Jordan
Press Freedom in Jordan
Throughout 1997, mounting restrictions on the press in Jordan reflected the government’s broader agenda of masking the widening divide between the state and its domestic political critics. In May, 1997, six months before the parliamentary elections, the cabinet of Prime Minister ‘Abd al-Salam al-Majali promulgated temporary amendments to the 1993 press and publications law that severely restricted the country’s outspoken independent weekly newspapers. The amendments followed nearly four years of legal action against the weeklies, the primary public outlet for independent views about the October 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty, the country’s economic performance under IMF-led reform, government corruption and human rights abuses.
Bread Riots in Jordan
On August 13, the Jordanian government lifted its subsidies on wheat. When bread prices immediately doubled, residents of the southern town of Karak demonstrated against the move, calling for a reversal of the policy and the resignation of the prime minister. The protests deteriorated into riots that lasted two days and ended only when the army occupied the town and enforced a strict curfew.
Strategic Myths: Petra’s B’doul
Until 1985, the small B’doul tribe resided among the historic ruins of Petra. They made most of their income from tourism, serving as guides, renting out their caves, and selling food and beverages. They also sold archaeological objects found among the ruins, mostly the shards of pots.
In 1985 the Jordanian government moved them to a new village. This relocation was a consequence of two ongoing projects: one to sedentarize the Bedouin, the other to give Petra the status of a national park and thus improve tourism. The actual move was 20 years in the making.
Palestinian Land Documents
Far from the glare of the media attention, on dusty shelves lining the basement of the Jordanian Department of Lands and Survey in Amman, lies a key to the political and economic viability of the Palestinian entity which may emerge out of the Oslo accords. Scores of folders documenting the details of land ownership in the West Bank, including titles to land and water rights and the location of state land, lie waiting for the PLO’s call.
Contested Space
Dispossession, displacement, migration and precarious living conditions are intimately connected phenomena. Lines of causality run in every direction. Those enduring such conditions, in their determination to establish some roots and some sense of community, somewhere, often find themselves in violation of the “laws of the land.” They are in overcrowded quarters violating some rule about density in substandard housing violating some housing code, on agricultural land violating land use regulations, or on land legally claimed by others.
Letter from Jordan
“Can you help me get a job in the United States?” “We like Saddam because he is a man of his word: He stood up to the Kuwaiti cheaters and now he is standing up to foreign domination and US intervention in the Arab world.”
I heard these two statements repeatedly — often from the same person — during my stay in Jordan this summer. From college professors, whom I knew from two months’ research at Yarmouk University, to shopkeepers and taxi drivers, these sentiments were sincerely held, fearlessly expressed and, to my surprise, apparently unanimous. It became a challenge for me, a US citizen, to comprehend the simultaneous attraction/repulsion ordinary Jordanians have for the United States and to explain the universality of their feelings.
Jordan’s Election
The pundits got it wrong. They had predicted that the Jordanian general election of November 8 would result in the overwhelming return of traditional candidates with only a smattering of opposition deputies, enough to provide a vigorous, vocal check on government, but marginal in terms of setting a political agenda and molding policy.
This prevailing view among the liberal, educated, middle classes, Palestinian and Jordanian alike, who comprise the kingdom’s commentators and analysts, was also the view of the royal palace. Inevitably it became the view of the foreign embassies, and the view of foreign journalists who rely so heavily on diplomatic briefings.
Report from Amman
When King Hussein announced last July that Jordan was severing its political ties with the West Bank, he implicitly acknowledged that his strategy of 20 years, to broaden and deepen his political base there, had been overtaken by the Palestinian uprising. The Palestinian revolt has asserted an independent political identity with such clarity and force as to make it impossible for Jordan to continue to claim to represent the Occupied Territories politically.
The communiqués issued by the Unified National Leadership did not conceal the accumulating enmity towards the regime. They apparently had a personal effect on the king himself, who was deeply disappointed by the “hostile” attitude they expressed.
Police Riot in Yarmuk
Just after midnight on May 15, 1986, some 75 Special Forces of the Public Security Department stormed a dormitory at Yarmuk University to put an end to a student demonstration. They tear-gassed and clubbed the students with “a zeal that bordered on the ruthless,” according to witnesses. At least three and probably six students — men and women — were killed in the melee, scores were injured and hundreds detained. Three of those killed were Palestinians.
“A Policeman on My Chest, A Scissor in My Brain”
On Wednesday, June 16, 1987, police units entered the offices of the Jordanian Writers’ Association, ordered all writers and employees out, then searched and sealed the premises. The order to disband the Association came directly from the desk of Prime Minister Zaid al-Rifa‘i. Under the martial law in effect since 1967, he is also the military governor general of Jordan. The Ministry of Information claimed that JWA “members had gone beyond the Association’s aims by using the JWA as a meeting place to serve their own selfish interests.” [1]
Jordan’s Plan for the West Bank
Jordan and Israel together have destroyed the post-Lebanon strategy of the Palestinian movement led by Yasser Arafat. King Hussein’s $1.2 billion five-year development plan for the Occupied Territories, unveiled in mid-July, provides the velvet glove to accompany Israel’s iron fist.
Books on Jordan
Uriel Dann, Studies in the History of Transjordan, 1920-1949 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984).
Paul A. Jureidini and R. D. McLaurin, Jordan: The Impact of Social Change on the Role of the Tribes (New York: Praeger, The Washington Papers 108, 1984).
Clinton Bailey, Jordan’s Palestinian Challenge, 1948-1983 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1984).
Squaring the Palestinian Circle
Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar and close observer of PLO affairs, is presently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, DC. He recently completed a book on the PLO experience in Lebanon. Nubar Hovsepian and Joe Stork spoke with him in late January 1985.
How would you describe the balance of forces within the Palestinian movement today?
The PLO and the Jordan Option
The PLO stands at a crossroads. The battle of Beirut revealed the valiant and tenacious character of Palestinian nationalism and the corresponding paralysis of the Arab state system, but the forced withdrawal of the PLO from Lebanon presented the organization with the most serious challenge to its cohesion and vitality in its 20 years of existence.
Two Books on Jordan
Avi Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, 1948-1957 (London: Frank Cass, 1981).
Peter Gubser, Jordan: Crossroads of Middle Eastern Events (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983).
Cohen, Political Parties in the West Bank Under the Jordanian Regime, 1949-1967
Amnon Cohen, Political Parties in the West Bank Under the Jordanian Regime, 1949-1967 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982).
Letter from Jordan
In July 1979, the Union of Jordanian Engineers held a forum in Amman on the “Economic and Technical Consequences of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Accord.” The participants expressed the fragile hope that the meeting would lead to similar activities in the future, for Amman is a city bare, not only of green grass, but also of political discussion and activity.
