Jordan’s King Abdullah – Friend or foe to Israel?

The same monarch who came to the aid of Israel, when attacked by Iran on April 13th, allowing Israeli aircraft full operational freedom in their airspace and helping to intercept Iranian drones on their way to our territory, has just categorically announced that “Jordan will never be the alternate homeland of the Palestinians.”

Apparently wanting to make it clear, that no matter how the Israel-Hamas war turns out, these people will not be able to find a refuge on his shores. But those sentiments are widely known, so why did he feel the need to forcefully express them now? 

It appears that King Abdullah is digging in, further staking his claim and making sure that no one has any illusions that Jordan will welcome in more Palestinians, adding to the already 1/2 to 2/3 of Palestinians who make up Jordan’s population, including his own wife, Queen Rania.

So emphatic was the king, that he made the claim that any “displacement of Palestinians constitutes a war crime,” intimating that anything short of returning them to Gaza would be an act worthy of legal action before the international courts. In fact, he has resorted to the “dead as a doornail” two-state solution, a concept which he must know has been rejected by Hamas, the governing body over Gazans, who have no intention of living side by side, peaceably with Jewish Israelis.

So why would he even suggest a rejected solution, evidenced by the massacre of October 7th, which aimed to strike a deep and bludgeoning assault on the Jewish homeland, with the delusional goal of somehow emptying out our country to eventually seize it for themselves? 

King Abdullah is an intelligent man who, given his precarious position of having to maintain his base of power, against all those who would love nothing more than to overthrow him, has his finger on the pulse of ever-changing Middle-East events, to adeptly strategize the best means for survival – his, especially.

Nonetheless, he has taken the opportunity to “accuse Israel of deliberately targeting the entire Palestinian people in a speech in which he never called out Hamas for its October 7 attack on Israel and presented the Jewish state as the sole aggressor in the conflict.”

But, if he really believed that, then why did he help those same “aggressors” when Iran threatened our existence? Why wouldn’t he let them destroy us and ensure that Palestinians have a home that’s not Jordan? It surely would have helped to secure his own position, knowing that terrorists, such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood would not be able to rattle his cage too much.

None of this makes much sense when you think about it. One day, he helps us, and the next day he’s blaming us for having the nerve to defend ourselves after being the victim of a brutal massacre which, had it been carried out in his own country, he would have likely done much worse than what we’ve done up until now. Yet, somehow, we are at fault by fighting back to defend our citizens and our rightful homeland?

Obviously, there is much more to this saber-rattling than choosing a random moment to vent and make sure that everyone knows Jordan is off-limits.

Claiming that “he grew up as a soldier in a region that is all too familiar with conflict,” he, of all people, should know that Israel has endeavored to live in peace with all of her neighbors, to the point where multiple, generous peace proposals were offered, which, for the sake of tranquility and security, would have provided enough territory to comfortably house all of the Palestinians living in much smaller areas. The bottom line is that they didn’t want those deals then, and they don’t want them now.

And this is why King Abdullah is frantic. Understanding that the Jewish homeland is here to stay, especially in light of the way events are playing out in this year-long battle, he perceives a threat to his own country and leadership, knowing that we will not lose. This is why he smells trouble. He knows that these terrorists will stop at nothing. He also knows that Jordan is not as well-equipped as Israel to deal with the likes of Hamas extremists whose Muslim Brotherhood counterparts now have a foothold in his government.

Undoubtedly, the possibility of a coup, by their ilk, has not escaped his imagination. And that is why he has taken a tough stand against his neighboring country of Israel, by suggesting that a “global accountability” must be enforced in order to ensure that “repeated horrors are not normalized, threatening to create a future where anything is permitted, anywhere in the world.”

He must be referring to Israel, because he’s called on the UN to “create a means to protect Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem,” despite the fact that no one is threatening any of them so long as they are committed to living peaceably alongside us. But they aren’t. Today, many of the terrorists who either attempt acts of terror or are on their way to commit them, on Israelis, come from the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Of course, we know how Gazans feel about us, as they celebrated the news of our massacre.

But King Abdullah is worried and deeply concerned over Israel’s targeting of UN sites in Gaza. Well, he should be, because those sites also housed weapons meant to exterminate us, and had they been intended to hurt him, he would not have hesitated to flatten them without one thought of the global criticism he’d receive. 

While his lament over “rulings of the UN’s International Court of Justice are defied and its opinions disregarded,” who is he kidding? If he really believed that, why would he lift one finger to help us? 

It’s sad, but the king can’t have it both ways. It’s understandable that he wants to secure his position, but he also must be honest enough to admit that the Palestinians, whom he claims have endured more than 57 years of ‘occupation and oppression’ have not done so due to Israel. 

He doesn’t want them, and they don’t want us, so rather than pointing a finger, he would do well to join forces with Israel and try to find a workable solution that keeps our two nations intact, rather than turn on us as a foe. Because, in the end, even he’d have to admit that we’re a much better neighbor than what a Palestinian state would be on his border, endlessly plotting how they could take over full control of his beloved Hashemite Kingdom.