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Minorities and the State in the Arab World
Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor (eds.)
Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
1999
5. The Palestinians in Jordan:
Demographic Majority, Political Monority
Asher Susser
The Palestinians in Jordan differ in many respects from other minorities in the Arab world. First of all, numerically they are not a minority. It is now generally accepted that they constitute just over half of Jordan’s population. Politically, however, in terms of their representation in the power structure of the state, they are a minority.
The Palestinians are neither a religious minority like the Copts in Egypt and the ‘Alawis in Syria nor an ethnic minority like the Kurds in Iraq. The Palestinians, like their Jordanian compatriots, are Arabs. Most are Sunni Muslims, and only a small minority (less than 10 percent) are Christian Arabs (mainly Greek Orthodox).
The Palestinian-Jordanian cleavage is a twentieth-century phenomenon. It is a product of state formation and modernization in the Middle East in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and of the Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine and the broader Arab-Israeli conflict. Compared to the intra-religious cleavage between Sunnis and Shi‘is, the inter-religious one between Muslims and Christians, and ethnic differences between Kurds and Arabs—all of which go back centuries—the Palestinian-Jordanian cleavage has relatively shallow historical roots. Moreover, the modern-day nationalist cleavage is mitigated by the traditional or primordial common identities of the religious community that have not been superseded by the more modern territorial-state identities. In some important social spheres, the primordial attachments still reign supreme.
Corporate identities along religious and ethnic lines continue to serve as important social distinctions, and in this respect, Jordanians and Palestinians hardly differ. It is therefore very common, for example, for Jordanians and Palestinians to intermarry. Jordanian and Palestinian Muslims intermarry frequently, as do Jordanian and Palestinian Christians. Muslims marrying Christians, however, remains rare.
All the same, the modern-day cleavage of national identity has assumed considerable political importance in Jordan. The historical experience of Jordanians and Palestinians, though linked, has been markedly different, producing divergent senses of national consciousness. It was the Arabs of Palestine who bore the brunt of the confrontation with Zionism, and it was their traumatic defeat in 1948, the loss of their homeland, and their dispersal that were the crucial formative components of their unique collective historical experience and identity.
For the most part, the new states that emerged in the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I were rather artificial creations. Nevertheless, a sense of territorial identity and loyalty to the state has developed over the years as new “nation-states” have come into being, with the formation of state institutions, bureaucracies, and political and military elites. This is as true of Jordan and the Jordanians as it is elsewhere in the Arab world. The Palestinians, however, are in a category unto themselves. They have developed a sense of territorial nationalism as a direct consequence of the loss of their political patrimony, rather than as a result of their uninterrupted and independent control of it, as is the case of the Jordanians and other Arab peoples. This does not make their territorial identity any less devout or genuine. If anything, it is often only more so and has frequently been in conflict with that of their Jordanian compatriots.
The political and socioeconomic components of the Jordanian-Palestinian cleavage have, however, evolved over the years. There has always been an imbalance in the power structure in favor of the original East Bank Jordanians. But this preference for East Bankers has not always had the same reasoning nor served the same purpose. Initially, the relative (never absolute) exclusion of Palestinians was, in essence, a defensive function of the mistrust toward the defeated and disenchanted Palestinian community. The Palestinians had a litany of grievances against the Hashemite monarchy, primarily because of its policies and military performance in the conflict with Israel. In later years the relative exclusion continued, but increasingly as an expression of a distinctive and assertive Jordanian national identity, or “Jordanianism.”
Competing and discordant national identities are not the only components of the cleavage between Jordanians and Palestinians. Other social and political processes, some mitigating and others not, have affected the evolving relationship between the two communities. For decades the crux of the Jordanian-Palestinian divide was rooted in the divergent interests and policies of the Jordanian state and the Palestinian national movement in the Arab-Israeli conflict. More recently this divergence has all but disappeared, as Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have already come to terms with Israel, or are in the process of doing so. Concurrently, however, as one major cause for divergence has receded, another has surfaced to take its place. Intercommunal tensions are becoming increasingly evident in the socioeconomic domain, where Palestinian predominance in the private sector of the Jordanian economy is beginning to have a fractious effect.
Imbalance of Power
The Palestinian-Jordanian relationship was hardly ever smooth sailing. Politically, the Palestinians were not really fully integrated as Jordanians. Their demographic weight has never been accorded proportional representation in the institutions of state.
After the annexation of the West Bank the Palestinians had a two-thirds majority in the kingdom. Palestinians constantly migrated from the West Bank to the East Bank (the administrative and economic center), and in the wake of the 1967 war another 300,000 Palestinians left the West Bank and Gaza for the East Bank. In the East Bank alone the Palestinians totalled approximately half of the population. Since the return to Jordan of another 230,000 to 300,000 Palestinians from the Gulf in 1990–1991, they are now definitely a majority of just over half.
