One day at a time
Jordan is caught between Israel's long-term designs for Palestine and America's ambitions in Iraq. Michael Jansen reports from Amman
To Jordan's west, Israel continues to wage its century-old war for possession of Palestine, while to the east, the US is stepping up its war-of-attrition against Iraq ahead of mounting a full- scale campaign to topple the government, installing a client regime and securing control of the country's oil.
Israel's policy of punishing the rebellious Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by destroying the Palestinian Authority (PA), devastating the infrastructure built since its creation and inflicting economic ruin on the territories has had a negative impact on Jordan in two respects. First, between 80,000 and 100,000 Palestinians have emigrated, most of them settling in the kingdom where the majority is already of Palestinian origin.
This has tilted the communal balance in the country even further in favour of the Palestinians. Second, tourism, one of Jordan's main sources of foreign exchange, has plummeted.
Before the Intifada erupted in September 2000, Jordan built hotels and other tourist facilities in the expectation of receiving more than a million visitors a year. Today's arrivals are a mere fraction of that figure.
Washington's post-Gulf War policy of containing Iraq through punitive economic sanctions and military threats led 200,000 Iraqis to seek refuge in Jordan and curbed Jordan's commercial links with Iraq (the kingdom's largest trading partner). However, in 2000 the situation began to change. The sanctions regime had seriously eroded by that point and Iraq boosted trade with its neighbours, including Jordan, Egypt and Syria. Iraq's domestic economy improved and some Iraqis returned home. A new war would halt trade and could precipitate a new outflow of refugees, negating the benefits to the region of the process of normalisation with Baghdad.
King Abdullah has responded to the Israeli and US challenges by proclaiming a "Jordan First" policy. This involves, on the one hand, total renunciation of his father's -- and grandfather's -- connection with the West Bank. At the same time, he is prepared to honour his predecessors' commitments to Palestinians living in Jordan and holding Jordanian citizenship.
King Abdullah has no intention of resuming Hashemite rule over the West Bank. He has firmly rejected Israeli suggestions that he might take over from the nearly defunct PA. On the other hand, Jordan seeks to promote its own national interests within Arab and international contexts. In practice, this means pursuing achievable political and economic goals and eschewing Arab, Islamist and US adventurism in the area. Consequently, on the home front, Jordan's security services and courts are cracking down on dissent and the press is being closely monitored. Islamist agitation against the US has been crushed. Professional associations involved in the campaign against normalisation with Israel have been decapitated or shut down because Jordan does not want to be accused of breaching its treaty obligations which include fostering trade and commercial relations with its neighbour.
On the Arab-international scene, Jordan is playing an active role in trying to launch a new Palestinian-Israeli peace process based on the "roadmap" submitted to the two sides by the US. Jordan is also leading the Arab effort to press Washington to give the UN weapons inspectors a chance to do their work in Iraq before declaring Baghdad in violation of Security Council resolutions and launching a war that everyone in the region is eager to avert.
On a day to day basis Jordan attempts to carry on as if there is no war in Palestine and no threat of war in Iraq. On the economic front, the Hashemite Kingdom has expanded trade with the US under their free trade agreement, rescheduled a substantial portion of its staggering $7.4 billion external debt and renewed its 11-year oil agreement with Baghdad. The signing of the latest Jordan-Iraq agreement was an act of faith because it took place just five days before UN inspectors began their search for prohibited weaponry near Baghdad. Under this deal Iraq will meet all of Jordan's oil needs -- valued at $600 million for 2003. Jordan obtains half of its oil requirements free and pays for the other half through barter involving Jordanian goods and services.
This exchange has made Iraq Jordan's largest trading partner, absorbing 20 per cent of the kingdom's exports. The country's manufacturing industry is particularly reliant on the Iraqi market and would be hard hit if trade comes to a halt. Amman also earns substantial revenues from Iraq's goods which transit Jordan's Aqaba port. Iraq's cargoes are transported to their destination by a fleet of Jordanian lorries, so a war would devastate the kingdom's transport sector.
On the political front, no Jordanian denies that the country could suffer potentially destabilising fall-out from a US attack on Iraq. Two authoritative sources told Al-Ahram Weekly that any challenge to the stability of the state will be met with calculated force. "There is a state here. It will react," the first informant said. "Domestic unrest will not be tolerated."
Amman's nightmare is a sudden influx of refugees from both the west and east. Last week Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rebuffed Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher when he asked for a commitment that Israel would not attempt to "transfer" Palestinians into Jordan.
The Weekly's first source was critical of Muasher for seeking such a public commitment and said Jordan had been given assurances by Washington that Israel would not be permitted to exploit a US war against Iraq by expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Jordan as it did in 1948 and 1967. "We have our friends in the Bush administration," the source stated, naming Secretary of State Colin Powell and Undersecretary Richard Armitage. The second informant predicted that Israel could effect mass "transfers" of Palestinians within the occupied territories rather than expelling Palestinians into Jordan or Egypt. "Even Israel cannot totally ignore the [peace] treaties it has signed with Jordan and Egypt. It has some obligations it must meet in order to remain a respected member of the international community," he asserted. While Iraqi refugees could be expected to pour into the kingdom if there is a conflict, he said that the majority would be confined to camps on the frontier and sent home as soon as possible. The first source agreed, "We cannot accept large numbers of Palestinians or Iraqis because we don't have enough water. Jordan is facing its worst ever water crisis."
The Jordanian establishment firmly believes that the US and Europe would not follow policies that would undermine the kingdom, which has almost always been a staunch ally of Western countries. "The destabilisation of Jordan would shake up the whole region," stated the first informant.
