T. Belman. Trump is not laying the groundwork for an “Israeli-PA peace plan”. He is laying the groundwork for an Israel-Palestinian peace plan. The PA has no say in the matter. If Mudar Zahran comes to power in Jordan, he will be the leader of the majority of Palestians or certainly more Palestinians than reside in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
Israeli Arab-affairs analyst Shimrit Meir on Sunday tweeted that the Trump administration is considering cutting aid to Jordan should it fail to support the political part of the “deal of the century” which should be presented after the September 17 Israeli elections.
Citing a Wall Street Journal report (Trump Peace Effort Traps Jordan Between U.S. and Palestinians) saying that as the Trump administration lays the groundwork for an Israel-PA peace plan, neighboring Jordan has been thrust into an awkward position, having to oppose Trump’s suggestions while depending on Washington’s support, Meir notes that the very idea shatters the sanctum sanctorum of the US Middle Eastern policy across generations.
According to Meir, in Israel, too, the Netanyahu security apparatus, which has been traditionally attentive to the Jordanian king’s needs since Golda met Abdullah I, are shocked by the notion of cutting off Jordan, and could possibly attempt to block such a move, Trump or no Trump.
On the other hand, Meir continues, truth be told, Israel has been growing a bit tired of the fact that of all the Jordanian public’s complaints against its king – and there are plenty of those – the only thing the monarchy has focused on is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It’s a move orchestrated by the Islamists, Meir argues, adding: “The question is why is it a good thing?”
According to Wikipedia cited sources, Jordan’s GDP per capita slowed to just 2% after the Arab Spring of 2011. A substantial increase of the population due to the influx of Syrian refugees, coupled with slowed economic growth and rising public debt led to a worsening of poverty and unemployment in the country. As of 2015, Jordan’s GDP is only $37.6 billion, ranking it 89th worldwide. Israel, next door, with roughly the same size population, boasts a $350.9 billion GDP.
According to official US sources as well as Arab media, the US awards Jordan between $6 and $8 billion a year in cash, besides granting it a Most favored nation (MFN) status, as do most Western countries. The US has also actively pressed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to leave Jordan alone regarding the economic austerity measures the fund normally demands of its third world debtors.
In short, getting on President Donald Trump’s wrong side could cost King Abdullah II close to a third of his economy. Ouch.
Shimrit Meir argues that pushing the king at this time would not help peace; instead, such a move is likely to encourage chaos. As it is, an estimated 80% of the king’s subjects do not belong to his political base, the Bedouin, and reports show the Bedouin are not so enamoured with him either.
Also: should the US cut its aid to Jordan, there’s no telling who would fill the void. Sure, it could be the Saudis or the Qataris, but it could also be the Iranians, the Russians, or the Chinese, all of whom are eager to grab a strategic post along Israel’s eastern flank.
On the other hand, the King might just capitulate and do what he’s told. As always, Jordan does not have a foreign policy as it does a pain management program.
However, there is also a much less sinister purpose for which the USG might have ended up funneling 6-8 billion in ‘off-the-books” funds to Jordan over the past year. The money might have been taken from the President’s large emergency contingency fund as well as the CIAs very large secret budget, and used to prevent Jordan, in accute financial distress from going under completely economically, with chaos and complete collapse ensuing. The Jordanians don’t seem to have the resources to import the petroleum, food and other necessary suplies for their 8-10 million people. Jordan simply doesn’t produce enough goods and services for all those people, or to pay for imports. As much as 8 billion “of the books” funds might have been necessary to pay for essential imports, keep buses and trains running at affordable prices, prevent long and frequent electric power blackouts, repair vital infrastructure, keep hospitals and schools open, etc. But Trump and his advisors may also have known that Congress would never appropriate that much money for Jordan. So the State department submitted a much more modest aid request (1.275 billion) to Congress, and secretly provided the rest of the emergency assistance secretly and “off the books.”
However, Trump may then have warned the Jordanians that he could not continue to provide this level of assistance in future years, unless Abdullah cooperated with US foreign policy goals.
I have difficulty explaining the gap between the 6-8 million dollars “in cash” the tDavid Israel says the US. gives Jordan every year, and the 1,275,000 official State Department figure for the USID package. One possible explanation is that the U.S. in handing out huge amounts of cash, probably through the CIA, to bribe Jordanian “VIPS” to support Abdullah and not join the opposition movement. There have been press reports that the CIA has been handing out huge amounts of off-the-books cash to various people in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty to the present government and prevent them from defecting to the Taliban, IS, etc. When Obama made his deal with Iran in 2015, he delivered hugeplanefuls offish to them, supposedly as payment for aircraft that the Shah had paid for before he was overthrown, but the U.S. never delivered to the Khomeini regime. But why did that have to be paid out in cash?
Let us suppose that Wasjhington provided $1 million in cash to 8,000 VIPS in Jordan–tribal chiefs, members of parliament, army and police officers, etc., with instructions to hand out the money among their followers, and insure their loyalty to Abdullah. That would add up to 8 billion dollars! Other possible recipients of bribes could be Abdullah himself and his numerous relatives and hangers-on. A lot of it could even have gone to pay off the king’s reputedly large gambling debts! If this is where all that reported cash is going, what a waste.