharaiba, Rahil, 252 Glubb, John Bagot, 120–121 Golan, 56, 63–64 Grapes of Wrath campaign (Israel), 157–158, 161 guerrilla warfare, 48–49, 63–64 Gulf War (1991), 86, 145 al-Habashna, Ali, 265 Hamas, 157; banishment from Jordan, 206; Israel-Hamas war, 195–200, 284–285; Israeli military campaigns in Gaza, 186; Mossad’s attempted assassination of Mash’al, 163–164; origins of, 50–51;

309

political threat to Jordan, 250, 285–286; threat to Transjordanian nationalists, 211 Hamza (prince), 172–173, 222–223, 267–270 Hasan (crown prince), 55; failure to succeed Hussein, 172; Hamza affair, 267–270; Israel-Hamas War, 196; Israeli Hasmonean Tunnel construction, 162; the IsraeliJordanian peace treaty, 88; Jordanian shooting of Israeli schoolgirls, 163; Jordan’s disengagement from the West Bank, 82–83; Palestinian interests in the Arab-Israeli peace process, 170; ultranationalist movement, 133 Hasan bin Zayd, 268–269 al-Hasan, Hani, 76 Hashemite Arabism, 102–103 Hashemite Kingdom: Arab Spring and the future of the monarchy, 223; clash with indigenous Jordanians over identity, 139– 140; Cold War-era strategic importance, 21–23; containing the Palestinian threat to, 285; creation of Jordan and Palestine, 6–8; Hashemites as leaders of Arab Islam, 95– 96; increasing Jordanian-Palestinian cleavages, 1–3; partition negotiations, 12– 13; post-1967 political landscape, 1, 50; the terms of partition, 10; ultranationalist involvement by the royal family, 133. See also East Bank/East Bankers; legitimacy, Jordanian; specific rulers Hashim, Ibrahim, 9 Hasmonean Tunnel (Israel), 162 Hattar, Nahid, 113, 137, 225 Hawatma, George, 156 Herzog, Ya’akov, 37 Hirak protest movement, 238–240 The History of Transjordan and Its Tribes (Peake), 110 Hizballah, 157, 161, 179–180 Holocaust, 11–12 holy places: Abdallah II’s commitment to custodianship, 191; the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty handling, 88; Jordan’s commemorative postage stamps, 112; Jordanian interests in the Arab-Israeli peace process, 170; signifying Hashemite sovereignty, 104. See also Jerusalem Human Rights Watch, 228 al-Hunayti, Yusif, 269 al-Husayni, Hajj Amin, 7, 9–10, 13–15, 19, 100, 282 Hussein (crown prince), 194, 267, 272 Hussein (king), 9, 72–78, 205–206; Abdallah II’s political shift, 207; alternative homeland scenario, 79–80; Arab federalization with Iraq, 100–101; the Arab Union, 27; attack on Syria, 25–26; attempt to unify Palestine and Jordan, 101–106;

310

Index

bowing to the fida’iyyun, 52–53; Camp David peace accords, 73–74; Clinton’s mini summit, 162; competing with the PLO over Palestine, 31–36; death of, 89, 166, 171– 173; disengaging from the West Bank, 283–284; East Bank identity, 116–119, 131–133; fighting the Rabat resolution, 72– 78; foreign policy and international affairs, 215; Hashemite Arabism, 102–104; increasing East Bank-Palestinian distrust, 146; integrating Bedouin into the state, 121; integration and inclusion of Jordan’s Palestinians, 212–214; integrationist national unity, 139–140; international Middle East peace conference, 77–78; Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, 85–89, 169– 171; Israelis’ frustration with, 38–39; Jordanian identity, consciousness, and history, 113, 115; Jordanization of regional history, 111; Jordan’s history of corruption, 255; May 1967 crisis, 40–42; Nasserist threat, 23–24; national unity after the civil war, 108; Netanyahu and warm peace, 161– 164; 1974 separation of forces agreement, 68–71; 1987 intifada, 80–83; normalization with Israel, 155, 158–161; October War with Israel, 63–64; Oslo Accords, 83–84; PLO deployment after the 1967 war, 48– 49; PLO partnership, 76–77; the PLO war with Jordan, 54–59; political legacy, 281; Reagan’s peace plan, 75; relationship with East Bankers, 222–223; representation of the Palestinian people, 71–72; revival of the Palestinian entity, 37; succession process, 171–173; territorialized national history and identity, 110; UAK formation, 59–61; US Cold War-era strategic interests, 22; use of foreign aid, 260–261; Wye plantation negotiations, 170–171. See also Nasserism Huwaytat, 123, 268 identity, Jordanian, 1–2; East Bank identity, 116–119, 210; evolution of a separate identity, 93–94; Israeli conflict shaping, 3; Palestinian identity and, 211–212; veterans’ demands for democratic reform, 226–228 identity, Palestinian: armistice with Israel, 13; Cold War-era revival of the Palestinian entity, 28–32; evolution of a separate identity, 93–94; Israeli conflict shaping, 3; Jordanian identity and, 105, 108–109, 211–212; Jordanization of Arab Palestine, 20; PLO-Jordanian competition over Palestine, 33–34 identity, sectarian: Jordan’s homogeneity, 281–282 identity, Transjordanian, 98

