Jordan Caught in Crossfire Between Iran and Israel

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

On April 13, Iran launched a massive aerial attack against Israel. Britain and the United States helped Israel defend itself against the attack, but so did some Arab states, among them Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who forwarded intelligence about Iran’s plans.

As well, Oman declared that it was crucial to reach an immediate cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas. And Kuwait “stressed the necessity of addressing root causes” of the region’s conflicts.

However, the attack caused major problems for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which lay in the path of the Iranian barrage and so found itself shooting down Iranian missiles -- and then being accused of defending Israel. Jordan also reportedly opened its airspace to Israeli jet fighters. One internet meme on X, formerly Twitter, showed King Abdullah II in an Israeli general’s uniform.

A former Jordanian information minister, Samih al-Maaytah, defended the decision. “Jordan’s duty is to protect its lands and citizens,” he maintained. What Jordan did “was to simply protect its airspace.” He added that “Jordan’s position on this conflict is that it is between two parties over influence and interests: Iran and Israel.”

But a regional conflagration will be “bringing vulnerable allies like Jordan to a most unwelcome position between a rock and a hard place,” contends Tuqa Nusairat, an analyst at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Even before this development, Jordan has been rocked by anti-Israeli sentiments. Against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, around 150,000 Jordanians, mostly of Palestinian origin, have been participating in angry demonstrations outside the Israeli embassy in the capital city of Amman since March 25. They have been organized by the National Forum for Supporting the Resistance and spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood.

There have been calls to annul the peace treaty that was signed between Israel and the late King Hussein in October 1994, alongside calls to end all aspects of normalization between the two countries. The Jordanian movement to boycott Israel has also been revived and is now focused on opposing the export of Jordanian vegetables to Israel, revoking gas and energy agreements, and closing the land border between the two countries to the transfer of goods.

During the demonstrations, there have been calls from the “resistance” to take up arms, cross the border and help liberate Palestine, not only in the Gaza Strip but also in the West Bank. King Abdullah allowed the protestors to express their solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, expecting that these protests would last only a few days before dying down. But they grew in intensity, and there were more calls for armed resistance and a popular intifada. Some protestors even attempted to break into the Israeli embassy and set it ablaze.

Any threat to Jordan’s stability would be an opportunity for the Iranian-led axis of resistance to interfere in the kingdom’s affairs and open up an additional front against Israel. The extent of Iran’s growing involvement in the Hashemite Kingdom is gradually being revealed, from smuggling arms, fighters, and money to disseminating its radical ideology. Iranian media reported that Hezbollah is ready to arm 12,000 “resistance” fighters to overthrow the monarchy.

One of the pillars of Iran’s long-term strategy to destroy Israel has been to encircle and strangle the state, using proxies in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Iran’s next victim might be Jordan. The country hosts millions of refugees and its disgruntled populace suffers from high unemployment. It sits strategically to the east of Israel and the West Bank.

So how would Iran destabilize Jordan to set the stage for a pro-Iranian regime or set up proxies to dominate the country? Since Abdullah has control of his parliament and loyalty from his professional military, who are Bedouins, not Palestinians, the most likely scenario would be a ground-up approach, targeting Jordan’s vulnerable population. They would cultivate support among the poor, Islamists, the disgruntled majority of Palestinians, and the millions of displaced refugees from the Syrian and Iraqi wars.

Jordan has long offered a softer form of autocracy than states along its borders. But the country of 11 million has been increasingly roiled by internal tension, including rumours that King Abdullah had amassed vast offshore assets. Jordan’s government has taken steps to rein in free expression, including the passage of new cybercrime legislation that could be used against critics of the monarchy.

The stability of Jordan is of concern in the region. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, spoke with King Abdullah about these developments, stressing that his country supports Jordan’s efforts to safeguard security and stability in the kingdom. Abdullah was even urged to annul the citizenship of some of the three million Palestinians living in Jordan who support Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Nearly 30 years since the peace accord between Israel and Jordan was signed, the Jordanian public remains steadfast in its opposition to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, as well as to peace and normalization with Israel. The possibility of instability in Jordan, leading Iran and its proxies to deploy forces along the Israel-Jordan border -- Israel’s longest border -- should be enough to keep Israel’s leadership awake at night.