Although they are a majority, there have traditionally been few Palestinians in the upper decisionmaking echelons. The key personalities of the royal court, with few exceptions, are disproportionately drawn from the Hashemite family itself and from prominent Transjordanian Muslim families, tribes, and clans. 1 From the time of the annexation of the West Bank (a term coined by the Jordanians to de-emphasize its Palestinian character) to the Rabat resolutions of 1974, which recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, about half the ministerial portfolios in Jordanian cabinets went to Palestinians. Since 1974, the ratio has dropped to around one-fifth. Moreover, only in exceptional cases did Palestinians assume the key posts of prime minister, interior minister (with responsibility for the domestic security organs), or information minister. 2 Since 1948 a number of Palestinians have served as prime ministers, but only for very brief interludes, during crises with the Palestinians or in caretaker cabinets. 3 All their terms combined amount to barely one year. The last of these was Tahir al-Masri, who served as prime minister from June to November 1991. His appointment was not at a time of crisis with the Palestinians nor was his a caretaker government. He might have lasted longer in office had it not been for the virulent opposition to his premiership amongst the East Bank stalwarts of the Jordanian establishment. 4
The disproportionate distribution of political power is most readily apparent in the structure and personnel of the armed forces and the domestic security organs—the mainstay of the regime. Since the 1930s, East Bankers, and especially the Bedouin, have formed the backbone of the army combat units. Since the annexation of the West Bank, Palestinians have served in the armed forces, at times even in large numbers, but usually not in crack infantry units or in the armored corps, which have predominantly comprised Bedouin soldiers. This is all the more so in the command structure of these formations. 5
In the early 1970s, after the civil war, the number of Palestinians in the army was reduced from around 40 percent to about 15 percent. After the introduction of conscription in 1976 the ratio rose again to approximately 30 percent. Conscription increased the number of Palestinians in the army but did not significantly alter the composition of the combat units. The training and service programs for conscripts differed from that of the career soldiers. Most of the conscripts served in office jobs and did not choose military careers once their two years of service were concluded. 6
When conscription was introduced in 1976, Jordan was experiencing economic prosperity. However, in the late 1980s the country entered a protracted economic crisis, one of the results of which was the decision to trim the military. King Husayn called for reorganization of the armed forces with an eye to quality rather than quantity. 7 In early 1992, as part of the new cutback policy, conscription was suspended. Despite the obvious economic constraints, it is not unlikely that there were political concerns as well, primarily the desire to keep undesirable elements, such as Islamic radicals or suspect Palestinians, out of the armed forces.
Evolution of a Collective Identity
The place of the Palestinians in the Jordanian state, in terms of numbers and relative representation in the ruling elite and the nature of the Jordanian-Palestinian cleavage, should be seen within the broader context of three distinct phases of evolution of the Jordanian collective identity: the period of ‘Abdallah’s reign, only at the end of which did the Palestinians become part of the state in numbers of far-reaching demographic consequence; Husayn’s rule over both the East and West Banks; and, last, the post-1967 era, when Jordan, in almost every practical sense, reverted to being an East Bank state.
Phase One: ‘Abdallah and Arabism
In the early years of the Emirate of Transjordan, the founder of the country, the emir ‘Abdallah, had no particular penchant for a Jordanian territorialist identity. On the contrary, he tended to emphasize Transjordan’s Arab character and highlight Arabism as the driving force of historical consequence, with the Hashemites, naturally, at the helm. For ‘Abdallah Transjordan was but a stepping-stone to Greater Syria and not much of a prize in and of itself. 8 ‘Abdallah urged his followers not to identify themselves by geographical region but rather as members of the Arab nation, and thus to regard “all the Arab countries [as] the country of every Arab.” 9 The ministers in his first government and the officers of the newly formed security forces were, more often than not, Arabs who hailed from other countries, such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, or Arabia. 10
This, however, gave rise to domestic opposition and to what one could cautiously regard as the initial, albeit embryonic, stirrings of local Transjordanian patriotism. Both tribal leaders and “petty bourgeoisie professionals” vented their protest against this rule of outsiders. The slogan of “Transjordan for the Transjordanians” was heard for the first time. 11
It would be an exaggeration to describe this phenomenon as a coherent form of Jordanian nationalism. No similar objection arose in later years to the many Palestinians who served in the Transjordanian bureaucracy, three of whom, Tawfiq Abu al-Huda (from Acre), Ibrahim Hashim (from Nablus), and Samir al-Rifa‘i (from Safed), alternated as prime ministers through much of ‘Abdallah’s reign. Their service to the regime, however, was not to the exclusion of Transjordanians. Furthermore, the longstanding historical ties between Transjordan and Palestine and the fact that these Palestinians fully integrated into the Transjordanian establishment probably made their presence more naturally acceptable than that of their non-Jordanian predecessors. Moreover, because of ‘Abdallah’s vision of Arabism, the early process of state building in Transjordan was not accompanied by the deliberate promotion of a Transjordanian territorial identity. Actually, ‘Abdallah disliked the name Transjordan ( Sharq al-Urdunn ). He preferred, at least initially, to refer to this territory as the Arab East ( al-Sharq al-‘Arabi ), which left the Pan-Arab option open. The unified security force established in 1923 was “pointedly not called Transjordanian,” but rather al-Jaysh al-‘Arabi (the Arab Legion), and this still remains the official name of the Jordanian Army. 12
‘Abdallah’s sights were set on expansion, at most in all of Greater Syria and the Hijaz and at least in Palestine. For ‘Abdallah the center of the Arab world was Greater Syria ( bilad al-sham ), with Damascus at its core. This was one naturally unified country ( Suriyya al-tabi‘iyya ), the partition of which was uncalled-for and illegitimate. 13
‘Abdallah’s vision, if not to say obsession, with respect to Greater Syria, was an unrealistic ambition. It enjoyed no support of consequence in the Arab world, and even his British mentors thought little of it. ‘Abdallah’s greatest achievement was the stabilization and consolidation of the Jordanian state, no mean feat considering his point of departure. Although for him this remained but a means to an end, for his successors it was to become an end in itself.
