Jordan: Disenfranchising Palestinian Citizens

In a recent op-ed at The Jerusalem Post, Mudar Zahran criticizes the Jordanian government’s “on-going process of striping Palestinians in Jordan of their citizenships.” Noting that Jordan has instituted an official policy of revoking the citizenship of Jordanians of Palestinian decent– so far resulting in the denaturalization of over 2,700 individuals, according to a Human Rights Watch report – Zahran quotes Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Nayef al-Qadi as defending the decision, stating, “Jordan should be thanked for standing up against Israeli ambitions of unloading of the Palestinian land of its people.’” Zahran argues that the regime has established an “apartheid system” that discriminates against Jordanian Palestinians, who he says are allowed “little or no involvement in any political or executive bodies or parliament,” and have suffered from “decades of systematic exclusion in all aspects of life expanding into their disenfranchisement in education, employment, housing, state benefits and even business potential.”According to Zahran, the rise of radical conservative nationalist groups since 2008 has exacerbated this situation; the nationalists are calling for turning Jordanian Palestinians into refugees and thus creating a “Palestinian demographic bomb” to send to Israel. Zahran characterizes this trend as “a serious threat to regional stability and Israeli national security,” and calls on the international community to “make it clear to Jordan that both peace and integration of its own citizens are not privileges it is giving away to Israel or any other country.“