 

Seeking Peace in the Middle East

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In the wake of the Gaza war, the so-called two-state solution – an Israeli and Palestinian state side by side -- has been resurrected.

This idea dates back to at least 1937, when a British commission suggested a partition of the British mandate of Palestine into two states. Ten years later, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181, which proposed two states for two peoples: one Arab, one Jewish.

Although the resolution’s recommendation of territorial partition left neither side satisfied, the Jews accepted it, but the Palestinians, encouraged by their Arab state sponsors, rejected it. The ensuing 1948 war led to the founding of the state of Israel; millions of Palestinians, meanwhile, became refugees, and their national aspirations languished.

In 1993, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo accords, recognizing each other and laying the groundwork for a phased, incremental process intended to eventually lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The two-state solution’s moment appeared to have arrived.

But neither side was ready to compromise on the highly emotional question of who would control Jerusalem or on the issue of “the right of return” of Palestinian refugees, which was deeply threatening to the Israelis. And so it floundered and despite interminable attempts to resurrect it, by brokers such as the United States, it remained a dead letter.

Today, it seems even more of a fantasy. Given the current situation, the two sides seem less likely than ever to achieve the mutual trust that a two-state solution would require. There is a complete disconnect between renewed international calls for a two-state solution and the fears and desires currently shaping Israeli and Palestinian society.

Polls make it clear that both Israelis and Palestinians are highly unenthusiastic about and wary of the idea. Gallup polls conducted since late last year found that 65 per cent of Israeli respondents opposed the two-state solution and only 25 per cent supported it. The gap is even larger among Palestinians; in polls that Gallup conducted last summer, before the October 7 Hamas attacks, 72 per cent of Palestinian respondents opposed the two-state solution and only 24 per cent supported it.

What, then, of other solutions? There is Hamas’s position, which is the destruction of Israel. There is the Israeli right’s solution, which is the Israeli annexation of the West Bank and the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority. There is the approach pursued for the last decade or so by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which aimed to maintain the status quo indefinitely – now impossible. And there is the idea of a binational state in which Jews would become a minority, thus ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state.

None of those alternatives would resolve the conflict to one or the other side’s satisfaction. That leaves only one viable medium-term arrangement that would allow Israel to safeguard its security and let Palestinians enjoy normal lives free from Israeli rule: some form of confederation with another entity for the Palestinians.

The most sensible idea would be to create a Palestinian government that would join in a confederation with an existing sovereign state, one that already has a stable and effective security force; maintains law and order; and fights terrorism.

That country would be Jordan, which borders the West Bank and whose population is overwhelmingly Arab and Muslim, and already more than half Palestinian. The Hashemite Kingdom was originally for a brief period part of the original Palestine Mandate, and, as Trans-Jordan, was the only Arab entity that more than held its own in 1948, conquering the West Bank and east Jerusalem, including the Old City and its religious centres. These areas were incorporated into Jordan until lost in 1967. To this day, Jordan still retains some rights there.

The 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan committed Israel to “respect the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem” and that “when negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.” In 2013, an agreement between Jordan and the Palestinian Authority recognized Jordan’s role in Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian holy sites.

This idea is not new and has been advanced before. But even as a stopgap solution, it is infinitely preferable to what exists today.

 

In a Dangerous Middle East Is Lebanon Doomed?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Everyone understands that Lebanon is, by any measure, a failed state, paralyzed by its sectarianism. Its various Christian, Druze and Muslim communities have over the past four decades destroyed what little unity it possessed.

More than a dozen religious sects coexist in a precarious balancing act, reflected in a power-sharing system that reserves government posts by religion. Both the presidency and central bank governor, two top posts reserved for Maronite Christians, have been vacant since October 2022 and July 2023 respectively, due to divisions over choosing successors.