By the time of ‘Abdallah’s assassination in 1951, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (as it had been named since independence in 1946) had been radically transformed. It was no longer the dusty desert principality of ‘Abdallah’s early years, but a state that had expanded to include the West Bank, had tripled its population, and now had a large Palestinian majority that outnumbered the original East Bankers by two to one.
Phase Two: Husayn and the Unity of the Two Banks
During the first period of King Husayn’s reign, from 1953 to 1967, the major effort of the state was directed toward the incorporation of its new Palestinian citizens—refugees and nonrefugees alike—under the banner of Hashemite Arabism. The common Arab identity was to unite Jordanians and Palestinians in one state.
The task of unification and assimilation was fraught with difficulty. The Jordanian state and the Palestinians did not share interests on the most crucial of issues. For Jordan, the post-1948 situation was more than satisfactory. Jordan did not believe in the Arabs’ capacity to dislodge Israel and sought above all else to maintain the territorial status quo. Such a policy was anathema to the great majority of Palestinians, who, disgruntled, defeated, and dispersed, wished for nothing more than to overturn the status quo and to have the Arabs turn back the historical clock by eliminating Israel. Their savior, therefore, was ‘Abd al-Nasir with his messianic brand of revolutionary, antimonarchist, anti-Israeli, and anti-Western Arab nationalism. The seemingly “anachronistic” Hashemite monarchy could hardly compete with the “progressive” alternative of Nasserism.
The monarchy and its Palestinian subjects were constantly at loggerheads, placing the regime on the horns of an incessant dilemma. While seeking to integrate the Palestinians, the Jordanians did not really trust them. Palestinians were, therefore, only partially integrated into the ruling elite. The Transjordanian political elite reigned supreme as the administrative centrality and economic preference of the East Bank over the West Bank were maintained throughout.
Unlike ‘Abdallah, Husayn did not harbor any expansionist designs. Maintaining the integrity of the kingdom in the face of the aggressive Pan-Arab onslaught of ‘Abd al-Nasir and his allies, in the Arab world and among the Palestinians, was a tall enough order in itself. As in ‘Abdallah’s time, Husayn did not initially promote a particularist Jordanian territorial identity, but the context was entirely different. ‘Abdallah’s brand of Arabism was conceived to justify expansion. For Husayn, Hashemite Arabism, drawing its inspiration and legitimacy from the pioneering role of the Arab revolt against the Ottomans in World War I, was Jordan’s defensive alternative to Nasserism and the justification for Jordanian-Palestinian unity in the Hashemite Kingdom, on both banks of the Jordan.
Because Jordanian-Palestinian unity was the essence, it was customary for Husayn to declare that “Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.” This formula of unity left no room for a separate Palestinian identity, nor for an especially Jordanian one. Under these circumstances it comes as no surprise that the promotion of a Jordanian identity was conspicuously absent from the textbooks of the state-run schools until 1967. Their pedagogic message was distinctly Arab nationalist. 14
The revival of Palestinian identity that began to gain currency in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the Arab world and among the Palestinians was, for the Jordanians, an intolerable threat to the unity of the kingdom. It was diametrically opposed to the fundamental thrust of Jordan’s policy of incorporating and assimilating the Palestinians, which required the systematic erasure of any semblance of Palestinian nationalism or separate identity.
The war of June 1967 was a watershed in this respect, as in so many others. The loss of the West Bank, and of Jordan’s manipulative control of the Palestinians there, ushered in a new phase in Jordanian-Palestinian relations. The Arab-Israeli conflict was “re-Palestinized.” The Jordanization of the Palestinians was arrested and, at the same time, the Israeli occupation provided a rallying cry for a vibrant Palestinian nationalism. The eclipse of Pan-Arabism, in the wake of ‘Abd al-Nasir’s shattering defeat, paved the way for an unprecedented legitimization of territorial nationalism in the Arab world. The panacea for the Palestinians was no longer Arab salvation but the armed struggle of the fida’iyyun, the backbone of Palestinian national revival. The impact on Jordan was profound.
The fida’iyyun, unable to establish themselves in the Israeli-occupied territories, deployed their forces in Jordan, creating a “state within a state.” Jordanian sovereignty was steadily eroded until the inevitable bloody clash of 1970–1971, the civil war between the Jordanian army and the armed forces of the PLO. The fida’i presence had aroused fears among Jordanians that the Palestinians’ hidden ambition might actually be to take over Jordan and transform it into their “alternative homeland” ( al-watan al-badil ). Even after the Palestinian defeat in Jordan, this anxiety was rekindled in the 1970s and 1980s by the oft-asserted contention by some on the Israeli right that, because of its Palestinian majority, Jordan was in effect the state of the Palestinians—in other words, “Jordan is Palestine.”
Phase Three: The Evolution of Jordanianism
Jordan’s conflict with the Palestinians, and the civil war of 1970–1971 in particular, was more than just a struggle for political supremacy. It was a traumatic, formative experience that accelerated the coalescence and consolidation of the divergent group identities of Jordanians and Palestinians alike. It widened the distinctive divide between the communities and endowed both Jordanians and Palestinians with an added sense of national consciousness, fueled by mutual mistrust and acrimony.
