In the ordeal, the Jordanians are not lacking in humor. To designate the famous Trump plan, which claims to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they do not speak of "Safqat al-qarn", Arabic version of "Deal of the century", dear to the American president, but from "Safa’at al-qarn" : the "slap of the century".
Reading this document, steeped in the colonial ideology of Greater Israel, which was unveiled at the end of January in the White House, the subjects of the Hashemite kingdom, half of whom are of Palestinian origin, were as outraged as their neighbors from the West Bank and Gaza. By granting them a state ersatz, deprived of East Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley – a territory to be annexed by Israel – the American plan "Seeks to liquidate the Palestinian cause", storm Khaled Ramadan, a parliamentarian.
Existential worry
But in the streets of Amman, the feeling of contempt felt throughout the Arab world is compounded by a form of existential worry. We fear here that the blank check offered by the American administration to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister, will resuscitate an old fad of the Israeli nationalist right: " the Jordanian option ", or the relocation of the Palestinian state to the east of the Jordan. A scarecrow for the Hashemite dynasty which, in such a scenario, would see its political base, the native Jordanians, become largely a minority.
"This plan was designed to be rejected, professes Marwan Muasher, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the kingdom, who was the first Jordanian ambassador to Tel Aviv, after the peace agreement between the two countries signed in 1994. The Israeli leadership does not want a Palestinian state, and, at the same time, it does not want an Arab majority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, he continues. She dreams of resolving this dilemma at the expense of Jordan, either by forced population transfer or by pushing Amman to administer the West Bank territories she does not need. "
King Abdullah logically said no. Unlike many of his Arab peers, including Saudi, Emirati and Egyptian leaders, who reacted very embarrassingly to the American initiative, the Jordanian monarch unequivocally rejected it. The polite but firm foreign ministry statement fell just an hour after the Trump-Netanyahu show, during which the plan was presented.
