Jordan begins revoking citizenship for Palestinians

It seems that the Hashemites are starting to get worried about the "Jordan is Palestine" line of argument, and have pre-empted any official Israeli statements to this effect by revoking Jordanian nationality for its Palestinian population.

From JPost:

Jordanian authorities have started revoking the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians living in Jordan to avoid a situation in which they would be "resettled" permanently in the kingdom, Jordanian and Palestinian officials revealed on Monday.

The new measure has increased tensions between Jordanians and Palestinians, who make up around 70 percent of the kingdom's population.

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

I find the very notion that citizenship can be revoked, en masse, absolutely incredible and a stark reminder of how lucky we are in the West that our governments do not have this kind of power over peoples' lives... yet!

I also wonder how this will affect the PA's negotiating stance when it comes to the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees.

Is it just me that finds this somewhat hypocritical? On the one hand Jordan purports to be a champion of Palestinian rights inside Israel (or the OPT depending on where you stand on the issue), and on the other shows complete and utter contempt for the rights of its own Palestinian population.

Isn't it also intriguing that given how interested our media is in the Middle East, this has had zero coverage in the Western press? If I was more cynical I'd say that the Middle East is only considered newsworthy if there's an opportunity to criticize Israel...

The 1.8 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan might transformed themselves into militants not unlike Hezbollah. This is going to be a big headache for Israel.

reply to post by coolieno99


Just goes to show that while countries like Egypt and Jordan are happy to use Palestinians as political footballs, when it comes to actually helping them or making their lives better they want nothing to do with them.

At any point in the last 40 years Egypt could easily have absorbed the 494,000 refugees from Gaza. Just as Jordan could easily have absorbed the 189,000 refugees in Judea/Samara. But neither country has lifted a finger, because it's politically more convenient to keep them in misery and squalid conditions so that they can hold them up to the world as an example of the evils of Israel.

And what scares me the most about all this is that so many supposedly educated and intelligent people in the West (and particularly in my country) fall for it hook, line and sinker.

Of course it would only take Jordan to enable the Right of Return and give Palestinians some land and then they wouldn't be shooting rockets into Israel daily. But nooooo. Jordan instead chooses to revoke the citizenship of Palestinians to intice turmoil with Israel. Taqiyya... tricky little game that the 57 OIC countries play to get Jews and Christians out of Islam.
No one is fooled by Islam and it's tactics.

The reformation of the Caliphate will only allow more of this behavior against Christians and Jews. You can clearly see the spread of Islam through Southeast Asia and Africa and the effort to gain more territory and population converted to Islam. In those areas those who refuse to convert are killed. Very sad.