immigration: Jordanization of Palestine, 15; post-Holocaust Jewish options, 282; Soviet Jews in Israel, 80 imperialism, Israel as a product of, 152 independence. See Arab-Israeli War; two-state solution independence (Israel): the War of 1948, 13– 15, 17–21, 152 infrastructure development: Jordan’s megaprojects, 167 integration and inclusion, 102; Abdallah II and Hussein’s policies of, 212–214; Abdallah’s clashes with East Bankers, 222; Abdallah’s election reforms, 233–234; Abu Awda’s opinions on, 216; discrimination of Palestinians in Jordan, 228–229; the Hashemite Arab narrative, 105–106 integrationist national unity, 139–140 International Court of Justice (ICJ): Israeli security barrier, 182 intifada: Al-Aqsa, 170, 177–179, 185–186, 208; First Intifada, 50, 80–83, 140 Iran-Iraq War, 148 Iraq: Abdallah I’s assassination and succession, 100; Arab Federation with Jordan, 100–101; Arab Union, 27; ArabIsraeli peace process, 87–88, 168–169; dividing up the Arab territories, 8; Gulf War, 86–87; influx of refugees to Jordan, 168, 227; Jordanian control of the West Bank, 13–14; Jordan’s Cold War-era political stability, 28; Jordan’s potential dissolution, 23–24; Jordan’s proposed West Bank annexation, 18–19; Jordan’s strategic suffocation, 182; overthrow of the Hashemites, 22; PLO’s political decline, 50; US invasion, 179, 182, 227 Islamic Action Front (IAF), 252; Abdallah II’s constitutional reforms, 248; East BankerPalestinian relations, 144–145; election boycotts and reforms, 230, 233–234, 236– 237, 261; electoral laws weakening, 218; Israel-Hamas War, 196; Jordanian Teachers Association, 254; Jordan’s 2013 elections, 262; preserving the monarchy, 249. See also Muslim Brotherhood Islamic Arabism, 94–96 Islamic reform, 94–95 Islamic Resistance in Iraq, 199–200 Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), 177, 184, 186, 258 Islamists: cultural versus political, 252; Jordanian national charter, 118; Jordan’s 1993 elections and Abdallah’s political reform, 218–219; Jordan’s 2013 elections, 262; Jordan’s intolerance of, 249–254; normalization with Israel, 153, 155–156; regional challenges, 286; retreat of the

