Rana Husseini is tall, unusually tall for a Jordanian. Several years ago I met her when she was collecting signatures on a petition to do away with honor killing in Jordan. “If you are Jordanian, please sign the petition”, she asked the mixed Arab and western crowd. I got the point. I am a westerner and will never be able to understand this culture completely. Anything said by a westerner would be interpreted as unwelcome foreign meddling and would hinder the cause.

Rana Husseini covered crime stories for the Jordan times. Every time I was in the capital I picked up a copy of the paper and looked for her byline. Over and over again she wrote the stories of women killed by their families. A thirteen year old boy saw his sister talking on the telephone, thought she was talking to a man, and strangled her with the phone cord. Another woman confessed to her brother that she was pregnant by an Egyptian who had left the country. The brother promised to get her an abortion and an operation to restore her virginity, then returned with a gun and shot her. Sometimes Husseini would go to a village and no one would talk to her about the killing. Other times she received death threats herself.

During the time I lived there about 30 women were killed by their families every year. The upper house of Jordan’s parliament, appointed by the King, had passed a bill against honor killings, but the bill could not pass the lower house, whose members are elected, largely through tribal politics. Since I left the law has changed. Honor killing is now illegal in Jordan.

Is honor killing Islamic? In an article for PBS, Husseini says no:

I want to emphasize two things. One is that all women are not threatened in this way in my country. Any woman who speaks to any man will not be killed. These crimes are isolated and limited, although they do cross class and education boundaries. The other thing is a lot of people assume incorrectly that these crimes are mandated by Islam, but they are not. Islam is very strict about killing, and in the rare instances where killing is counseled, it is when adultery is committed within a married couple. In these cases, there must be four eyewitnesses and the punishment must be carried out by the community, not by the family members involved.

Honor killings are part of a culture, not a religion, and occur in Arab communities in the United States and many countries. One-third of the reported homicides in Jordan are honor killings. The killers are treated with leniency, and families assign the task of honor killing to a minor, because under Jordanian juvenile law, minors who commit crimes are sentenced to a juvenile center where they can learn a profession and continue their education, and then, at eighteen, be released without a criminal record. The average term served for an honor killing is only seven and a half months.

Rana Husseini has written a book on the subject, Murder in the Name of Honor. When it is released, it should be well worth reading.

Cross-posted at Chilling Out.

Here is a Jordanian goat.

The goat belongs to Fatma. Fatima is the one on the left. Yes, they have tatoos on their faces. I found out later that Jordanian women don’t usually allow themselves to be photographed.  I hope I don’t get into trouble with the Bene Sakr for this one.

Fatima is stirring up the goats with a stick to try to get them to be more photogenic for the picture.

Then Fatma took a picture of me with the goat. I don’t know if she ever used a camera before.

[photo edited]

I know a Jordanian guy who put a photo of his wife on the internet–she had a proper scarf on, hair completely covered  and everything.  He had to take it down after some guys at work started making nasty comments about her. There were pictures of his kids too, but that wasn’t a problem.  I wanted to take a picture of her–I had stayed with the family a few times–but by then she didn’t want anyone taking her picture because of the bad experience.

It’s too bad when women’s photos have to be removed–in any culture. You don’t see that happening with men.

“How can I find out about what Palestinians think”, I was asked on another thread. Well, there’s the Jordan Times. And I forgot to mention all of King Abdullah’s speeches. What an intellect.

And what about this issue and that issue that people keep bringing up? You can’t really talk about it in a short quip on a thread. Sometimes it’s more complicated and takes time to explain. So here is a list of sources I recommend as well as what is on this blog about Palestinians so far. Sort of an index.

News sources

The Jordan Times-Jordanian online newspaper in English (the King reads this paper)

The Maan News Agency- Palestinian news service, because you know it’s not going to be on the evening news.

bitterlemons-international.org-Middle East round table–op ed’s reprinted from various international publications.

The Christian Science Monitor-always in depth and reflective when they write about the Middle East

The Israel Lobby

Chomsky Ditches Rockefeller Chapel, Politics is Still Local-Chomsky, the Israel lobby, and professors Norman Finkelstein and Mehrene Larudee

J Street–a new American Jewish lobby for a two state solution- not all American Jews are neocons who oppose the formation of a Palestinian state

Chomsky, Israel Lobby co-author Mearsheimer to speak at Chicago’s Rockefeller Chapel in October 2007-book: Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Policy. Is the Israel lobby the only thing preventing the formation of a Palestinian state?

