Hamas War

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

And Who Really Is That Jordanian King Abdullah? And Whose Land is This?

I just read Arlene Kushner's latest posting, which got me thinking.  It's time to remind everyone that the king in Jordan has a very flimsy historical connection to what is called Jordan.  As I write this, "From Israel: Blowin' in the Wind" isn't yet on Arlene's site, but I trust that she'll have it up shortly and recommend reading it in its entirety.

Apparently many Arab leaders are getting nervous because of the spreading instability/unrest/demonstrations/violence and are setting up "insurance/emergency arrangements."
The news this morning was that PA president Mahmoud Abbas has secured Jordanian citizenship, as have his entire family and several other major Fatah figures such as Ahmed Qurei, Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaineh and Muhammad Dahlan.
According to Khaled Abu Toameh's report on this in the JPost, application for citizenship was made by PA leaders at a time when they were urging Jordan not to grant Jordanian citizenship to Palestinian Arabs so that they might "consolidate their Palestinian identity."

Jordan, itself, is a time bomb.  The skeleton, which is ignored by most international diplomats, the media and history books, is that Abdullah's family has a very recent and weak connection to the land and people they rule.
King Abdullah II, a Hashemite, sits uneasy on his throne, and fears the demographic threat of a growing Palestinian population within his kingdom.
Abdullah should be worried.  His family isn't native to the area at all.  They are Hashemites who were brought in and declared royal rulers.  Read this:
Although the Sykes-Picot Agreement was modified considerably in practice, it established a framework for the mandate system which was imposed in the years following the war. Near the end of 1918, the Hashemite Emir Faisal set up an independent government in Damascus. However, his demand at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference for independence throughout the Arab world was met with rejection from the colonial powers. In 1920 and for a brief duration, Faisal assumed the throne of Syria and his elder brother Abdullah was offered the crown of Iraq by the Iraqi representatives. However, the British government ignored the will of the Iraqi people. Shortly afterward, the newly-founded League of Nations awarded Britain the mandates over Transjordan, Palestine and Iraq. France was given the mandate over Syria and Lebanon, but had to take Damascus by force, removing King Faisal from the throne to which he had been elected by the General Syrian Congress in 1920.
In November 1920, Emir (later King) Abdullah led forces from the Hijaz to restore his brother’s throne in the Kingdom of Syria. However, the French mandate over Syria was already well planted, and Emir Abdullah was obliged to delay his pan-Arab goals and focus on forming a government in Amman. Since the end of the war, the British had divided the land of Transjordan into three local administrative districts, with a British “advisor” appointed to each. The northern region of ‘Ajloun had its administrative center in Irbid, the central region of Balqa was based in Salt, and the southern region was run by the “Moabite Arab Government,” based in Karak. The regions of Ma’an and Tabuk were incorporated into the Kingdom of the Hijaz, ancestral home of the Hashemites. Faced with the determination of Emir Abdullah to unify Arab lands under the Hashemite banner, the British proclaimed Abdullah ruler of the three districts, known collectively as Transjordan. Confident that his plans for the unity of the Arab nation would eventually come to fruition, the emir established the first centralized governmental system in what is now modern Jordan on April 11, 1921.
King Faisal I, meanwhile, assumed the throne of the Kingdom of Iraq in the same year. The Hashemite family ruled Iraq until King Faisal’s grandson King Faisal II and his immediate family were all murdered in a bloody coup by Nasserist sympathizers led by Colonel Abdel Karim Qassem on July 14, 1958. The Hashemites suffered another major blow in 1925, when King Ali bin al-Hussein, the eldest brother of Abdullah and Faisal, lost the throne of the Kingdom of the Hijaz to Abdel Aziz bin Saud of Najd. The loss, which was brought about by a partnership between Ibn Saud and followers of the Wahhabi movement, led to the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and brought to an end over one thousand years of Hashemite rule in Mecca.
Emir Abdullah soon succeeded in loosening the British mandate over Transjordan with an Anglo-Transjordanian treaty. On May 15, 1923, Britain formally recognized the Emirate of Transjordan as a state under the leadership of Emir Abdullah. This angered the Zionists, as it effectively severed Transjordan from Palestine and so reduced the area of any future Jewish national home in the region. The treaty stipulated that Transjordan would be prepared for independence under the general supervision of the British high commissioner in Jerusalem, and recognized Emir Abdullah as head of state. In May 1925, the Aqaba and Ma’an districts of the Hijaz became part of Transjordan. (complete article)
There is no "Jordanian People."  It's a very recent invention of political and diplomatic convenience, less than a hundred years old.  It's much newer than the Zionist movement, and I have no doubt that if the Jewish People hadn't begun its return to the historic Jewish HolyLand, the middle-east would have had been ignored by the western world.

