THERE CAN BE NO PEACE IN JORDAN UNTIL THE WORLD APPRECIATES THE COUNTRY’S TRUE ETHNOGRAPHY
ARAB nationalism is dead. It
lasted for 100 years and it has suddenly disappeared. In the former states of
now war-torn LIBYA, SYRIA and IRAQ, speaking ARABIC now means nothing. However,
being a member of a family, lineage or clan of either the SHIA, SUNNIS,
CHRISTIANS, DRUZE, YAZIDI, TUAREG or BEDOUIN means everything. The “ARAB LEAGUE”
is now totally dysfunctional.
From MOROCCO to MALAYSIA, ISLAMIC
JIHADIS go from one place to another in support of recently created political
entities like the TALIBAN, AL-QAIDA, or ISIL. Nations and their borders now
count for nothing. Yet the new POPE has just recognized yet another ARAB state,
“PALESTINE.” Perhaps this is because he has critically misread how ARAB
entities really rise and fall.
Background
Information:
PALESTINIANS
ARE ARABS, WITH ARAB CULTURE, ARABIC LANGUAGE AND ARABIC HISTORY – PHILISTINES
ARE FROM CRETE, PRESENT DAY GREECE
PALESTINE
- ORIGIN OF PEOPLE - WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS?
Until the end of the First World
War, most of the ARABIC-speaking MIDDLE EAST was under the authority of the TURKISH
OTTOMAN EMPIRE. The TURKS lost their empire when they fought against the allies
during the war. And so, after four centuries of subservience to the TURKS,
CHRISTIAN and MUSLIM speakers of ARABIC, longing for independence, created ARAB
nationalism, a political movement that mirrored the ethnic and linguistic nationalism that were then transforming the landscape of 19th-century EUROPE.
In this new ideology, an “ARAB”
was someone who spoke ARABIC. The largely CHRISTIAN ARAB proponents of this
ideology hoped that as citizens of newly created secular states, they would
finally be given the legal and political equality denied to them for centuries
under ISLAMIC law and MUSLIM rulers. And so, after the First World War, a
number of “ARAB” states were created by the LEAGUE OF NATIONS, such as LEBANON,
SYRIA and IRAQ. By the end of the Second World War, they had all gained their
independence.
AFTERMATH
OF BRITISH COLONIALISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Among these newly created states,
there arose the HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN, which became formally independent
in 1946. Until then, it was legally part of the LEAGUE OF NATIONS Mandate for PALESTINE,
implemented on trust from the LEAGUE OF NATIONS by the BRITISH government. So
we must ask, in this age of suddenly disintegrating “ARAB states,” where do the
JORDANIANS live and who are they?
 |
Bad
times ahead: Sir Edmund Allenby enters
Jerusalem’s Old City Photo: 2013 Culture
Club
|
The people who reside in JORDAN
live on the east side of the JORDAN River. Anyone who has ever been to Sunday
school probably knows the regions and cities of this area better than they know
their own state or province. This is the biblical land of BASHAN and of GILEAD.
Three thousand years ago, what is
now northern JORDAN was the territory of the ISRAELITES: specifically the
tribes of DAN, MANASSEH, GAD and REUBEN. Later, the area became part of the
second JEWISH Commonwealth under the MACCABEES, before the ROMANS conquered the
whole area and made it part of their empire (the CHRISTIAN Bible has retained
numerous books which describe the history of the MACCABEES until the ROMAN
conquest).
HASHEMIS
WERE AND CONTINUE TO BE A USURPING BEDOUIN TRIBAL ELITE IN EASTERN PALESTINE
No one reads the LEAGUE OF
NATIONS Mandate for PALESTINE document anymore. But according to international
law, it is still valid
Who are the JORDANIANS? Until the
second decade of the 20th century there had never been a JORDANIAN people,
ethnic group or tribe by that name, or a group of diasporic exiles who thought
of themselves as “JORDANIAN.” JORDAN is a 20th-century BRITISH invention,
dreamed up in the 1920s, for the peoples living in what BRITAIN illegally hived
off from the LEAGUE OF NATIONS Mandate for PALESTINE in 1923. Until 1946 its BRITISH
administrators called it just that — EASTERN PALESTINE.
Background
Information:
BRITISH
RULING IN THE MIDDLE EAST – THE CAUSE OF CURRENT SITUATION - SKYES PICOT AGREEMENT
The British diplomat Mark Sykes and a FRENCH
counterpart Francois Georges Picot divided the Middle East into zones of
influence that later served as the frontiers of independent Arab states.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS MANDATE FOR PALESTINE
No one reads the LEAGUE OF
NATIONS Mandate for PALESTINE document anymore. But according to international
law, it is still valid. It is the legal basis for the creation of the JEWISH
state of ISRAEL. Its provisions still stand, because all of the legal
pronouncements of the League were subsequently recognized as binding, when the UNITED
NATIONS was created after the Second World War.