A Moslem Conspiracy: Brigitte Gabriel’s frightened war-zone vision of population politics-Gabriel is a Lebanese Christian who grew up in a war zone in Lebanon and was helped to asylum by Israeli sources.

Arab Extremists

Jordan stops flirting with Hamas…for now-sequel to “American loses it last Arab friend” about the unfortunate “Jordan as Palestinian homeland” provocation

America loses its last Arab friend-Jordan talks to (gasp!) Hamas. Yup, it’s about that “Jordan as Palestinian homeland” business again

Hamas takeover of Gaza- “Follow the money–another proxy war between Iran and the U.S.”

Vintage 1969 Middle East Fanaticism Quotation-the secretive Miles Copland

Palestine just a pawn in Copeland’s 1952 Game of Nations-Promoting stability in the Middle East. “After Nasser’s successful Egyptian coup, his people were again in touch with American diplomats and eventually they came around to the American view of the necessity of using Israel as the scapegoat to unite the country…”

Speeches by Abdullah II, King of Jordan.

This guy is my hero. Seriously. His photo is above my computer, and I have archived a lot of his old speeches from back when the Jordan Times articles were only online for a week.  When I take a notion to monitor the use of this website, I can see people from university IP’s looking at these speeches for long periods of time, so I know I’m not the only one who appreciates both his scholarship and his street wisdom. The King has some of the speeches (like the Amman Statement about moderate Islam–oh wait that has its own website) on his official website as well, also some op-ed pieces he has written for major western publications. He believes in Palestinian statehood, and his confidence makes me sure it can happen now, in this election cycle.

The Amman Message: how Jordan understands Islam–text of remarks by King Abdullah II, November 2004

Text of King Abdullah’s message to U.S. congress March 7, 20007

Transcript of Interview, Jordan’s King Abdullah 4-10-07

Transcript of interview with Jordan’s King Abdullah May 9, 2007 with Egyptian Al Ahram daily

Prosperity, stability, a crucial model for other countries: Text of King Abdullah II remarks at opening of Dead Sea G-11 Economic Summit 5-19-07

Remarks by King Abdullah 5-21-07 to Nik Gowing, BBC World, at the side of G11 Economic Forum

Text of Jordan’s King Abdullah’s remarks to Al Ghad daily July 1, 2007

Text of Jordan King Abdullah’s remarks at Canadian Foreign Ministry 7-13-07

Text of Jordan King Abdullah II interview with JTV 8-31-07

Text of remarks by King Abdullah II to the World Economic Forum at Sharm al-Sheikh 5-19-08

Palestinian Statehood

U.S. pledges $900 million at Gaza conference-Hillary says money will not go to Hamas

Palestinian Scuttlebutt: “Mish Harb”-sniffing the Arab Street in Chicago after the Gaza military action

If Mahmoud Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence–where is it?- by the end of the rant I have found the link–yes, it’s real.

Remembering Mahmoud Darwish-the Palestinian poet who wrote the Palestinian Declaration of independence–links to poems that are incredible even in translation.

Palestine screws up again, rejects statehood- a rant against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for rejecting an offer of statehood as Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert leaves office–because of Jerusalem.

Palestine Independence: Who would provide security?

Obama weasels on Palestine-parsing Obama’s campaign speech in Amman and his answers to questions that seem evasive on second glance, and I’m afraid another rant.

Obama: remaking the world is not for Woman-Obama campaigning in Israel and writing an inscription–but not with gender neutral language

Does John McCain want to destroy Jordan?-A report that an aide to presidential candidate John McCain wants to “turn Jordan into a Palestinian state” is apparently a hoax on the part of a website dedicated to “Destroying the kingdom of Jordan peacefully”.  I like Jordan.

The Palestinian State: Parsing King Abdullah-still trying to figure out the mystery of what exactly is holding up statehood for Palestine–it sure isn’t the King.

Palestinian Independence: Waiting for the Pole to Turn Green-a meaningless rant expressing impatience with the Palestinians for not unilaterally declaring independence.