The policy of incorporating or assimilating the Palestinians had met with only limited success. This had ominous consequences for East Bankers. The unification of the East and West Banks and the continuous migration of Palestinians to the East Bank, instead of producing the desired integration, was now perceived by many Jordanians as a threat to their own political patrimony.
King Husayn adopted an ambivalent approach. He made a concerted effort to reinforce the particularist Jordanian loyalty, identity, and sense of statehood, but simultaneously sought to avoid alienating his Palestinian subjects and preserve at least a measure of influence over the Palestinians’ political destiny.
In the aftermath of the civil war, many Palestinians were removed from the bureaucracy and the military, thus further reducing their representation in the machinery of state. 15 The king’s former slogan, “Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan,” was gradually superseded by “Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine,” culminating in the formal disengagement from the West Bank in 1988.
In contradistinction to ‘Abdallah and the first period of Husayn’s reign, the regime, as of the early 1970s, initiated a deliberate inculcation of a distinctive Jordanian territorialism, national consciousness, and identity. Jordan was now in constant “search of a usable past” to promote a sense of Jordanianism. 16
Jordanian territorialism was projected from a secular vision of history that appropriated equally the pre-Islamic and the Islamic and modern Arab history of the land that became Jordan, all embraced as vestiges of a specifically Jordanian heritage. The archaeological marvels of Roman Jarash; Petra of the Nabateans, whom the leadership in Jordan tended especially to portray as the historical predecessors of modern-day Jordanians; the Umayyad desert castles; and the tombs of the companions of the Prophet ( sahaba) in Jordan are all regularly highlighted and injected into the people’s collective consciousness through festivals and other public occasions and commemorated on banknotes and postage stamps. 17 Jordan’s newest universities, Yarmuk in the north and Mu‘ta in the south, established in the 1970s and 1980s, both bear the place names of historic battles waged by Islamic forces in the early seventh century on the land of Jordan against the Byzantines (in 629 and 636). All these are revived and reconstructed as an exercise in the “invention of tradition” to bolster the territorial state and to “transform it into a ‘community of memory,’ i.e., a nation state.” 18
Jordan’s new national charter, endorsed in 1991, opens with an elaboration on the theme of Jordan throughout the ages as a wellspring of civilization, development, and prosperity, obviously formulated to dispel the notion that Jordan is an artificial creation with no real historical roots. As the charter would have it, the conscious identity of the Jordanian people was not a product of the creation of the Jordanian state, but rather a forerunner to its formation and a factor in the British failure in 1920 to “tear apart the unity of the Jordanian people” by establishing separate local governments on the East Bank for the areas of Irbid, Salt, and Karak. 19 The suggestion was that the establishment of the state was actually an act of self-determination rather than a consequence of British colonial mapmaking.
In Husayn’s pronouncements, Jordan, in and of itself, is presented as a model of tolerance and political pluralism worthy of emulation. 20 Jordan is not a stepping-stone of last resort to other, greater domains, but a model in its own right for Jordanians to be proud of and for other Arabs to follow.
The promotion of Jordanian consciousness was not just a counterweight to Palestinian national fervor. It was equally intended by the monarchy to convince the Israeli right of the futility of the “Jordan is Palestine” theory. Forcefully refuting this notion, Crown Prince Hasan observed that Jordan was “not [a] waste land,” nor was it the “alternative repository for the Palestinian people.” 21
Tribalism, Jordanianism, and the State
The promotion of Jordanianism has gone hand in hand with the integration of the tribes into the machinery of the state. Jordanian society has developed with an almost built-in functional cleavage, whereby the Jordanians have come to dominate the bureaucracy, the military, and domestic security, that is, the running of the state, whereas the Palestinians have attained predominance in the private sector, the financial markets, and the economy in general. Since the early years of union between the East and West Banks, Palestinians have complained about their underrepresentation in government. However, in more recent years, as the economy has faltered and the government has been induced to cut back on its own spending, it has been those on the government payroll (i.e., mainly Jordanians) who have begun to feel disadvantaged compared to many of their Palestinian compatriots.
This cleavage is deeply rooted in Jordan’s political and social history. One of the most important and lasting achievements of ‘Abdallah’s reign was the integration of the Bedouin into the state, first and foremost through recruitment into the Arab Legion. 22 In a revolutionary turn of events, those whose traditional lifestyle had been antithetical and even hostile to any form of both centralized control and law and order were transformed into the backbone of the state.
Service in the Arab Legion contributed decisively to the transformation of tribal allegiance to loyalty to the commanding officer and ultimately to the monarch. It was the king who now took over the role of “the shaykh of shaykhs”—the supra-tribal leader. 23 The Hashemite kings of Jordan, ‘Abdallah and Husayn, who trace their lineage to the Prophet, could double as religious leaders or bearers of the religious heritage, thus further augmenting their appeal to tribal soldiers. 24
The preferential enlistment of the Bedouin not only provided poor people with career opportunities. It also served to consolidate the legitimacy of the state and to create a patron-client relationship, 25 superbly characterized as the “quintessential monarchical/tribal-military axis.” 26
As Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner have indicated, the process of state formation in the Middle East has led to the weakening of tribal authority and the erosion of old tribal loyalties. This has resulted in the emergence of new groupings that retain certain tribal characteristics but are also significantly “shaped by other factors, including class, ethnicity and even nationalism.” 27 This is all especially true in Jordan.