In 1923 the BRITISH arbitrarily
violated the Mandate, morally and legally, by creating the “EMIRATE OF JORDAN”
in EASTERN PALESTINE. The BRITISH announced that this was a “temporary”
measure, which they quietly and quickly made “permanent.” Jews were no longer
allowed to live there.
BRITISH
WHEELING AND DEALING
The name, the “HASHEMITE” Kingdom
of JORDAN, makes reference to the fact that its ruling tribe, the HASHEMIS,
were imported by the BRITISH from outside of JORDAN in the HEJAZ (what is now
western SAUDI ARABIA). The HASHEMIS rule JORDAN today as the SAUDIS do ARABIA,
claiming the name of the country by right of tribal conquest and occupation,
but in their case with the connivance of the BRITISH, who unilaterally lopped
off 70 per cent of mandated PALESTINE, and gave it to them as their
compensation for their tribal revolt against the TURKS during the First World
War.
This explains all those “tribal
rebellions” that occurred there during the 1920s and 1930s. Clearly, the BEDOUIN
tribes that were there before the HASHEMIS invaded had a hard time
understanding why they should give up their independence and be ruled by these BRITISH
imports. The HASHEMIS put down these “rebellions” with the active aid and
military support of thinly disguised BRITISH mercenaries, in an army that was
ironically named THE ARAB LEGION, trained and led by BRITISH officers.
Although the BEDOUIN were the
masters of most of the desert lands of JORDAN, east of the river there were
always small towns and villages, where farmers and townsmen eked out a living.
Many of the ARAB MUSLIMS of these towns and villages were former BEDOUIN who
had become farmers. Among them were the demographically reduced survivors of
the BYZANTINE EMPIRE, which had fallen to the invading ARAB MUSLIMS in the
seventh century during the first MUSLIM invasions from ARABIA. These included
various ARABIC- and ARAMAIC-speaking CHRISTIANS, as well as ARMENIANS who were
later joined by MUSLIMS from the CAUCASUS, and DRUZE immigrants from SYRIA.
Background
Information: PALESTINIANS
PALESTINE
- MIDDLE EAST: THE MYTH OF PALESTINIAN CENTRALITY
LICENSE
TO STATEHOOD
TELLING
THE UN SIX HOME TRUTHS
CONTEMPLATING
A SUBSTANTIVE CHANGE IN THE PALESTINIAN POSITION
PALESTINE,
AND ITS PROSPEROUS MARKETING CONCEPT
PALESTINIAN
ARAB IDENTITY DEVELOPED QUITE RECENTLY, AS A CONTRARY MOVEMENT AND MIRROR IMAGE
TO THAT OF THE JEWS
Today the majority of the
country’s inhabitants are largely MUSLIM ARABS who now think of themselves as PALESTINIANS.
Before the Mandate, they had no national identity and like that of JORDAN,
there is no record of a self-defined, self-declared PALESTINIAN national
identity in any historical document before the early to mid-20th century.
PALESTINIAN ARAB identity seems
to have developed quite recently, as a contrary movement and mirror image to
that of the JEWS, who were returning to their ancient homeland by right, and
whose physical, religious and cultural connection to the land had never been
severed, or questioned, and which was formally recognized by the LEAGUE OF
NATIONS after the First World War. This is the essence of that strange and
paradoxical ethno genesis of what is now called the PALESTINIAN nation.
Once the BRITISH established the
Mandate, and JEWISH immigration began to create a mini-industrial revolution,
both WESTERN and EASTERN PALESTINE attracted waves of MUSLIM ARAB immigrants
from EGYPT and SYRIA. These new immigrants found it convenient to make common
cause with the non-BEDOUIN residents of JORDAN and much later, specifically
after 1967, called themselves and their children PALESTINIANS. President ROOSEVELT
pointed out in 1939 that “ARAB immigration into PALESTINE since 1921 has vastly
exceeded the total JEWISH immigration during this whole period.”
JORDAN
IS CLEARLY A PALESTINIAN ARAB STATE IN WHAT WAS FORMERLY BRITISH MANDATED
PALESTINE
The great historical irony of
this period is that all of the ancestors of today’s MUSLIM ARAB PALESTINIANS,
now living in Mandated EASTERN PALESTINE, all of a sudden stopped being thought
of as ARABS of PALESTINE by the BRITISH, and then by the members of the UNITED
NATIONS after 1948, and even more so since the OSLO process began in 1992. This
has been and remains one of the great disappearing acts of modern history, for JORDAN
is clearly a PALESTINIAN ARAB STATE in what was formerly BRITISH MANDATED
PALESTINE, with a majority of non-BEDOUIN villagers and townspeople who do not
define themselves as BEDOUIN or JORDANIAN.
Background
Information: TRANS JORDAN
JORDANIAN-PALESTINIAN
CONFEDERATION
DOES
JORDAN WANT PALESTINIANS IN CONTROL OF THE BORDER?
