I am a Jordanian Palestinian and I support Trump’s settlement plans for Gazans

President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Gaza’s Palestinians relocate to Jordan and Egypt on a “short term or long term” basis has been dismissed as diplomatically “unprecedented.”

The critics are wrong.

Jordan is a majority Palestinian state ruled by an ethnic Hashemite monarchy of fewer than 100 people. If Palestinians have a “right of return,” it’s to Jordan. Palestinians in the West Bank/Judea & Samaria and Gaza were Jordanian and remain so, despite the Hashemite Kingdom’s abandonment of them.

Jordan and Egypt oppose assuming responsibility for the Palestinians. “They will,” says President Trump. He is right — both historically and legally. Jordan’s own nationality law confirms that Palestinians are legally Jordanian. According to Jordanian Nationality Law No. (6) of 1954: “Anyone who held Palestinian nationality before May 15, 1948, and habitually resided in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between December 20, 1949, and February 16, 1954, is considered a Jordanian citizen.”

In 1951, Jordan’s Hashemite regime declared sovereignty over Palestinian territories designated for Arabs under the U.N. Partition Plan. The Jericho Conference formalized this, with Palestinians recognizing the Hashemites as “Kings of Palestine.” Consequently, every resident of Gaza was considered a Jordanian citizen between 1949 and 1954. By rejecting Trump’s proposal, the Hashemite regime violates international law, which prohibits rendering individuals stateless or denying them entry into their own country.

Jordan occupies 78% of British Mandate Palestine. The British installed the Hashemites as rulers until 1946. In 1949, Jordan revoked Palestinians’ British Palestinian passports and replaced them with Jordanian passports. Most Gazans are refugees from areas previously controlled by Jordan’s Hashemite regime, making them Jordanian citizens by ancestry with the right to return.

Like many post-colonial Arab states, Jordan is an artificial entity. It lacked its own passport until 1949, relying instead on British-issued Palestinian passports. The UN only recognized Jordan as a state in 1955. It also had no currency of its own until 1951, using the British-issued Palestinian pound, which bore the inscription “Palestine/Eretz Israel – Land of Israel.”

There is no demographic threat to Jordan absorbing more Palestinian refugees. Jordanians and Palestinians are fully integrated, with most Jordanians being of Palestinian descent. Even East Bank Jordanian tribes have Palestinian roots, such as those in Karak (from Hebron) and Bani Sakher (from Gaza and Sinai).

For those claiming Palestinians wouldn’t accept this solution, the evidence says otherwise. A 2008 U.S. Embassy cable from Amman revealed Jordan’s Palestinian majority prioritizes compensation and legal rights over the right of return-which the Jordanian regime argue out to be to Israel itself, and keep telling Jordan’s Palestinian majority to “not expect rights in Jordan and seek it in Israel as they ought to return there”. This is what the US Embassy’s cable — which is now public — reports:

A common theme that emerges from discussions with Palestinian-origin contacts and some government officials … is a ‘grand bargain’ whereby Palestinians give up their aspirations to return in exchange for integration into Jordan’s political system.

For their part, many Palestinian-origin Jordanians are less concerned with ‘prejudging’ the right of return and more concerned with fulfilling their roles as Jordanian citizens.

Many Palestinian-origin Jordanians readily acknowledge that the right of return is merely a fantasy.

The plight of our people began in 1948 when the Hashemites took control of parts of British Palestine by force. After losing this territory in the 1967 war with Israel, the Hashemites abandoned the Palestinians — who were their own citizens — leaving them stateless and denying their connection to their true homeland, Jordan. This abandonment played a major role in making the Palestinian issue one of the most urgent global conflicts. Had the Hashemites granted full citizenship and rights to these Palestinians, it could have significantly altered the course of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

To the contrary, under the Hashemites, Jordan’s Palestinian majority holds Jordanian passports but faces heavy taxation and discrimination, portrayed by state media as “merely refugees who should someday return to Palestine.”

The U.S. Embassy cable confirms:

The right of return in Jordan is inextricably linked with the problem of semi-official discrimination toward the Palestinian-origin community.

The only obstacle to Palestinian resettlement in Jordan is the Hashemite monarchy — fewer than 70 individuals. A 2007 U.S. Embassy cable described the Hashemite family as “a non-Jordanian family” that fears “a tribal coup of sorts (which has always been avoided in Jordanian politics).” This explains King Abdullah’s opposition to granting Palestinians civil rights in their own country.

The international community must listen to what Palestinians actually want instead of imposing impractical solutions crafted by out-of-touch bureaucrats. President Trump is publicly stating what most Palestinians and Jordanians privately believe. As a businessman, he offers a practical solution to a conflict that has been endlessly theorized but never resolved.

As a Jordanian, I proudly support President Trump’s proposal. It offers a path to peace, stability, and reconciliation with our Israeli brothers and sisters.

Mudar Zahran is a Jordanian politician in exile. He previously served as an Economic Specialist and Assistant Policy Coordinator for the American Embassies in Jordan and Iraq.

Image: Pixabay, via Picryl // CCO 1.0 universal public domain