Is a Palestinian State Offensive?- a rant against Palestinian apathy about statehood

Last September I bookmarked a newspaper piece about Jordan courting Hamas and promptly forgot about it.  The headline was “As a Palestinian state recedes, Jordan contacts Hamas“, the piece in the Lebanese Daily Star by Saad Hattar, but only the first paragraph is still available without a subscription to the archives.

Jordan’s move to thaw relations with the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) following nine years of estrangement has raised eyebrows as to the timing and the motives behind this tactic. Internal and external factors dictated the rapprochement amid growing Jordanian dismay at American and Israeli behavior.

Today there was a new headline, “Jordan and Hamas: a window briefly opened, then shut” and Hamas has once again become the orphan child in Jordan.  This piece is by Rana Sabbagh-Gargour, who the Daily Star  describes as “a journalist and former chief editor of The Jordan Times”. Since these things tend to disappear quickly, (yes, I know people use these pages for research) I have also archived it here.

I remember the first time I met Rana Sabbagh, as she was called then, at the old Jordan Times building in Amman. It started with a chance meeting with a man named Abdul Rahman on a bus. Many people gave me their addresses or phone numbers when meeting me for the first time, and I usually filed them and ignored them, but for some reason, after a week or so I went and looked up Abdul Rahman at the small supermarket (a hole in the wall grocery store, actually) where he worked. It turned out he had been an editor in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. The country of the paper he was working for at the time was at odds with Iraq, so he had spent some time in Iraqi prison and still had problems walking as a result of strokes he had after being beaten in prison. He knew I was a teacher, but he told me I should write, and introduced me to his friends as “a journalist”. “Write a newspaper article about this subject”, he said, mentioning something that had just happened that day. “Then take it to the Jordan times and ask for the editor”, he told me. I did. At the desk at the entry to the Jordan Times/al-Rai building, they were dubious, but they made a phone call and directed me to that area. Rana Sabbagh was in a meeting at the moment, but I was escorted to a small room where I explained my business and handed over the article I had written. A half hour later, she appeared. She was concise, brief, strictly business. She told me exactly why she couldn’t accept the article, and told me what to do about it. A week later I brought her another article which she bought. I cannot even begin to describe what it feels like to see your own byline for the first time. Thank you Abdul Rahman; thank you Rana Sabbagh.

So back to Jordan and Hamas.  If you really want to understand the complicated dance between Hamas and Jordan, read the whole thing.  You will get everything you need to know about the situation without having to read anything else for background.  But one thing really struck me. Jordan is allied with the Egypt/Saudi/PLA group and against terrorism of Hamas/ Hizbollah/Iran/ Syria.  Jordan was itself the target of a spectacular assault on a wedding party by suicide bombers.

What then could entice Jordan, which some have called America’s only Arab friend, to open talks with Hamas, a notorius group on the CIA’s terrorist list that Jordan has little reason to love? Jordan hates religious extremists.  Jordan hates terrorists.  There were the usual answers you would expect about yesterday’s elections in Israel, and wanting to give the new U.S. president time to format policy, but just like back in the days when Rana Sabbagh was editing the Jordan Times, when the most startling and provokative ideas were found after you turn the page five, column six,  Rana Sabbagh has buried her most interesting observations in the ending paragraphs of her piece.   Jordan’s sudden courtship of Hamas was triggered by the fear of  a new massaive influx of refugees, this time from Palestine.

Insiders say the GID had little confidence that Abbas’ PA would not collapse in 2009, either leaving a power vacuum in the West Bank that might be challenged by Hamas or allowing Hamas simply to take the helm. In either case, the GID assumed that Hamas would prevent the influx of West Bank Palestinians to Jordan. And it would help ease the spillover of any security deterioration that would likely follow the PA’s collapse.

[Mohammad] Dhahabi’s [former head of Jordan's General Intelligence Department (GID), who was removed on December 29] calculation also reflected growing mistrust within the Jordanian establishment of Fatah, the dominant faction in the PLO, which Abbas heads. Dhahabi was worried that Fatah elites might negotiate a peace deal at the expense of Jordanian interests to save their faltering legitimacy. Having Hamas and the Jordanian Islamists on the side of official Jordan would curb the agenda of influential politicians in the US and Israel who continue to see Jordan as an “alternative homeland” for Palestinians.

