Jordan, in the dark on the details, views the ‘deal of the century’ as an existential threat – and the kingdom’s hands are tied
AFP
Jordan is once again seeking political asylum. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz will hear the details of the “deal of the century” in Washington this week, King Abdullah will apparently only be able to guess at the nature of the ambush U.S. President Donald Trump is laying for him.
Based on the statements of senior Jordanian officials, the kingdom is still officially in the dark, and speculation relies mainly on leaks to the Israeli media. But their greatest fear is that Jordan will become the alternative Palestinian homeland.
“What does annexing the Jordan Valley mean, after Trump has already recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, given it permission to annex the Golan Heights and recognized the legitimacy of some of the settlements?” a senior Jordanian pundit said in an interview with Haaretz. “All of this means Jordan has ceased to be an important element of the peace process. [NEVER WAS]
“Moreover, the deal of the century abolishes the two-state solution. It undermines the Arab peace initiative of 2002, which was always a cornerstone of every proposed solution. It rejects the Palestinians’ right of return and demands that Jordan absorb additional hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, or even millions.”
Jordan expressed these fears publicly after last year’s Bahrain conference, which detailed the billions of dollars in aid that Trump’s plan envisions for Palestine and Jordan. In exchange, Jordan would be asked to serve as a home for Palestinian refugees and effectively become a Palestinian state.
Jordan now faces three threats that it defines as existential.
The first is the expected American pressure to adopt Trump’s peace plan. This could include cutting American economic aid and military support, thwarting the king’s efforts to raise money from international financial institutions and even promoting Saudi Arabia’s aspiration to become the custodian of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
The second threat, which is even more dangerous, is a scenario in which the Jordanian public launches protests against the deal and demands that the kingdom sever ties with Israel, or even cancel the peace agreement.
And the third threat will come to pass if Israel adopts the U.S. deal, annexes the Jordan Valley and other settlements assigned it under the plan and thereby severs Jordan from the West Bank.
Jordan’s options for opposing the deal are limited. It has no substitute for its alliances with the United States and Saudi Arabia. Despite its efforts to draw closer to Russia by thawing relations with Syria, Russia provides neither a diplomatic nor an economic alternative to American support.
Jordan’s ties with Saudi Arabia have been tense for quite some time, at first due to its refusal to let its territory be used as a base for attacks on Syria four years ago, and later because of Riyadh’s hints that it wants to become the guardian of Jerusalem’s holy sites. But Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates continue to be a vital source of economic support. In 2018, they gave Jordan $2.5 billion to help it rehabilitate its economy and calm the stormy demonstrations that broke out at the start of that year.
Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are also viewed as key supporters of the U.S. proposal, and as countries that have already almost completed normalization with Israel. Thus facing off with them over their backing for the deal would be dangerous.
The worrying question is whether Jordan might cancel or threaten to cancel the peace treaty as a way of exerting pressure against the deal. For now, Amman’s diplomatic reasoning is that scrapping the treaty wouldn’t eliminate the threats the deal poses to Jordan.
It wouldn’t deter Israel from annexing the Jordan Valley, because the annexation proposal isn’t related solely to the valley’s strategic importance, but also to Israel’s domestic political battles, which generally override strategic considerations. For the same reason, it also wouldn’t prevent annexation of the settlements. And it would end Jordan’s influence over the holy sites in Jerusalem, while also turning the kingdom into an enemy state.
More than a year ago, when senior government and military officials held discussions about the likely effects of canceling an agreement that let Israel lease Jordanian land in the Jordan Valley and the Arava, questions arose about its impact on the peace treaty. According to Jordanian sources, the unequivocal conclusion was that canceling the peace treaty wasn’t an option and shouldn’t even be considered, because it would play into Israel’s hands more than it would help Jordan.
But now, circumstances could change. Even though Amman considers the peace treaty vital, or even existential, it’s hard to know how it would respond if there were widespread violent demonstrations because Jordanians saw the “deal of the century” as an opportunity to clash with the government over issues unrelated to the deal.
Cairo, meanwhile, is treating the planned Netanyahu-Trump meeting as if it were solely an Israeli-Palestinian issue, or even an Israeli-American one, that has nothing to do with Egypt. To date, there have been no official statements by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi or senior officials in his administration about the upcoming meeting in Washington.
Judging by its past statements about the American proposal, Egypt still supports a two-state solution and opposes Israeli annexations of territory or other unilateral steps. But it’s apparently relying on the political divisions within Israel to thwart the deal without it having to publicly oppose it.
Egypt is more interested in developments in the Gaza Strip, and specifically in how Hamas and Gaza residents respond to the American proposal, than in the proposal’s content. Unlike Jordan, it isn’t threatened by what is known of the deal so far. And if the proposal grants it billions of dollars to develop joint Egyptian-Palestinian industrial parks, it certainly won’t refuse the money.
Hamas will remain dependent on Egypt whether or not anything comes of the deal. And Israel will similarly remain dependent on Egypt to mediate any violence that might erupt due to Trump’s proposal.
But even countries that aren’t likely to be harmed by the deal, like Egypt and the Gulf states, aren’t free of the fear of how their publics will respond. If the Palestinian issue reenters the Arab public conversation and reappears on the Arab diplomatic agenda, this could spark protests whose official pretexts would be the deal, but whose roots would be years of accumulated frustration and bitterness against Arab regimes.
In contrast to the impotence of public opinion prior to the Arab Spring revolutions, today, public opinion carries weight. It has the power to topple governments or dictate political moves.
Trump’s deal is already viewed in the Arab media as an idiotic one meant to make the Palestinian problem disappear and allow Israel to annex territory. Now, it’s being portrayed as an American gift meant to help Netanyahu cling to power, at the Palestinians’ expense.