The tribe as liaison between the individual and the state has given way to the state itself, which has direct access to the individual tribesmen through the wide range of services it offers. Concomitantly, the settled tribes have developed a greater vested interest in the state, 28 further reinforced by the central role the state plays in the allocation of financial resources. 29
Consequently, new forms of tribal identity, as opposed to common perceptions of traditional tribalism, are far from antithetical to the state. On the contrary, the Bedouin have become full participants and are, generally speaking, strongly committed to the continuity and welfare of the state. 30
Two historical processes have thus coalesced in the past generation: the evolution of Jordanianism and the integration of the tribes. In the process, it is the tribes who have become the standard-bearers of Jordanianism. According to one prominent Jordanian, “Tribalism has now changed into Jordanianism.” 31 In the words of another, the youth of the East Bank have, in the last decade or so, begun to perceive their affiliation to the state as a means of “protection against the Palestinian danger. . . . The state to them is the tribe of the Jordanians versus the tribe of the Palestinians.” 32
Moreover, the state itself has consciously promoted Jordan’s tribal heritage as “a symbol of Jordan’s distinctive national identity . . . vis-à-vis its most distinctive other, Palestine.” 33 Yet Jordanian national identity is not only a “reactive delineation against others” but is also evolving toward a positive identification with the institutions, the monarchy, the army, and the political system. 34
Because of their symbiotic relationship with the state, the tribes have declined as autonomous power structures. Yet tribalism or tribal solidarity is still deeply entrenched in Jordan’s social fabric. 35 “Family and tribe remain two of the strongest institutions in Jordanian society.” 36 This has significant ramifications for Jordanian-Palestinian relations. Because the bureaucracy is preponderantly staffed by East Bankers, kinship-based patronage naturally favors other East Bankers at the expense of the Palestinians. The Jordanianized bureaucracy, or “bedoucracy” as it has been called, perpetuates itself. 37 The ability of East Bankers to obtain favors and jobs under these circumstances is far greater than that of their Palestinian compatriots, though no deliberate policy of discrimination may be intended by the monarchy itself. In practice, however, an alliance has evolved between the state and its machinery and one of the two communal groups in the country. 38
Jordanianism and the Palestinians
The calculated promotion of Jordanian national identity, resting on the alliance with the East Bankers, was problematic in that it was not intended by the monarchy to exclude the Palestinians of the East Bank. This, of course, entailed much internal contradiction.
Jordan’s Palestinian policy has gradually evolved since the early 1970s. ‘Abdallah, and Husayn in his early years, sought to inherit and assimilate Arab Palestine and its people as Jordanians under the canopy of Hashemite Arabism. After 1967, however, with the steady consolidation of the Palestinian national movement, Husayn, unable to stem the tide, conceded. Jordan’s role was downgraded from inheritor to mere partner. This was the essence of the ideas of federation, first proposed by Husayn in 1972, and subsequently of confederation between Jordan and a future Palestinian entity or state. Jordan had come to terms with the reality that it would not be able to restore the status quo ante in the West Bank.
The Jordanians, however, had no intention of conceding their patrimony on the East Bank. Considering the historical ties between the two banks and the demographic reality on the East Bank, this was not free of difficulty and potential irredentism. Husayn therefore was determined to simultaneously bolster a sense of Jordanianism and avoid being marginalized in the Arab-Israeli peace process by maintaining a measure of influence and input on the Palestinian track. He consequently never excluded the possibility of forming some special relationship with the Palestinian entity or state of the future, as an essential means of securing the kingdom on the East Bank. Husayn asserted repeatedly that Jordan’s Palestinian citizens on the East Bank were Jordanians in every sense, fully equal to their East Banker compatriots (even though in practice they were not), and owed their unswerving allegiance to king and country. This had always been the official position, but it was even more emphatically so after the signing of the Oslo accords in the summer of 1993.
Anxious that Palestinian advances toward statehood might erode East Bank Palestinian loyalties, or alternatively spur anti-Palestinian sentiment among East Bankers, Husayn made every effort to curb a fractious rise of intercommunal tension. In the aftermath of the Oslo accords, Husayn constantly restated his time-honored formulas on Jordanian-Palestinian unity that had been the king’s staple political lexicon for decades. All the people of Jordan, he professed, were members of one family, united just like the ansar (the Prophet’s supporters in Medina) and the muhajirun (the Prophet’s Meccan companions, who migrated with him to Medina) in the early days of Islam. Now, however, when addressing the nation, he notes especially that he is speaking to the Jordanian people “of whatever descent and origin” and warns very firmly that anyone who tampers with this national unity will become his “enemy until doomsday.” 39
Despite the king’s warnings, Jordan’s more liberalized political system of recent years was exposed to ultra-nationalist Jordanian rumblings that freely entered the public discourse. A Transjordanian right-wing nationalist movement, cynically referred to by its critics as the Jordanian Likud ( al-Likud al-Urdunni ), was clearly taking shape. Its spokesmen were uninhibited in their contention that “Jordan for the Jordanians” had to be protected from possible Palestinization. They were quite explicit in their view that the Palestinians in Jordan (all or many of them) should return (i.e., not as a matter of choice) to Palestine when Palestinian self-rule became a reality. Latent tensions between Jordanians and Palestinians resurfaced with a “saliency unheard of since the dark days of Black September [1970].” 40
The origins of this school of thought were indeed in the early 1970s, provoked first by the civil war and then by the Rabat resolutions, but they were considerably more restrained at the time. 41 After all, the resolutions of the Rabat Arab summit of 1974, recognizing the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, were only a theoretical challenge to Jordan. They had no immediate operational content. The Oslo accords were another story altogether. Now some of the ultra-nationalists were seriously campaigning for the disenfranchisement of the Palestinians, who only “pretended to be Jordanians.” 42 Needless to say, these positions are flatly opposed by the monarchy, nor are they shared by most East Bankers. But this kind of intercommunal tension has not abated. In recent years it seems to have even been exacerbated by the functional cleavage that divides Jordanians and Palestinians.