Index secular Palestinian revival, 50–51. See also Arab Spring; Islamic Action Front; Muslim Brotherhood Islamization of Palestine, 50–51 Israel: alternative homeland scenario, 78; attack on East Bank fida’iyyun, 51–52; Battle of Karama, 107–108; Camp David Accords, 73–76; effect on Arab self-esteem, 152; effects of the Gulf War, 86–87; fears over Jordan’s demise, 22; gas supplies to Jordan, 186–187, 256; history of Jordan’s relations and political stability, 282–284; Hussein’s UAK, 61; international Middle East peace conference, 77–78; Jordan as the Palestinian homeland, 78, 94; Jordan’s Cold War-era stability, 23–28; Jordan’s demands for 1967 territorial boundaries, 73; Jordan’s disengagement from the West Bank, 83; Jordan’s peace agreement, 85–89, 166; Jordan’s postwar interim negotiations, 68– 69; Jordan’s veterans demanding military reform, 226–227; Jordan’s war with the PLO, 55–56; linking the 1987 intifada to, 81; 1974 separation of forces agreement with Jordan, 69; 1970 cease-fire, 53; October War, 63–64; Oslo Accords, 83– 85; Palestinians’ right of return, 228; pressure to resettle refugees in Jordan, 225; Reagan’s peace plan, 75–76; recognition as the nation state of the Jewish people, 182–183; serving Jordanian state interests, 117; the War of 1948, 13– 15, 17–21, 152; West Bank security barrier, 179–182. See also Arab-Israeli peace process; Arab-Israeli War Israel Defense Forces (IDF), 18, 25–26, 38–39 Israel-Hamas War (2023), 195–200, 284–285 Israeli-Palestinian Declaration of Principles (1993), 87 Jericho Congress (1948), 14 Jerusalem: Abdallah II and Abbas’s effort to defend, 212; as the capital of Israel, 191– 192; Hashemite Islamic heritage, 104; Hasmonean Tunnel construction, 162; impediment to the two-state solution, 187– 192; Israeli refusal to withdraw from, 89; Jordanian-Israeli status on 1948, 20; Jordan’s commemorative postage stamps, 112; Sharif Hussein’s interment, 96; terms of partition, 10; 2015 Israeli-Palestinian violence, 190. See also holy places Jewish Agency, 9, 12–13, 18–19 Jews: Jordanians’ characterizations of, 157. See also Israel; Zionist enterprise Johnson, Lyndon B., 36 Johnston, Charles, 22 “Jordan First” initiative, 94, 112–113, 208–209

311

“Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine,” 2, 88, 111, 137, 183, 283, 286 “Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan,” 2, 78–79, 87, 89, 104–105, 111, 113, 135, 142, 193, 283–285 Jordanian Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, 119 Jordanian Brotherhood Party, 99 Jordanian Communist Party (JCP), 118–119 Jordanian Initiative for Equal Citizenship (2012), 228–229 Jordanian National Charter (1991), 227–228 Jordanian National Movement, 227 Jordanian People’s Party, 99 Jordanian Press Foundation, 109 Jordanian Socialist Democratic Party, 119 Jordanian Teachers Association, 253–254, 259–260 Jordanianism, 108, 123–125, 210–211 Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, 133, 284. See also Arab-Israeli peace process Jordanization of Palestine, 15, 20, 48, 109– 116, 252–253, 283 Karama, the Battle of, 51–52, 57–58, 107–108 al-Kaylani, Muhammad Rasul, 52 Kennedy, John F., 28 Kerry, John, 190 Khammash, Amir, 63 al-Khasawna, Awn, 236–237, 251 al-Khasawna, Bisher, 191, 197–198, 260 al-Khattab, Sultan, 157 Kirkbride, Alec, 15, 171 Kissinger, Henry, 55–56, 69–70, 172 Kushner, Jared, 193 Kuwait: aid to Jordan, 258 land-use agreements, 192–193 Lebanon: armistice with Israel, 13; fears of Palestinians’ expulsion, 80; Israeli invasion in 1982, 75; Nasserist influences in, 24; Operation Grapes of Wrath, 161; as PLO haven, 49–50, 58 legitimacy: Abdallah’s early state building, 96–101; Bourguiba’s position, 62; historiographic efforts, 117; integrating Bedouin into the state, 121; Jordanian, 281; museumization of history, 114–116; of the PLO, 81; of the Zionist endeavor, 152–153; PLO questioning, 94; PLO supporters questioning, 59; Shuqayri’s denial of, 35 liberation tax, 32–33 Likud, Jordanian, 133, 144 Likud party (Israel), 70, 73, 77–79, 283 Ma’ani, Omar, 255 Madrid peace conference (1991), 83, 85, 87, 143, 153

