Some Palestinian Jordanians Lose Citizenship
Muhannad Haddad grew up here, went to school here, got a job in a bank here and traveled to foreign countries with a passport from here. Then one day the authorities said he was no longer Jordanian, and with that one stroke they took away his citizenship and compromised his ability to travel, study, work, seek health care, buy property or even drive...he was being stripped of his citizenship to preserve his right to someday return to the occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem.
“They gave me a paper that said, ‘You are now Palestinian,’ ” he said, recalling the day three years ago that his life changed.
...Human Rights Watch said that 2,700 people in Jordan lost their citizenship from 2004 to 2008, and that at least another 200,000 remained vulnerable...
Critics and human rights advocates...said the Jordanian government acted to preserve its own interest, trying to appease non-Palestinian Jordanians concerned about the growing economic and political influence of citizens of Palestinian descent, a charge Mr. Sharif denied. They say it also appears that Jordan is frightened by talk of declaring Jordan a Palestinian homeland as an alternative to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
But of course Jordan is part of the original "Palestine" that was intended to become the reconstituted Jewish national home.
Jordan cannot be excluded from any political and geographical resolution of the Arab-Israel conflict.
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