NATIONAL POST, MONDAY, JUNE 8, 2015 nationalpost.com A11 ‘Until the second decade of the 20th century, there had never been a Jordanian people, IDEAS ethnic group or tribe by that name’ The fictional kingdom GEOFFREY CLARFIELD Jordan and so many of them had AND SALIM MAN S UR There can be no lasting peace in Jordan until the once again taken up arms against Is- rael, in the hope of conquering all of world appreciates the country’s true ethnography, Western Palestine. If that is the case, rab nationalism is dead. It are they really “refugees” or are they lasted for 100 years and it has Geoffrey Clarfield and Salim Mansur argue not still residents in the territory of A suddenly disappeared. In the the Palestine Mandate? former states of war-torn Libya, Syria The political and ethnographic dis- and Iraq, speaking Arabic now means appearance of the Palestinian nature nothing. However, being a member of of the Arabs of Eastern Palestine (Jor- a family, lineage or clan of either the dan), has largely been a tactic used by Shia, Sunnis, Christians, Druze, Yazidi, the Arab League, and its allies on the Tuareg or Bedouin means everything. left, to put Israel and its supporters The “Arab League” is now totally dys- on the defensive, for many Arabs have functional. made public statements in favour of From Morocco to Malaysia, Islamic the Jordan-is-Palestine argument. jihadis go from one place to another They just happen to do so in a way in support of recently created political that usually implies the destruction of entities like the Taliban, al-Qaida, or the Jewish State. ISIL. Nations and their borders count For example, on Feb. 2, 1970, Prince for nothing. Yet the new Pope has just Hassan of the Jordanian National As- recognized another Arab state, “Pal- sembly said, “Palestine is Jordan and estine.” Perhaps this is because he has Jordan is Palestine: there is only one critically misread how Arab entities land, with one history and one and the really rise and fall. same fate.” Until the end of the First World On March 14, 1977, Farouk Kad- War, most of the Arabic-speaking dumi, the head of the PLO political Middle East was under the author- department, told Newsweek, “There ity of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. should be a kind of linkage because The Turks lost their empire when Jordanians and Palestinians are con- they fought against the allies dur- sidered by the PLO as one people.” ing the war. And so, after more than Also in 1977, speaking to a Dutch four centuries of subservience to the newspaper, PLO representative Zou- Turks, Christian and Muslim speak- hair Muhsen said, “For tactical rea- ers of Arabic, longing for independ- sons, Jordan, which is a sovereign ence, created Arab nationalism, a state with defined borders, cannot political movement that mirrored raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while the ethnic and linguistic national- as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly isms that were then transforming the demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and landscape of 19th-century Europe. Jerusalem. However, the moment we In this new ideology, an “Arab” reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we was someone who spoke Arabic. The will not wait even a minute to unite largely Christian Arab proponents Palestine and Jordan.” of this ideology hoped that as cit- Perhaps the most revealing pub- izens of newly created secular states, lic quote by Muhsen was when he they would finally be given the legal bluntly stated that, “There are no and political equality denied to them differences between Jordanians, for centuries under Islamic law and Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Muslim rulers. And so, after the First We are all part of one nation. It is World War, a number of “Arab” states only for political reasons that we were created by the League of Nations, carefully underline our Palestinian such as Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. By identity. ... The existence of a separ- the end of the Second World War, they ate Palestinian identity serves only had all gained their independence. tactical purposes. The founding Among these newly created states, of a Palestinian state is a new tool there arose the Hashemite Kingdom in the continuing battle against Is- of Jordan, which became formally in- rael.” (And this goes some way to dependent in 1946. Until then, it was explaining why Arab states rise and legally part of the League of Nations fall so quickly. They have little his- Mandate for Palestine, implemented torical or ethnographic unity, with on trust from the League of Nations the exception of Egypt.) by the British government. So we Mudar Zahran is an Arab, Muslim, LibrarY OF CONGRESS must ask, in this age of suddenly dis- Palestinian Jordanian who has had integrating “Arab states,” where do the From right, King Abdullah with Emir Abd al-Ilah of Hejaz, regent of Iraq, Emir Naif, Abdullah’s youngest son, to flee Jordan because he has told Jordanians live and who are they? and Nuri al-Said, Iraqi ambassador-at-large, at Abdullah’s coronation in Amman on May 25, 1946. the truth to his fellow Arabs — that The people who reside in Jordan Jordan is a Palestinian State. In a live on the east side of the Jordan The name, the “Hashemite” King- invading Arab Muslims in the seventh Syria. These new immigrants found recent article he has bluntly stated: River. Anyone who has ever been to dom of Jordan, makes reference to the century during the first Muslim inva- it convenient to make common cause “There is, in fact, almost nothing Sunday school probably knows the fact that its ruling tribe, the Hashemis, sions from Arabia. These included with the non-Bedouin residents of Jor- un-Palestinian about Jordan except regions and cities of this area better were imported by the British from various Arabic- and Aramaic-speaking dan and much later, specifically after for the royal family. Despite decades than they know their own state or outside of Jordan in the Hejaz (what is Christians, as well as Armenians who 1967, called themselves and their chil- of official imposition of a Bedouin province. This is the biblical land of now western Saudi Arabia). The Hash- were later joined by Muslims from the dren Palestinians. President Roosevelt image on the country, and even Bed- Bashan and of Gilead. emis rule Jordan today as the Saudis Caucasus, and Druze immigrants from pointed out in 1939 that “Arab immi- ouin accents on state television, the Three thousand years ago, what do Arabia, claiming the name of the Syria. gration into Palestine since 1921 has Palestinian identity is still the most is now northern Jordan was the ter- country by right of tribal conquest and Today the majority of the country’s vastly exceeded the total Jewish immi- dominant … to the point where the ritory of the Israelites: specifically, occupation, but in their case with the inhabitants are Muslim Arabs who gration during this whole period.” Jordanian capital, Amman, is the lar- the tribes of Dan, Manasseh, Gad connivance of the British, who unilat- now think of themselves as Palestin- The great historical irony of this gest and most populated Palestinian and Reuben. Later, the area became erally lopped off 70 per cent of man- ians. Before the Mandate, they had period is that all of the ancestors of city anywhere. Palestinians view it as part of the second Jewish Com- dated Palestine, and gave it to them as no national identity and like that of today’s Muslim Arab Palestinians, a symbol of their economic success monwealth under the Maccabees, their compensation for their tribal re- Jordan, there is no record of a self-de- now living in Mandated Eastern Pal- and ability to excel. Moreover, em- before the Romans conquered the volt against the Turks during the First fined, self-declared Palestinian nation- estine, all of a sudden stopped being powering a Palestinian statehood for whole area and made it part of their World War. al identity in any historical document thought of as Arabs of Palestine by Jordan has a well-founded and legal- empire (the Christian Bible has re- In order to give this new national before the early to mid-20th century. the British, and then by the members ly accepted grounding: The minute tained numerous books that de- fiction of Jordan some instant legit- of the United Nations after 1948, and the minimum level of democracy is scribe the history of the Maccabees imacy, the British creatively mistrans- even more so since the Oslo process applied to Jordan, the Palestinian until the Roman conquest). lated Arabic titles like “emir” (in those began in 1992. This has been and re- majority would, by right, take over Who are the Jordanians? Until the days it meant an often non-hereditary, The minute a mains one of the great disappearing the political momentum.” second decade of the 20th century, elected Bedouin tribal leader) and acts of modern history, for Jordan The Jewish state of Israel lies west there had never been a Jordanian “sharif,” and called these men “kings,” minimum level of is clearly a Palestinian Arab State in of the Jordan River and has sovereign- people, ethnic group or tribe by that giving them a kind of faux-royal aura. what was formerly British Mandated ty over that territory by historical and name, or a group of diasporic exiles In fact, the Hashemis were and con- democracy was Palestine, with a majority of non- legal right. There is no “occupation.” who thought of themselves as “Jordan- tinue to be a usurping Bedouin tribal Bedouin villagers and townspeople If the Israeli government decides to ian.” Jordan is a 20th-century British elite in Eastern Palestine.