312

Index

al-Majali, Abd al-Hadi, 136–138 al-Majali, Abd al-Salam, 135–136 al-Majali, Amjad, 263 al-Majali, Hazza, 25, 30, 34, 101, 263 al-Majali, Hussein, 267 march of the unemployed, 257–258 marriage: among Jordanians and Palestinians, 282 martial law, Hussein’s declaration of, 34 Mash’al, Khalid, 163–164, 195, 206, 250–251 al-Masri, Tahir, 138, 143, 234 media: Abdallah II’s state supervision, 248; early Jordanian identity formation, 97–99; Israel-Hamas War, 198; Jordanian consciousness and history, 115; opposition to peace with Israel, 159–160; purging of the fida’iyyun, 109; radicals of the East Bank First school, 137; recognition of Petra, 112–113 mega-projects (Jordan), 167–168 Meir, Golda, 18, 37, 61, 63, 69 middle class: Jordan’s economic reform, 260– 261 military government: Jordan, 54–55 Mollet, Guy, 23 Mossad: attempted assassination of Mash’al, 163–164 Muasher, Marwan, 156–157, 180, 192, 196– 199, 213, 220, 263 Mu’ayta, Qasim, 53 Mubarak, Husni, 229 al-Mufti, Sa’id, 20 mukhabarat (domestic intelligence service), 273(n28); East Bank patronage, 219, 249; election reform, 236–237; government corruption, 255; Hamas and, 206; Hirak protest movement targeting, 239; Jordanization of, 144; Muslim Brotherhood factionalization, 253; opposition to political reform, 249; state power, 246, 260, 262–263; veterans challenging the monarchy, 227; war with the PLO, 55 al-Mulqi, Fawzi, 101 al-Mulqi, Hani, 256–257 Mursi, Muhammad, 251 Musa, Sulayman, 107, 135 museumization of Jordan’s history, 114–116 Muslim Brotherhood: Abdallah II’s political reforms, 234–235, 247; abolition of Jordan’s one-man, one-vote system, 261– 262; Arab Spring in Jordan, 229–231; failure of secular alternatives, 113; Jordanian and Palestinian factionalization, 251–253; Jordan’s 2013 elections, 262; Jordan’s disengagement from the West Bank, 206; Jordan’s professional associations, 253–254; Khasawna’s

proposed election reforms, 236–237; relationship with Hamas, 250–251; relationship with the Hashemite monarchy, 250–253, 285–286 Nahas Pasha, 99 al-Nasir, Gamal Abd: death of, 57; Nasserist threat to Jordan’s stability, 23–28; outbreak of the 1967 War, 40–42; as Palestinian savior and liberator, 21–22, 102; revival of the Palestinian entity, 30, 37; threatening Jordan’s political stability, 24; UAR, 100–101 Nasir bin Jamil, 52–53, 55, 133 Nasserism: Arab allies against, 250; challenging the monarchy, 100, 102–103; controlling the narrative, 105; questioning Jordan’s right to exist, 280; threatening Jordan’s stability, 22–26; War of 1967, 48. See also al-Nasir, Gamal Abd National Agenda (Jordan), 217–221, 233–234 National Charter, Jordanian, 116–119, 132 National Committee of Retired Servicemen (Jordan), 225 National Dialogue Commission (Jordan), 234 National Front for Reform, 238–239 National Religious Party (NRP; Israel), 70 National Water Carrier (Israel), 36 nationalism, Arab. See Arab nationalism nationalism, Jordanian: East Bank First school, 135–141; Hashemite version, 103–104; supporting Arab-Israeli peace, 154; territorial history and identity, 110–111; tribalism and, 119–120; ultranationalists, 133–134, 140, 155; war catalyzing new nationalism, 107. See also Arab nationalism nationalism, Palestinian: attempts to contain, 282–283; effect of the Six Day War, 283; establishment of the PLO, 29–30; partition and, 9–13; political decline and influence, 250; territorial identity, 286 Nayif (prince), 171 neoliberalism: Abdallah II’s reform enterprises, 213–217, 219–220, 286; increasing East Bank-Palestinian cleavages, 147–148; Jordan’s economic crisis, 260–261; political fallout of, 2–3 Netanyahu, Binyamin: Clinton’s mini summit, 162; negative impact on Israeli-Jordanian relations, 183–184; 1996 elections, 157– 158; political deadlock in 2021, 194; Temple Mount policy, 190; warm peace with Hussein, 161–164 1967 War. See Six Day War Nixon, Richard, 55, 172 nonaggression pact: Israel and Jordan, 19–20 normalization of Israel, 152–153; Abdallah II and the decline of Jordanian-Israeli

