BREAKING: Jordan Begins Revoking Palestinians' Citizenship

[The Sushi Bandit]

Source: Current TV and Raw Story

Fearing that Israel is hatching a plan to declare Jordan the official Palestinian state, Jordanian officials have begun revoking Palestinians' citizenship en masse, stirring panic.

Jordan's population is roughly 70 percent Palestinian, making the difficulty of this move quite obvious.

However, Jordan authorities say it is aimed at preventing Israel from forcing Palestinians out of Gaza. The former Palestinian citizens of Jordan will be allowed to stay as residents, so long as they obtain "yellow ID cards" from the government.

"We're not expelling anyone, nor are we revoking the citizenship of Jordanian nationals," said Jordan Interior Minister Nayef al-Kadi in an interview with Al-Hayat. "We are only correcting the mistake that was created after Jordan's disengagement from the West Bank. We want to highlight the true identity and nationality of every person."

Read more: http://current.com/items/90475848_breaking-jordan-begins-revoking-palestinians-citizenship.htm

[rockymountaindem]

1. Um... what plot?

What a merry-go-round.

[WriteDown]

2. This isn't possible.....

They will welcome their Arab brothers with open arms.

[The Stranger]

6. Given that Jordan is being forced to take on refugees because Israel threw them off their land,

trying to claim they don't "welcome their Arab brothers" really doesn't quite get it.

[notesdev]

9. Jordan knows

the Palestinians better than you do

Look up "Black September", it will help you to understand why the Palestinians are destined to be unwelcome everywhere.

[babylonsister]

14. Whoa. So now we know exactly where you're coming from. See

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1101794.html

or post #4. But I suspect you won't.

[No Elephants]

36. Yet, the Palestinians are 70% of the population of Jordan.

[The Stranger]

40. Look up "West Bank" and "Gaza" and think about Black Decades instead of a "Black" month.

Jordan just wants the Palestinians to get their OWN land back, but Israel is still settling it illegally with their own religious nuts.

[Name removed]

42. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[WriteDown]

43. Might want to check the death toll of Black September.

So Jordan wiped them out to help them? :eyes:

[WriteDown]

10. Like another poster said...

Look up Black September.

[Alamuti Lotus]

17. Look up Wasfi al-Tal

Interesting guy. Not altogether cuddly. And once you have finished with that, look up DFLP & PFLP, who staged the initial operations to sabotage Arafat (not that the narcisstic disaster didn't deserve sabotaging, then or later). What's more interesting is the struggle that broke out between Salah Jadid & Hafez Assad; how much history might've been different had the latter failed and the former worked to depose the British-installed Saudi Arabian King and his collaborationist dynasty.
Sorry, didn't mean to ruin the shallow soundbyte recital with some actual discussion points.

[WriteDown]

18. So the Palestinians are the bad guys?

Okay? Also Black September was in September 1970.

[Alamuti Lotus]

65. Did you even read that before replying?

What a strange phenomenon..

[The Stranger]

39. Look up "West Bank" and "Gaza" and think about Black Decades instead of a "Black" month.

[WriteDown]

44. See post #43. nt

[The Stranger]

46. Saw post #43, but it fails to understand that the Palestinians' problem is not with Jordan,

but with them trying to get their homes back.

The rest is just more obfuscation.

[WriteDown]

48. Their homes?

They tried that with Jordan and then were wiped out? Its pretty simple.

[The Stranger]

51. Their homes aren't in Jordan. That's sort of the whole point.

Their homes are on the West Bank, which you now say Israel "owns."

[WriteDown]

54. So the homes stopped at the border?

Odd considering quite a few Palestinians still reside in Jordan.

[Igel]

59. There's confusion in the terminology.

It's easy to confuse citizenship, geographic origin, and ethnicity. Not all Palestinians have Palestinian ID cards, not all Palestinians are Arabs (many geographic Palestinians are Jews, with their families there longer than Arabic's been spoken in the land), and not all Palestinians have roots in Cisjordan.

We often use the word "Palestinian" to mean "Arab with cultural and ethnic roots in Cisjordan", and often restrict that even to those with or eligible for PA-issued IDs. This blinds us to the term's other uses, and causes us to be incautious in the use of the term in general. After all, since we use the term in a given way, everybody else must be forced to use the term in the same way. Hubris? Certainly, at least if it's insisted upon after the range in meaning's been explained.

