The previous parts of this series were dedicated to explaining Israel’s stated historical will to create an alternative homeland, as well as devising plots to do so. As a matter of fact, there has never been a time where this possibility is more present than today. Many Israelis may deny this could ever happen, and they could be correct. But if they are, it would be due to logistical reasons rather than a vehement rejection of the plan by Israeli society. Jordan will fight tooth and nail, diplomatically and even militarily, if this plan is set in motion. This is an existential issue, so the country has no choice. That’s not to say Jordan is anywhere near as strong as Israel, but if Israel struggles in Gaza against a militant group, it would suffer against a conventional army that is backed by a well armed population. If it doesn’t look like Karameh, it would look like Fallujah.
Ultimately, the United States sets the equation. Though the U.S. supports Israel almost unconditionally, it draws a red line with Jordan. Jordan is one of the top recipients of U.S. foreign aid because a stable Jordan serves as a bulwark against Iran and its militant allies, as well as radical Salafist groups. So, we don’t have to think of the possibility of a war now, because at this moment, the U.S. seeks to keep Jordan and Israel’s fragile peace. The fear is a shift of the overton window, in which Israeli officials and lobbyists in D.C. begin to shore up support for this idea. This isn’t unrealistic. After 1967, the U.S. expressed its commitments to Resolution 242, indicating that Israel must fully withdraw from the occupied territories. Now, the latest “peace proposals” backed by America divide any Palestinian entity into defenceless bantustans. Unchecked lobbying and propaganda has made it that the standard for what is an acceptable solution to the “Palestinian problem” gets lower. The rights and land allocated to Palestinians continuously decrease with every proposal. How much land is chalked off the map of the West Bank before attention shifts to the East Bank?
As Israel massacres thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the desire of the Israeli government to transfer the enclave’s population has never been more apparent. Myriad comments by government officials and lobbying for the idea of deporting Gazans in Congress show this desire, if the violent displacement of 1.5 million Palestinians to the Egyptian border did not already. A think tank with ties to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel’s intelligence ministry even proposed a detailed plan for the displacement of Gaza’s population to Egypt. If this is the aim in the congested Gaza Strip, what about the fertile and strategically located West Bank? Back in 2010, 53 members of the Knesset signed a bill advocating for “two homelands for two peoples on two banks of the river”, implying the West Bank is for Jews and the East Bank is for Arabs.
Now, there are two ministers in the Israeli cabinet that advocate for clearing the West Bank of Arabs, one of whom (Bezalel Smotrich, who is responsible for the West Bank!) gave a speech on a podium decorated with a map of Israel, Palestine and Jordan as a “greater Israel”. In the West Bank, there are pogroms and murders committed by Israeli settlers in Palestinian villages, as the IDF merely looks on. Additionally, there are laws designed to easily revoke the status of East Jerusalem Palestinians. There is even a law which allows the interior minister to deport Israel’s Palestinian citizens for “sponsoring terrorism”, without clearly defining what this is. What direction can these laws be headed, if not east? As the lobby pushes congressmen, especially Republicans, to consistently allow billions to be sent to the Apartheid State, all while these same representatives make genocidal comments and deny the existence of Palestinians, one can conclude that, if the moment came, perhaps America can eventually be duped into backing Israeli moves to annex the West Bank and expel its indigenous people.
At the end of the day, it is the media which forms the mentality of the public. There are loads of pieces on this matter in Hebrew, but it is work on the alternative homeland in English that should be our primary concern. “Manufacturing consent”, a term coined by the great Noam Chomsky, explains that the media, being run by political and military elites, showcases certain points of view, which influences the public in a certain way. Thus, it becomes the case that the elite manifests its ideas by manufacturing the consent needed from voters to proceed with their sinister plans. Articles written in English advocating for Jordan’s delegation as the Palestinian state are targeted towards Americans, for it is America that sets the scales in the Middle East.
One historical example was Sidney Zion, a passionate right-wing Zionist, writing that “Jordan is Palestine” in the New York Times in 1982, at the same time that Sharon was planning on jeopardizing peace in the entire Levant for the sake of making the alternative homeland happen. Since the 1994 Wadi Araba Treaty, talk like this in English-language media has decreased, though is recently picking back up. These articles throw the responsibility on Jordan to resolve the Palestinian question, a situation Israel created. Perhaps right-wing Zionists are panicking because their racist and provocative policies have placed Israel in a precarious situation, but that is their mess to clean up.
One article that makes the assumption that everyone has to make sacrifices to end the conflict except for Israel is this heap of garbage written by Jonathan Panikoff, a former United States Intelligence Officer specializing in the Near East. Now, he is the director of the “Middle East Security Initiative” in the Atlantic Council, a powerful think tank in D.C. Panikoff, who advocates the continuation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as a “war of survival”, writes that the solution to the conflict is (get this): Jordan cedes its most inhabitable land to the Palestinian state. For this, it will be rewarded with a swathe of Saudi desert and a Gulf-funded desalination plant! Wow, Jonathan! I can’t believe no one has proposed this before! He posits that only a two state solution is viable, but then adds that the amount of settlements Israel builds expands every year, and in the same light, they will demand more of the West Bank in any final settlement. Panikoff recognizes that Congress is firmly Zionist, so he presents his Jordan plan. Assuming the author is honest, would it not be best to use his position as an influential man in Washington, to push for Israel to fulfill its international obligations and end its violations? Is it not best for Israel to make concessions so there may be a sustainable peace in the region? Or would he rather cause the collapse of an American ally, perhaps due to his personal opinion of Israel?
