Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
9 October
ISRAELI MILITARY SLAUGHTERS JORDANIAN POLICE
On this day in 1956 an Israeli battalion-sized force including armour and backed up by artillery attacked the Qalqilya police station that was under Jordanian control, killing over 70 Jordanians. Israel claimed these attacks were to deter Palestinian guerrilla attacks from the soil of Arab states. In fact, the Jordanian Army understood its weakness compared to the Israeli military and Israel would have known the Jordanian Army had been ordered the previous July to shoot infiltrators entering or coming from Israeli territory.
ذبح الجيش الإسرائيلي للشرطة الأردنية
9 أكتوبر
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1956، هاجمت قوة إسرائيلية بحجم الكتيبة، بما في ذلك المدرعات والمدعومة بالمدفعية، مركز شرطة قلقيلية الذي كان تحت الحكم الأردني، مما أسفر عن مقتل أكثر من 70 أردنيًا. وزعمت إسرائيل ان هذا الاجراء كان لردع هجمات حرب العصابات الفلسطينية من أراضي الدول العربية. في الواقع، فهم الجيش الأردني ضعفه مقارنة بالجيش الإسرائيلي وكانت إسرائيل تعرف أنها كانت قد أمرت في يوليو الماضي إطلاق النار على المتسللين الذين يدخلوا أو يخرجوا من الأراضي الإسرائيلية.
At the popular level, Jordanians have always considered Israel as a state enemy. However, there has been growing discontent since a shooting incident inside the Israeli embassy in the Jordanian capital Amman in July 2017, when an Israeli security guard killed two Jordanians, allegedly following a quarrel. The Jordanian government allowed the security guard to leave Jordan, eliciting further public anger.
Relations between the two countries have always been unstable due to Israel’s settlement policies. Relations typically become strained during periods of escalating confrontations between the Palestinians and Israelis. Such tensions have intensified in recent years, with Jordan-Israel relations reaching a record low in 2019.
After the 1948 Nakba, citizens of the West Bank became Jordanian citizens and were incorporated in Jordanian institutions.
After the war of 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, Palestinians retained Jordanian citizenship until the Palestinian Authority was established in the West Bank in 1988 in preparation for the founding of a Palestinian state. Jordan’s custodianship of al-Aqsa Mosque remains in force.
Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, disclosed meetings she had with King Abdullah I before the establishment of Israel in 1948, aimed at reaching a mutual understanding.
An understanding was reached before the war of 1948 that broke out between the Arab Legion and Zionist gangs after the establishment of Israel; the two sides agreed the Jordanian army would not participate seriously in the war in exchange for Jordan maintaining custody of the West Bank.
On 25 September 1973, before the outbreak of the war waged by Egypt and Syria to regain territiry lost to Israel six years earlier, King Hussein warned Golda Meir of Egypt and Syria’s plan to attack Israel. However, Meir did not take his warning seriously.
This coincided with Washington denying the right of return of Palestinian refugees, 2.2. million of whom live in Jordan, and trying to settle them in the diaspora by cutting US funding to UNRWA, and putting pressure on other countries to stop their own funding for UNRWA. Trump called on other countries to share Jordan’s custodianship over Jerusalem’s holy sites.
In December 2019, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an opinion piece claiming the Israeli right is preparing to remove King Abdullah II. The claims are based on a series of articles by Israeli right-wing writers and government supporters published in previous weeks.
According to the piece, the plan includes the annexation of the Jordan Valley, which will lead to the annexation of the West Bank and the end of the peace agreement with Jordan. This, in turn, will lead to the downfall of Jordan’s royal family led by King Abdullah II, who is described as ‘a slave trying to break free from slavery, and a rude Arab who dared to raise his head’.
The article noted that the bottom line of the project would be to annex the West Bank without the inclusion of millions of Palestinians, who would move to a new Jordan without the royal family in power. This co-called transfer of Palestinians to Jordan has been a long-time wish of extreme right-wing Israeli parties.
