Jordan-Palestine: 'Some would call that apartheid' (but its not Jews doing it...so its okay)

[Cleveland_7795]

Over the last Ten years; since the monarch of Jordan, King Abdulla II has succeeded his father, King Hussein, the government of Jordan has engaged in systematic, institutionalized discrimination against its silent majority; Jordanians of Palestinian ethnicity. The practice amounts to an apartheid system similar to that of South Africa

Over the last Ten years, Jordan’ Interior Ministry has withdrawn the citizenship from more than 50 thousand Jordanians of Palestinian origin; a clear violation of international law, U.S policy and Jordan’s constitution. A Human Rights Watch report titles: “Palestinians in Jordan, Stateless Again”, tackled the matter in details and proved the practice was discriminatory and based on ethnicity; this by itself constitutes an apartheid practice as non-Palestinians in Jordan do not face such discrimination

http://www.arabtimes.com/portal/news...ew=no&nid=7542

[archibaldcrane]

10/10

Spoiler: show

and when half our total foreign aid budget is propping up jordan, i'll be outraged as an american

[Elvis]

http://www.arabtimes.com/portal/news...ew=no&nid=7542

I'm touched that someone like you, who previously said this of the Palestinians:

Who the fuck cares? Palestinians can't fucking read anyway. The only 2 subjects in school are How to Hate and Kill Jews, and after lunch its revisionist history class.

[...]is suddenly concerned for their human rights. Palestinians are treated worse in Lebanon than in Jordan. You could have cited HRW reports on their status there as well but I think you were upset I posted another Israel-Palestine thread and thus, scoured the internet for something recent.

Regarding Lebanon, see: The Sabra and Shatilla massacre (however, Israel played a tactical role in the slaughter), the War of the Camps, etc.

At least now - implicitly - you are accepting that Palestinians are not Jordanians (or Lebanese for that matter). They have their own distinct national identity.

(Nowhere in the HRW report is the apartheid claim made implicitly or explicitly.)

Whereas prominent anti-apartheid (South Africa) political activists like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela or former US presidents like Jimmy Carter, have spoken out against Israeli apartheid and/or voiced their solidarity w/ the Palestinian struggle against Israeli colonialism (see: the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa report on Israeli Apartheid).

This is the report by HRW referenced in your source (why are you reading the ArabTimes BTW? LOL):
Stateless Again
Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality

Excerpt from the HRW report:

More than half of the 6.3 million population of Jordan is of Palestinian origin—that is, from areas west of the River Jordan, including the West Bank, today’s Israel, and Gaza. With the exception of persons from Gaza, the vast majority of those persons of Palestinian origin have Jordanian citizenship. However, since 1988, and especially over the past few years, the Jordanian government has been arbitrarily and without notice withdrawing Jordanian nationality from its citizens of Palestinian origin, making them stateless. For many of them this means they are again stateless Palestinians as they were before 1950.

Some Jordanian officials have said they are doing so in order to forestall supposed Israeli designs to colonize the West Bank, by maintaining the birthright of Palestinians to live in the West Bank. Yet the real reason may be Jordan’s desire to be able to rid itself of hundreds of thousands of Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin whom Jordan could then forcibly return to the West Bank or Israel as part of a settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem caused by the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars.

At least that appeared to be the interpretation of a high-ranking Ministry of Interior official who in July 2009 said that certain Jordanians of Palestinian origin would remain Jordanian nationals only until such time that a refugee settlement had been reached.

So far, Jordan has withdrawn its nationality from thousands of its citizens of Palestinian origin—over 2,700 between 2004 and 2008 alone. It has done so, in the individual cases Human Rights Watch identified, in an arbitrary manner and in violation of Jordan’s nationality law of 1954. Under that law Palestinian residents of the West Bank in 1949 or thereafter received full Jordanian nationality following Jordan’s incorporation of the West Bank in April 1950.

Israel admits it covertly canceled residency status of 140,000 Palestinians
Document obtained by Haaretz reveals that between 1967 and 1994 many Palestinians traveling abroad were stripped of residency status, allegedly without warning.

The Jordanians of Palestinian origin are refugees from the 1948 war and the 1967 war.

It is unsurprising that in both Lebanon and Jordan, Palestinians are treated poorly. Jordan is not a democracy - it is a family-run dictatorship. Jordan has signed a peace treaty w/ Israel and is one of our few Arab allies in the region.