Jordan’s sudden affection for Hamas, then was a result of powerful American interest groups (Jewish and Christian, although Sabbagh is too polite to say so) who do not accept the two state solution.

Jordan has now changed direction, but for how long?  Sixty per cent of Jordanians are Palestinian.  Jordan has welcomed wave after wave of refugees–Armenians, Circassians, Palestinians (after both the 1948 war and the 1967 war), and then the Iraqis.  The Palestinian refugees, led by Hamas, started a civil war against Jordan in 1969, because after being pushed out of the West Bank, they wanted to use Jordan to continue their war on Israel.  Several assassination attempts against King Hussein failed.  How much more chaos can Jordan absorb?  If Jordan’s Kings weren’t possibly the smartest heads of state in the world, America and Israel might long ago have lost their staunchest ally in the Arab world to religious extremists.

For now, the rapprochement with Hamas is (officially, at least) dead.  But I suspect it wouldn’t take much to bring it back.

“We will continue to push for a two-state solution to protect Jordan’s security and stability while making sure that Palestinians in the West Bank are empowered with security and economic stability to stay on the ground and to bury the ‘Jordan is Palestine’ scenario,” a Jordanian official has said.

“We will not allow any local or regional forces to push us to embrace the agenda of chaos and destruction that Iran and its allies are pursuing.”

This is a joke right? Americans would never tell a sovereign nation they had to accept a massive resettlement of people from another country so they could be forced out because they were the wrong ethnic group?  Wrong.  Since the latest action in Gaza, the late night threads of PumaPAC have teemed with exactly that kind of sentiment.  I thought it would disappear after the inauguration, but it has continued.  In fact just yesterday it appeared here.  If Jordan does ever embrace terrorism it won’t be because they want to but because they were pushed to by American extremists like this.

This is way cool.  I just checked back with Forvo, a website for listening to words pronounced in their own languages. Last week I posted the name of Jordan’s King Abdullah II ( الملك عبد الله الثاني بن الحسين) to be pronounced by a native speaker.  Already someone from Jordan has made a recording of the pronunciation. Thanks, lkurdi!

Here’s a breakdown of the Arabic, in case you don’t want to go to the effort with google translate:

الملك king (malik, actually al-malik if you include the definite article)

عبد الله Abdullah (two separate words عبد adb slave or servant and الله Allah,  God–it is forbidden to name anyone “slave” without adding “God” or a name of God). It looks like separate word here, but is actually one word, because the letter dahl د does not connect to any letter that follows it.

الثاني  the second (ithani, actually al-ithani with the definite article)

بن son of (bin, technially ibin ابن is son )

الحسين Hussein (al-Hussein or  “the Hussein”– of course this would be the late King Hussein, Abdullah’s father)

Right now I feel like I could just reach out and touch Jordan.

Last night my neighbor told me she was keeping the children inside because West Nile Virus had just been discovered in several of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods, including this one.  Just a few streets over, they still didn’t have electric services restored after the heavy storms and rains that have swept through in the last few days.  And now, with more  standing water in the alleys and nearby nature preserves, we’re in for even more mosquitoes.  Sick, diseased mosquitoes.

Getting infected with West Nile isn’t like catching a cold either. Since the first two dead cows in 2001 confirmed that West Nile had entered the state, 94 people have died from the disease, just in Illinois.  While the epicenter of West Nile deaths has move westward form Illinois to Colorado to California, a hot spot remains in urban Chicago.

When I lived in Jordan back in 2000, there was an outbreak of West Nile virus in Israel just across the border, a 40-minute cab ride away.  I saw notices in the newspaper, films of mosquitoes on channel 2  (the only channel I could pull in), and after dusk chemical trucks spraying the streets on either side of Abdali bus station in central Amman.  Nobody died from West Nile in Jordan.

In the last 7 years, West Nile virus has entered this country and spread like wildfire, killing 94 people and preventing children from playing outdoors in the summer.  Where is our government?  In the past we have seen the federal government take the lead in controlling and even wiping out numerous diseases like influenza and polio.  It used to be that fearing mosquitoes was something that happened in third world malaria prone areas like Africa.  Where is the federal government now?  Oh, yeah, that’s right.  They’re busy trying to impose their religion on everybody else by trying to redefine contraceptives as abortion.

If you have never seen King Abdullah the Second of Jordan speak, you can now see him on YouTube, thanks to Charlie Rose.