Index relations, 183–187; Hussein’s support for, 158–161; Israeli negotiations with Saudi Arabia, 191; Jordan’s malcontent over, 154–158 Nusayrat, Sulayman, 115 al-Nusur, Abdallah, 261 October War (1973), 61–64, 67–70 oil supplies: Jordan’s dependence on Iraq, 182–183 “old guard”: opposition to Abdallah’s political reforms, 221. See also East Bank/East Bankers one-state solution, 183–184, 194, 284 Oslo Accords (1993), 11, 50, 83–85, 89, 182– 183, 212, 283–284 Ottoman Empire: Aal al-Bayt’s Jordanian history, 114–115; Hashemites’ religious war over, 95; the people and the lay of the land, 5 Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), 195 Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), 33 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): the 1987 intifada, 80–83; aftermath of the 1967 War, 47–51; Arab-Jordanian and ArabPalestinian identity, 132; Camp David peace accords, 76; competing with Jordan over Palestine, 31–36; declining influence in Palestinian politics, 142, 250; establishing a fighting national authority, 71; establishment of, 29–30; exclusion from Jordanian textbooks, 106; fida’iyyun in Jordan, 51–53; Hussein’s conflict, 9; international Middle East peace conference, 77–78; Israel’s 1993 agreement, 284; Jordan’s mobilization against, 54; Madrid peace conference, 83; 1970 cease-fire, 53; October War, 67; Oslo Accords, 83–85; paramilitary deployment following the 1967 war, 48–51; partnership with Jordan, 76–77; political parties in the Jordanian national charter, 118; questioning Jordan’s right to exist, 94; Reagan’s peace plan, 75– 76; separation of forces agreement with Israel, 70–71; war with Jordan, 54–59. See also representation of the Palestinians Palestine National Council (PNC), 33, 71 Palestinian Arabs, 9, 11–14, 29, 282 Palestinian Authority (PA): Jerusalem as impediment to a two-state solution, 187– 192; loss of legitimacy, 179–180; refugee question, 184 Palestinian entity: Cold War-era revival of, 28–32; Israeli-Jordanian opposition, 37; origins of, 30 pan-Arabism, 101–102; the 1967 War, 106; Abdallah II’s “Jordan First,” 94–96;

313

Abdallah I’s state building, 97–100; antimonarchy forces, 119; Jordanian secession movement, 29; modern Jordanians’ view of, 280; opposition to peace with Israel, 155–156; territorialized history and identity, 110 paramilitary organizations. See Fatah parliamentary government: Abdallah II’s liberalized autocracy, 246–247 partition, 9–14; Bourguiba’s advocacy for Palestinian statehood, 62; territorial allotments, 19; UN recommendation, 12– 13; Zionist-Jordanian partnership over, 282 Peel, Lord, 9–10 Peel Commission, 12 Peres, Shimon, 77–78, 157–158, 161 Petra (Jordan), 5, 111–113, 115 pluralism, political: Jordanian national charter, 117–118 police: shooting on the Temple Mount, 190 political participation: East Bank-Palestinian cleavage, 142–143, 145–148; tribal nationalism and identity, 123 political parties: Abdallah II’s political reform, 246–247; early Jordanian identity formation, 97–99; Jordanian national charter, 118–119; PLO competition over control of Palestine, 34 political reform: Abdallah’s liberalized autocracy, 246–247; Abdallah II’s National Agenda, 217–221; Arab Spring, 231–232, 236–237; governments under Abdallah II, 216–217; Jordan’s veterans’ demands, 226–228 Popular Arab Jordanian Committee for Resisting Submission and Normalization, 155–156 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), 48, 53–54 postage stamps, commemorative, 98–99, 104, 111, 127(n81) pragmatists: East Bank First school, 136–138 private sector: socioeconomic fallout of Jordanian-Palestinian rivalry, 141–145; privatization, 213–215, 222–226, 236 professional associations (Jordan): Jordanian shooting of Israeli schoolgirls, 163; opposition to peace with Israel, 158, 164; Palestinians and Muslim Brotherhood, 253–254; purging of the fida’iyyun, 109; rejection of normalization with Israel, 155–157 proportional representation: Jordan’s political reforms, 220, 237 al-Qaddumi, Faruq, 54, 83 Qasim, Abd al-Karim, 24, 30 Qatar: aid to Jordan, 258

