Over the years, including the years prior to their election victory in Gaza and subsequent slaughter of those with opposing ideologies, whenever someone expressed sympathy for Hamas and their ‘justifiable actions’, allied to their suffering in comparison to others in the Arab world, I would tend to pose the question, "If theirs is such a just case, why do so few of their Arab brethren open their arms and welcome these people, give them equal  rights and even the most modest financial support to improve their lot?"


The answer is far from simple, of course. The Arab nation has long looked down its nose at the Palestinians and seen them as little more than a tool with which to beat Israel, the US, and those they consider to be former Imperialist occupiers. The words ‘Arab’ and ‘brotherhood’ are the ultimate  misnomer. As we see every day on the news from points of the compass as far removed as Indonesia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria and beyond, Muslims kill dozens of times more Muslims, and Arabs kill 100’s of times more Arabs than do Israelis, Americans, Christians, Hindus, or Sikhs put together. There is, in short, little love lost between Arabs, between Muslims, and in particular, between the Arab majority and the Palestinians, a people for whom most Arabs have a barely hidden disdain. 

 
So why, having kicked Hamas out of Jordan in 1999, is King Abdullah suddenly flinging open his arms to embrace Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal as little less than a returning hero? The answer is that unfortunately he has very little choice in the matter. Abdullah is in very, very big trouble, and whilst the eyes of the world have been focused on Syria and the awful slaughter Assad is raining down on his own people, the flames of discontent have been fanning ever more strongly across Syria’s border to Jordan, where the majority of the population is now Palestinian.

 
Abdullah, (whose own wife Queen Rania is a Palestinian), is beginning to lose his grip on power with open dissent now commonplace on the streets of Amman and beyond, something that was virtually unheard of even a few months ago. Even Abdullah’s recent peace offering of five acres of land to anyone who wants it to begin their own farmstead has apparently fallen on deaf ears. So, with Meshaal and his goons forced out of Syria by the rapidly  deteriorating situation there and looking for a new home, the last thing  Abdullah wants is for Meshaal to appeal to the Palestinian majority in Jordan and ask them to rise up against the Hashemite dynasty. The old adage of  “keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer” was never more prescient.

 
If Abdullah can find a way to rehabilitate Meshaal into Jordanian society the Hamas leader could well end up being the trump card that saves the King’s regime, a dynasty that began in 1922 when the British (who were mandated to administrate what was then Palestine and Transjordan), agreed that the present King’s grandfather Abdullah I, would be ruler of a new nation which ended up being overseen by the British until 1946, when the modern state of Jordan was born.

 
The mass of Palestine Arabs who sought what they expected to be temporary safe haven in Jordan after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, on the opposite side of the Jordan River, remained where they fled after Israel’s unlikely victory over the combined forces of the Arab world, and the Palestinians (as they subsequently became known), were a continual thorn in the side of the present king’s father, the late King Hussein. In 1971, following a series of battles that reportedly cost thousands of lives, he famously forced the PLO out of Jordan in what became known as ‘Black September’, after discovering Yasser Arafat and his cohorts plotting against the country that had given them safe haven. Most of them fled to Lebanon and began causing trouble there instead.

 
The extended history of the Jordanian people and the Palestinians is too complicated to reduce to this ‘bite-size’ offering, but suffice it to say that by sheer weight of numbers and having bred substantially faster than the native Jordanians, the Palestinians now once again represent a highly  significant and potentially overwhelming threat to the Jordanian regime. With long-standing Arab dynasties falling like nine-pins in the region and the mirage of real secular democracy in countries like Egypt and Libya already being replaced by Islamist parties with very different agendas, the Palestinians in Jordan now hold a very strong hand. Abdullah is desperate to reach out, grab that hand, and hold on to his kingdom. 

 
Time might well prove that sadly, the Sandhurst educated King is on a very sticky wicket!

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