The videos are: |here| from the Royal Palace in Jordan (date unknown, but after the Palestinian election and before the Iraqi one), |here| from Washington after a meeting with Secretary of State Colin Powell, |March 19, 2002 here|, and |September 16, 2003 here|with the sound quality so poor and out of sync you can hardly hear the video, also King Abdullah is shown |here| in the first two minutes of something called the YPO Leadership conference, date unknown.

Who can forget the King’s entrance into the public spotlight with the Middle Eastern soccer championship, less than a year after the death of his father, the late King Hussein. At every game the king was front and center wearing a sport jersey and jumping up from his seat with both arms straight up in the air whenever there was a goal. No wonder the Jordan team was so inspired to win.

And that poor player from Iraq who made a goal in the wrong direction, inadvertently scoring for Jordan. Things will not go well for him, my Palestinian friends told me. Uday, the son of Saddam Hussein, was in charge of the team and on his return for sure the player would be tortured or killed for that blunder.

On the night that Jordan won the championship, all over the country there was celebratory gunfire. I was watching with some Americans near Madaba and at the end of the game decided not to return to my lodging until all the gunfire was over.

I kept a photo of the King in my digs while I was in Jordan and still have one over my desk. The King’s speeches were available to read in the Jordan Times, somewhat buried in the back pages, but they always published the whole thing verbatim in an “unofficial transcript”. I remember reading Fidel Castro’s speeches back in college. Our university paper used to receive a copy of the Havana propaganda publication with Fidel’s speeches printed in the front. I never did get entirely through one speech. They were just the same thing over and over again. Viva the homeland, venceremos, we will win, etc, etc.

Abdullah’s speeches aren’t at all like that. They are incredibly well thought out. You have to wonder if Abdullah even has a speechwriter–where would he find someone who could express those ideas so well? Apparently he thinks on his feet a lot better than the American presidential candidates too, as I was always amazed by the way he was able to answer reporters’ questions off the cuff.

When I returned to the U.S. I found out that King Abdullah had been interviewed by Charlie Rose several times. Unfortunately you had to have a credit card and order the video which they would mail to you for a nominal fee. So if your old Jordanian roommate is in town overnight and you are in the mood to watch it NOW, too bad. Later the videos got put together into an archive, so you had to order several hours worth of shows to just see one of the king.

The king continued to make riveting speeches, at least from the standpoint of someone like me who was looking for enlightenment about the unfathomable Arab culture, politics, and current events. The Jordan Times continued to print his speeches in their internet edition. Unfortunately they were only online for a week, until their latest Sunday through Thursday issue replaced the previous weeks’ issue. I started cutting and pasting the entire speeches into my January 2004 archives. The Jordan Times now keeps more extensive archives, and the King’s own website has his written pieces that have been published in the west, but this is probably one of the few places you can still find online transcripts of some of the King’s previous speeches.

So now my favorite interviewer, Charlie Rose, and my favorite world leader, King Abdullah, are together on video and available for the world to see. Hopefully Charlies’ s archivists will get around to putting the dates on the videos (and fixing the sound) sometime soon.

It was all a hoax, but the Arab world keeps talking about it all the same.

A report that an aide to presidential candidate John McCain wants to turn Jordan into a Palestinian state is apparently a hoax. It was reported widely in the Arab world that Robert Kagan had given a speech at a New York university that advocated turning Jordan into a Palestinian state. But Kagan denies making the statement or even that such a speech took place. The university in question can find no record of any such event where such a speech might have been given.

The speech was reported by news tabloid service Ammonnews, but it was later revealed the information came from the Israeli site Filkka Israel.

In case there is any question about the agenda of the above Arab-language blog, they list (in English) one of their goals as “Destroying the kingdom of Jordan peacefully and bringing back its land to its normal situation as a part of great Palestine.” They have also been known to write dubious stories about such topics as “Saudi Ambassador Saves 3 Mossad Agents but a 4th is still in Beirut [6/15/2008] as well as stories about Israeli intelligence borrowing cars from the wives of Hizbullah members”. Hee, hee, hee.

