Recent insults aimed at Israel by the Jordanian Prime Minister should not be treated as meaningless populist rhetoric. Rather, his degrading epithets should be seen as yet one more example of Jordan’s implacable hostility toward us. Indeed, despite all the good faith efforts we’ve made to try to to help Jordan with supplies of affordable gas and lifesaving water, Jordan’s behavior towards us has, nevertheless, become increasingly hostile.
Although the Hashemite’s diplomatic war against Israel may be motivated by a desire to placate their restive “Palestinian” majority, their degrading treatment of Jewish visitors is a manifestation of something far more sinister within their impoverished, antisemitic society. Granted, the Jordanian government has outlawed the Moslem Brotherhood. But the King has not really done anything to eradicate the movement, perhaps out of fear that this would spark an outbreak of uncontrollable violence against his regime.
More troubling, though, is the fact that the Jordanians have done next to nothing to stop the flow of illegal weapons across our common border. This situation represents a clear and present danger not only to our citizens in Judea and Samaria, but also to our citizens within the so-called Green Line.
And now, to add insult to injury, the Jordanians are categorically refusing to open a humanitarian corridor to help the Druze in Swaida. Their excuse that such a corridor would prompt their own Bedouin to attack the Druze might be true, but the Jordanian Army could easily seal the border with Syria and prevent this from occurring. It’s likely, though, that the Jordanian Army, which is largely composed of Bedouin, would not exactly be keen to confront their kinsmen and would simply look the other way as mobs of Jordanian Bedouin crossed the border to slaughter defenseless Druze civilians.
Taking this all into account, it’s likely that rising instability in Jordan may spiral out of control, forcing the government to cancel its peace treaty with us. While this may seem to be an extreme assessment of the situation, the Jordanian regime may feel that it is a measure they have to adopt in order to placate their increasingly radicalized citizenry.
But does this peace treaty really mean anything? It was supposed to facilitate the acceptance of peace with Israel within Jordanian society and yet it has done nothing to bring this about. In fact, a recent review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education found that Jordanian school textbooks for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years legitimize Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, celebrate Jihad, demonize Jews, and advocate the ethnic cleansing of Jews. If that’s an example of how the Peace Treaty between Jordan and Israel is being implemented by the Jordanian government, could a declaration of war be any worse?
So, what should we do about this deteriorating situation? Here’s one solution.
Given the fact that “Palestinian” Arabs make up the majority of the people living in Jordan, I’ve long subscribed to the belief that “Jordan is Palestine”. Assuming we formally made this claim, we would be forced to take several measures to underscore our commitment to it.
These would include such things as formally renouncing the Oslo Accords, which the PLO never actually ratified. Arranging the move of the residents of Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Jericho and Nablus to Syria, then destroying these now empty cities, might prompt many other Arabs in Judea and Samaria, who don’t accept our existence, to leave. We should also offer the PA a one time opportunity to reestablish themselves in Jordan, before we finally eliminate them from the pages of history.
There’s no question that this process will be messy and extremely complicated, but I really don’t see any alternative. Any Arab who wants to remain in Judea and Samaria will be allowed to do so as a resident alien, whose taxes will pay for his education, welfare and medical expenses.
The ideas expressed by the 5 Sheiks of Hebron concerning the creation of a clan based “Emirate” should also be considered.
While the Hashemites, who largely control the Jordanian army and security services, may not agree with this kind of bleak outcome, I really don’t know how long they can reasonably expect to survive as a minority ruling over a mass of resentful citizens.
They may try to turn Jordan into a truly repressive police state, but many observers claim that’s actually what Jordan is today. At some point, though, the violence may simply be too much for the Royal Family to tolerate, and they’ll opt for a comfortable exile either in Europe or Saudi Arabia. The King may actually prefer this type of outcome to the one that happened to his royal cousins in Iraq.
In the event this is how events play out, we can expect the PA and Hamas to enter into a short term peace agreement eventually, while regional states force their troublesome Palestinian Arab refugees to leave for their new homeland. The Iranians will undoubtedly try to deploy troops in order to protect Hamas, which will start the countdown for our intervention.
At some point, though, a vicious civil war will break out between the PA and Hamas over which side inherits the new state of Palestine, formerly Jordan. It’s entirely likely that the violence will spill over into Israel, which will be obliged to wipe the new Palestinian Arab terror state off the map before the Iranians decide to base a large expeditionary force there.
If our government decided at that point to force the Palestinian Arabs into Iraq, we would be left holding the original Palestine Mandate, which would be an outcome both I and many other Israelis could live with.