Many Jordanian Palestinians have nothing to do with Cisjordan. They are living in their ancestral lands and are not refugees from anywhere.

[JDPriestly]

32. Jordan and Palestine and Israel were all the same

land pretty much until the partition. If the Palestinians want to argue that Israel should not exist and they should have their own state based on their history, then, yes, they would have to be part of Jordan. That's the history. There was the Ottoman Empire which included all three areas and much more until the division of the French and British mandate areas. The British mandate area included pretty much the current areas we know as Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories. It was all one. So, Israel would be not be incorrect in asserting that Jordan and Palestine are one state.

With the break-up of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the League of Nations and the occupying powers chose to redraw the borders of the Middle East. The ensuing decisions, most notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement gave birth to the French Mandate of Syria and British Mandate of Palestine. More than 76% of the British Mandate of Palestine was east of the Jordan river and was known as "Transjordan".

The country was called "Transjordan", under British supervision until after World War II. In 1946, the British requested that the United Nations approve an end to British Mandate rule in Transjordan. Following this approval, the Transjordanian Parliament proclaimed King Abdullah as the first ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. Abdullah I continued to rule until a Palestinian Arab assassinated him in 1951 as he was departing from the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Jordan captured the area of Cisjordan now called the West Bank (also referred to by Israelis as Judea and Samaria), which it continued to control in accordance with the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Abdullah thereupon took the title King of Jordan, and he officially changed the country's name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in April 1949. The following year he annexed the West Bank, but only two countries recognized this annexation: Britain and Pakistan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan

In 1922, the League of Nations granted the United Kingdom a mandate over Palestine under terms similar to the Balfour Declaration.<48> The population of the area at this time was predominantly Muslim Arab, while the largest urban area in the region, Jerusalem, was predominantly Jewish.<49>

The third (1919–1923) and Fourth Aliyah (1924–1929) brought 100, 000 Jews to Palestine.<40> From 1921 the British subjected Jewish immigration to quotas and most of the territory slated for the Jewish state was allocated to Transjordan.<50>

The rise of Nazism in the 1930s led to the Fifth Aliyah, with an influx of a quarter of a million Jews. This caused the Arab revolt of 1936–1939 and led the British to cap immigration with the White Paper of 1939. With countries around the world turning away Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, a clandestine movement known as Aliyah Bet was organized to bring Jews to Palestine.<40> By the end of World War II, Jews accounted for 33% of the population of Palestine, up from 11% in 1922.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel

The whole area was transjordan. Jordan is the Palestinian homeland. Sorry, guys, you need to read your history.

Here is the story on the Ottoman Empire which sided with the Germans in WWI and was thereafter divided as stated above:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Empire

It's too long to copy here.

Here is a map picture of the Ottoman Empire 1914:



Here is a map of Transjordan in the early 1920s not long after WWI and the end of the Ottoman Empire. It was the British Mandate and included most of what are now Jordan, Palestinian Territories and Israel.

Please read your history books. It's so easy to Google stuff. Why do you folks insist on remaining ignorant.

[No Elephants]

38. In the early 1900's, someone lived on the land where Israel now is. so,

the British occupied it and claimed to be able to deal in it as they pleased. So what? Someone lived on the land where Israel now is.

[JDPriestly]

55. The area was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire

picked the wrong side in WWI -- and lost. At the end of the Ottoman Empire, the victors took the spoils including Palestine. Palestine was granted to the British who had the same right to do with the land what they wanted as the Ottoman Empire had before them. Under English law, ultimately the land belongs to the sovereign.

In the U.S., the Constitution gives us the right to just compensation when the government takes our land. That is not necessarily the law elsewhere.

When Mark Twain visited the TransJordan/Palestine/Israel area in the late 19th century, he commented that it was mostly uninhabited.