314

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qualified industrial zones (QIZs), 165–166 Rabin, Yitzhak, 56; Allon Plan, 70; assassination precluding the two-state solution, 284; death of, 166; Hussein’s death, 160; Israel signing the Oslo Accords, 84; Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, 87–88; Washington declaration, 155 radicals: East Bank First school, 136–138 Rania (queen), 197, 213, 219–220, 265 Rashid, Nadhir, 55 al-Rawabda, Abd al-Ra’uf, 188 al-Razzaz, Omar, 256–257, 260 Reagan, Ronald: peace initiative, 75 refugees: API addressing, 178; East-West Bank unification, 139; effect on the ArabIsraeli peace process, 168; Jordanians’ opposition to normalization, 156; Jordanians’ role in negotiations over, 88– 89; Jordanization of Palestine, 15; Jordan’s economic crisis, 259; Jordan’s potential Cold War-era dissolution, 23–24; Jordan’s regime support, 249; socioeconomic fallout of Jordanian-Palestinian rivalry, 141–146; tensions between Abdallah II and East Bankers, 225; Trump’s Deal of the Century, 193–194; ultranationalist clashes over, 140. See also alternative homeland concept; two-state solution regime stability: importance for Israeli security, 38–39; Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, 89; Israeli-Palestinian violence threatening, 177–178; Nasserists threatening, 23–24, 102–103 regional politics: Jordan and Israel’s common cause over, 284; Jordan’s economic crisis, 256, 258; stability of Israeli-Jordanian relations after 2009, 184 representation of the Palestinians: Algiers Arab Summit, 67–68; Egypt shifting the balance of power in the October War, 67; evolution of Jordanian identity, 93–94; formation of the UAK, 59–61; Hussein fighting the Rabat resolution, 72–73; PLO recognition, 59–64, 75–76, 133; the postcivil war fight for, 59–64; Rabat Summit outcome, 71–72. See also Palestine Liberation Organization al-Rifa’i, Samir (1), 20, 101 al-Rifa’i, Samir (2), 230–232, 270–271 al-Rifa’i, Zayd, 53 right of return: API addressing the issue of, 178; Jordanians’ opposition to normalization, 156; Jordan’s “Return March” supporting, 185; Transjordanian nationalism and East Bank First, 135–136; Trump’s Deal of the Century ignoring, 193–194; ultranationalist position on, 133–

134; US and Israeli pressure on Jordan, 225. See also alternative homeland concept; refugees; two-state solution Riyad, Abd al-Mun’im, 42 Road Map (United States), 179 royal family, ultranationalist involvement, 133 al-Sadat, Anwar: Algiers Arab Summit, 67–68; Camp David negotiations, 73–76; Jordan’s role in the October War, 61–63 Safadi, Ayman, 194, 196–198 Sa’id, Hammam, 251 al-Sa’id, Nuri, 35, 99 Saudi Arabia: aid to Jordan, 258; negotiations over normalization with Israel, 191 Second Intifada. See Al-Aqsa Intifada secular nationalism: Hamas’s ascendance over, 250–251; Jordan as protector of, 113–114; Jordanian-Palestinian relations, 210; 1987 intifada, 80–81 security: Israeli-Jordanian cooperation against ISIS, 184; Israeli-Jordanian cooperation on regional matters, 284; Jordan’s Cold War–era strategic position, 21–23; political, identity, and security linkages, 3. See also Arab-Israeli peace process security (Israel): the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, 87–88; regional balance of power, 152–153. See also Arab-Israeli peace process security (Jordan): criticism of Abdallah II’s political reforms, 227–228; the IsraeliJordanian peace treaty, 87–88; Jordanian national charter, 117–118. See also ArabIsraeli peace process separation of forces agreement (1974), 68–69 settlers, Israeli, 85, 191, 193–194, 197 Shamir, Shimon, 163–164 Shamir, Yitzhak, 75, 77–80, 86–87 Sharett, Moshe, 18, 23 Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, 6, 95–96, 104, 188 Sharon, Ariel: alternative homeland scenario, 79–80; disengaging from the Palestinians, 179–180, 182 Shiloah, Reuven, 24 shipping: May 1967 crisis, 40–41; 2023 war, 199 shootings: Israeli embassy in Amman, 190; Israeli schoolgirls, 163 Shubaylat, Layth, 160, 235–236 al-Shuqayri, Ahmad, 9; establishment of the PLO, 29–30; May 1967 crisis, 40–42; PLO conflict with Jordan, 31–34; questioning Jordan’s right to exist, 31, 35; tensions over PLO-Jordanian relations, 39 al-Sisi, Abd al-Fattah, 197 Six Day War (1967): aftermath and meaning of, 47–51; effect on Jordanian-Palestinian