At least that article is a think tank piece; manufacturing consent involves imparting these opinions to the masses. In comes the most Zionist of papers, the Jerusalem Post. When it comes to regional affairs, it’s impressive how low the Jerusalem Post can go. When the op-ed “A Paradigm for Peace: Jordan as Palestine” was released, they had gone even lower. Without intending to be, this article is a brilliant summary of all the fallacies that alternative homeland advocates commit. One does not even have to search for articles opposing the notion the author presents to figure out his vision isn’t feasible or ethical. Still, it is worth dissecting for the sake of eliminating doubt.
The excerpt printed below the title is already frustrating: “Recognizing Jordan as a Palestinian state, while maintaining its status as a monarchy, reflects the national identity of a majority of its population.” The article claims that “two-thirds of the population considers themselves Palestinian.” Firstly, this is just untrue. National identity is a complicated topic for Palestinian-Jordanians, and self-identification varies from person to person. Nevertheless, an estimate of 2/3rds is inaccurate. UNRWA has registered over 2.3 million Palestinians and their descendants in Jordan, the vast majority of whom have citizenship. Some organizations, such as the Minority Rights Group, say there can be as many as three million Palestinians in Jordan if one accounts for unregistered Palestinians. The CIA estimates that 69% of Jordan’s population are Jordanian citizens, the remainder being made up of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, migrant workers from other states and a small percentage retaining Palestinian nationality. How can it be that two thirds of the population are Palestinian, if the citizenry as a whole is two thirds of the population? If we take the country’s 11.5 million strong population, we then calculate that nearly 8 million are citizens. Palestinians are not even the majority of citizens residing in the country, let alone the majority of the population.
To suggest Palestinians comprise an overwhelming majority of Jordan’s population is not offensive in and of itself, because Palestinians are indeed a large part of society and an integral one at that. But it is a lie that is propagated by Zionists for this exact purpose. So where does this estimate come from? Probably from this map by writer Michael Mehrdad Izady. His crucial error is putting Jordanians into the category of “Palestinian” or “Bedouin”. This is an amateur mistake from someone who writes so extensively on ethnic-demographic topics. There are many “East Bank Jordanians” from sedentary rural and urban backgrounds, just as a considerable number of Palestinians are of Bedouin heritage. When the British arrived in Transjordan in 1920 and took a census, they found that over half of the land’s inhabitants were not Bedouin. (Western Imperialism in the Middle East 1914-1958, by D.K. Fieldhouse, page 220) Izady erroneously noting every non-Bedouin Jordanian as a Palestinian explains why rural areas that did not receive refugees and migrants are ascribed Palestinian majorities. The writing on the side of the map indicates Izady’s ideological leanings. He writes more than once that Jews turned Palestine from an undeveloped backwater into an economic powerhouse, whilst also calling Arab Nationalism (and by extension, Palestinian nationalism) a fascist ideology, of which the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said was a “functionary”. He doesn’t even mention the Nakba once! His singing the praises of the Jewish settlement of Palestine while greatly overstating Jordan’s percentage of Palestinians makes his narrative very clear.
Moreover, even if the vast majority of Jordan’s inhabitants are Palestinian, the author adopts an insulting tone throughout. He acts as though the benevolent Israelis will give Palestinians the “privilege” of having a state that “recognizes their national identity.” What Palestinians demand and deserve is the right to citizenship in their country of origin and repatriation/compensation for their land that was stolen. The author acts as though Israel would be doing Palestinians a favour by making Jordan an alternative homeland, but the article is evidently targeted towards people who have never spoken to Palestinians. This idea is insolent towards Palestinians and the cause they remain steadfastly committed to.
Professor Dann’s proposal involves connecting Jordan with water resources and economic deals to develop the country’s barren desert and accommodate an influx of Palestinians. He states that Palestinians who recognize Israel as a Jewish state (implied that this is after their land is annexed) can stay, but supporters of terrorism will be deported. Who is a “supporter of terrorism”? Whoever waves a Palestinian flag, according to the ministry of the interior. Just like the intelligence ministry’s proposal, a considerable percentage of Israeli officials believe chucking aid money at Egypt and other Arab countries is sufficient to affect the transfer of Gaza’s population. It only takes a convenient political situation for Israeli officials to propose similar plans for the West Bank. This logic doesn’t work for sentimental reasons. If Jordan’s government is complicit in another Nakba, which it said it wouldn’t be time and time again, the country would erupt. Likewise, no amount of foreign aid can fix an existential issue. There is simply no way a small, resource-scarce country like Jordan can handle the influx of the West Bank’s population. The rightful resentment of these potential refugees would be unmitigated, and the combination of these factors would destabilize the country.
The entire premise of the professor’s proposal is obnoxious because it shoulders the burden on Jordan for a problem Israel created. He writes that “The Jordanians, however, have a responsibility to Arab Palestinians, and Israel should not be expected to bear the burden of providing them with a national homeland.” Absurd! It is Israel who has expelled and killed over 1 million Palestinians since the colonial endeavour had re-branded itself into a state. It is they who ruthlessly persecute the remaining Palestinians to entice them to leave. The question is, why SHOULDN’T Israel, the squatter of the land, be expected to shoulder the responsibility for allowing the Palestinians their right to self determination?
Everyone who knows about the Middle East and International Law knows this idea is moronic. I wouldn’t doubt if the Genocide Post’s owners thought the same. But when preaching to the American public and Congress, who, as evidenced by the Iraq debacle, are woefully uneducated on the Middle East, anything goes. The Jerusalem Post or a think tank journal aren’t the most relevant publications in America, sure. Is it not strange that this idea has been floating around more in the last year or so? At what point will we see this idea in Fox News? The more articles written suggesting this as the solution to the Palestinian problem, the more it becomes normalized, not only in the public eye, but perhaps in Western political circles as well. Thus, it is of paramount importance to diagnose manufactured consent early on before the disease can spread.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of 9awtak.com, its staff, or other contributors.