The population of the Palestinians has skyrocketed in recent decades. Now, mind you, in the U.S., the population declined during the Depression. It is normal for population to decline in times of economic duress. But not in Palestine. Sorry. But I am very cynical about the Palestinians. My father was very concerned about Palestinians in the 1950s and 1960s. They were given a lot of assistance, but they did not use it for positive purposes. They are mired in bitterness and the desire for revenge, violent revenge. I came to my own opinion that they need to help themselves and stop whining to the rest of the world. Israel is a reality. The Palestinians have made their situation worse by weeping on the shoulders of the world, complaining constantly and stirring up violence against Israel. They should work with the world and with Israel to make the area a safe place for themselves, their children and all in the area. It's called winning friends and influencing people. I remind you that my father volunteered in the U.S. to support programs that
aided the Palestinians, and he did that early on. I am cynical about their plight. They are their own worst enemies.

[JDPriestly]

56. I should add that many of the people living in the land that was

named Transjordan or the British Protectorate following the end of the Ottoman Empire were JEWISH. That is often forgotten. The Samarians are not Jewish but are a related religion. (As I understand it, they follow certain Jewish texts but not others.) I believe that they still live in the area also.

[timeforpeace]

8. Yeah, right. That's how this whole mess got started. Wasn't Israel's fault.

[No Elephants]

35. Palestinians are 70% of the people who live there. Sounds as though they more than welcomed them.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[The Stranger]

5. The West Bank is theirs, and it is still being settled illegally, is the problem.

Hopefully, most here don't support that.

[WriteDown]

11. Odd, I thought it was Jordan's. nt

[The Stranger]

41. Well, then get educated on the subject.

And you won't be harboring such misconceptions.

[WriteDown]

45. I'm fairly certain it was Jordan's before it was lost. nt .

[The Stranger]

47. Right, "it was lost." Now tell us what "it" was. Then tell us how "it" was "lost."

You're well on your way.

:think:

[WriteDown]

49. The West Bank?

Lost after 1967 I believe after an attempt by the Arab nations to wipe the Jews out yet again. Its now belongs to Israel. So I suppose the solution is to return it to Jordan. Then there will be peace.

[The Stranger]

52. No, the solution is to return the people to their homes, not to force them on to Jordan.

Why is this so hard to understand?

[WriteDown]

53. Force them to Jordan?

The land was Jordan's. Why are you against giving it back? Surely, the Palestinians will have a better chance of establishing an independent homeland if they are dealing with their Arab brothers rather than Israel.

[babylonsister]

4. Are you sure? This article claims Jordan is rejecting Netanyahu.

Jordan: East Jerusalem cannot be part of Israel's capital
By DPA


The Jordanian government on Monday rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim that Jerusalem would remain the undivided capital of Israel and that the Jewish state has a free hand to set up settlements throughout the West Bank.

"The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are occupied territories according to several resolutions issued by the United Nations," Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communication Nabil Sharif was quoted as saying by the official Petra news agency.

"In particular, the UN Security Council resolution 242 of 1967 and resolutions 476 and 478 of 1980 consider Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem null and void and call on Israel to end its occupation of East Jerusalem."

He said that remarks made Sunday by the Israeli government about Jerusalem were nothing more than "fallacies that negate the well- established legal and political realities" and place obstacles "in the path of peace and US efforts that seek to establish peace through the realization of the two-state vision."

more...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1101794.html

[Joanne98]

7. On man.

[proteus_lives]

12. Not surprising.

The Arab states have been throwing the Palestinians under the bus for 60+ years.

[WCGreen]

19. How else can they keep the whole Isreali Palestinian conflict going...

It's in their best interests to keep the tension going so they have a scapegoat.

[MicaelS]

60. We have a winner!

Every Arab / Muslim nation in the ME could have solved the problem years ago by giving the Palestinians citizenship. They could all done it, and people could emigrated to whatever Arab nation they wished. The fact that they have not just proves that the Palestinians have been used as a weapon against Israel. Israel and the Palestinians is what the autocratic governments of the ME use to foment hate and hysteria. By doing this they keep their citizens / subjects from paying to close an eye to the corruption of their own governments.

[JonQ]

62. Yup

hatred of an external enemy is pretty essential to maintaining an absolutist regime with a tiny number of incredibly wealthy people sitting atop a pyramid of chronically unemployed, poverty stricken proles with no prospects for a better future.

Got to direct that hatred outward lest they direct it at the cause of their suffering.

Which is why peace deals involving Israel and palestine are pretty much doomed from that start.

