T. Belman. This article is total propaganda. The truth is, that in all the demonstrations in Jordan over the last 6 months, Jordanians have shown anger with the government and in particular, with King Abdullah. They want him gone. Israel is never mentioned in the protests.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II is trapped between an aggressively pro-Israel Trump, a hardline Israel and an increasingly radicalized grassroots clamoring to cut all diplomatic and trade relations with Israel
By Marwan A. Kardoosh, HAARETZ
REUTERS
Jordan banked more heavily than any other Arab state on hefty returns from peace with Israel and the vision of a future Middle East Common Market.
But after years of disillusionment regarding Israel’s behavior towards the Palestinians, capped by the Trump administration’s partisanship towards Israel and hostility towards the Palestinians, Jordanians across the political spectrum – including members of parliament – are now convinced more than ever before that Israel is an irreconcilable enemy.
King Abdullah II of Jordan has consistently maintained the need for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace in the region. However, Israel’s hardline position against a two-state solution, together with dangerously unbalanced American rhetoric on the Palestinian issue (soon to be ratified in the Mideast “Deal of the Century,” whenever it finally emerges) have rendered his stance increasingly difficult to sustain.
Jordan finds itself now trapped between the demands of an aggressively unilateralist, pro-Israel Trump camp unwilling to channel more aid, and an increasingly radicalized local public opinion that wants to cut all diplomatic and trade relations with Jerusalem.
There is growing grassroots pressure to abandon the $15 billion gas deal with Israel. There is outrage at the delay in Israel returning the land plots of Naharayim in the north and Tzofar in the south leased from Jordan under the terms of the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty. What’s more, Jordanians haven’t forgotten the incident in 2017 involving an Israeli guard who reportedly shot dead a Jordanian attacker near the embassy in Amman.
Jordanian protesters carry the Jordanian national flag, and chant slogans during a protest against a government agreement to import natural gas from Israel, in Amman, Jordan, September 30, 2016 MUHAMMAD HAMED/ REUTERS/ ???
Jordanians from all walks of life have come to view Israeli operations in the West Bank and Gaza as unjustifiable and disproportionate attacks on innocent civilians. Then there is what the kingdom claims are Trump and Israel’s alleged attempts to change the historic and legal status quo of the Al-Aqsa Mosque site.
In concluding a peace accord with Israel on 26 October 1994, a top U.S. strategic interest, the late King Hussein became the first Arab head of state to come to terms with the Jewish state since President Anwar Sadat led Egypt to a similar pact in 1979.
The two countries, though formerly self-proclaimed enemies of one another, shared parallel fears, including that of an assertive Palestinian nationalism seen by many across the two borders as diluting the raison d’etre of both a modern Jordanian or Israeli state.
From a Jordanian perspective, a Jordan-Israel Benelux-style union of cross border economic integration, which would later include Palestine, could have the potential to overcome any signs of Palestinian discontent in the two countries, not least from Jordanians of Palestinian origin who resist the normalization of relations with the Jewish state. For the time being however, such a framework remains elusive, pending an end to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Despite the many benefits to the Jordanian economy of ending the state of war with Israel, the peace-building vision never materialized. For Jordan, critical external debts were written off, foreign aid came through in abundance, preferential trade agreements were inked one after the other.
Jordan joined the WTO and Qualifying Industrial Zones (QIZs) – a special form of U.S.-Jordan-Israel trilateral “diagonal cumulation” accord seeking to “reward” Jordan for participation in the Middle East peace process, and to bring the country closer to Israel – were established across the country. In the first 10 years after their launch, the QIZs helped spike Jordanian exports to the U.S. massively, from a mere $15 million to more than $1.5 billion.
But little of this wealth and growth has trickled down to ordinary Jordanian citizens.
Per capita income actually decreased in the years since the conclusion of peace with Israel, and unemployment has grown. None of the proclaimed development projects (such as the Red Sea-Dead Canal) have yet been implemented and, contrary to initial expectations, the Palestinian market did not open up to Jordanian trade.
Disillusionment with peace has grown. Jordanians are asking: “Where are the fruits of peace?”
U.S. President Bill Clinton, Jordan’s King Hussein and P.M. Yitzhak Rabin, during the signing ceremony of the Israeli-Jordanian peace accord at the Wadi Araba border crossing, on October 26, 1994. AFP
What are the reasons for this dreadful failure? On the Israeli side, Israel’s political system failed to mobilize to push regional cooperation plans and peace, preferring to defer to the demands of domestic pressure groups. At the same time, excessive security measures inhibited Jordanians from coming to Israel in significant numbers.
On the other side, Jordan’s overly apprehensive, suspicious and unhelpful bureaucracy stymied progress. Paradoxically, the same people who boycotted contact with Israelis because of their opposition to normalization, were often the loudest to complain when it came to the absence of a peace dividend.
