105: Why don’t we talk about Jordan?

This is such a fascinating place to really shed some light to really turn the spotlight.

“Jordan is both absolutely central to the Israeli-Palestinian question, to the Israeli-Palestinian”

story, and also almost entirely invisible from that story. And what am I talking about? In 1948, Jordan, or trans-Jorden, as it was called, then, had probably the most competent Arab army in the war, the Arab Legion. It was led by British officers, it was fairly well trained, it defeated in multiple battles,

the Israeli forces, and it ended up at the end of the war, holding the territory known today as the West Bank. It didn't used to be called the West Bank, it is biblically known as Judean Samarion, Hebrew that is still the name Judea and Samaria, Samaria's the northern part, Judea's the southern part, but it became the West Bank, because if you're Jordanian and you're

sitting in the city of Amman, the capital of Jordan, and you basically hold down the entire

east bank of the river, and when you define yourself by that river and you look west, the West Bank of the river is Judean Samaria, and so the name West Bank is a Jordanian name for the territory, and why did Jordan name it, because in 4849 in that war, it held that territory. It defeated Israeli attempts to take various parts of it, there was actually a serious

Israeli consideration during the war in February of 1949 after the Egyptian army had left the 48 war, had signed a deal, ceasefire and roads, and with drawn back to Egypt. There was a serious Israeli conversation in the Israeli war cabinet, contemplating the possibility of maybe attacking the Jordanian positions and trying to take the West Bank. And the end, the decision was decided not to do it, and mainly the reason given was that Israel

didn't want to end up in control of vast numbers of Palestinians and the Palestinians, cities and towns of the West Bank. Some of the considerations were also geopolitical, they didn't want to upset the British

Jordan was basically under British protection, and angering the British in that war by

expanding into what is Jordanian territory at that moment in the war, been Korean feared

“might bring the British into the war, which would be a disaster for Israel, but the key argument”

raised in the actual cabinet meeting was that argument about we don't want to end up in control of people we don't want to give citizenship to, so we don't take territory because that would be undemocratic to end up in the in control of them. No questions are new under the sun, everything debated today was debated in 4849. And so Jordan ends up in control of this territory, and over the course of the next 19 years

between the 48 war and the 67 war, it's Jordan, Jordan officially annexes it. Jordan grants citizenship to most of the Palestinians living in it. Jordan actually convenes the famous Jericho conference, in which Palestinian leaders

Palestinian elites basically swear allegiance to the Jordanian monarchy.

They feel that the 48 war demonstrated that the Arabs had failed them, miserably failed the Palestinians miserably. That's not a crazy conclusion to draw from the 48 war. The term Nakhba, which today refers to the catastrophe of the mass flight of Palestinian refugees at the time. In 4849, the term was not used to refer to that, and over the course of the 50s, it was a term used to refer to the Arab failure to dislodge the Jews to defeat.

The Jews, Nakhba was a disaster, a catastrophe, but the catastrophe wasn't the suffering of ordinary people. It was the political shame of the Arabs in the failure to defeat

“the Jews. That's what the term meant when it was used at that time, and so Palestinians”

were deeply convinced at that time. That the Arabs had failed them miserably. Palestinians did not have the strength to stand against the Jews on their own. And so for many in the West Bank, Jordanian rule, Jordanian citizenship, was a great answer to all the great problems. It was Muslim Arab monarchy, which was vastly preferable to the land falling under the power of the Jews under the control and sovereignty of the Jews, and it was a reasonable solution

for that time. Jordan maintained its claim, not only up until 67. Israel preferred the Kingdom Jordan to maintain control of the West Bank. In the run of the 67, Israel actually begged the Kingdom Jordan not to join in the war, that Egypt and Syria were signaling was going to begin. Their state radio was announcing that they placed Israel into naval blockade. It was not subtle signaling. And Israel asked Jordan not to join the war, and

the King of Jordan basically concluded that if he didn't join the Arabs in this great war of liberation of Palestine from the Jews, then he would be assassinated. And so he

And so he joins the war and loses the West Bank. But it would be 21 more years until

“1988, before Jordan actually officially gave up its claim to the West Bank, which had”

had annexed and considered right up until '88 to be Jordan. There are a lot of reasons nobody talks about this history. And there are obvious reasons. They want the whole story to be Palestinian victimhood and Israeli conquest. And the fact that Gaza ended up under a rather brutal Egyptian military rule until '67, each up by the way, did not offer them citizenship. Did not see Gaza as part of Egypt going forward. Jordan did. Egypt betrayed

the Palestinians. It's rather, you know, in the narrative. It's easy to deal with Egypt. Jordan is much harder to deal with because Jordan welcomed this part of what is supposed to be Palestine, into Jordan. And even, well, can Palestinians into Jordanian citizenry, into Jordanian polity, and Palestinians, willingly and eagerly sought to become Jordanian

“subjects. And so the whole narrative breaks down. And the Israelis dealing with the”

Jordanians and what to do with the West Bank and asking Jordan not to join '67. They don't want to take the West Bank for it. All of that just completely disrupts the basic narrative that Palestinians want to tell about the Israelis, about the Arabs, about their own story. And so Jordan is hidden away off on the side of every serious conversation about the future of this land, even though it was one of the real central figures that shaped how everything

turned down. Jordan is also basically from the same period in the early '70s. A kind

of unspoken ally of Israel. And for a simple reason. Jordan is Israel's longest border. Israel doesn't have many needs from that border. It doesn't need to run pipelines from Iraq. It doesn't need to, you know, do anything dramatic or serious in terms of economic trade, what it needs is quiet. What it needs is that border to be a safe border because it's the longest border. And Jordan grants Israel that. Jordan and Israel have a peace

treaty. That's since 1993. But they basically had a de facto peace treaty, de facto quiet with the Jordanian state makes sure that the borders safe since basically 1970. When the Jordanian monarchy kicked out the Palestinian political factions that had threatened the Jordanian monarchy, but it also launched countless waves of attacks against the Jews against the Israelis across the border in Israel. And since then, Jordan has been essentially a military

protectorate of Israel. So this relationship of being close to Israel is something that Jordan itself doesn't want publicized. Doesn't want talked about. It's not that anybody is unaware of this in the Middle East. It's that it's not comfortable to have it be the topic of conversation. So Jordan tries to stay quiet and keep its head down. For all these reasons, nobody talks about

“Jordan. Here's the thing. Jordan might have a profound and critical role in the future.”

