Alpher considers why the Israel Foreign Ministry campaign to portray the “Jewish refugee issue” as “somehow akin to the narrative of the 1948 Palestinian refugees” is”yet another classic instance of misjudgment and phony nationalism on the part of the Foreign Ministry under extremists Avigdor Lieberman and Danny Ayalon, and why he predicted that if the Arab revolutionary virus strikes anywhere that we haven’t seen it yet, his candidate would be Jordan.
Q. Last week, you mentioned an Israel Foreign Ministry campaign to portray the “Jewish refugee issue” as “somehow akin to the narrative of the 1948 Palestinian refugees”. You called the campaign “yet another classic instance of misjudgment and phony nationalism on the part of the Foreign Ministry under extremists Avigdor Lieberman and Danny Ayalon”. Why, what’s wrong with raising this issue?
A. As I noted last week, if indeed the Jews from Arab lands are refugees and are not, as portrayed by Israel for years, Zionist pioneers, this is an issue that should engage Israel and specific Arab states, not the Palestinians. The latter are thoroughly justified in referring Israel to bilateral negotiations with the Arab states from which these Jews fled, primarily in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Israel did indeed raise the issue with the Palestinians in previous negotiations and was, understandably, referred to the Arab states. That the Israel Foreign Ministry is raising the “Jewish refugee” issue now within the context of potential negotiations with the Palestinians reflects, in my view, bad faith and an attempt to evade sincere peace talks. Last week, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon brought the campaign to the United Nations with great fanfare.
One obvious area in which this campaign can only be explained as either a misunderstanding or a deception on Israel’s part is in comparing Jews who fled Arab countries with Palestinian refugees as if the two groups can be defined on the basis of identical criteria. The Jews in question quickly became Israeli (or European or American) citizens and received (particularly in Israel, where most of them migrated to) extensive resettlement aid and benefits. Sixty and 50 and 40 years ago, Israel never called them refugees.
On the other hand, those Palestinians who fled to Arab states because the Arabs made war on Israel in 1948 were, with the exception of Jordan, left stateless by their host countries and their status has been exploited ever since in the Arab struggle against Israel. A special United Nations agency, UNRWA, was created to care for them, inevitably further perpetuating their refugee status. The Palestinian narrative regarding the conflict continues, with full Arab backing, to call for Israel to accept the principle of “return” of five million refugees and their descendants–a demand understandably understood by Israel as signaling its demise as a Jewish state–as well as for financial compensation for properties left behind.
Israel is fully justified in pointing out the cynicism and callousness with which the Arab states have treated the Palestinians. It is justified in rejecting the “right of return”. But the cases are hardly comparable: Israel does not seek “return” for its Jewish citizens of Arab-state origin. On the contrary, it argues they now live in their homeland. As for compensation, Israel actually raised the issue with Egypt in the two countries’ peace negotiations that led to their 1979 peace treaty, and was told that Jews who fled Egypt and left behind property that was confiscated by the state could bring their cases to the Egyptian courts. Apparently, several cases brought by European lawyers on behalf of diaspora Egyptian Jews are still pending, though to the best of my knowledge none has yet been judged to merit compensation. Still, the point is that this agreement set a precedent for the way Israel and its Arab neighbors could deal with the issue, if and when they negotiate peace.
Nor is Israel justified in arguing that all 818,000 documented “Jewish refugees” from Arab countries were forced to abandon property for which they were never compensated. Many Moroccan Jews, for example–nearly one-third of the total–were able to sell their property before migrating. Over the years, Morocco and Tunisia have repeatedly invited Jews who left in the 1950s and 1960s to return and reclaim citizenship. Apparently the descendants of a few have indeed settled in Morocco, including Israeli gangsters who have avoided jail in Israel this way.
Finally, the timing of the Israel Foreign Ministry campaign is strange, to say the least. There is no peace process arena where Israel can present its demands. Is this campaign somehow supposed to give Israel a more positive profile at a time when its policies vis-a-vis the Palestinians, coupled with the Arab revolutions, render it increasingly isolated by the day? If so, it is doomed to fail.
Q. In last week’s Rosh HaShana issue you also wrote that if, in the year ahead, “the Arab revolutionary virus strikes anywhere that we haven’t seen it yet, my candidate would be Jordan. There, an otherwise popular monarch has thus far failed to really engage an increasingly pressing need for reform.” Can you elaborate?