Index relations, 106; Fatah’s success, 35–36; fida’iyyun, 51–54, 106–109; increasing tensions leading to, 39–41; Jordan’s loss of the West Bank, 283; Muslims’ loss of selfassurance, 152; post-war political landscape, 1 social contract, Jordan’s, 208, 222–223, 257, 260–261, 263, 270 socialists, Hussein’s national narrative countering, 103–104 Solidarity Party (Jordan), 99 Soviet Union: international Middle East peace conference, 77–78; Jewish immigration, 80; Jordan’s Cold War-era strategic position, 21–23; Jordan’s war against the PLO, 56; US arms sales to Jordan and Israel, 36–37; War of 1967, 40 stability, political, 282 stamps. See postage stamps state building: Abdallah I, 96–101; cultural heritage and history, 114–115; effect on tribal authority, 122–124; integrating the Bedouin into the state, 120–121; Jordanian national charter, 117–118 state within a state concept, 51, 53 statehood, Jewish: Abdallah I’s acceptance of partition, 10–11; impact on the Palestine problem, 11–12; Israeli accord with Abdallah, 18. See also Arab-Israeli War statehood, Palestinian: Abdallah II’s vision of Jordan and, 206–207; Algiers Arab Summit, 67–68; East Bank loyalties, 132; one-state solution, 183–184, 194, 284; partition plan, 19–20; US opposition to, 75. See also alternative homeland concept; two-state solution students: East Banker-Palestinian clashes, 140–141; tribal clashes, 124 succession, Hussein’s, 171–173 Suez War (1956–1957), 39–41 suicide bombings, 157, 161, 180 Sunni Muslims, 148, 169, 210, 281, 284 Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), 7 Syria: Abdallah II’s crescent of Shi’ite Iranian influence, 169; Abdallah I’s early state building, 96; Abdallah I’s expansionist ambitions, 8; Arab Union, 27; armistice with Israel, 13; creation of Jordan and Palestine, 6–8; creation of the UAR, 23– 24; drone attacks during the Israel-Hamas War, 199; Gulf War, 86; Hashemite quest to rule, 95–96, 99–100; Hussein’s attack on, 25–26; Israeli-Jordanian cooperation against ISIS, 184; Jordan’s Cold War-era political stability, 28; October War with Israel, 63–64; run-up to the 1967 War, 39; separation of forces agreement with Israel, 70; supporting the PLO against Jordan, 55

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al-Talhuni, Bahjat, 33, 101 al-Tall, Bilal, 115 al-Tall, Sa’id, 79 al-Tall, Tariq, 225, 233 al-Tall, Wasfi: assassination, 108; class conflict, 104; Hussein’s conflict with the fida’iyyun, 53, 55, 57; PLO conflict with Jordan, 33–34; political ascendance, 30–31; Shuqayri’s denial of Jordan’s legitimacy, 35; ultranationalist movement, 133 Tallal (king), 171 taxation: Jordan’s economic crisis, 256–257 Temple Mount, Jews’ exclusion from, 189–191 temporary legislation, 159 territorial expansion: Abdallah I, 96–97, 282– 283; early Hashemite ambitions, 7–9; Hussein’s criticism of Israel’s aggression, 36; the terms of partition, 10 territorial nationalism, 106–110, 113–114, 154–155 terrorism, PLO’s evolution from resistance to, 58 trade and commerce: Jordan benefiting from peace with Israel, 165; Jordanian-Israeli energy exchange, 187; Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, 168; the people and the lay of the land, 4 Transjordan, Emirate of, 131; Abdallah I’s early state building, 96–101; creation of Jordan and Palestine, 6–8; Hashemite expansionist ambitions, 8–9; Jordan’s right to exist, 281–282; as origin of Arab unity, 96; the people and the lay of the land, 4–5 Transjordanian identity, 116–117 tribal communities and tribalism: anti-regime protests, 236; criticism of the Hashemite monarchy, 232–233; effects of Abdallah’s neoliberal policies, 223–224; Hirak movement, 238–240; lineage-based nationalism, 139–140; Muslim Brotherhood, 113; role in JordanianPalestinian relations, 119–125; Transjordanian nationalism and East Bank First, 135–136; ultranationalist view of Jordanian identity, 134–135 Trump administration, 191–192 Tunisia: Palestinian statehood, 62 Tuqan, Ahmad, 57 24th of March Youth Movement (Jordan), 234–235, 238 two-state solution: criticism of Abdallah II’s political reforms, 228; the demise of, 284; effect of the Israel-Hamas War, 196; Jordan-Israel peace negotiations, 2, 89, 179–181, 183, 187–196, 283–284; Muslim Brotherhood opposition, 206; Palestinian interests in the Arab-Israeli

