CPTnet

AMMAN: Jordan is a waiting room

by Greg Rollins

As some of you know, I am currently in Amman, Jordan doing some work for
CPT. With Israel/Palestine to the west and Iraq to the east, Jordan is a
waiting room for other people's problems.

Out of a population of five million people, 60 percent of Jordan is
Palestinian. Palestinian refugee camps make up a huge part of Amman and dot
the rest of the country. Israel chased the first refugees here in 1949 when
they took over much of Palestine, and again in 1967 when they took over the
Gaza Strip and West Bank. Ask any Palestinian you meet here where he is from
and he will name a place in Israel/Palestine. A place that his father or
even grandfather was chased out of and he himself has never seen. The
Palestinians are now waiting for the Right of Return (as they and the UN
call it) but Israel refuses to allow them to come back.

Now enter a new refugee, the Iraqis. Once under the dictatorship of Saddam,
now they see themselves under the dictatorship of the U.S. Currently, an
estimated 400,000 Iraqis reside in Jordan. More come every day. Some Iraqis
are waiting for visas from other countries. Some are waiting for refugee
status from the U.N. so they can seek asylum in other countries. But few
countries are accepting Iraqis right now. Canada and Australia are said to
be the only two.

Most Iraqis are here because they have no other choice and now they are
simply waiting. Waiting to find work, waiting for medical treatment or
waiting for the situation back home to calm down. Many Iraqis fled after
they received death threats in Iraq. Some, because they worked with U.S.
forces, or were accused of working against U.S. forces. Some received death
threats because they worked with journalists, or even as one Iraqi told me,
because he helped Western aid groups hand out money to Iraqi families in
need. None of these people know how long they will have to wait.

What does the government of Jordan think about all these people waiting?
They say little. Jordan has made peace with Israel and encourages the new
government of Iraq. Throughout the last three and a half decades Jordan has
tried to stay out of the wars here in the Middle East. The king of Jordan
knows that the key to survival is staying friends with everyone. That
includes the U.S. After Israel and Egypt, Jordan receives the third largest
amount, three billion dollars, of U.S. foreign aid.

In the mean time, the Palestinians and Iraqis in Jordan continue to wait.
They wait for threats back home to die down. They wait for wars to end and
occupiers to leave or let them return. They wait between banishment and
evacuation.