Democratic Palestine : 30 (ص 6)
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- Democratic Palestine : 30 (ص 6)
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its administration alongside the Israeli
occupation. Above all, they aimed at
promoting the Jordanian kingdom as
the lynchpin for any solution to the
Middle East crisis. The failure of the
king’s plans applies both to those aim-
ing to create an alternative to the PLO
and those aiming at coopting the PLO
into a false partnership, as with the ill-
fated Amman accord of 1985 which
was eventually cancelled by the PLO.
The uprising served to accentuate the
Palestinian people’s abhorence ot the
aims behind the Jordanian regime’s
five-year development plan and joint
administration of the West Bank.
On the other hand, the Lavor Party
has showed itself unwilling and/or
unable to forge an Israeli consensus
for settling the Palestinian issue via a
«land for peace» exchange involving
Jordan. The US, for its part, has done
very little to help King Hussein make
the Jordanian option a reality,
Added to these larger reasons is a
trend within the Jordanian regime itself
which has always advocated washing
their hands of the Palestinians. This
trend gains weight in times when Arab
officialdom, fur whatever reason, ap-
pears to side with the Palestinian option
rather than the Jordanian one. For ex-
ample, after the 1974 Rabat Summit
which recognized the PLO as the sole,
legitimate representative of the
Palestinian people, the regime began
pursuing a «Jordanization» policy
whereby many state departments,
ministries and especially the security
services were virtually closed to
Palestinians. Today very few Palesti-
nians are heads of labor or professional
unions, despite the fact that Palesti-
nians constitute somewhat over half of
the population in Jordan. Recently, a
decision was also taken to limit
Palestinians’ admission to Jordanian
universities so that they would not
constitute more than 15% of the stu-
dent body. In several major
newspapers, Palestinian editors have
been replaced by Jordanians.
THE CHALLENGE
On this background, the king
cancelled the five-year development
plan, abandoned claims to the West
Bank, and dissolved the lower house of
the parliament where half the seats are
6
occupied by Palestinians from the West
Bank. The Ministry for the Affairs of
the Occupied Territories was subsumed
under the Foreign Ministry. Less than a
week later, the regime announced that
it would halt salaries to West Bank civil
servants, health care _ personnel,
teachers and policemen as of August
16th, while giving them severance pay
and maintaining their right to pension.
While the PLO and Palestinian peo-
ple welcomed the regime’s acknow-
ledgement of their independence, it is
also clear that the real intention was to
entrap the PLO and make the masses
despair. The Jordanian regime tried to
create a vacuum in the West Bank, bet-
ting on the PLO’s inability to see that
people have basic health, educational,
legal and administrative structures to
sustain everyday life - and especially the
needs of continuing the uprising.
Besides depriving over 20,000
Palestinians of half or all of their in-
come, the Jordanian move intended to
make every West Banker, and many
other Palestinians as well, fear for their
passports. Originally, Jordanian In-
terior Minister Dajani stated that
90,000 Palestinians in the West Bank,
holders of Jordanian passports, had
lost Jordanian citizenship as of July
31st, and that they would henceforth
hold only Jordanian travel documents.
However, after a PLO delegation’s
August 13th visit to Jordan, it was
decided that West Bankers would hold
temporary passports to be renewed
every two years instead of every five
years, as has been the case. As of July
31st, no Palestinian will be granted
Jordanian citizenship. Also visiting
permits for West Bank Palestinians
coming to Jordan were restricted to one
month, as opposed to the previous
three.
With all these measures, the Jorda-
nian regime planned to preoccupy the
PLO with endless discussions on how to
solve the material problems that arose
for West Bankers, and how to respond
to the political challenge contained in
the Jordanian decision. This would be
at the expense of work to further the
uprising, and optimally the king hoped
to elicit divergences among Palestinian
leaders as to how to face the challenges,
possibly leading to new splits. Concur-
rently, the Jordanian measures were an
assault on the uprising on two fronts -
that of daily survival of the masses and
that of political unity. The grand finale
of the king’s scenario would have the
PLO, much weakened and possibly
divided, begging the monarch to
resume its interference in Palestinian
affairs.
There are other indications that the
king’s real intentions are divisive.
Despite claims that these measures aim
to accentuate the Palestinian identity,
in essence the regime aims to partition
the Palestinian people according to
where they now reside. In his speech,
the king said that Palestinians in Jor-
dan are Jordanians. This is meant to
provide a model for resettling Palesti-
nians in the countries where they
presently live. As a result, the PLO
would in the end represent only those
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip.
PRELUDE TO MORE
REPRESSION
The king also warned that no party
would be allowed to interfere in Jor-
dan’s internal affairs. This is most
likely the prelude to new attacks on the
national movement in Jordan. Lists are
already being drawn up of PLO cadres
present in Jordan; they would be re-
quired to declare whether their loyalty
is to the monarchy or to the PLO; those
who choose the latter would be expelled
on the principle of «love it or leave it.»
In the same vein, everyone working
with the PLO and carrying a Jordanian
passport would be considered a spy.
The «Jordanization» policy may be
escalated to limit Palestinians’ access to
education and jobs. Palestinians from
the West Bank who work in the public
sector in Jordan, where they reside on
the basis of travel permits, may have
their contracts terminated; they would
be treated like other Arabs working in
Jordan, i.e., required to obtain
residence permits. In this light, the
Jordanian moves appear as a way of
taking revenge on the Palestinians for
having charted their own course of
struggle.
IS THE KING BOWING OUT?
There are many reasons to doubt that
this move means the Jordanian - هو جزء من
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