Relations between the United States and Jordan have been close for 6 decades, with 2009 marking the 60th anniversary of U.S.-Jordanian ties. A primary objective of U.S. policy has been the achievement of a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace in the Middle East.

U.S. policy seeks to reinforce Jordan's commitment to peace, stability, and moderation. The peace process and Jordan's opposition to terrorism parallel and indirectly assist wider U.S. interests. Accordingly, through economic and military assistance and through close political cooperation, the United States has helped Jordan maintain its stability and prosperity.

The Hashemites in Jordan are a minority among the substantial Palestinian population. However, the comparison between the status of Palestinians in Lebanon or Jordan and their status in Israel is apples and oranges.

In Israel, the Palestinians have been living under military rule for almost 50 years with no national rights and no voting rights while they are slowly ethnically cleansed and subject to on-going human rights abuses.

In Lebanon, there are roughly 415,000 Palestinian refugees - who are classified into 3 categories:

Spoiler: show

1. Refugees registered with UNRWA and the Lebanese authorities.
   The number of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon registered with the UNRWA in June 2006 was 406,342 (about 10% of the population of Lebanon). They are Palestinians who had fled Palestine in 1948 (UNRWA).
   
2. Palestinian Refugees registered with the Lebanese authorities (non-registered Palestinian refugees).
   There are Palestinian refugees registered with the Lebanese authorities but not with UNRWA and are estimated to number between 10,000 and 40,000, according to the European Union’s Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) (Amnesty International, 2003). UNRWA states that the Lebanese Ministry of Interior has ‘unofficially’ informed it that these refugees number 13000 (UNRWA, ‘The Latest Developments in the Living Conditions of Palestine Refugees in Lebanon’, 2006). Half of these refugees were registered by the Red Cross and later by the Lebanese Government, and are also 1948 refugees, while the rest were registered under the orders of former Interior Ministries in the period of 1969 – 1978 and are 1967 displaced persons.
   
3. Non-ID Palestinian refugees.
   The number non-ID Palestinian refugees in Lebanon is subject to controversy: the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) in March 2003 issued a report estimating there to be 10,000 of them; the US Committee for Refugees estimated 16,000 (World Refugee Survey, 2003); and the Danish Refugee Council, who carried out a survey in 2005, estimated the number at 3,000 people.

Source - Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon - Forced Migration Online Project, based in the Refugee Studies Centre, at the University of Oxford's Department of International Development

Max Blumenthal on the harsh situation for Palestinians in Lebanon:



There is no comparison to how Palestinians are treated in Israel to how they are treated in Jordan. The 400K+ Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have suffered greatly historically (and have carried out violence against w/ the Christian population in Lebanon) as well as in the present under apartheid-like conditions. None of this compares to how they are treated in Israel though, because the relationship and power dynamic between Israel and the Palestinians is of a wholly different nature (colonial conflict). Palestinians in Jordan are not Palestinians but Jordanians of Palestinian descent.

In Israel, Palestinians are being continually driven off their land (continuous since before the declaration of Israeli Statehood, in spite of Zionist memes like 'the Arab armies attacked Israel as soon as it was born' or some variation upon that lie).

Furthermore, even inside Israel-Palestine, Palestinians could be divided into sub-categories:
1. The Israeli Arab population of Israel proper
2. The Palestinians living in Gaza
3. The Palestinians living in the West Bank and E. Jerusalem
4. The Bedouins (who are sometimes considered distinct from the Palestinians, although it really doesn't matter since they were ethnically cleansed along w/ the former and are treated as poorly historically and in the present. Sometimes worse.)

Israeli Arabs are institutionally discriminated against but they are Israeli citizens. Their struggle is different from that of the Palestinians in the OT. And within the OT, Palestinians in Gaza are struggling to live under the on-going blockade and are ruled by the Hamas government. Except, recently Hamas has entered into a unity government w/ Fatah so things are changing (how much is an uncertainty, because the PA has no real power).

And in the West Bank and E. Jerusalem, the Palestinians are actively being ethnically cleansed.

I won't mince my words about the status of Palestinians as a whole in Israel - it's simply much worse than anywhere else for them in the world because of how fragmented their society is (from one another and from themselves).

[Brill Weave]

So is this about Jordan or Israel Elvis?

[Elvis]

So is this about Jordan or Israel Elvis?

This is about Israel, but I spent enough time in my comment covering the HRW report and related issues.

