Temporary. Since 1967: Let's Talk About Jordan

Let's talk about Jordan. Israel's neighbor, with 11.5 million inhabitants and more than 2.2 times the size of the Netherlands. Where, however, 634,182 Palestinians are registered as “guests” and where the law states that you “must be non-Jewish”.

The Hashemite king loves to lecture us at the UN about managing the Palestinians. For decades, he has been shouting that the world has chosen to manage the conflict instead of addressing it.

But the Palestinians there have no national identity number. They are classified with the non-Jordanians, among Egyptians and Iraqis. The Jordan Times dedicated one headline to them with a single word for all of them: Guests.

Every Israeli step was considered temporary, "until temporary became permanent, and permanent became policy." He called the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank a war crime and Israel's actions there a “policy to drive Palestinians from their land.”

Temporary did become permanent. In Jerash.

The Gazans who fled to Jordan after the 1967 war never received citizenship there. In the war that Nasser started by blockading the Straits of Tiran, he promised to destroy Israel. Jordan joined in and gave them temporary travel documents instead. They still have to renew them every two years for 200 dinars each time. UNRWA states that Jordan has made the Gazans foreigners and stateless. The worst is the Jerash refugee camp, which opened in 1968 and which everyone there calls the Gaza camp.

Temporary became permanent: 59 years after the start of those two-year contracts!

In September 1970, when PLO factions openly called for the overthrow of the then King Hussein, he sent his tank divisions to refugee camps near Amman and his artillery shelled Irbid and Zarqa. Reporters discovered that the Wahdat camp in Amman was "just a pile of smoking rubble." When Syrian tanks crossed the border to support the PLO, Hussein called for American and Israeli air strikes. Washington greenlit a plan for Israeli intervention. Hussein kept his throne with Israeli support!

Minister of the Interior, Nayif al-Qadi, recently explained what they do with Palestinians they would rather not have. They freeze their national number, "to motivate them to consolidate their right to Palestine.” Thus perpetuating their refugee status! Even stronger - in 1988, Jordan severed ties with the West Bank and revoked the citizenship of the 760,000 Palestinians living there.

After Hamas murdered 1200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023, the king stood next to the German Chancellor and said: "No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt," calling this a red line against the plan of "the usual Jewish suspects" to take in the refugees.

At the UN, they call Israel an apartheid state, partly based on who can and cannot obtain Israeli citizenship. Sheer slander! Just test Jordan, and they will fail the test.

The 1954 nationality law, which made the “Palestinians” on the West Bank Jordanians, granted citizenship to anyone who had lived in the British Mandate territory before May 15, 1948, and lived in the kingdom in the years that followed, provided that the person "was not Jewish."

In 1973, the government made the sale of land on the West Bank to Israelis a punishable offense. With the death penalty. This remained in effect until 1995 and partially in effect until February 8, 2026.

In August 2019, Jordan closed the tomb of Aaron, the brother of Moses. Reasons: "Israeli violations and performing rituals without the ministry's knowledge."

In the ruins of Roman Jerash near the camp, the mosaic floor of a synagogue showed animals coming out of Noah's ark next to a menorah, until a church was built over it in 530. Fifteen centuries later, the Jews are again at the Jordanian border, and the answer is still No.

That same Israel—which everyone calls an Apartheid state—swore in Khaled Kabub in May 2022 as the first Muslim judge with a permanent seat on the Supreme Court. Earlier, Mansour Abbas, leader of an Islamist party, signed the coalition agreement that brought him into the Israeli government coalition.

The Peace Island at Naharayim is important because the Jewish Palestine Electric Company built dams there for a power plant. In 1932, Emir Abdullah pressed the button that opened the island. For years, it lit his palace in Amman. The following year, Jordan terminated the Jewish lease for the island.

Great Britain once established Jordan in 1921, and the king came to Amman from Mecca. The Jews had been burying their dead on the Mount of Olives for 2,500 years. The day after Israel became independent in May 1948, he sent his Arab Legion! They took the Old City, expelled the Jews, and blew up the Hurva, the largest synagogue there. On the Mount of Olives, they destroyed tombstones and used them for paving and as latrines in their camps.

In 1949, Jordan signed an armistice of which Article VIII promised "free access to the Holy Places, cultural institutions, and use of the cemetery on the Mount of Olives." Subsequently, for 19 years, Jordan did not allow a single Jew to reach the Western Wall.

In 1973, when Egypt and Syria attacked the Jews again (Yom Kippur), the king sent troops to fight against the Jews with them on the Golan Heights. The subsequent peace treaty (1994) nevertheless promised Jordan 50 million m³ of water per year from Israel, and it still supplies this water! A 2021 agreement, which provided another 50 million m³ of water, was set to expire at the end of 2025. Israel had asked the king to moderate his rhetoric and restore full diplomatic relations. Recently (March 2026), Jordan again rejected requests from Netanyahu for a meeting. One of the Jordanian conditions was a new agreement to buy more water.

Israel keeps its word, while the king calls the Jews war criminals at the UN every September.

Temporary. Since 1967.