Possible peace. It's we're talking about peace right now. Pretend I'm not talking about peace because what serious person would. But let's just do it as a little fantasy excursion into Lala land. What would a peace actually need? Palestinians in some part of the West Bank, Gaza, whatever that means in in 20 years. However, much it's been rebuilt whether Hamas really can be dislodged or if there's just endless permanent forever war. I don't know. But let's imagine that there is some kind

of a process that there is some kind of a potential for peace that we want to get there or put it this way. If we're there 25 years from now, what would have had to have happened beforehand to bring us from the place we are today to that place? That's an interesting thought exercise. Well, that thought exercise involves a lot of Jordan. Jordan is the official steward of the Holy sites, of Jerusalem, the Muslim Holy sites, especially in primarily the Al-Aqsa mosque,

the Haram of Sharif compound the Temple Mount. And Jordan is also the strategic depth of any kind of Palestinian polity in the West Bank. There is no version of a West Bank including the green line that could become a Palestinian state, including the maximalist best case scenario from the Palestinian negotiating perspective. That would be anything but a rump state totally depended on the Israelis and which the Israelis would watch with a very keen eye and with tremendous security

control and deep intelligence penetration because it's the highlands overlooking their cities

and shrinks them down to nine miles wide. There's never a situation in which the West Bank

is not an overwhelming Israeli security concern even in the best case scenario of everybody being loving and dovish and everything being solved. And so a Palestinian in the West Bank in a future

Bank, I have no idea I'm just saying there isn't a scenario in which that's not a rump state

“dependent for its security on Israel and for its economic prosperity on economic integration”

into the Israeli economy. And there's almost nowhere in the West Bank to put an international airport. There was some hope there would be a smaller port in Gaza and they used to be a smaller port in Gaza during the peace process years. But in the West Bank it's too hilly there's just no flat place where that would fit. Well what if the West Bank could be some kind of confederation with Jordan, not annexation and conquest, two states, but deeply allied and deeply intertwined

with the Jordanians. And therefore instead of being the great threat to Israel,

being part of the security architecture that protects Israel and Jordan together,

which has exist in since 1970. It also means they might have an open border to Jordan, which means they have a huge sense of space, rather than a sense of being cloistered in surrounded by an Israeli military, a very watchful and worried Israeli military. It also means they have an international airport in a man that's a real international airport.

“And so they might have access to these Israeli airport, we're talking about peace, right?”

But if they don't have access to it, they have access to the Jordanian one. Or if they don't have easy access to it or if they don't just have open borders with these rallies, they would still have it with the Jordanians. This is a a potential vision that side steps, so many of the fundamental problems, Israel would trust the Jordanian monarchy on the Temple Mount with and with holy sites and with the security of the border. And Israel, it can trust, there's just this

decades and generations of proof that you can trust the Jordanians to do this. Now, what Jordan itself want to be this kind part of this kind of solution. The simple answer is absolutely not, the Jordanian monarchy knows that the fact that most of its population, a majority of its population is Palestinian descendant is a destabilizing element in Jordan. The Jordanian monarchy is very moderate, but the population of Jordan in polls expresses deeply not just anti-Israel views,

but anti-Semitic views, radical anti-Semitic views about Jews controlling the world, not just not just what, you know, I don't know what, a right wing Zionist would say is anti-Semitic, just literally everybody would agree is anti-Semitic, he's a majority views among Jordanians and most Jordanians are

Palestinian. And so there's a radicalization element that Jordan is always fighting and it's not

getting easier. Just in the past year, Jordan did two major steps, it actually outlawed the Muslim brotherhood. That's the radical solidifist Islamist kind of branch of Sunni Islam from which Hamas is born from which al-Qaeda was born and they're very powerful force in Jordanian politics, another outlawed by the monarchy and also Jordan launched the beginning or the retard restoration

“after I think 30 years of a mass-draft universal draft, which may not be perfectly universal,”

but it's going to be much bigger than it is today. Jordan is hard at work outlawing and marginalizing the radicals, downplaying the Palestinian narrative, playing up Jordan's own history of the land in the territory and the identity of Jordan as a distinct polity, they have museums that they've built and invested in archaeology and Jordan that focuses on the ancient kingdoms, the Moabites and various other assorty kingdoms of the territory to create a Jordanian identity that's distinct

from the rest of the Levant and Jordan very much doesn't want to get caught soldering the burden of the Palestinian solution to the Palestinian national question. And so Jordan is not on board with any of this, but the fact that nobody will talk about it because it's uncomfortable to talk about how Jordan Jordan's role historically doesn't quite fit the Palestinian narrative. Jordan's role today is incredibly useful to the Israelis and Jordan's potential role in the future is something

the monarchy doesn't want to be, even though it could solve a great many problems, a great many problems for Palestinians and a great many problems for Israel. Would that solve the problem for Jordan? I don't know, it depends what kind of future Jordan wants and what kind of vision it has of its future. Jordan is both central to everything happening and almost completely invisible and many many different parties and aspects of this conflict make itself. So Jordan is a fascinating

question. Thank you for that question.