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Index

peace process, 170. See also alternative homeland concept Ubaydat, Ahmad, 227, 238 ultranationalists (Jordan), 133–134, 140, 144, 155 Umayyad caliphate, Jordanization of, 111 UN Emergency Forces (UNEF) in Sinai, 40–41 UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), 12–13 unemployment: effects of Abdallah’s neoliberal policies, 223–224; Jordan’s economic crisis, 257–258 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 187, 195–196, 258, 270 United Arab Kingdom (UAK), 59–61 United Arab Republic (UAR), 23–24, 26–27, 40, 100–101, 105–106 United Nations, 11–12, 40–41, 146, 197, 228 United States: American casualties in the Israel-Hamas War, 199–200; antiaircraft defense for Jordan, 62; arms sales to Jordan and Israel, 36–37; Camp David Accords, 73–76; Clinton’s mini summit, 162; declining regional stature and support for Jordan, 186; destabilization of Iraqi trade, 169; economic assistance to Jordan, 258; effect of the Gulf War on Jordanian relations, 86–87; IDF raids in the West Bank, 38; Israel-Hamas War, 196–197; Israeli gas supplies to Jordan, 187; IsraeliPalestinian negotiations, 170–171; Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, 191–192; Jordan’s benefits from peace with Israel, 164–165; Jordan’s Cold War-era strategic position, 21–23; Jordan’s political stability, 27; Jordan’s war with the PLO, 55–56; moving towards the two-state solution, 180–181; concern for dissolution of Jordan, 26–27; pressure to resettle refugees in Jordan, 225; Road Map for Israeli withdrawal, 179; separation of forces agreement from Israel, 71–72; shooting at the Israeli embassy in Amman, 190; Trump’s Deal of the Century, 192–195

Vance, Cyrus, 74 War of 1967. See Six Day War War of Attrition (1970), 53 “warm peace,” 161–164 water rights, 37, 165, 167–168, 194–195 West Bank: Aal al-Bayt’s Jordanian history, 115; Abdallah II’s lack of ties to, 188; Abdallah I’s annexation, 14, 18–19; aftermath of the 1967 War, 47–51; Allon Plan, 69–70; Cold War-era plans for an independent Palestinian state, 29; formation of the UAK, 60–61; geography, politics, and economics, 4–6; IDF reprisal raids, 38–39; integration into Jordan, 15; Israeli security barrier, 179–182; Jordanization of Palestine in 1950, 20–21; Jordan’s disengagement, 82–83, 111, 133– 134, 140, 205–206, 226, 283–284; Jordan’s postwar interim negotiations, 68– 69; Madrid peace conference, 85; PLO-Jordan competition over Palestine, 31–36; post-1967 political landscape, 1–2; revitalizing Palestinian nationalism, 283; rise of PLO support after Black September, 59; War of 1948, 13–14. See also alternative homeland concept World Bank: Jordan’s economic crisis, 255– 256, 258 World War I, 95, 105 World War II: impact on the Palestine problem, 11–12 Yasin, Shaykh Ahmad, 164 “Zamzam” initiative, 252–254, 262 Zayd bin Shakir, 52–53, 143 Zayn (queen mother), 133 Zionist enterprise: the alternative homeland scenario, 79; creation of Jordan and Palestine, 7; the idea of partition, 9–13; Jordan’s relations and political stability, 282–283; Jordan’s ultranationalist movement, 134; Muslims’ sense of defeat by, 151–152

About the Book

IN A SWEEPING NARRATIVE, ASHER SUSSER TRACES THE EVOLUTION OF Jordanian politics through the prism of the kingdom’s policies toward Palestine and the Palestinians. Susser shows how the triangular relationship involving Jordan, the Palestinians, and Israel—from the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan in 1921 to the present—came to influence the Jordanians’ sense of collective identity, the impact it had on the making of peace between Jordan and Israel, and how it has shaped the complex and often tense relationship between Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin and their East Bank compatriots. His work also sheds crucial light on Jordanian perceptions of their national security in the context of the war between Israel and Hamas. Asher Susser is professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Tel

Aviv University.

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