The above Arab language blog post is translated, rather laboriously, as might be expected with machine translation, with the FoxLingo toolbar as follows:

John McCain Adviser for Foreign Affairs: John built a solid option Jordanian final solution for the Palestinians. نيويورك – جاين بيتيفت New York – Jane Ketevan

خلال محاضرة ترويجية لأفكار المرشح الجمهوري للرئاسة الأميركية جون ماكين في قاعة ألمرت هولمز بوبست في جامعة نيويورك . During the lecture promotional ideas for the Republican presidential candidate John McCain at the American Chamber salary Holmes Stopes at the University of New York. وأمام الآلاف من الطلاب والأكاديميين أعلن الخبير في شؤون الجغرافيا السياسية والسياسات الدولية روبرت كاغان وهو يشكل مع ويليام كريستول الفريق المكلف بتقدم تصور مفصل لإستراتيجية السياسة الخارجية في الشرق الأوسط للمرشح الجمهوري . Faced with thousands of students and academics announced expert in the affairs of political geography and international policies Robert Flanagan It is with William Kristol team progress to imagine a detailed strategy for foreign policy in the Middle East for the Republican candidate.
أعلن روبرت كاغان أن المرشح الرئاسي عن الجمهوريين قد تبنى بالفعل إستراتيجية الخيار الأردني للتخلص من العبء الذي تشكله قضية النزاع الفلسطيني الإسرائيلي حول الأراضي في الضفة الغربية على السياسة العامة للولايات المتحدة في الشرق الأوسط. Robert Flanagan announced that the presidential candidate of the Republican strategy has already built the Jordanian option to get rid of the burden posed by the issue of Palestinian-Israeli dispute over land in the West Bank on the public policy of the United States in the Middle East. الخبير المعروف في الشؤون الدولية والمحسوب على الصقور المسماة ” نيو كون ” قال بأن السياسة الأميركية الخارجية مع جون ماكين ستأخذ منحى مباشرا للتعامل مع القضية بشكل يريح المنطقة ودولها للتفرغ بمعاونة الأميركيين لنشر الديمقراطية ومحاربة إرهاب الإسلام الفاشي. Known expert in international affairs and calculated the hawks, called “New fact”, he said that U.S. foreign policy with John McCain will take direct action to deal with the issue and its comfort zone for full-time help of the Americans to spread democracy and fight terrorism fascist Islam. وفي شرحه للإستراتيجية الجديدة قال: In his explanation of the new strategy, he said:
الأردن هو الوطن الطبيعي لملايين الفلسطينيين من سكانه وكذلك هو الحل الأمثل لقضية اللاجئين الذين ذاب أغلبهم في المجتمعات التي يقيمون فيها ولكن البقية ممن تعيش في المخيمات سيكون عليها الإختيار بين البقاء في أماكنها أو الإستيطان في الأراضي الفلسطينية شرق الأردن . Jordan is the natural home for millions of Palestinians of the population and also is the best solution to the issue of refugees who have mostly melted away in the communities in which they reside, but the rest of those who live in the camps will have to choose between staying in place or settle in the Palestinian territories east of Jordan. وقد أثار إ‘ستخدام روبرت كاغان لتعبير ” الأراضي الفلسطينية شرق الأردن ” وهو الخبير الأميركي المعروف بأنه كاتب إستراتيجيات عدة بخصوص الدول العربية إستفادت منها الإدارة الأميركية برئاسة جورج بوش وهو مقرب منها، أثار إستغراب الأكادميين الحاضرين فوجه أحدهم سؤال لكاغان فور إتاحة الفرصة له وقال: The effects of a ‘Khaddam Robert Flanagan of the term “Palestinian land east of Jordan” which is known to be an American expert writer strategies regarding several Arab countries benefited from the American administration headed by George W. Bush is close, the effects of amazement academic attendees drew one of them asked Flanagan soon allow him and said:
هل يعني ذلك أن الضفة وغزة لن تكونا مكانا لدولة فلسطينية مستقبلية وفقا لإعلان جورج بوش العام 2003؟ Does this mean that the West Bank and Gaza will not be a place for a future Palestinian state, according to George Bush declared the year 2003? فأجاب كاغان: Agha replied:
الأردن يضم أغلبية فلسطينية ومن الطبيعي حين نتحدث عن الدمقراطية أن تحكم الأغلبية في بلدها، وبالتالي لن يكون هناك حاجة لدولة أخرى لأنها بالفعل موجودة وهي قائمة ويمكن للعائلة الهاشمية أن تبقى في الملك إن أراد الشعب الفلسطيني ذلك، أما عن الضفة الغربية فمشكلتها بسيطة، التجمعات السكانية الإسرائيلية تبقى جزءا من دولة إسرائيل والتجمعات السكانية الفلسطينية يتم تبادل الأراضي فيما بينها وبين إسرائيل حيث هي غير قابلة للتواصل مع الدولة الفلسطينية شرق الأردن والباقي يصبح جزءا من فلسطين التي تمتد من حدود العراق إلى حدود إسرائيل. Jordan has a majority Palestinian Of course when we talk about Damaqratih that govern the majority in the country, and therefore there will be no need for another country because it already exists a list of the family can remain in the Hashemite king that he wanted the Palestinian people, either from the West Bank problem is simple, residential areas Israel remains part of the State of Israel and the Palestinian population centres are exchanging land between them and Israel, where they are not continue with a Palestinian state east of Jordan and the rest become part of Palestine which extends from Iraq’s borders to the borders of Israel.
سؤال آخر وجه لكاغان عن غزة فقال: هاواي تبعد الاف الأميال عن الأراضي الأميركية ورغم ذلك هي جزء من هذه البلاد . Another question to face Flanagan said from Gaza: Hawaii thousands of miles away from U.S. territory, although it is part of this country. طالب أردني إعترض على كاغان وقال له بأنه من أصل فلسطيني ولا يوافقه الرأي فأجابه : Jordanian student objected to the songs and told him that, of Palestinian origin does not share his opinion replied:
وأنا لا أوافقك الرأي ايضا …لقد أصبحنا متعادلين ويمكننا أن نكون أصدقاء ما أثار الضحك في القاعة . I do not share his ideas … We are also equivalent and we can be friends as the effects of laughter in the hall.

