SAMPLE ARTICLE January 27, 2001

   JORDAN-REPORT
   PALESTINIANS
   The Brewing Jordanian-Palestinian Conflict
ordan is admittedly willing to take some 1.5 million Palestinians as full-fledged citizens provided they renounce allegiance to Yasir Arafat's authority and swear absolute loyalty to the Hashemite throne. But the potentially inevitable option is splitting Jordanian society down to the root amid fears the kingdom might be turned into a so-called alternative homeland for the Palestinians as a final solution to their conflict with Israel. Fears are also reverberating across Amman that should the Palestinians ever be resettled in Jordan, it might dictate an eventual federation comprising Trans-Jordan, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in which the Palestinian majority would assume full control, reducing King Abdullah II to a constitutional figurehead. Those fears are at the roots of the underlying animosity between Jordan's 2.5 million Palestinians and the 2-million-strong indigenous population, which was sensationally dramatized by a fist-fight in parliament in Amman last week.

"The violent quarrel has unmasked the deep-rooted hate between the two communities. It started with face slapping and below-the-belt kicks in the House that spilled out to a libelous war of words in Amman's tabloids and culminated in rival street riots that police had a hard time to cope with," wrote Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's AL MUSTAQBAL newspaper (Jan. 20, 2001). The main antagonists were Deputy Khalil Attieh, of Amman's first constituency, who is of a Palestinian descent, and Deputy Ahmed Ouweidi Al Abbadi, of the capital's 5th constituency, who hails from a prominent Jordanian bedouin tribe.

Attieh, who enjoys the backing of the teeming refugee camps of Al Hussein and Al Mahatta in Amman, took the floor in parliament during the debate of the 2001 fiscal budget to scream abuse against Abbadi, according to AL MUSTAQBAL's Amman-datelined report by correspondent Ramadan Al Rawashdeh. "This man is the essence of corruption. He is a germ contaminating the society," shouted Attieh with his finger pointed at Abbadi some 20 benches away. Abbadi, the standard-bearer of the tribe that carries his name, leaped out from his seat and ran toward the rostrum, screaming "I'll kill this bastard." Attieh took off his jacket, climbed down the platform and both became rapidly engaged in fist blows and kicks. By the time other deputies managed to separate the belligerents, each of Attieh and Abbadi had a bloody nose, badly bruised cheeks and were limping.

Accusations
Amman's tabloids went amok the next day, splashing demands by Abbadi that Attieh and his family be stripped of their Jordanian citizenship and deported. They also ran a demand by Abbadi that 50 percent of the real estate and bank accounts the Palestinians hold in Jordan be confiscated outright. "The state has been providing security and stability to the Palestinians although they are plundering Jordan at the expense of the indigenous population," Abbadi was quoted as saying by one tabloid, according to AL MUSTAQBAL. "They (Palestinians) are tightening their stranglehold on the nation's business and commerce, gobbling up most of the country's finances while our sons join the army and police to protect them. This is an unacceptable situation," Abbadi was quoted as saying.

Attieh, in turn, accused Abbadi of working for Israel's Mossad secret service and of embezzling public funds when he was a police colonel in the mid-1970s. The Free Masons movement, which backed Attieh, also threatened to publish documents of Abbadi's alleged sexual scandals, including an attack in which Abbadi is said to have raped a lady in an Amman beauty parlor, according to AL MUSTAQBAL.

"The Attieh-Abbadi episode has provided the most dramatic revelation of the underlying hatred and distrust reciprocated by the two main communities of Jordan's society," Hariri's newspaper contended. Columnist Saleh Qallab of the London-based Arabic-language daily ASHARQ AL AWSAT noted (Jan. 15, 2001) that the "regrettable explosion of ethnic animosities in Jordan" was sparked by snowballing reports in the Middle Eastern and Western media that Yasir Arafat's Palestinian authority was likely to strike a deal with Israel behind Jordan's back, compromising the right of Palestinians in diaspora to return to their land.

Jordan, the columnist noted, hosts 1,700 Palestinian camp refugees in addition to 800,000 emigrants who were forced to flee their West Bank homes in the 1967 Middle East War. Most of the West Bank emigrants became Jordanian citizens dominating the nation's civil service and economy, but Jordan has frequently asserted that it would not stand in the way if they opt to return home in future. "Jordan's government is deeply worried that Arafat's authority and Israel are assuming exclusive responsibility for the fate of diaspora Palestinians, ignoring the fact that one half of the entire Palestinian nation lives in the Kingdom," Qallab wrote. "The government shudders at the prospect of an Arafat-Israel separate deal that would strip Jordan's Palestinian community from the right to return, or to compensation, or to both."

Keen for a Solution
The Palestinians in Jordan make up 41 percent of the refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Jordan's current Prime Minister Ali Abul Ragheb told a recent session of parliament in Amman that his government was "keen that a solution of the Palestinian refugee problem be acceptable to their majority as far as the right to return to Palestine, or to compensation for those who opt to stay on in Jordan, are concerned." Jordan, Abdul Ragheb said, was also eligible for financial compensation for the fortunes it spent in caring for the Palestinians over the last 53 years. Jordan's treasury shells more than $350 million a year on the refugees, according to the conservative Beirut daily AN NAHAR (Jan. 9, 2001). "Jordan will also need financial assistance from the international community to rehabilitate and merge the Palestinians who opt to stay on in Jordanian society," Abul Ragheb added. Abul Ragheb asserted that his government would not seek to "Jordanize" the Palestinians against their will, or vice versa. "If they opt to return, the state will protect the properties they had come to acquire during their stay in Jordan," Abul Ragheb said, according to AL MUSTAQBAL (Jan. 11, 2001) . "If they choose to stay they have to have a singular allegiance to Jordan's monarchic system," Abdul Ragheb added. The leftist Beirut daily AS SAFIR (Jan. 11, 2001) said Abul Ragheb's assertions were a clear admission that Jordan, unlike Lebanon, would be willing to resettle all Palestinians who opt to remain in the kingdom if and when a Palestinian state is proclaimed. But Jordan will demand in return:- 1-Financial compensation for every Palestinian who renounces his right to return. 2-Hefty fiscal assistance from the international community to the Kingdom to finance the Palestinians' merger into the Jordanian society. 3-Solemn loyalty to the Hashemite monarchy, which will not tolerate a dual allegiance by 'Jordanized' Palestinians.

Acute Dangers
Abul Ragheb acknowledged the fears of the indigenous population that they would be drowned in a sea of Palestinians as the result of resettling 1.5 million refugees. "I am aware of the acute dangers involved in the demographic changes ahead, including the enormous economic and financial risks involved. But there seems to be no other way out," Abul Ragheb said. Jordan's annual budget deficit stands at $230 million at present and unemployment runs as high as 20 percent, which would be horrendously boosted with more than one million or 1.5 million Palestinian refugees added to the population, noted the London-based AL HAYAT newspaper (Jan 25, 2001).

The Amman government is also haunted by the frightening specter of a new wave of Palestinian migration should the current intifada in the West Bank and Gaza flare into all-out warfare. Most of the Palestinians displaced in the 1948 war and the emigrants of the 1967 war had flocked to Jordan because of the geographic proximity and the thick social bonds tying the people on both banks of River Jordan together. "So it is natural to assume that in the event of a new Palestinian exodus, Jordan will be the preferable destination," wrote AL HAYAT. "This underscores Jordan's dilemma as it stands more or less helplessly on yet another fateful cross-roads."