As everyone knows, Jordan is the only country which decided to try to integrate Palestinian Arab refugees into their society. After the Arab state rejected the partition plan and launched war upon the nascent Jewish state, Jordan then occupied and annexed the West Bank, as Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip, but did not give citizenship, unlike Jordan. Then in 1967 the Arab states launched war again, Egypt by closing the Straits of Tiran and along with Syria lining up troops at the borders, Egypt unlawfully expelling the UN peace keepers in the Sinai after the Suez War when Egypt tried to close the Suez, and Jordan began bombing the Jewish state, even when Israel tried to beg King Hussein not to take them to war again.
Again, as we know, Israel beat the numerous Arab state armed with Soviet weapons and political aid, and occupied the West Bank and Gaza, and the strategic Golan Heights from which Syria would shell Israel, which Israel annexed and offered citizenship to all inside it after annexing it in 1981.
Then the PLO declared a state in the West Bank in 1988, and then Jordan made peace with Israel in 1994 with revolutionary peace maker Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein. And Jordan never asked for the West Bank back in it.
But now, for some reason, after being the only country to take in the Palestinians Arabs and give them all citizenship, Jordan is now stripping Arabs who happen to come from west of the Jordan River, of citizenship.
"Our goal is to prevent Israel from emptying the Palestinian territories of their original inhabitants," the minister explained, confirming that the kingdom had begun revoking the citizenship of Palestinians.
"We should be thanked for taking this measure," he said. "We are fulfilling our national duty because Israel wants to expel the Palestinians from their homeland."
Kadi said that, despite the new policy, Palestinians would be permitted to retain their status as residents of the kingdom by holding "yellow ID cards" that are issued to those who have families and homes in the West Bank.
He said that Palestinians working for the Palestinian Authority or the PLO were among those who have had their Jordanian passports taken from them, in addition to anyone who did not serve in the Jordanian army.
Kadi claimed that the kingdom was seeking, through the new measure, to thwart an Israeli "plot" to transfer more Palestinians to Jordan with the hope of replacing it with a Palestinian state.
Now where do they get this idea of an Israeli "plot" to move Palestinians into Jordan? To me, revoking the citizenship of people who make up 60% of the populace of an otherwise underpopulated country amounts to ethnic cleansing. This is wrong. Why should there be discrimination between the Palestinians west and east of the river? Wasn't both what is Israel, PA territories, and Jordan all part of the British Mandate of Palestine, before Churchill divided it by the river and gave the Hashemites Transjordan? Martin Gilbert's "Churchill and the Jews" can tell one about his steadfast determination for a Jewish State west of the Jordan. Churchill also said in his 1922 White Paper that Jews could settle anywhere west of the Jordan River.
There is no Israeli plot. But this did make me think again: I think a great solution to the I/P problem would indeed be a Jordanian option. Jordan could have back the West Bank, which would give it an automatic infrastructure which Jordan, already developed, could help with in the West Bank. Jordan is also at peace with Israel and has good security forces, and has outlawed Hamas, which means it would be a perfect and most peaceful idea. Why not Jordan indeed be the Arab state which the 1922 Churchill Paper and his division of the Mandate says it can be? To me this is a disgusting plot to disenfranchise actual former citizens of the state of Jordan, which Israel has never done, and a Yisrael Beiteinu bill to do so unless loyal was defeated.
I think Jordan, which is at peace with the Jewish State, should be more active in bringing about peace rather than making it harder. I am for a two-state solution, be it an independent Palestinian Arab state West of the river, which I hope Abbas will help bring about by actually negotiating. but the Jordanian option isn't a bad one either. i see no reason for Jordan to try to eliminate such an option.
But as Jordan strips citizenship from the demographic which makes up the majority of the country, one could call Jordan a REAL apartheid state! The blacks, who were most of the actual citizens of South Africa, like the Arabs west of the river who are actual citizens of Jordan, lost their citizenship. Israel has never done this to actual Israelis living inside Israel. Arab-Israelis can vote, which blacks in South Africa could NOT do, and more Palestinians in Jordan will not be able to do. So I say JORDAN, APARTHEID STATE!