Here are the two photographs that appear on the blog with the hoax:

And who might Robert Kagan be? He is one of the neoconservatives (as opposed to “pragmatists”) currently vying for McCain’s favor, although he claims he is not a Straussian. That appears to be his photo on the right. Here is a podcast of him speaking about his book The Return of History, and the video of an interview with Charlie Rose here.

And who might be the other photo? Is it “Jane Ketevan”, the purported author of the piece? No Google hits on that name. What about spelling it more like the Arabic spelling–”Jane Beteft”? Still no hits. if you click on the photo in the original blog and check the properties, it gives the information “pitfieldmain.jpg”. Could this be a photo of Canadian politician Jane Pitfield, who once ran for mayor of Toronto? Could be. Maybe a really old photo of her. This “destroy Jordan” thing doesn’t sound like the type of thing she would be interested in though.

Oh, but what does it mean? By now everyone in the Arab world has figured out the whole thing was a fake, but they keep talking about it just the same. Does anything happen by accident over there?

Maybe it’s an attempt to discredit Kagan and the neocons ahead of the U.S. elections–after all, Kagan’s brother is the architect of the Iraqi “surge”. Or maybe it is a another push towards Palestinian statehood, as the clock keeps ticking on the American political window of opportunity for George W. Bush. Bush could set it up for McCain, so McCain can ride the euphoria of an apparent Middle East resolution into the November elections without incurring blame or displeasure from the conservative Jewish vote.

What IS the Bush administration doing about Palestinian statehood???

May 25 is Jordan’s independence day.

Happy Birthday Jordan!!!!

In a televised statement celebrating Jordan’s independence, King Abdullah II talked about supporting Palestinian independence:

We will not hesitate in performing any role or effort and exploiting our ties with influential powers and international forums to enable our Palestinian brethren to regain their right and set up their independent state….

We will continue to commit ourselves to the choice of just peace based on international legitimacy resolutions and within the Arab consensus.

Good idea.

But how does a nation become independent these days? I really have no clue.

American wrote a Declaration of Independence, then fought a war against England. Would anyone fight a war against Palestine if they just went ahead and declared independence?

So how exactly did Jordan get to be independent?

