28 June - 4 July 2001
Issue No.540
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 June - 4 July 2001 Issue No.540 |
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Hampering Hamas
A Hamas leader flies into Amman from Qatar. Jordan detains him -- and the Qatari plane crew. Relations between Qatar and Jordan sour. Meanwhile Palestinians in Jordan grow ever more dismayed. Lola Keilani reports from Amman
Ibrahim Ghosheh, 67, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, is about to finish his second week locked in a room at Queen Alia's International Airport in Amman, Jordan. Ghosheh arrived suddenly in Jordan from Qatar on June 14; the Jordanian authorities refused to allow him entry. Qatar refuses to take him back. As the brinkmanship persists, relations between Doha and Amman worsen and Jordanians of Palestinian descent are growing restless.
Ghosheh is one of four key leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian resistance movement, who were deported from Amman to Doha 18 months ago, after Qatari mediation. The four had endured several weeks' detention before Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the United States requested their deportation.
The current crisis endangers relations between Qatar and Jordan, and threatens to widen splits in Jordanian society between those of Palestinian and those of Jordanian descent.
This week, Jordan again refused to let the crew of the Qatari plane which carried Ghosheh to Jordan return to Doha unless they took the Hamas leader with them.
On Friday, the Qatari ambassador to Amman tried to leave the airport with the pilot and plane crew. They were stopped. Jordanian Minister of Information Saleh Qallab explained that Jordan's authorities "were surprised to learn that the Qatari ambassador wanted to travel to Doha accompanied by the crew, without the arrival of replacement team. We told him his move violated international law."
Meanwhile, the Qatari plane captain, Hamad Bedeiwi, refuses to fly Ghosheh back to Doha, saying he has strict instructions from Qatari officials not to do so. Qatar's foreign ministry issued a statement last Saturday saying that Doha "will not tolerate the incarceration of its citizens."
Ghosheh's wife, Noura, has said that her husband "has plans to quit all political activities related to Hamas," but is not willing to drop membership of the movement." The Jordanian government has reiterated that it will not let Ghosheh enter Jordan as a Hamas leader and a member of its political office.
Ghosheh's family, and his lawyer, Saleh Armouti, head of the Islamist-led Jordan Bar Association, have been denied access to the detained Hamas leader. Armouti said that he planned to sue Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Awad Khleifat. According to Armouti, Khleifat ignored a court order to meet Ghosheh. Armouti also said that the Jordanian government has "acted in an unconstitutional manner," by not allowing a Jordanian citizen entry into the Kingdom. Armouti added that Ghosheh must first authorise him to sue the government.
The Jordanian government's handling of the crisis has boomeranged against the Hashemite regime. It has made thousands of Jordanians of Palestinian origin feel insecure. They fear that the cabinet could decide to question their citizenship and bar them entry whenever the whim so takes it. Another unfortunate side to the crisis is that Jordan seems to be aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against Hamas. Prioritising internal security over politics, Jordan is harassing Hamas just as Sharon moves against the organisation. Many Jordanians resent this unhappy correspondence.
Detaining Qatari citizens will also imperil the already fragile relations Jordan has with many Gulf countries. Bad feeling between Jordan and the Gulf states still remains since Jordan's support of Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.
"The government should have dealt with the issue at a political level and not a security level," said analyst Musa Zaid. "The authority should have contained the problem and calculated the repercussions of its act, which has harmed not only Jordan's relations with Qatar, but also created an internal crisis between the government and the biggest political movement in Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood and its political wing, the Islamic Action Front, as well as political parties and professional associations," he added.
Meanwhile, the reported mediation efforts of both Yemen and Libya have foundered; their early efforts have apparently failed to achieve a compromise between Amman and the Hamas leadership. Yemen and Libya had offered to launch separate mediation efforts with the possibility of moving Ghosheh to either Sanaa or Tripoli. But on Saturday, Yemen announced that it had halted its intervention after reaching an impasse.
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