The Palestinians, the Economy, and the Monarchy
Because state policy has always been to absorb the Palestinians, and because their place was generally not to be found in the employ of the government, they have established their prominence in the economy. Economically, Palestinians have been very well integrated into the state and the fabric of society, and many have willingly thrown in their lot with the Jordanian kingdom.
Some Palestinians, especially refugee-camp dwellers (about 20 percent of the total refugee population and some 10 percent of the total Palestinian population in Jordan) are still reluctant to renounce their affiliation to Palestine. This “deliberate non-assimilation of Palestinians, as part of their identity building,” provokes mirror-image reactions among Transjordanians. 43 It is these Palestinians (mostly 1967 refugees) whom many Jordanians, the government included, would like to see return to the Palestine of the future.
As for the rest of the Palestinians, many—especially among those who arrived in 1948–1949—have made it to the middle, upper-middle, and upper classes of Jordanian society and have by now acquired a real stake in the continued stability and security of the regime. 44 Significant segments of this Palestinian community were alienated from the PLO because of the civil war, and in recent years a variety of regional changes has reinforced this trend of Palestinian acceptance of and loyalty to the monarchy and the Jordanian state. 45
A “sea change of sorts has occurred.” 46 First of all, the major irritant in Jordan’s relations with its Palestinian citizens has been mitigated considerably. In the more distant past, Jordan’s relative moderation toward Israel was perceived by the Palestinians as inimical to their most basic interests and aspirations. However, in an era of Middle East peacemaking, in which the PLO is as much of a full participant as Jordan, this is no longer so. Moreover, in recent years a number of Husayn’s major policy decisions have further endeared him to his Palestinian subjects: the disengagement from the West Bank in 1988, the political liberalization set in motion in 1989, and Jordan’s stand alongside Iraq in the Gulf War. 47 Jordan’s peace with Israel and the subsequent shift away from Iraq, though less popular, have not markedly altered the generally favorable appraisal of many Palestinians of their lives as Jordanians. Certainly in comparison to the lot of Palestinians elsewhere, their experience in Jordan under King Husayn has, for the most part, been secure, benevolent, prosperous, and difficult to improve upon elsewhere in the Arab world, including in an independent Palestine. This is so much the case that even the younger generation of Palestinians is far more “likely to express loyalty to Jordan, or at least Husayn, than ever before.” 48
The Functional Cleavage and East Banker Apprehension
Ironically, this greater Palestinian willingness to integrate is not always met with a welcoming embrace by East Bankers. Many East Bankers remain suspicious of the Palestinian presence. Palestinian loyalty to the Jordanian state is still questioned. East Bankers consequently harbor anxieties with respect to both the Palestinian demographic weight and their prominence in the economy.
A study published in Jordan in early 1995 on the Jordanian-Palestinian cleavage revealed a series of perceived impediments to the advancement of domestic cohesion.
In the opinion of citizens of Jordanian origin, the obstacles were as follows:
The concentration of the private business sector in the hands of citizens of Palestinian origin;
Fear of the increasing number of Palestinians (based not on anxieties about their natural increase but on concerns about regional developments that might lead to large-scale Palestinian migration to Jordan—induced, for example, by Israeli actions or refugee resettlement from Lebanon);
The dual loyalty of the Palestinians;
The Palestinians’ ingratitude toward Jordan despite the privileges and benefits accruing from longstanding Jordanian citizenship.
In the opinion of their Palestinian compatriots the obstacles were as follows:
The domination of government jobs by citizens of Jordanian origin;
Underrepresentation of Palestinians in government and in Parliament;
The allocation of “sensitive” posts exclusively to Jordanians;
The preferential treatment accorded to Jordanians by the bureaucracy in all spheres. 49
The functional cleavage, whereby the Jordanians control the machinery of state and the Palestinians are predominant in the economy, has clearly evolved as a fundamental feature of Jordanian society and a “main source of the fears, anxieties and concerns of Jordanians and Palestinians.” 50 In recent years this cleavage has even been exacerbated.