A. I recently had the opportunity to discuss this with Jordanians involved in attempts to democratize the country’s political system. That system features an authoritarian monarch and an electoral process and parliament that favor heavy manipulation and minimal legislative authority. In the course of more than a year and a half of upheaval in a large part of the Arab world, Jordan has witnessed relatively limited demonstrations–mainly by East Bank Hashemite-allied tribes unhappy with their economic situation–and no fatalities. King Abdullah II has wisely sent unarmed police into the streets to deal with demonstrations and has even on occasion instructed the police to distribute bottled water to demonstrators.
Israel has a vital interest in stability in Jordan. The Hashemite Kingdom, with its peace treaty with Israel and moderate regional policies, forms a kind of “strategic depth” for Israel vis-a-vis more radical Iraq, anarchic Syria and the volatile Palestinian issue. It’s interesting to note that even hawkish Israeli politicians who rise to power by preaching that “Jordan is Palestine” change their tune upon reaching the premiership: Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu all have followed this pattern. But bilateral relations have deteriorated in recent years: the peace process has disappeared and the king has responded to this reality and to economic woes and political pressures engendered by the “Arab spring” by lowering the profile of his ties to Israel. Lately he has even (unjustly) accused Israel of thwarting legitimate Jordanian aspirations to develop nuclear energy–which in any case it cannot afford under current financial conditions. Only the security relationship remains stable.
Since the Arab revolutions began in early 2011, King Abdullah has initiated both electoral reform and party/parliamentary reform processes. Jordanian reformers argue that these changes are essentially rhetorical rather than practical and that the king is not getting sound advice from those who surround him. The new electoral system remains heavily biased in favor of East Bankers or Hashemite supporters rather than Palestinians (who are probably more than half the population) and the renascent Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, which is led primarily by Palestinians and forms the primary opposition movement. The newly-promulgated electoral law allows for only 18 percent (27 seats) of the 150-strong parliament to be chosen by nationwide lists; that the other 82 percent are elected unfairly is illustrated by the fact that in Hashemite/East Banker-populated areas, an MP is elected by roughly 7,000 voters, whereas in Amman with its largely Palestinian population it takes 100,000 voters to produce a single legislator.
One result of dissatisfaction with the reforms is that to date, after a prolonged and energetic government campaign, fewer than 50 percent of Jordan’s three million eligible voters have taken the trouble to register. Under these circumstances, a date for parliamentary elections has not even been set.
Jordanian reformers warn that relative quiet will not long prevail under these circumstances, especially with energy prices scheduled to rise by 300 percent in the coming 18 months and the country once again flooded with refugees–this time from Syria. Israel could within a few years help the kingdom solve its natural gas energy problems and alleviate its water scarcity as well. But the king would never make such a “normalization” request as long as there is no viable peace process with the Palestinians in place.
Nor can the Saudis be depended on to bail out the Hashemite Kingdom. They gave Jordan $1.5 billion last year, but have not been heard from in 2012, except to demand that Jordan agree to funnel military aid to Syrian rebels across the Jordan-Syria border. Of course, if this provokes more violence along that border, the king will have yet another excuse of “external threats” to explain the lack of real reform. On the other hand, given Jordan’s Palestinian demographic-political problem, and with Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority and Israel on its borders, the king will nearly always be able to cite some sort of internal or external threat.
Meanwhile, the Jordanian national debt has doubled in six years; aid this year from the United States, the European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council is proving insufficient. Jordanian reformers argue that the newly “reformed” system is designed to leave in place a rentier layer of privileged power strata financed largely by the trickle-down of foreign aid.
The remarkable aspect of the situation in Jordan, aside from the relative quiet thus far, is the fairly widespread readiness among the public to maintain the monarchy and follow the king’s lead in gradual, “top down” reform–with Morocco cited as a worthy model. Even under the new and still unfair system of distributing voting districts and allocating few seats via nation-wide lists, the Muslim Brotherhood might hope to win around one-third of the total. And the new parliament will be empowered to name the prime minister–a symbolic but hopefully significant aspect of authority the king has agreed to forfeit.
But will the Brotherhood agree to participate? And will Abdullah II give up more of his authority to a genuinely enfranchised parliament and bear the possible risk of political uncertainty and weakening of his rule that this could engender? If he doesn’t, is he not risking his entire kingdom? A growing number of informed observers of the scene in Jordan are increasingly fearful about the future.
Finally, if far-reaching change does take place in Jordan, how will Israel relate to it? Alternatively, how would Israel respond to genuine violent turmoil in Jordan, should it occur? The prospect of greater power for the country’s large Palestinian population could radically change the regional power equation.
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1 COMMENT
Jerome Richard | September 25, 2012 2:06 PM
When the two-state solution is finally achieved, the settlement structures should be left intact as compensation for Palestinian refugees.
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