[No Elephants]

37. When 70% of your population is Palestinian, how have you thrown Palestinians under the bus?

I might agree with you on an Arab nation other than Jordan. On the other hand, Israel bombed countries that "harbored" Palestinians. So, that might make you a little antsy when a Palestinian family took up residence next door.

[proteus_lives]

50. Wow, 70%?

That brings up a question, how many Palestinians identify themselves as Jordanians? I'm wondering how the gov is separating them. Yeah, Israel does attack nations with Palestinian connections but those same nations (Jordan included) have been using the Palestinians as cannon fodder against Israel for decades.

[JerseygirlCT]

57. Yup

Convenient when they need them. But they need them to be in a bad spot, in order to use their plight as sleight of hand - taking the focus off their own human rights abuses.

[burning rain]

13. Destabilization of Jordan would be a very bad thing -- and bad for Israel, too.

Demagogic fathead Netanyahu.

[WriteDown]

15. So the Palestinians are a destabilizing influence...

those darn rabble-rousers.

[burning rain]

20. I was referring to Jordan's stripping citizenship in reaction to concern....

[Alamuti Lotus]

16. this news is fake

I have seen it nowhere reported elsewhere, and there are many places it would appear first (palestine-info, al-Manar, etc..). It is not that the Playstation King does not serve the US-Israeli war machine, but he has not indeed acted as this article would suggest. I mean, what would happen to his wife... if he was looking for a divorce, there are far simpler methods than going to such a length as this.

Now, the facile bullshit on display in about half of this thread is unfortunately not fake; that trash is quite real and may actually be more interesting.

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. Use the google, it is not fake

http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=19938

I am sure this is the road to something nasty actually and is a game changer

[Lithos]

22. JPost is a major newspaper

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1246443863400

[Alamuti Lotus]

24. stand corrected, and intrigued

[Behind the Aegis]

23. So fake, the Jordanian Times is editoralizing about it.

The saga of withdrawing or rescinding the Jordanian nationality of people of Palestinian origin continues amidst confusion about the exchange of the so-called yellow cards with green cards and vice versa of those affected.

While understanding the urgent need to regulate citizenship rights of Jordanians and former Jordanians who were residents of the West Bank in the wake of the 1988 decision to sever legal and administrative relations with the former Jordanian territory, we are at a loss as to why this regulation cannot be spelled out by law in no uncertain terms instead of resorting to administrative complications and the issuance of coloured cards.

This yellow and green card phenomenon must be replaced with another legislative mechanism to end, once for all, the confusion arising from the 1988 decision to sever all administrative and legal ties with the occupied West Bank. Normally granting and withdrawing citizenship is regulated by law and not by administrative procedures as seems to the case in our country.

The problem originally ensued from the 1988 decision to sever all administrative and legal ties with the former Jordanian territory west of the River Jordan. It was basically politically necessitated by the Arab and Palestinian decision to allow the Palestinians and their representatives to speak for themselves on how best to pursue their national rights and establish their own independent state on Palestinian soil.

more...

[Political Heretic]

25. Would you care to revise your bullshit statement, sir?

:)

It's not a fake. As has been shown.

[Alamuti Lotus]

28. What part of "stand corrected and intrigued" was lost upon you?

[Alamuti Lotus]

31. ahhh... worse than fake: bass-ackwards bureaucratic propaganda faceplant

the sort of thing that the friendly Arab dictators specialize in on many an occasion.

[peacetalksforall]

26. What I got out of this is that Jordan is trying to protect Palestinians against

a (further) Israeli move against the Gaza Strip Palestinians.

If Israeli has the chutzpah to declare that Jordan is Palestine, the move by Jordan to make Palestinians residents instead of citizens is a correction to protect them.

Right? If yes, hooray for Jordan.

I am reaching a point where I feel so sick to my stomach when I read the relentless, sick, black, manipulative attacks on Palestinians by Israel that I want to cover my eyes, ears, and scream to drown it all out. Israel, who I always assumed was the mature, humble, responsible leader, doesn't appear to want peace.

Instead they are applying ghetto strategies and tactics. I am ashamed again if what Jordan fears is true.

There are too many correlations to Nazi Germany. Absolute cruelty towards a target group.