And with the rise of Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim group that uses its territory as a launching pad aimed at Israel, its future in any larger Middle East war is that of a death foretold. Lebanon has become little more than a pawn of Iran’s, with virtually no agency of its own.

Iran founded Hezbollah in 1982 to export its Islamic revolution and fight Israeli forces that had invaded Lebanon. Sharing Tehran’s Shia Islamist ideology, Hezbollah recruited among Shia Muslims, at the time the poorest people in the country.

It is Iran who shaped Hezbollah and to whom Hezbollah is loyal. It demonstrated its military strength in 2006 during a five-week war with Israel, and its power grew after deploying into Syria in 2012 to help President Bashar al-Assad fight Sunni rebels.

Hezbollah also entered politics and has ministers in government and lawmakers in parliament. In 2016, the Hezbollah-allied Christian politician Michel Aoun became president. Two years later, Hezbollah and its allies won a parliamentary majority. This majority was lost in 2022, but the group continues to exercise power over the state.

Hezbollah now boasts some 150,000 precision rockets and asserts it can hit all parts of Israel. In 2021, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the group had 100,000 fighters.

Hezbollah began launching rockets from southern Lebanon at Israel on Oct. 8 in support of Hamas, which carried out an attack into Israel from Gaza the previous day. Some 90,000 people have been displaced from southern Lebanon since the conflict broke out.

Lebanon’s Christians politically dominated the country until they lost a vicious civil between 1975 and 1990 that resulted in an estimated 150,000 fatalities. They are now relatively helpless and caught in the crossfire, with little ability to steer the country away from disaster.

Maronite Patriarch Boutros al-Rai early in the current Gaza war called for Lebanon to stay on the sidelines and more recently declared that war had been “imposed” on Christians. Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Beirut Elias Audi asked in March if it was fair for “one faction of Lebanese to decide on behalf of everyone and take unilateral decisions that not all Lebanese agree on.” Even Hezbollah’s main Christian ally, the Free Patriotic Movement, announced that its alliance with Hezbollah had been shaken.

“The main problem that arose recently was crossing the limits of defending Lebanon and getting involved in a conflict in which we cannot make decisions,” its leader Gebran Bassil complained.

Michael Young, senior editor at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, called Bassil’s comments an attempt to gain some leverage over Hezbollah by signaling a rift, but also reflected Christian unease with the status quo.

“The mood among the Christian community is almost a psychological divorce from the system. They don't feel that they have a say in the system and in a way it’s true -- Hezbollah is in control of much of the system,” Young told Reuters.

On Jan. 7, travelers through Beirut’s airport saw the arrival and departure screens suddenly flash a message addressed to the powerful leader of Hezbollah: “Hassan Nasrallah, you will not have any supporters if Lebanon is drawn into a war for which you will bear responsibility.” Nasrallah isn’t listening. Hezbollah fired a large barrage of rockets at northern Israel on April 12.

Lebanon was already hit hard by a financial meltdown that began in 2019. Since then, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen by 50 per cent, the currency has lost more than 90 per cent of its value, and poverty now plagues 80 per cent of the population. Salaries became nearly worthless after the pound lost most of its value.

Lebanon’s insolvent banks won’t allow depositors to withdraw their money in full. The Association of Banks in Lebanon has said the institutions do not have enough liquidity to pay back depositors.

Now things are even worse, with tourists staying away, shops closed, and schools shuttered or sheltering thousands displaced by the fighting. Lebanon’s overburdened health-care system will be unable to cope if the war spreads.

Simon Neaime, an economics professor at the American University of Beirut, fears that the Lebanese are exhausted. “In 2006, during the last war with Israel, we had a fully functioning economy, we had a functional banking system supplying credit to the private sector and contributing to growth, we had a government in place, we had a president,” Neaime explained.

In 2006, Lebanon received support from Arab countries, particularly oil-rich Persian Gulf nations, for reconstruction after the end of that war. This is not the case today, with ties to the gulf monarchies, ruled by Sunni Muslims, strained by Hezbollah’s increased regional presence. The country, or what’s left of it, is on its own.