Mudar Zahran @ American Thinker
Jordan occupies 78% of British Mandate Palestine. The British installed the Hashemites as rulers until 1946. In 1949, Jordan revoked Palestinians’ British Palestinian passports and replaced them with Jordanian passports. Most Gazans are refugees from areas previously controlled by Jordan’s Hashemite regime, making them Jordanian citizens by ancestry with the right to return.
Like many post-colonial Arab states, Jordan is an artificial entity. It lacked its own passport until 1949, relying instead on British-issued Palestinian passports. The UN only recognized Jordan as a state in 1955. It also had no currency of its own until 1951, using the British-issued Palestinian pound, which bore the inscription “Palestine/Eretz Israel – Land of Israel.”
There is no demographic threat to Jordan absorbing more Palestinian refugees. Jordanians and Palestinians are fully integrated, with most Jordanians being of Palestinian descent. Even East Bank Jordanian tribes have Palestinian roots, such as those in Karak (from Hebron) and Bani Sakher (from Gaza and Sinai).