• From 16th century: Jordan was part of the Ottoman empire, ruled from Damascus.
• After WWII, the League of Nations created the French Mandate of Syria and the British Mandate Palestine.
• 1921-Britain gave Transjordan semi-autonomous control
• On March 22, 1946 Britain signed a treaty granting independence to Jordan
• 1946-British requested United Nations approval to ending the British Mandate in Transjordan
• The Jordanian Parliament proclaimed King Abdullah the first king of The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
• The king proclaimed the state to be officially inaugurated and a series of ceremonies was done in the morning of May 25 in the capital of Amman.

So those were the steps back in the last century. Either a war or an agreement with whatever country it’s already a part of, then approval by an international body, then recognition by its own internal government. It looks like it helps if a major world power sponsors the UN resolution.

So I say the Palestinians themselves have to take the next step. They need to plan their party.

First they will have to declare independence. They already have a legislature and an elected leader, although he’s probably still getting his strength back from the surgery, but they can still pass some resolutions. Then they will have to get either George Bush or the Queen of England to sponsor a UN resolutiuon. Then they pass some resolutions and have a ceremony. Then they get official recognition by Jordan, the U.S. and England, in which order, I don’t know. Then I guess they play the birthday song and dance the dubka for about the next week. After that they can get around to manufacturing passports and figuring out who to bribe to get them.

Or something like that.

Someone tell me why this can’t work.

You gotta love the Jordanians’ use of diplomatic language.

“Some animals died: either they fell over heights, or simply due to the difference between Wadi Rum and Shomari environment and climate,” explains Jamal Zaidaneen, head of the Nature Conservation Department at Wadi Rum Nature Reserve. He is explaining what happened to the 10 Arabian oryx that were once brought to Wadi Rhum from the Shomari Wildlife Reserve near Azraq in the north of Jordan.

Ha ha ha ha ha

حا حا حا حا حا

I can tell you what happened. My bedouin buddies in Rhum, the ones who try to make a living taking tourists around, shot the oryx for sport while they were out roaming around the desert with their Landrovers and their guns. The locals in Shomari would do the same thing if the oryx weren’t fenced in.

The Arabian oryx–translated in the Bible as “unicorn”–is extinct in the wild, but a few still survive in captivity. Now Wadi Rhum, in the south of Jordan, is about to receive 40 more Arabian oryx.

Why shoot the oryx? Shrug. Aren’t they protected by law? If the Jordanian government comes around and tries to stop us, they will get killed too. They know not to mess with us. But they’re almost extinct. Don’t you want to save them? Shrug. Is oryx good to eat? Slowly came the answer. Yes. But I bet that particular oryx wasn’t eaten; it was killed for sport. How do you convince someone from another culture of the value of preserving an entire species? What about tourists? If you have oryx here, won’t more tourists come and you will make more money showing them around in your landrover? No answer. Hmmm.

And the new Oryx project?

The project’s first phase includes designating a 21-kilometre fenced area, where the animals will be set loose, Zaidaneen said, explaining that the herd needs first to adapt to its new environment, climate and plants.

“There is no time frame for this stage, but it is expected to extend over two to three months, during which the oryx will be given the time to adjust to their new habitat which will ensure its survival chances,” Zaidaneen added.

Ah, the uses of words. While the oryx are adjusting in their new corral, no doubt my Bedouin friends will also have a chance to adjust to the oryx. Let’s hope it happens during tourist season and that some sweet young Western women will have fascinating conversations with the bedouins (Arab women do not talk to men unless they are relatives) and that the Bedouins will come to see the survival of the oryx as a crucial part of their tourist gig. Maybe they will even pick up some environmentalist rap to impress the ladies with.

Then what happens to the oryx?

Twenty animals will be flown from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, Zaidaneen said, adding that the environment and climate of these countries is similar to Wadi Rum, which will raise their survival chances.

These animals, which form the first and main herd, will be released early next year into the wild and will be monitored by satellites which will follow their movement and behaviour.

“Under the second phase, satellites will be installed to monitor the herd. The Arabian oryx walks around 60 kilometres daily looking for food; using this advanced technique will save us time and effort and ensure the animals’ safety,” Zaidaneen noted.

The third phase includes bringing another 40 heads, in two batches, to be also released into the Jordanian wild.

Ha ha ha ha ha

حا حا حا حا حا

Tracked by satellites! Excellent!! Let’s see the bedouins try to take out a satellite while they’re out tearing around in the desert with their Landrovers and their guns and their cellphones.

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From The Jordan Times May 1, 2008, jordantimes(DOT)com