If fears that the deal will give Israel a free hand to annex territory prove accurate, and all the more so if territory is actually annexed, protests could develop into a pan-Arab movement that would force Arab governments to respond. Marketing the deal to Arab countries would then become mission impossible. And that’s without even mentioning the damage that America’s standing in the region would suffer.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Why is that a problem if they are on the other side of the river? The whole point is to incentivize them to relocate to Jordan voluntarily. I agree. As long as this population is within striking distance of Jews, this will happen. The point is to remove them as far away as possible.
From Robert Spencer’s Jihadwatch. Mudar Zahran defended this Palestinian-Jordanian, saying that he had been provoked into the attack by a Jordanian policeman on the scene, had been hasled for years by Jordanian authorities for attempting to sell things in the vicinity, and was suffering from a mental illness. I don’t know where the truth lies. But the attack does raise questions about whether Israel can ever trust Jordanians to behave peaceably towards Israel, or for that matter towards anyone else. The Palestinians, Syrians Iraqis and the Bedouin “natives” in Jordan are all deeply troubled people with a culture of violence, and quarrels with each other. To my mind, the instability of the Jordanians and their propensity to violence makes any sort of Jordan Option problematical.
And the third threat will come to pass if Israel adopts the U.S. deal, annexes the Jordan Valley and other settlements assigned it under the plan and thereby severs Jordan from the West Bank.
From the writer’s to HaShem, please make this a reality…
We have been waiting for President Trump’s “Deal of the Century” for quite a while, with only hints and rumors of what’s inside. Now we have a little bit better idea. It sounds, on the face of it, like how things should be, with one possible exception (see below). But just because you see how things “should be”, doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how they “will be”. The success of Trump’s plan, as this Haaretz article points out, is far from assured, and it even carries with it the potential for some very undesirable side effects. We must all hope that Trump and his advisers have really thought this thing through.
One thing is sure, It is time to declare the “Two-state Solution” dead, once and for all. It was tried, several times, and failed each time because of palestinian rejection. The palestinian-Arab front never really wanted a settlement, anyway, no matter how generous. Their only goal was to see Israel completely destroyed. This could only be achieved by maintaining a festering conflict, and a “suffering” populace that could be manipulated to commit acts of terrorism against Jews, while appearing to be the oppressed victims of Israeli brutality. The “palestinian people” was the perfect invention for this purpose. It was the ultimate “tar baby”, which Israel could not get unstuck from. And for their part, the rest of the world (i.e. Europe, the U.N., etc.), understood this and took full advantage of the situation, to self-righteously exercise their own subtle anti-Semitism, by maintaining the charade. For Trump to finally drive a stake through the heart of the (evil) Two-State Solution, would in itself, be a huge triumph.
Beyond that, settling or rectifying the geographical and demographic “facts on the ground” is probably necessary, as well, but therein lies real risks. First, who is going to decide, or dictate, what happens to the “West Bank”, geo-politically, in the “Deal of the Century”? Is the US going to unilaterally recognize it all as part of Israel? Is Israel going to annex all of Judea and Samaria? Perhaps the palestinians may even fight a war of independence for a postage-stamp sized enclave. Any way you look at it, it could be messy. And secondly, what will the new status of the “palestinians” be? Under the “Deal”, will they become full-fledged citizens of Israel, with voting rights? That could pose a major political danger to Israel, but if they are not given full rights of citizenship, then Israel could, quite rightly, be open to charges of apartheid. More than twenty five years ago, I had a conversation with an Israeli diplomat, who said to me, (something to the effect that)… we could have peace, but “what will we do with those people?” They understood the dilemma even then.
As the Haaretz article also discusses, the greatest unknown is what will be the reaction of the Arab masses, who have been conditioned for generations, to hate Israel and to view Jews as evil. Can the Arab regimes keep their populations under control, at least until the dust settles around “the Deal”? Or, will they even want to? Hopefully Trump has made it worth their while to play along.
Lastly, while this “Deal” will be entirely credited to President Trump, for better or for worse, it will require lots of money, to grease the skids, to buy good will, and to otherwise implement the plan. It is hard to see how he will be able to fund this effort without substantial bi-partisan support in Congress (aka, money). Is a Democrat-controlled House likely to fund Trump’s “Deal of the Century” on one hand, while sparing no effort to oust him, on the other?
All the blah, blah, blah aside, I eagerly anticipate President Trump’s “Deal of the Century”. If you want peace, you have to at least try, and a new approach is clearly needed. Blessed be the peacemakers.
While the Jordan Otion would be beneficial to the Palestinians, they have been brainwashed for 70+ years to hate Israel. Poll s appear to show that most Jordanians hate Israel and Jews generally.This makes it easy for Abdullah and other Jordanian politicians to oppose both the Jordan Option and the Trum “Deal” (which seem to be similar in over-all concept) by claiming that they favor Israel and Jews at the expense of Arabs (Whether Palestinian, Transjordanian, Syrian or Iraqi. All four of these groups are well represnted in present-day Jordan). Arabs have been taught for decades that whatever is good for Jews is bad for Arabs, even though this is not true.
The 1.7 million Arabs living in Yehuda & Shomron will be ecstatic. Finally the corrupt gang imported pursuant to Oslo will sooner or later be disempowered.
Will some leave to Palestine/Jordan or elsewhere? Time will tell. Patience is required.
Jordan’s King does not want to face reality that Jordan is actually the Pal-Arab state based on its formation as 78% of Mandatory Palestine allocated to the Arabs in 1922 on what was supposed to be the largest part of the Jewish State. It is also approximately 75% Pal-Arab demographically (or West Bankers as they call them). If Jordan becomes a democracy it will become the Pal-Arab state completely.