Political liberalization has afforded the Palestinians a more influential voice in Jordanian politics. Economic liberalization, however, tends to cut back on the size and allocative nature of the state sector. Both processes have potentially negative consequences for a sizeable proportion of East Bank Jordanians. 51 The return of 230,000 to 300,000 Palestinians to Jordan from the Gulf after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War (1990–1991) introduced additional strain into the already sensitive equation. Most Jordanian migrant workers were of Palestinian extraction. Their departure reduced competition in the local job market and lessened the potential for tension or conflict. 52 Now, however, many of the returnees from the Gulf, who accumulated sufficient wealth, have established their own businesses in Jordan. They are considerably better off than Jordanians who continued to work for the government, particularly as a result of the cutbacks in government spending. 53
Jordanians have other concerns as well. The peace treaty with Israel may result in a further downgrading of the public sector, manpower reductions in the military, and yet additional economic gain for the private sector, once more turning the East Bankers into the “economic, political and social losers.” 54
In April 1989 and again in August 1996 riots broke out in Jordan, following price hikes for basic commodities. In both cases the core of the troubles was in the more tribal south, always the bedrock of support for the regime. The Palestinians took no part in the incidents on either occasion. It would be a gross exaggeration to suggest a serious crack in the historical association and fundamental loyalty of the more tribal south to king and country. But the ramifications of the functional cleavage in an era of economic uncertainty is taking a toll that requires the regime’s attention.
The intercommunal tension is palpable. At the same time, however, according to the study quoted previously, most Jordanians, both originally Jordanian and of Palestinian origin, support some form of union between Jordan and Palestine in the future (see Appendix at the end of this chapter). There is still a constituency of Jordanians who regard confederation with trepidation, fearing being overwhelmed by Palestinian numbers and economic power. However, they represent a minority.
Conclusion
Overall support for some form of union tends to reaffirm the relative historical shallowness of the communal cleavage. It is political, social, and functional, not ethnic or religious, and therefore not of the primordial nature that has withstood the challenges of modernization and remained a divisive factor in other Arab states. The cleavage in Jordan is actually a consequence and product of modernization and the concomitant political, social, and economic changes, all relatively new, that have preserved the ethnic and religious Arab and Muslim cultural ties and common heritage that unite Jordanians and Palestinians more than they divide them. Moreover, Jordanians and Palestinians, much more than any other two Arab peoples, are tied together by an uncommon web of historical affinity and intimacy. The historical ties between the East and West Banks have existed for centuries. They were deeply influenced by the lay of the land, which made social, commercial, and administrative ties along an east-west axis far more natural than along the north-south one. Thus, the relations between the Hawran in the north and adjacent Palestine to the west were far closer than those between the Hawran and the Balqa to the south. Relations between the Hawran and the Karak region farther to the south were almost nonexistent. Similarly strong or even stronger social and commercial ties linked Salt with Nablus, the Balqa with Jerusalem, and Karak with Hebron and Gaza. 55
Furthermore, Jordan and the Palestinian national movement are both products of the British Mandate for Palestine, and their respective fates have been molded inseparably by the struggle for Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict and its consequences.
As two seasoned Jordanian observers (one Palestinian and the other Jordanian) have noted, “It would be a historical anomaly, and an almost impossible nation-building challenge, for Jordan and Palestine to try to develop as independent states separated by the sorts of borders and socio-economic barriers that define relations amongst most Arab countries.” Jordanians and Palestinians were “more like Siamese twins.” They had never been separated and to do so would “spell an end to both: culturally, nationally and economically, but foremost of all, politically.” 56
Distinctive, authentic Jordanian and Palestinian identities have evolved, and both communities earnestly desire to preserve them. Yet the majority in both communities believes that some form of special relationship will have to link them in the future. Historical ties, geographic proximity, and demographic realities are difficult to ignore.
Indeed, Jordan’s national charter, while fully cognizant of the distinctive Jordanian and Palestinian identities, simultaneously elaborates upon the extraordinary historical association between Jordan and Palestine. This, the charter asserts, makes some future unionist relationship between the states of Jordan and Palestine inevitable, provided that Jordanian national unity (i.e., between Jordanians and Palestinians on the East Bank) is maintained and that there is no contradiction between the Palestinian and Jordanian identities. Needless to note, this is easier said than done, but it is by no means unattainable.
Endnotes
Note 1: Schirin Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? State-Tribe Dynamics and the Formation of National Identity (Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 1994), p. 127. Back.
Note 2: Uriel Dann, “Regime and Opposition in Jordan, 1949–1970,” in Menahem Milson (eds.), Regime and Society in the Arab World (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute, 1977), pp. 128–159. Back.
Note 3: This does not include former Palestinians like Tawfiq Abu al-Huda or Samir al-Rifa‘i, who also served under ‘Abdallah well before 1948 and were regarded as Jordanians by all and sundry. Back.
Note 4: Asher Susser, “Jordan,” Middle East Contemporary Survey (MECS), vol. 15 (1991), pp. 491–494. Back.
Note 5: Arthur Day, East Bank/West Bank: Jordan and the Prospects for Peace (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1986), p. 80; Frederick Peake (Peake Pasha), A History of Jordan and Its Tribes (Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1958), pp. 251–253. Back.
Note 6: Day, East Bank/West Bank, pp. 79–80. Back.
Note 7: Al-Dustur, 20 June 1991. Back.
Note 8: Kamal Salibi, The Modern History of Jordan (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), p. 95. Back.
Note 10: Ibid., pp. 93–94. Back.
Note 11: Mary Wilson, King Abdallah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 64–65; Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? pp. 92–94. Back.