Meanwhile, Jordanian business activity within Israel is still clandestine and extremely modest. The movement of goods between the two economies remains limited and is significantly down from about the halcyon days of 14 years ago when the QIZs were booming. Jordan exported goods to Israel worth $84 million in 2018 (inorganic chemicals making almost half of this total), while trade in the other direction amounted to a measly $71 million.
The primary requirement for a product to qualify for QIZ benefits is that Jordanians and Israelis must share in appraised value, with possible input by the U.S. or the Palestinians. Mandatory Israeli value-added in QIZ products was, therefore, behind the expansion of Jordan’s imports from Israel.
The silver lining for this economic disappointment wasn’t about Israel: thanks to the QIZ, themselves a part of the peace dividend, Jordan emerged as a processing base for garments heading for the American market, and the industry became Jordan’s largest export sector in the mid- to late-2000s.
One key message from the aftermath of this “economic peace” is that Israel’s share of the peace dividend pie is all too obviously far more significant than that enjoyed by Jordan. Despite 25 years of peace with Israel, Jordanians have not yet benefitted from Israeli expertise in industrial sectors that seem to be obvious candidates for cooperation, such as light manufacturing or technology.
Nor has Jordan benefited even indirectly from greater and more certain flows of foreign direct investment. On the contrary, these have actually declined over the period, rebounding only in the mid- to late-2000s.
For Israel, the outcome of the peace accord with Jordan has been totally different. It not only liberated Israel from being a pariah state in the region, it also brought with it enormous flows of inward foreign direct investment and opened up new trade vistas with Asia and other countries where the Star of David flag was banned for decades.
The difficulties are not confined to the economic field alone. Jordan made its peace with Israel soon after the conclusion of the Oslo agreement, in the expectation that a rapid resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was in train. That resolution was the basis of the legitimacy of Jordan’s reconciliation with the Jewish state. Subsequent developments, however, especially after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, have taken a quite different direction.
The Jordanian public has been shaken by the lack of progress, even regression, in terms of Palestinian rights. Particularly harmful have been the construction projects launched in East Jerusalem, which Jordan regarded as violating not only the letter and spirit of Oslo, but also Israel’s commitment to Jordan under Article Nine of the peace treaty. This has caused friction between the kingdom’s leadership and the Israeli government, eroding mutual confidence.
The only area that exhibits stability and confidence is that of security cooperation, where the two countries’ intelligence services appear to be in bed with each other.
Jordan cannot and should not base its economic future, or even a major stake of it, on economic relations with Israel. Even if the Jewish state opens up its market to Jordan on an equal footing to other countries, the fact remains that the kingdom has a very limited productive base; its economy suffers from low rates of GDP growth and high unemployment.
Change is only possible if Israel’s leadership wises up and goes for a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the region. Otherwise, we may be in for yet more meager business activity, a lot more political frustration, and deteriorating bilateral relations across the Jordan River.
Marwan A. Kardoosh is a development economist with 20 years of experience working in the Middle East and North Africa
This article is from the pro-Arab Ynetnews, via the even more pro-Arab Themedialine. It gives some reasonably accurate information, though, about some of Jordan’s economic problems.
@ Ted Belman:
Thank you Ted for the info.That is as may be, and very valid explanation, but not one of the points I made can be refuted as untrue. Also, .as Herbert pointed out above, the Pew poll suggested that the percentage is the maximum. 100%…We’ve been told umpteen times that about 76-78% are YESHA Arab families. . So the balance seems to have been by a sort of osmotic accretion.
Do you know why the videos shown have such a narrow spread (perhaps the camera is hidden in a “bow tie”) and are so very short, never showing any large or massed protesters…..crowds like those at, say, a Chasid’s funeral ??
Just more proof, if any needed-which it isn’t- that even those who don’t know any Jews are Jew-Haters..
@ Edgar G.:
If the demonstrations attacked the Jews, Abdullah would have publicized the same.
The reason that Jordanians have the highest level of antisemitism is because they all fled from Israel and have blamed Israel ever since.
Some years ago, before the supposed Jordanians’ current “disillusionment” with Israel because of its alleged bad behavior, the Pew Research Center’s poll of attitudes in Arab countries towards Jews, indicated that 100% of the Jordanians hated Jews. Except for the poll’s margin of error, it indicated that every Jordanian hated Jews. All the other Arab countries registered in the high 90’s (percent). Arabs wallow in their hatred of others, especially towards Jews, but Jordanians, in particular, excel in it. There is no benefit to appeasing them, as the author suggests (demands?). They are incorrigible.
Something I forgot. The headlines tell us not to believe that “Jordan sees Israel as an implacable enemy”..
Ted, you point to the demonstrations being against the king, not Israel……for the past 6 months. True…according to the very fleeting glimpses that we have been allowed to see…..1-2-3 scattered minutes, when the demonstrations must/may/should be hours-long………..but. their normal Jew-Hate has been temporarily overtaken by their economic distress (although those I see are generally well padded, and not hungry looking at all)……
…and perhaps the parts of the demonstrations that we DON’T see, may excoriate the Jews…as would be normally expected to happen with EVERY Arab demonstration or riot…We hear about, but don’t see, any large concentrations of protesters…
What about all the polls which say that Jordan is the most Anti-Semitic country in the world, except for the “Canaanites”.. self-dubbed, being 92% and 93-4% anti..respectively… and the Capital Punishment laws I mentioned above, I understand that they may be just for political reasons, or they may be the true attitudes of a rabidly Islamic, Jew-Hating people, But they ARE there, and nobody in the “International Community” ever mentions them.
