Sometimes I wonder why some people, including MPs continue to cast doubt on the ability of the government to protect the interests of the country in the face of the ongoing peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
Some people fear that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be at the expense of Jordan and its identity.
These people contend that the projected solution would erode the Jordanian identity by having Palestinian refugees permanently settled in Jordan either because Israel would never allow them to return or because some would choose to stay in Jordan.
The decision to grant children of Jordanian women married to foreigners civil rights has been viewed as only the beginning of a longer and wider process that could lead to the “Palestinisation” of the country.
These sceptics have not accepted the repeated assurances of the government that the endgame for the Palestinian question would never be at the expense of Jordan’s vital interests and their suspicions continue to grow despite the assurances that their fears and anxieties are ill founded.
The explanation may be in issues touching on the Jordanian nationality and identity.
After the influx of a million and a half Syrian refugees and the entry into Jordan before that of almost a million Iraqis, some Jordanians began to feel more and more marginalised.
In the eyes of the sceptics, the issue of the more than a million and half Palestinian refugees already residing in the country has been compounded.
The aggravation of the refugee crises in the area has led some to fear that Jordan is fast turning into one large refugee camp housing Palestinians, Syrians and Iraqis and indigenous Jordanians are becoming a minority.
To fix this problem, the government must reckon with three deeper issues.
First could be the consequences of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war that led to the loss of the West Bank. That was the beginning of the rift between Jordanians and Palestinians.
Second is the 1970 catastrophic armed conflict between Jordanian forces and Palestinian commandos stationed on Jordanian soil. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as the Jordanian-Palestinian relations are concerned.
Third was the 1988 Jordanian political decision to sever all legal and administrative ties with the West Bank despite the constitutional constraints.
That decision cemented the break of relations between Jordan and the Palestinians.
Ever since, the ties between the two peoples who once forged one united nation became sour and filled with suspicions.
Now the two sides are reaping the harvest of these three events in their contemporary history, which gave rise to mistrust between them.
Nothing would heal the wounds between them and put their relationship on a more positive foundation than the restoration of the unity between the two banks of the Jordan River after the Palestinians establish their own independent state.
Anything short of that would perpetuate the hostility and ill feelings between the two sides.