In 1948, the same year that the BRITISH-led
ARAB (BEDOUIN) LEGION OF JORDAN invaded the newly created State of ISRAEL, KING
ABDULLAH of JORDAN declared that “PALESTINE and JORDAN are one.” And so in
1948, ARABS resident in both EASTERN and WESTERN PALESTINE went to war with the
newly created state of ISRAEL in that small part of WESTERN PALESTINE that had
been begrudged by the UN to the JEWISH people. No one thought that this new state
of ISRAEL would survive.
The
ARABS of the BRITISH Mandate on both sides of the JORDAN attacked ISRAEL and
when they were defeated, many of them removed themselves from one part of WESTERN
PALESTINE to those parts of PALESTINE, on both sides of the JORDAN, then under
“JORDANIAN” authority. The same thing happened when ARABS from the WEST BANK chose
to cross the JORDAN after the 1967 and subsequently, when JORDAN and so many of
them had once again taken up arms against ISRAEL, in the hope of conquering all
of WESTERN PALESTINE. If that is the case, are they really “refugees” or are
they not still residents in the territory of the PALESTINE Mandate?
“PALESTINE IS JORDAN AND JORDAN IS PALESTINE.”
The political and ethnographic
disappearance of the PALESTINIAN nature of the ARABS of EASTERN PALESTINE
(JORDAN), has largely been a tactic used by the ARAB LEAGUE, and its allies on
the left, to put ISRAEL and its supporters on the defensive, for many ARABS
have made public statements in favor of the JORDAN-IS-PALESTINE argument. They
just happen to do so in a way that usually implies the destruction of the JEWISH
State.
For example, on Feb. 2, 1970.
Prince HASSAN of the JORDANIAN NATIONAL ASSEMBLY said, “PALESTINE is JORDAN and
JORDAN is PALESTINE: there is only one land, with one history and one and the
same fate.” On March 14, 1977, FAROUK KADDUMI, the head of the PLO political
department told Newsweek, “There should be a kind of linkage because JORDANIANS
and PALESTINIANS are considered by the PLO as one people.”
Also in 1977, speaking to a DUTCH
newspaper, PLO representative ZOUHAIR MUHSEN said, “For tactical reasons, JORDAN, which is a sovereign state with defined
borders, cannot raise claims to HAIFA and JAFFA, while as a PALESTINIAN, I can
undoubtedly demand HAIFA, JAFFA, BEER-SHEVA and JERUSALEM. However, the moment
we reclaim our right to all of PALESTINE, we will not wait even a minute to
unite PALESTINE and JORDAN.”
Perhaps the most revealing public
quote by MUHSEN was when he bluntly stated that “There are no differences between JORDANIANS, PALESTINIANS, SYRIANS and LEBANESE.
We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we
carefully underline our PALESTINIAN identity. … The existence of a separate PALESTINIAN
identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a PALESTINIAN state is
a new tool in the continuing battle against ISRAEL.” (And this goes some
way to explaining why ARAB states rise and fall so quickly. They have little
historical or ethnographic unity, with the exception of EGYPT.)
THE
MINUTE A MINIMUM LEVEL OF DEMOCRACY IS IMPLEMENTED IN JORDAN, THE PALESTINIAN
MAJORITY WOULD TAKE OVER THE POLITICAL MOMENTUM
MUDAR ZAHRAN is an ARAB, MUSLIM,
PALESTINIAN, and JORDANIAN, who has had to flee JORDAN because he had told the
truth to his fellow ARABS— that JORDAN is a PALESTINIAN State. In a recent
article he has bluntly stated: “There is, in fact, almost nothing un-PALESTINIAN
about JORDAN except for the royal family. Despite decades of official imposition
of a BEDOUIN image on the country, and even BEDOUIN accents on state
television, the PALESTINIAN identity is still the most dominant … to the point
where the JORDANIAN capital, AMMAN, is the largest and most populated PALESTINIAN
city anywhere. PALESTINIANS view it as a symbol of their economic success and
ability to excel. Moreover, empowering a PALESTINIAN statehood for JORDAN has a
well-founded and legally accepted grounding: The minute the minimum level of
democracy is applied to JORDAN, the PALESTINIAN majority would, by right, take
over the political momentum.”
The JEWISH state of ISRAEL lies
west of the JORDAN RIVER and has sovereignty over that territory by historical
and legal right. There is no “occupation.” If the ISRAELI government decides to
give back some of this land in a territory-for-peace deal, it will have done so
knowing it is sacrificing part of its historic homeland to hostile ISLAMIC expansionists,
not to “a people without a land,” for the ARABS OF PALESTINE, that is the PALESTINIANS,
are a majority in EASTERN PALESTINE.
ETHNOGRAPHIC
FICTION
The world has been living with a
two-state solution for decades. No matter what the faux King of JORDAN may say
or do, his country and his people are not JORDANIAN. JORDAN is what
anthropologists call an “ethnographic fiction.” The majority of JORDANIANS are
PALESTINIANS living in Mandated PALESTINE. There can be no peace without the
recognition of this simple ethnographic truth. The Pope should know this.
Adapted by Geopolitical Analysis and Monitoring from the article originally written by Geoffrey Clarfield and Salim Mansur