Note 12: Salibi, The Modern History, p. 94. Back.
Note 13: Israel Gershoni, “The Arab Nation, the Hashemite Dynasty and Greater Syria in the Writings of ‘Abdallah,” part 2, Hamizrah Hehadash (in Hebrew) 25, no. 3 (1975), pp. 165–170. Back.
Note 14: Michael Winter, “The Arab Self-Image as Reflected in Jordanian Textbooks,” in Asher Susser and Aryeh Shmuelevitz (eds.), The Hashemites in the Modern Arab World (London: Frank Cass, 1995), pp. 207–220. Back.
Note 15: Asher Susser, On Both Banks of the Jordan: A Political Biography of Wasfi al-Tall (London: Frank Cass, 1994), pp. 156–157. Back.
Note 16: Emmanuel Sivan, “The Arab Nation-State: In Search of a Usable Past,” Middle East Review 19, no. 3 (spring 1987), pp. 21–30. Back.
Note 17: Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? pp. 71–72. An examination of Jordanian postage stamps, from the foundation of the emirate to the present, clearly shows the shift of emphasis from general Arab to Jordanian-Palestinian and then to more purely Jordanian themes. See Stanley Gibbons Stamp Catalogue, part 19, Middle East, 5th ed., 1996, pp. 272–318. Back.
Note 18: Sivan, “The Arab Nation-State,” p. 28. Back.
Note 19: Text of the national charter as published in al-Dustur, 30 December 1990. Back.
Note 20: Asher Susser, “Jordan,” MECS, vol. 17 (1993), p. 452. Back.
Note 21: Asher Susser, “Jordan,” MECS, vol. 12 (1988), pp. 601–602. Back.
Note 22: Uriel Dann, Studies in the History of Transjordan, 1920–1949: The Making of a State (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1984), p. 10; Riccardo Bocco and Tariq Tell, “Pax Britannica in the Steppe: British Policy and the Transjordanian Bedouin, 1923–39,” in Eugene Rogan and Tariq Tell (eds.), Village, Steppe and State: The Social Origins of Modern Jordan (London: British Academic Press, 1994), pp. 108–109; Laurence Axelrod, “Tribesmen in Uniform: The Demise of the Fida’iyyun in Jordan, 1970–71,” Muslim World 68, no. 1 (1978), p. 44. Back.
Note 23: Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? pp. 96–97, 127; Linda Layne, “Tribesmen as Citizens: ‘Primordial Ties’ and Democracy in Rural Jordan,” in Linda Layne (eds.), Elections in the Middle East: Implications of Recent Trends (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987), p. 128. Back.
Note 24: Axelrod, “Tribesmen in Uniform,” p. 27. Back.
Note 25: Ibid, p. 26; Laurie Brand, “In the Beginning Was the State . . .: The Quest for Civil Society in Jordan,” in Augustus Richard Norton (eds.), Civil Society in the Middle East (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1995), pp. 144–153. Back.
Note 26: Axelrod, “Tribesmen in Uniform,” p. 26. Back.
Note 27: Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (eds.), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 3. Back.
Note 28: Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? pp. 165, 179–180. Back.
Note 29: Yezid Sayigh, “Jordan in the 1980s: Legitimacy, Entity and Identity,” in Rodney Wilson (eds.), Politics and the Economy in Jordan (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 174. Back.
Note 30: Layne, “Tribesmen as Citizens,” pp. 125, 135–136. Back.
Note 31: Ahmad ‘Uwaydi al-‘Abbadi (an East Banker of tribal origin), quoted in Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? p. 259. Back.
Note 32: ‘Adnan Abu ‘Awda (of Palestinian origin), quoted in Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? p. 264. Back.
Note 33: Linda Layne, Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 103. Back.
Note 34: Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? p. 238. Back.
Note 35: Ibid., pp. 179–180. Back.
Note 36: Brand, “In the Beginning,” p. 180. Back.
Note 37: Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? p. 185. Back.
Note 38: Brand, “In the Beginning,” p. 184. Back.
Note 39: Asher Susser, “Jordan,” MECS, vol. 17 (1993), pp. 471–472; vol. 18 (1994), p. 438. Back.
Note 40: Susser, MECS, vol. 18 (1994), p. 438.; al-Majalla (London weekly), 30 June 1996. Back.
Note 41: Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? pp. 213–214. Back.
Note 42: Al-Majalla, 30 June 1996. Back.
Note 43: Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? p. 220. Back.
Note 45: Sayigh, “Jordan in the 1980s,” p. 173. Back.
Note 46: Brand, “In the Beginning,” p. 159. Back.
Note 49: “The Domestic Dimension,” Center for Strategic Studies, University of Jordan, 1996, pp. 12–13. Back.
Note 50: “The Domestic Dimension,” p. 16. Back.
Note 51: Brand, “In the Beginning,” p. 185. Back.
Note 52: Fathi, Jordan: An Invented Nation? p. 173. Back.
Note 53: “The Domestic Dimension,” pp. 15–16. Back.
Note 54: Brand, “In the Beginning,” p. 160. Back.
Note 55: “The Domestic Dimension,” p. 5. Back.
Note 56: Rami Khouri and Musa Kaylani, quoted in Asher Susser, “Jordan,” MECS, vol. 17 (1993), pp. 469–470. Back.
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