President Trump’s proposal that the United States takes control of the Gaza Strip while other countries welcome the Palestinians who live there, King Abdullah II of Jordan cannot conclude.
The monarch gently pushed Mr. Trump, telling him at the White House on Tuesday that the American president was essential for peace in the Middle East and committing to Jordan to welcome more Palestinians who need medical care. And the approach seemed to convince Mr. Trump to resume threats made before the visit to withdraw aid in Jordan if she rejected her plan.
However, the notion has exposed dilemmas for King Abdullah, whose family – and the land they have settled for generations – has a complex relationship with the Palestinians who have sometimes become violent.
Here is what you need to know about the president’s plan and history informing the king’s rejection.
The president’s proposal is vague and surprised his advisers when he presented him last week. Mr. Trump was not consistent or clear on what he implies, except insofar as his plan certainly seems to count on Jordan and Egypt, among others, accepting a huge influx of Palestinian refugees.
Trump said about 2 million people from Gaza are impatiently left and did not want to come back. But he also suggested that they could be forced to go out and not authorized, which would violate international law and would damage the long -standing visions of a Palestinian state made up of Gaza and the West Bank.
Be that as it may, the Jordanian king is wary, in particular because a great wave of Palestinians entering his country after a conflict with Israel fueled a bloody conflict in Jordan in the past.
Why is the plan problematic for Jordan?
The King of Jordan cannot consent to Mr. Trump’s plan without risking the anger of the various important elements of the population of his country.
An increase in Palestinian refugees would move the demography of a nation more that already has a large Palestinian population – the estimated number of Jordanians from Palestinian horizons varies from a quarter to two thirds – and could ignite tensions between them and others Jordanians. And this could disrupt the delicate balance that the monarch tries to maintain between keeping distinct Jordanian interests while standing with his citizens of Palestinian origin or descent and also supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Accepting the Gazans on a temporary or permanent basis could practically undermine the struggle for the Palestinian state, potentially causing troubles in Jordan and beyond. At the same time, a wave of new refugees would also irritate the loyalists of the monarchy who fear that Jordan becomes a de facto Palestinian state.
A more Palestinian migration can also threaten the economic stability of Jordan – and if the past is also a precedent, national security. He could provide an opening to the Palestinian group armed in Hamas, which has long exercised power in Gaza. Jordan in 1999 repressed Hamas, closed its offices in the country, expelled certain figures from the group and prohibited its leaders from carrying out political activities in the country.
“Jordan has a long and very bad story with organized Palestinian movements,” said Aaron David Miller, senior member of the Endowment Carnegie and former negotiator of the Middle East State Department.
What was Jordan’s relationship with the Palestinians?
In the wars surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948, some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from the new country – to the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.
Jordan has seized and annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt has taken Gaza, preventing the creation of the Palestinian state envisaged in a United Nations partition plan.
Following the annexation and the large number of refugees, Jordan ended up with an important Palestinian population, and it has become a major base of operations for the Palestinian armed groups fighting Israel.
But in the 1967 war with the Arab states, Israel took the West Bank, which it still occupies and annexed East Jerusalem. The war caused another flow of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, around 300,000.
Two decades later, Jordan renounced his claim to this territory, and he canceled Jordanian citizenship of certain Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, who now have more than 3 million.
Today, the estimated number of Jordanians from Palestinian horizons varies from a quarter to two thirds.
Overall, the Palestinians in Jordan are poorer and are less represented in government than other Jordanians.
When did Jordan face the Palestinians?
The most notable confrontation between Jordan and Palestinian groups began in September 1970, also called Black September by some Palestinians. But the crisis was rooted in the 1967 war, when the Palestinian influx led to new refugee camps in Jordan and fueled the rise of militant groups such as the Palestine liberation organization operating militias in the state.
Things have worsened when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine diverted line planes to New York and London, landing three during a distant landing track in Jordan in September 1970. More 300 passengers. Most of the airline captives were released in a few days, but some took place throughout the month.
The king imposed a martial law, and intense fighting met between his military and Palestinian fighters who had long continued the following year. In the summer of 1971, the Palestinian forces had been expelled from Jordan and went to Lebanon.
“The 1970 residue is suspended from everyone in the kingdom,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,
Are there personal concerns for the king?
The position of King Abdullah in Jordan rests in part on him and his wife, Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian origin, being vocal defenders of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian state.
Any decision considered to be undermining this cause could threaten its grip over power. And the relationship between the leaders of Jordan and the Palestinians has often been bitter and sometimes fatal.
The current great-grandfather of the king, Abdullah I, reigned in Jordan first when it was a British protectorate then as the first monarch of the independent kingdom of Jordan, established in 1946.
The roots of the Jordanian royal family in Saudi Arabia have long increased the accusations of certain Palestinians that they were foreign, and their friendly relations with the Western powers – and, later, with Israel – caused additional political friction.
King Abdullah I was murdered in 1951 at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem by a Palestinian who was enraged by revelations that the monarch had been Secretly negotiation with Israel.
His grandson, King Hussein, the sovereign from 1952 to 1999, was also disdained as weak for his losses of war, and faced assassination attempts and threats of ousting.