I didn't know - Jordan is 30% native born Jordanians and 70% Palestinians - soon to be residents?

Jordan is the country that has evolved into the one with the most maturity and heart. Thank God.

[Ian David]

34. Looks more like they're throwing fuel on the fire. n/t

[robinlynne]

27. 70% Palestinian?? Are we talking refugees? jordanians? What does that mean?

[mackerel]

29. How is this even possible? Another country can declare another

country to be a completely different country? It all sounds like propaganda to me.

[harmonicon]

33. it happens all the time

For instance, see: Israel, Panama, Kosovo, etc.

[sofa king]

61. I tried to figure that out.

According to Wikipedia, 93% of the people in Jordan are citizens, but that may not include 700,000+ Iraqi refugees. Somewhere between 60% and 80% of the population is of Syro-Palestinian descent, which may be where that figure comes from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan

But a Jordanian of Syro-Palestinian descent isn't any more Palestinian than a Syrian is a Palestinian. All it means is that they come from similar cultural and ethnic stock.

The Wikipedia article offers one clue, however. Some percentage of Jordan's citizens also claim to be displaced Palestinians, and it could be these people who are facing revocation.

After Black September, Jordan pretty much bowed out of the Arab-Israeli dispute, dropping their territorial claim to the West Bank and East Jerusalem after 1974 and effectively leaving that area to the Palestinians (and the Israelis), while making life unpleasant for the various Palestinian groups that tried to base themselves in Jordan.

In the eyes of Jordanians, the West Bank probably looks a whole lot like Palestine to them, and those who claimed to be displaced Palestinians may be "encouraged" to go there, rather than be allowed to repeat the regrettable events of 1970-71.

[Scurrilous]

30. Sounds fishy to me...

<snip>

"Following the disengagement, Jordan issued yellow cards to Palestinians in Jordan and the diaspora holding Jordanian passports, which entitled these individuals to the full rights of Jordanian citizenship.

Palestinians in the West Bank who had family living in Jordan were issued green cards, which entitled them to temporary Jordanian passports to facilitate travel but did not grant them citizenship rights.

Palestinians with yellow cards who return to Palestine and receive recognition as nationals under either Israeli or Palestinian law revoke their right to a yellow card and are issued a green card when they renew their passports. Conversely, Palestinians with green cards may be granted yellow cards in certain circumstances, such as when their parents reside in Jordan and hold yellow cards.

According to figures cited by the deputy, authorities replaced 190 yellow cards with green ones and 5,130 green cards with yellow ones in the period between March 1 and June 30, 2009, compared to replacing 204 yellow cards with green and 4,139 green with yellow in the same period in 2008.

The figures also show that 244 people were issued green cards, while 2,696 were issued yellow cards in the same period of 2007."

http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=18480&searchFor=citizenshi


So in the past three years 638 Palestinians have had their yellow cards replaced with green (losing full rights of Jordanian citizenship), while in the same period 12,325 Palestinians traded in green for yellow (granting them full rights as Jordanians).

This is revoking Palestinians' citizenship en masse?

LOL

[Xithras]

58. The only difference between a Palestinian and a Jordanian...

...was the street sddress of your ancestors in May 1923. Prior to that, it was all Palestine. Most Palestinians lived in the more fertile parts west of the Jordan river, while the drier eastern portion portion across the Jordan (known as Transjordan, which literally means "other side of the Jordan") had a much smaller and less educated population. In 1923 Britain (which had controlled the area since WWI) gave the less populated Transjordan portion of Palestine to a Saudi Arab named Abdullah to repay the assistance his father and tribe provided to the British in WWI. Abdullah came north with a bunch of his tribal bretheren, set up his new country in the gifted lands, and we have Jordan today.

The Jordanians are just as much "invaders and oppressors" of the Palestinian people as the Israeli's are. It's a western created nation existing on Palestinian land stolen and militarily occupied by a people not native to that part of the middle east.

[excess_3]

63. you forgot Syria

the only difference between Jordanians-Palestinians
and Syrians is where the line was drawn between
the French Mandate and the British Mandate.


to me, they are all descendants of Levant Arabs
who were administered by the Ottoman Empire.

[The Sushi Bandit]

64. .