The guy made the thread w/ the contention that Jordan is practicing apartheid. He made this thread because I made a thread a couple of hours before:

http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/109...that-apartheid

If it wasn't obvious, look at the title of my thread:

Israel-Palestine: 'Some would call that apartheid'

Look at the title of the cleveland's thread:

Jordan-Palestine: 'Some would call that apartheid' (but its not Jews doing it...so its okay)

Derp.

[Elvis]

Oh and the quote I put in my thread title is referring to a comment made by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.).

[Brill Weave]

OMG all I wanted was for you to say Jordan or Israel you donk lol.

[Demosthenes11]

it should be expected that any thread with "israel" or "palestine" in the title will be full of long ass posts that are bold / multicolored that have many different sized fonts

[Elvis]

OMG all I wanted was for you to say Jordan or Israel you donk lol.

I did!

I said Israel.

Then I said WHY.

[Elvis]

it should be expected that any thread with "israel" or "palestine" in the title will be full of long ass posts that are bold / multicolored that have many different sized fonts

I don't post in varying fonts anymore. I've matured.

[Brill Weave]

So the Jordanians are fucking with the Palestinians because of puppies? This is why I hate politics.

[Elvis]

Not just puppies. Teacup Chihuahuas.

[Milkster]

Serious question, why is the whole Isreal-Palestine thing such a big deal? I try to keep up but I, honestly, get confused on why they're fighting and who is who. If someone could like a few articles on the entire history, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Mazmaz]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli...inian_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...inian_conflict

?

[Elvis]

Serious question, why is the whole Isreal-Palestine thing such a big deal? I try to keep up but I, honestly, get confused on why they're fighting and who is who. If someone could like a few articles on the entire history, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I've said many times that I am pro-Palestinian. I don't believe you can be impartial on this issue, although there are people who come close IMO (like an Israeli author named Sandy Tolan, who wrote a book called - The Lemon Tree - An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East).

So this is my recommendation, which you should take w/ a grain of salt. It is a short video lecture by an Israeli named Miko Peled, wherein he gives a primer on the conflict:

YT description/quick biography of who Miko is:

Spoiler: show

Miko Peled is a peace activist who dares to say in public what others still choose to deny. Born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family, his grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His Father, Matti Peled, was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Sinai.

Miko's unlikely opinions reflect his father's legacy. General Peled was a war hero turned peacemaker.

Miko grew up in Jerusalem, a multi-ethnic city, but had to leave Israel before he made his first Palestinian friend, the result of his participation in a dialogue group in California. He was 39.

On September 4, 1997 the beloved Smadar, 13, the daughter of Miko's sister Nurit and her husband Rami Elhanan was killed in a suicide attack.

Peled insists that Israel/Palestine is one state—the separation wall notwithstanding, massive investment in infrastructure, towns and highways that bisect and connect settlements on the West Bank, have destroyed the possibility for a viable Palestinian state. The result, Peled says is that Israelis and Palestinians are governed by the same government but live under different sets of laws.

At the heart of Peled's conclusion lies the realization that Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace as equals in their shared homeland.

I consider Miko's comments to be profound because of his personal biography and the context of his family history.



Another short video lecture is by an Israeli named, Amnon Neumann.

Neumann fought in the 1948 War and participated in atrocities (his own admission). He was interviewed on his own volition, by an Israeli organization called, Zochrot. 'Zochrot' is Hebrew for 'Remembering' - which describes the purpose of the organization.

Zochrot ("Remembering") seeks to raise public awareness of the Palestinian Nakba, especially among Jews in Israel, who bear a special responsibility to remember and amend the legacy of 1948. The principal victims of the Nakba were the Palestinians, especially the refugees, who lost their entire world. But Jews in Israel also pay a price for their conquest of the land in 1948, living in constant fear and without hope.

The Nakba destroyed the fabric of relations that existed between Jews and Palestinians before 1948. In recognizing and materializing the right of return lies the possibility for Jews and Palestinians to live in this country together.

Zochrot carries out different projects to advance understanding of Nakba and its legacy. This website is one of those projects. The site presents information about the Palestinian localities that Israel destroyed in 1948 and about the Nakba's place in our lives today. The Nakba is spoken in different voices on this site — in photographs, testimonies, maps, prose, and more. Zochrot's is one of these voices, a voice that seeks recognition for injustice and new paths toward change and repair.

Zochrot often seeks out veterans of the 48' War or Palestinians who survived it, to talk about what happened from their point of view.

This is the testimony of an Israeli soldier - a former member of the Palmach (Wiki, only for cursory information):