Identity Controversy in Jordan
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Political Observation - Identity Controversy in Jordan
Political and media tussles reaching the point of hatred and plotting break out from time to time between those who claim to represent the “nationalist movement” within the “foreign opposition” backed by tribal activists, retired military officers and some parliamentary personalities, and a host of political and media personalities attributed to those described as the “Palestinian constituent” together with those who claim to be their supporters from among the liberalists linked to the regime, the US embassy and foreign agendas. The struggle of the “nationalist” faction with the palace and its entourage revolves around corruption, nepotism, monopolising power, structuring the regime and the naturalisation file with the deteriorating economic situation and financial and administrative corruption as their ammunition in the onslaught on the palace with the aim of deterring it from implementing the foreign dictates on the future of the “Palestinian issue” and its fallouts on Jordan, and twist its arm into carrying out “political reforms” and a restructuring leading to reproducing the regime on “nationalist” grounds that would prevent the palace from pursuing its ghoulish comportment towards the state, its faculties and its future, and subsequently, achieving a government with a “general mandate in addition to bulwarking the “east-Jordanian constituent” against the widening of the “political rights” of the “Palestinian constituent”.
As a result, political tussle erupted in the past few days over the notion of “collective national identity” which was recommended by the royal committee to streamline the political system and ratified by the constitutional amendments at the beginning of this month.
In light of this poisonous political atmosphere, it is imperative to corroborate what we have already elucidated concerning this issue and its perspectives and the standpoint that should be undertaken towards it by the vital forces in society. Hence, by revisiting the events instigated by the former US administration through the Deal of the Century and by probing the current events that have been taking place in Jordan since King Abdullah acceded to the throne, and then linking them to their foreign plane, we deduce that the issue of naturalising the “Palestinian refugees” in their place of residence and expanding political representation of those dubbed as the “Palestinian constituent” in Jordan represent the cornerstone in the bid to settle the “Palestinian issue” and entrenching the Zionist occupation and its “right to exist” since perpetuating the existence of so-called “Palestinian refugees” would keep the “Palestinian issue” alive in the conscience of the Muslims and a cause for entrenching “extremism” from a security perspective, turn it into a stain on the solutions of the so-called “Middle East issue”, and maintain it as a “legal impediment” at the plane of international laws and conventions, which tend to selectively decide on the peoples’ right to self-determination. This turns the “Palestinian issue”, which is laden with conspiracies, into a burden on the Arab regimes and an obstacle in the face of integrating the Zionist entity into the region, a scarecrow for "Israeli" security and a threat to the Jewishness of the state. Hence, the policy of the usurping entity is built on the notion of “ending the right of return”, land-grabbing, Judaizing the Palestinian areas and displacing more residents of the occupied lands, especially the residents of al-Quds. In other words, the Zionist entity is attempting to get rid of the Palestinian “demographic surplus” and relocate it to Jordan, and place the settlers in their residential areas while maintaining its sovereignty over the lands and the holy precincts; this is why it continues to build settlements in the West Bank, harass the Palestinians, and confiscate their properties.
It is common knowledge that the “Palestinian issue” is a matter of interest for the international community since it borders Western interests in the Gulf and international transportation routes. It is also common knowledge that "Israel" represents a Western colonialist forward operating base (FOB) in the heart of the Islamic world, and any tension or clash between the Muslims and the “Zionists” would rekindle in the people of the region the notion of liberation and Jihad, threaten the interests of the West and herald the demolition of the entire Western American colonialist project for the Middle East. Hence, Western powers, headed by America, have been attempting to end the remnants of the “Palestinian issue” and integrate the Zionist entity into the region via normalisation, alliance, economic intertwining and the “Abrahamic approach”. They have also been endeavouring to dissolve “the Palestinian identity” through extremely devious styles, including naturalising the Palestinian refugees in their place of residence. This trend cropped up when Egypt forsook her commitment to the League of Arab States in 1965 stipulating refraining from naturalising the Palestinians and only granting them unified travel documents in order to preserve the Palestinian identity. In 2012, the Egyptian authorities accelerated the pace of naturalising the Palestinians; their number reached 50,000 from Gaza alone at the same period when the king of Jordan formed a committee that included former intelligence chief Mohammed al Dahabi, Taher al Masri, and Rajai al Dajani, to naturalise the Palestinians. However, Mohammed al Dahabi, described by the US embassy in one of its briefings as “an impediment in the face of reforms”, according to NGO sources, hampered the forming of the committee. Hence, the recommendations of the royal committee and the constitutional amendments pertinent to parties and elections, which will lead to taming partisan activities, providing an appropriate climate for pragmatic and liberal parties and tightening the siege imposed on proscribed doctrinal parties, and which will also lead to widening the representation of the “Jordanians of Palestinian origin” in parliament and in the “forthcoming parliamentary government” at the expense of the “tribes”, under the guise of “shoring up the collective national identity” and upholding fair representation for all the factions and regions of Jordanian society, such recommendations are insincere since they are tantamount to a response to the Westernisation and secularisation of the societal awareness on the fulfilment of the “regional solution”, abolishing the right of return, liquidating the “Palestinian issue”, and turning Jordan into an alternative homeland and a ”hybrid regime”, irrespective of the fate of the participatory formula with the Palestinian Authority and the notion of the “two-state solution” and its denotation. This is the reason behind the tautness of the “East-Jordan nationalist movement”, its resentment towards the king and his family, and its aversion to “naturalisation” and expanding political representation of the so-called “Palestinian constituent”, and the cause behind the division among the state’s security agencies and the king’s relentless onslaught on the intelligence department with the aim of downsizing its function and undermine its grandeur, as well as his calls for ending the leaking of information to the “foreign opposition”.