And that brings me to the most important point which must not be ignored nor white-washed.  There is no such thing as a Palestinian people and history.  It's a fiction, a modern invention.  The only People to have a national history and tradition based in this part of the world is the Jewish People. 

Judaism is more than a religion.  We're a People-Religion-Nation.  We are unique.  We've survived our enemies.  We have returned to Our Land from which we had been exiled.  Statisticians have calculated that very soon most Jews will be living here in our historic homeland.  All those reports, predictions and attempts over the millennia to declare us dead are totally mistaken. 

We the Jewish People live and thrive in the HolyLand, thank G-d. 

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

if this is true, that the top tier of pa leaders asked for jordanian citizenship while not allowing its citizenry to do so, it is the height of hypocrisy. talk about crippling your people while doing what is best for you. disgusting. even avrum burg [sigh] had the decency [oy] to publicly declare his desire for french citizenship.
as you probably know, i dont agree with you about the palestinians. even if it is a modern invention this does not mean it does not exist. they identify as a collective national group, so they are a nation. you may not like it, but there it is.

on a different note, i am back, and you have no idea how thrilled i am to be here. just walking the streets, breathing the air, appreciating every second. this is how jews should live. nothing like it. home.
i could go on, but ill stop here.

Batya said...

a, so you're here, I could have passed you on the street and not have known?

I wonder what other "insurance" they've taken out.

Anonymous said...

cute ;)

in the vanguard said...

Great, the more "palestinians" it takes on, the more Jordan becomes likely to topple from its overloaded with non-hashemite explosive material. I, for one, a minority no doubt, believe Jordan in revolutionary state is a good thing.

Batya said...

van, not so simple
It's never good to have riots and unrest nearby, and Jordan and Israel share a long, for us, border.

in the vanguard said...

Batya, maybe you're right.

Batya said...

You have to always look at how easily the house of cards can fall and affect others.

Anonymous said...

Batya, we must always be prepared.

As for what's good or bad for us, as always, that's up to us. After that, Hashem guides us to what we deserve.

Hani Obaid said...

The fact that the king is hashemite descended from Saudi Arabia and more importantly for a Muslim nation from the prophet Mohammad makes him ideal to unify such a diverse nation. Per official UNRWA figures there are around 2 million Palestinians living in Jordan holding Jordanian passports. These are first gen Palestinians who aren't planning on going back, and they make up one third of Jordan's population. If one counts 2nd en Palestinians (who actually are more Jordanian than Palestinian), the figure rises to more than 50% of the population. The remainder descended from a multitude of what used to be Bedouin tribes. These tribes themselves are by no means unified however they accepted the hashemite rule of the current king abdullah II ancestor Abdullah I precisely because he's not one of them. In the same line of thought you will find that every Jordanian king has always married a none-Jordanian so as not to appear as to have favored one of the tribes. The queen is only Palestinian by ancestry.

Hani Obaid said...

Forgot to say the last part about (The only People to have a national history and tradition based in this part of the world is the Jewish People.)

Please open an encyclopedia or a history book any history book because I can't believer you went to school if you actually wrote that sentence believing it.

Batya said...

Hani, you should try reading some older history books, written before these newly invented faux nations were artificially created.

Yechiel said...

Hani - Accordin to the CIA Jordan consists of 83% of a population calling themselves "Palestinian" that is 5.4 million people and the vast majority (more than 70%) of the regions "Palestinians."

Either way in the coming months it is highly likely that King Abdula is going to b overthrown by the Palestinians.

Schvach said...

BRAVO Batya, the 'truth will out'. Only on the rarest of occasions does anyone bother to acknowledge that the Hashimite royal family, and Hashimite rule in Jordan, are artifacts of the British imperial rule of old, a relic of the age of the Arabists, and it's the Jews of Israel who pay for this indulgence of a model of British monarchical rule in the Middle East. As the Bolsheviks dealt with the Romanovs, so should the Jordanians deal with the Hashimite royals, or at least send them packing - Monaco sounds like the likely place.

Batya said...

Yechiel, Schvach, thanks for lending a hand, your words.

Hadassa said...

Shalom!
Anonymous, please explain how a "modern invention" has any right to land owned by a people since ancient times, and especially how they have the right to call it a country. A collection of Arabs from various countries has no more right to the Land of Israel than a collection of Jews from various countries has the right to any country other than Israel.

goyisherebbe said...

What's bad about Hashemites. We also believe in Hashem

Hadassa said...

Shalom!
OK rebbe. I laughed.