@ Adam Dalgliesh:
Very acute observations Adam, { the more so, because they are exactly what I was going to post, myself……..ahem ..!!!! }…. This anti-Israel shill from Ha’Aretz, neglected to mention that Israel would have to be crazy to become closer to a Jew-Hating dictatorial regime, in whose country Jews are NOT allowed to live, where the punishment for selling land to a Jew is DEATH, and, above all, he didn’t even emit a tiny whisper about the massive corruption, (which you touched on, in your “trickle down comment, which he mentioned, but didn’t explain) as well as provocateurs against “The Jews” which turns the animus away from Humpty Dumpty, (partly)
If the Local YESHA illegal Arabs are their BROTHERS whose self-inflicted condition is so bad, (although they cling to their illegally invaded areas) why don’t they “welcome them” to their own house, in Jordan… They don’t even know that they all live on land stolen from the Jews to whom it all belongs.
And much, much more that becomes tiresome to repeat, with no response …….We’ve all pointed out these items time after time after time…with not a scrap of result. Let the Jordanian mamzerim look into themselves, their Koran, and then BEGIN to think.,
A sudden thought…..perhaps the “Palestinians” politically hatched in Moscow in 1964 consider the Hashemites as newcomers, since they are only “descended from the 7th cent. (so their story goes).myth Muhammed…and these YESHA itinerant interlopers are actually the REAL, LIVING, Canaanites, who were in the Land a thousand years even before Israel….
I also am puzzled as to what this hack writer means when he talks about the “end of the 2000s…..which he did..twice. Is he talking about just before the year 3000,-and Buck Rogers- or does he really mean the end of the 1900s..
And how come that Israel, which had the power, llowed Jordan to retain the lnd presently lesed from Jordan.
And FINALLY, is that “Island of Peace” not the very spot where a Jordanian soldier opened fire on an innocent group of Israeli schoolgirls, murdering 7…..innocent souls, that they were.
The atrocities committed by Arabs against Jews in the past 50 years alone, would fill 2 very large volumes…if anyone had the heart to print them.And they still go on today without the Jews exacting REAL,,, punitive penalties…… WHY….?
King Abudullah has done what Arab tyrants and dictators have done for a longtime try and change the subject of how bad things are at home by blaming the Zionists.
Israel is not the issue in Jordan, in-spite of the hate of Jews by the Jordanians and Palestinians there, it is the lousy conditions and lack of jobs.
This article is total propaganda. The truth is that in all the demonstrations in Jordan over the last 6 months, Jordanians are angry with the government and in particular, with King Abdullah. They want him gone. Israel is never mentioned in the protests.
The usual Marxist-Arabist claptrap (when it originates in Am Ha’Aretz, one is best advised to disregard it). In “seeking” for answers to why Jordan has not prospered, the author ignores the continuous history of Palestinian obstruction through terrorism, and the Jordanians’ lack of will or interest in ending that.
The Hashemite king of Jordan has always had an interest in keeping this conflict alive, because it distracts from the corruption of his reign and gives him an external cause to blame Jordan’s problems on. If the Jordanians truly wish to prosper in peace, they should concentrate on compelling the king to abdicate, fight terrorism actively by denying it a haven in Jordan, and work to establish a real democratic republic (not a fake democracy that uses the mob to destroy democracy).
Time to say so long and fairwell to the hashimites, dig your own water wells, buy out the gas contract, accept the return of your citizens living illegally in J – S., request visas to visit Temple Mount, accept the p a will control your parliament. Tata so long weren’t good to know you.
This article reflects Haaretz’s anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian views. Its editors, publisher and German investors all want Israel to be replaced by an Arab state of Palestine. The only things in the article that is true is that Jordan received massive foreign economic aid from the U.S., as a “reward” for making peace with Israel, and that very little if any of this foreign aid has “trickled down” to the Jordanian people, who naturally suspect that the King, his courtiers and other court “favorites have absorbed nearly all of it. That there has been a massive groundswell of popular opposition to the peace agreement with Israel is questionable, however, to the extent that such opposition has developed, it has clearly been promoted by the King and his court, assisted by th Muslim Brotherhood, which has a de facto co-operation agreement with the king.
As fro Israel being responsible for Jordan’s problems, that is pure ______. Israel has bent over backward to be helpful to Jordan, despite the king’s hostility. To the extent that Jordan’s trade with the “Palestinian” territories has been limited, that reflects the decisions of Abbas in the “West Bank” and Hamas in Gaza. Israel has not tried to limit Jordanian trade with these territories.