In this context, it is imperative to perceive that there is no harm in “naturalising” and resettling the “Palestinians”, treating them equally to their brethren in Jordan in terms of the legitimate rights and duties without relinquishing one single inch of the land of Palestine and the right of return, and it should not be a problematic since citizenship in Islam is the right of being affiliated to the “doctrinal homeland” and of living therein irrespective of the presence or the absence of the Islamic State and her system. Since citizenship is a legal bond rather than a doctrinal bond between an individual in his quality as a human and the state, and since such a bond entails a host of rights and commitments, it is therefore permissible provided it is not built on loyalty to the systems of Kufr. Moreover, since citizenship, i.e., “nationality, in the Islamic lands is the right of every Muslim, irrespective of the implemented system while taking into account the prohibition of being loyal to Dar al-Kufr and its system, or acknowledging the country-levels of the Islamic lands on patriotic or nationalist grounds and what they may entail in terms of modernist outputs, discriminations and violations of the Shari'ah rules, obtaining it and enjoying the legitimate rights it entails is an entitlement that gives the emigrants from Palestine the right to settle in the lands of Islam and enjoy all the rights and duties.
However, if settling the “Palestinian refugees” falls within the political context epitomised in “normalisation, alliance and the Abrahamic approach”, which is a conspiratorial context aiming at abolishing the “right of return”, entrenching the Zionist occupation of Palestine and recognising the right of "Israel" to exist, it should therefore not be resisted by depriving the Palestinians of their rights, but resisted by the people of the two banks to the attempt to liquidate the issue through legitimate methods and means.
Therefore, it is imperative for this perception to be the foundation for the viewpoint towards “naturalisation” and the relationship between the children of the two banks. In other words, as the brothers east of the river object to the “political reforms” and the notion of the devious “collective national identity”, they should take into account the legitimate right of the people of Palestine to be fully integrated in the Muslims’ lands without any discrimination, and their right to be supported based on the exigency of Islamic fraternity and the pledge of the covenant (thimmah) for the non-Muslims from among them. Hence, it is imperative to rescind and eschew the peripheral identities and the “collective national identity” in favour of the doctrinal identity in which there exists no difference between Arab and non-Arab save in piety while taking into account the pledge of the covenant to the non-Muslims, especially as the people of Jordan, when they gave refuge and supported Palestine and her people against the crusades, British colonialism and Zionist occupation, they did so on the grounds of Islamic fraternity and because the issue was their own just like the people of Palestine. They ought to remember that the Sahaba (may Allah be pleased wit them) did not conquer Jordan to uphold patriotism but for the word of Allah the Almighty to reign supreme; the children of Palestine in Jordan should for their part snub their collaborating leaders, reject the liquidating of their issue and the relinquishing of their lands and their right of return. By this token, objecting to settling the “Palestinians”, depriving them of some of their rights, or describing them as refugees, or discriminating against them on “patriotic” grounds, or under the guise of preserving the “Palestinian identity” is abhorred by Shari'ah. The duty is to be fair to them on the grounds of religious fraternity and the covenant, close ranks with them in confronting the regime and the US-Zionist project targeting the entire Ummah indiscriminately. It is also imperative to realise that Jordan and its people are all militarily, culturally and economically colonised, and they themselves are in need of a liberation warranting a struggle with the American foreign colonialist backing the regime to sever the support it gives to its collaborators, by exposing, isolating and banishing them. Moreover, we ought to realise that the king himself does not have any authority over Jordan; he is merely executing the domestic and regional tasks assigned to him by the US in exchange for his continuance in power together with his family, knowing that he inherited the throne from his father on the recommendation of US National Security Advisor Sandy Berger who instructed king Hussein in his last days to remove his brother crown prince Hassan, a move exposed by the French press at the time.
Moreover, it is imperative to realise that the Jordanian political milieu, with its various tendencies, is by and large corrupt and an extension of the herd of collaborators and scroungers who have mastered the rules of the American political game in the regions and have been vying to execute it. It would be woolgathering to envisage a “parliamentary government” with a general mandate within a state shackled with political, military and economic agreements, a corrupt and hired political milieu and a powerless people. Hence, the path towards regaining the authority and “sovereignty” would not be through “political reform” for the same fabric, or on patriotic grounds of the Jahiliya era: “Do they, perchance, desire the law of pagan ignorance. But for people who have inner certainty, who could be a better law-giver than Allah” [al-Maidah-50]; the solution ought to be taken from the reservoir of the noble Shari'ah and its method in tackling corrupt regimes, namely the radical change that uproots the regimes of affiliation, Kufr and Taghut, and establishes the Shari'ah of Allah and righteous governance.
“Hence, judge between them in accordance with what Allah has revealed, and do not follow their errant views; and beware of them, lest they tempt you away from what Allah has revealed to you.” [al-Maidah-49]
13 Jumada al-Akhirah 1443h
16 January 2022
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