AMMAN - Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday called on the government to stop revoking the nationalities of Jordanians of Palestinian origin.
Officials insist the measure is consistent with regulations issued as a result of a 1988 decision to sever administrative ties with the West Bank, which had been a Jordanian territory since 1950.
In its report issued yesterday, titled “Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality”, the human rights watchdog claimed that the authorities stripped more than 2,700 of these Jordanians of their nationality between 2004 and 2008, and the practice continued in 2009.
The 60-page report accuses the government of arbitrarily depriving citizens who were originally from the West Bank of their nationality, thereby denying them basic citizenship rights such as access to education and healthcare.
In response, Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications and Government Spokesperson Nabil Sharif told The Jordan Times yesterday that the report involved several inaccuracies and incorrect assertions and was not based on facts and laws.
“The suspicious campaigns against Jordan will not deter us from doing our duty towards the Palestinians and will not impede their legitimate pursuit of a sovereign Palestinian state on Palestinian national soil with Jerusalem as its capital,” the minister said.
Sharif noted the Interior Ministry does not have the legal authority to withdraw the nationality of any Jordanian citizen, pointing out that the measures taken fall under a “status rectification” that became necessary following the disengagement decision, which, he said, came in response to demands by the Palestinians.
He said Arab leaders also encouraged the decision at their Rabat summit in 1974, and at subsequent meetings in Fez (1982) and Algiers (1988).
Among the changes that followed the decision was the redrawing of the map of electoral constituencies to represent the East Bank only.
“The implementation of the disengagement decision was aimed at the embodiment of the Palestinian identity,” the minister said.
“It has led to the restoration of citizenship to thousands of Palestinians inside the occupied West Bank,” he explained.
Sharif said that inaction in this regard would serve Israeli schemes to displace Palestinians from their homeland.
However, HRW officials rejected the official stance, stressing that human rights take priority over politics.
“Jordan is playing politics with the basic rights of thousands of its citizens,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at the organisation.
“Officials are denying entire families the ability to lead normal lives with the sense of security that most citizens of a country take for granted,” she was quoted as saying in an HRW statement distributed to media representatives during a press conference held here to launch the report.
Speaking to reporters, Christoph Wilcke of the HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division said the Arab foreign ministers meeting in Casablanca in 1965 called on countries hosting Palestinians to give them the same treatment as their citizens.
“Jordanian officials have defended the practice as a means to counter any future Israeli plans to transfer the Palestinian population of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Jordan,” said Wilcke, adding that stripping citizens of their nationalities contradicts human rights norms and relevant international treaties that Jordan has ratified.
Adel Hadid, an Interior Ministry official who was present at the press conference, said ministry officials met with Wilcke and answered his questions about authorities’ measure to replace the “yellow cards” with “green cards”, stressing that the ministry has formed an ad hoc committee tasked with looking into any relevant complaints.
Yellow cards are held by Jordanians of West Bank origin who are allowed to live on either side of the Jordan River, while green IDs restrict residency to the West Bank.
“The committee meets once a week and looks into any grievances submitted by citizens,” Hadid said, questioning the accuracy of the HRW report in recording the number of nationalities revoked.
Responding to a question by The Jordan Times yesterday, Wilcke stressed that there is no Palestinian state and so Palestinians cannot have Palestinian nationality.
“Only a viable and sovereign country can give nationality to its citizens. Palestinians have no nationality,” Wilcke said, adding that until the Palestinian state comes into being, Arab host countries should treat Palestinians on an equal footing with their own citizens.
But Hadid refuted the argument, stressing that there is a Palestinian state, which Jordan acknowledges, and that this state has diplomatic representation in the Kingdom, all other Arab countries and other foreign countries.
Palestinian Ambassador in Amman Ata Khairi told The Jordan Times yesterday that a total of 110 Arab and foreign countries have acknowledged the Palestinian state since its declaration in 1988.
“We have embassies around the world representing the Palestinian country. The passport issued by the Palestinian National Authority is acknowledged by the United Nations and the international community,” Khairi added.
In its report, HRW added that Jordanians affected by this policy learned they had been stripped of their nationality not from any official notice, but during routine procedures such as renewing a passport or driver’s licence, or registering a marriage or the birth of a child at the Civil Status Department.
Withdrawal of nationality appears to be as random as it is arbitrary, the report said.
Kawkab Qawasmi told The Jordan Times that she has been living with her family in Jordan for more than 60 years, but in 2007, authorities revoked her and her family’s nationalities for having a yellow card.
“My family members are more than 30. There are four children now who should go to school but they can’t go to public schools since they don’t have a national number and we cannot afford to send them to private schools,” she said, adding that her sons cannot apply for jobs at public institutions or own a car or a house.
