By Miri
When trying to undermine
the Palestinians' right to self determination, right wingers usually
come up with two arguments, first “the Palestinian people as such don't
exist”, and/or second, “the Palestinians already have a country,
it's called Jordan”. The second argument is usually based on the notion
that Jordan's eastern part constitutes part of the historic land of
Palestine, as well as on the fact that more than half of the
population of Jordan is of Palestinian origin.
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| Map of Palestinian refugee camps |
Especially the latter
argument can easily be dismantled by looking at history and at the
fact that Jordan's demographic condition mainly resulted from the
expulsion of the Palestinian population from their lands, as well as
from Jordan absorbing the most substantial part of those Palestinian
refugees that Israeli expansionism had created.
Today there are
approximately 1,9 million refugees in Jordan, with more than 337,000
of them living in the 10 official refugee camps.
The forced migration
of Palestinians to Jordan is usually divided into two main waves,
with the first one following Israel's War of Independence in 1948,
and the second one with the war of 1967, when Israel took control
over the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai peninsula and the Golan
Heights. Following the war of 1948, Jordan annexed the West Bank, and
granted all Palestinians residing in that area Jordanian
citizenship. Since 1948, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) registered a total number of 1,698,271
refugees who eventually sought Jordanian citizenship.
During the 1967
war, a second wave of refugees was created, the majority of which
sought shelter in the neighbouring countries of Syria, Egypt and
Jordan. As opposed to those Palestinians who fled from the West Bank
to the East Bank and who were already considered Jordanian citizens,
the refugees coming from Gaza and who had been living under Egyptian
authority, were only granted temporary passports by the Jordanian
government, a condition that, with a few exceptions, continues until
today.
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| View at a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan, 1948 |
Following 1967, Jordan and especially its refugee camps, came
to be more and more associated with a growing Palestinian resistance
movement and therefore turned into a frequent target for attacks by
Israeli brigades. The resistance movement in turn attracted a great
number of followers from within the Jordanian population who opposed
the Hashemite regime and therefore was increasingly perceived as a
threat to King Hussein's authority.
In order to give a halt to this
threat, as well as to the harsh reprisals by the Israeli army
following the guerrilla attacks, the king in 1970 declared martial
law and formed a military government to enforce it. The subsequent
armed conflict between militant Palestinian organisations and the
monarchy, also referred to as the Black September, resulted in
thousands of casualties and only ended in 1971 with the expulsion of
the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and thousands of
Palestinian fighters to Lebanon.
Following the Arab League's decision
in 1974 to recognise the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of
the Palestinian people, King Hussein was forced to relinquish his
claim to speak on behalf of the Palestinians during peace
negotiations and to acknowledge a Palestinian state independent of
Jordan. Finally in 1988, the king severed Jordan's legal and
administrative ties to the West Bank and gave up his claims to
sovereignty.
In a speech to the nation, King Hussein, based this
decision on his determination to help the Palestinian people to
establish their own independent state. This stated goal
however also led to the withdrawal of Jordanian nationality from
all Palestinians who resided in the West Bank at the time.
Following
Human Rights Watch, a policy of arbitrary withdrawal of Jordanian
nationality from citizens of Palestinian origin, couched by the authority “as a
means to counter any future Israeli plans to transfer the Palestinian
population of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Jordan“, continues
up until today. More than 2,700 Jordanians of Palestinian origin were
stripped of their nationality between 2004 and 2008 and are thereby
denied basic citizenship rights such as access to education and
health care.
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| Palestinian kids in a camp in Amman |
Throughout its history, the Jordanian government has
been oscillating between an emphasis on Jordanian-Palestinian unity
and a privileging of local Transjordanian identity, depending on the
respective political context. Generally, the Jordanian citizens of
Palestinian origin suffer from what is considered to be a deeply
embedded discrimination: “Their career options are limited to the
private sector, they run the economy, but have no access to the
decision making circles and state institutions”, states one UNRWA
employee. The 13 percent dwelling in the refugee camps suffer
furthermore under poor living conditions, more physical and mental
health problems, higher unemployment levels, and lower income.
It is debatable whether it is due to their social and economic
marginalisation, or because of a political and national sentiment
that a majority of the Palestinian population living in
Jordan until today do not cease to have a sense of belonging to Palestine.
Green Olive Tours can organize trips to explore the status of Palestinians in Jordan. Contact the Tours Coordinator for Details. The Amman Day Tour visits a refugee camp.
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