The Levantine Crescent:    Israel | Jordan | Lebanon | Palestine | Syria

A thousand years before Mohammed, and five hundred years before the Romans, the Nabateans controlled the area which makes up today’s Jordan. Descendents of nomadic tribes from the Arabian peninsula, they ruled from Petra, a grandiose city of towering buildings and irrigation ditches carved out of the sandstone mountains. Nabatean trade routes extended into India and China; the Nabatean alphabet would later become Arabic script. But the trade routes shifted and Roman conquerers were replaced by Byzantines, Ummayads, Abbasids, Mamelukes and Ottomans. By 1915 this onetime center of the ancient world was largely forgotten except by the nomadic Bedouins whose herds grazed here and across the Jordan River on what would later become known as the West Bank.

With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire came the rise of Arab nationalism. British diplomats (among them T.E. Lawrence, aka “Lawrence of Arabia” and Winston Churchill) first took advantage of this sentiment. To reward Abdallah ibn Hussein, one of their most loyal and powerful supporters in the region, they gave him control over Transjordan, the region East of the Jordan River, while at the same time declaring his son Faisal king over the newly-created kingdom of Iraq. After 1948, Hussein would declare sovereignty over the farms and water supplies of the West Bank: the 1967 Six-Day War, which led to the Israeli occupation, cost the Kingdom of Jordan nearly 40% of its farmland and an equally significant chunk of its tax base.

Hussein’s friendliness with the British – and his willingness to negotiate, albeit quietly, with the Zionists – did not go unnoticed. In 1951 Hussein was shot in East Jerusalem’s Mosque of Omar by a Palestinian nationalist. This was the start of a long-running problem, as waves of migration in 1948 and 1967 changed the demographics of the region; today some 70% of the residents of Jordan consider themselves Palestinians. These Palestinians grew increasingly radical, and increasingly alienated from the ruling Jordanian government. As their attempts to wrest back Israeli territory proved unsuccessful, they set their sights instead on overthrowing Jordan’s king and setting up a Palestinian state there. In response King Hussein (grandson of Abdallah ibn Hussein) sent the Jordanian Army against the Palestinians; by the time the smoke of “Black September” cleared the PLO had moved their bases out of Jordan, and a new generation of Palestinians looked not to King Hussein but to Yasser Arafat as their leader.

Unlike its next-door neighbor Saudi Arabia, Jordan has no substantial deposits of petroleum or natural gas. Its economy is largely dependent upon foreign aid, and upon remittances from Jordanian citizens living and working abroad in the Arab world. As a result, Jordan has been forced to tread lightly amidst its larger, wealthier and more powerful neighbors. Jordan’s current leader, King Abdullah, is working to privatize the state-run potash and fertilizer industries, and to modernize tourist facilities. (Jordan possesses some stunning antiquities, the ruins of Petra being the most famous: alas, Middle East tourism is at a low ebb in the wake of September 11 and the Intefada).

Sandwiched between warring nations, Jordan’s leaders have had to develop their skills at playing one side off against the other. There have been a few notorious blunders: Hussein favored Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, a decision which left Jordan ostracized in the Persian Gulf and which seriously damaged relations between the U.S. and what had up to then been seen as the most moderate country in the Arab world. There has also been historic tension between Syria and Jordan: Syrian tanks assisted PLO troops during the 1970-71 civil war, while Jordan gave support and lodging to the Syrian “Muslim Brotherhood” at the same time. Relations between Jordan and Syria have warmed considerably of late; so too have relations between Jordan and Iran.

In 1994, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel. While many issues remain unresolved, and while the relationship between the two countries is still strained at best, this peace treaty allowed cash-poor Jordan to reduce some of its military expenditures. Jordan has nothing to gain from continued conflict with Israel; its social fabric is already strained to capacity by the current refugee situation, and more fighting is likely to bring nothing but continued carnage and still more stateless persons. While Jordan has done more than any other Arab country for Palestinian refugees, it has explicitly disclaimed any responsibility for the West Bank region.

King Abdullah, who succeeded Hussein after his 1999 death from cancer, is generally considered a worthy successor to his father. Intelligent, well-spoken and politically moderate, he has managed so far to keep Jordan out of the swirling miasma of conflict which surrounds the region. Still, he has numerous hurdles to overcome. Jordan’s health care system may be among the best in the Middle East, and its protections for disabled citizens widely applauded; it also suffers from a 15% (official estimate) to 30% (unofficial estimate) unemployment rate. Should its economic standing continue to suffer, Jordan could find itself swept up in another civil war.