DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 25, 2012,
Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood has given King Abdullah II notice that he has until October to bow to their demand to transform the Hashemite Kingdom into a constitutional monarchy or face Arab Spring street pressure for his abdication.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report that Israeli and Saudi intelligence watchers are becoming increasingly concerned about the approaching climax of the conflict in Amman between Islamists and the throne .
For Israel, an upheaval in Jordan bodes the tightening of the Islamist noose around its borders – Egypt and Libya to the south and Syria to the north, with unpredictable consequences with regard to Jordan’s Palestinian population.
Saudi Arabia, already threatened by Iranian aggression, fears the oil kingdom may be next in line if its northern neighbor is crushed under the marching feet of the “Arab Spring.”
The oil kingdom’s royal rulers are reported to have belatedly woken up to the peril and are in a panic. They realize that their preoccupation with helping Syrian rebels overthrow Bashar Assad misdirected their attention from the enemies lurking at their own door. Thousands of articles in the Arab press in the past year have predicted that after the Muslim Brotherhood seizes power in Damascus, Amman would be next in its sights followed by Riyadh.
The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly of Sept. 21 analyzed the plight closing in on the Jordanian monarch and outlined three of his options:
1. He could bow to the main Muslim Brotherhood’s demand by submitting to the kingdom’s transition to a constitutional monarchy and the transfer of executive power to an MB-led government by means of the electoral reforms for which the Brothers have been pushing for years. In Jordan as in Egypt, the Brothers hope for a two-third majority in a free election.
2. He could stand up to the Brotherhood’s demands and order his security, intelligence and military forces to crack down on the opposition. This course carries the risk of plunging Jordan into the carnage of civil war among the diverse segments of the population. The biggest dangers come from the Bedouin tribes, whose traditional allegiance to the Hashemite throne has weakened in recent years, and the Palestinians who form 60 percent of the population.
3. He could seek to negotiate a compromise through various brokers. Our sources report that several attempts at mediation have been ventured of late, but got nowhere because the Muslim Brotherhood sent its most radical leaders to the table and they left very little margin for compromise.
According to sources at the royal court, Abdullah will very soon meet with MB leaders for a personal appeal for calm after years of heated debate. Most observers believe that he has left it too late and by now the Muslim Brotherhood has got the bit between its teeth.
Indeed, according to an internal memorandum leaked to the Al-Hayat newspaper, the MB has already set a date for mass demonstrations against the King to start on Oct. 10 and ordered its members to go to work at once to mobilize at least 50,000 demonstrators for daily protests against the king and the royal family until he bows to their will.
The memorandum states: “Every member must be dedicated to communicate with his relatives, close friends, acquaintances, fellow employees and various Islamic groups and patriots…” It calls for the formation of “hotbeds to… focus on the participation of groups affiliated with universities, schools and women’s organizations.” Protesters are also advised on tactics for overcoming a security crackdown.
Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood has therefore moved forward from opposition propaganda, debating and political pressure to activism against the throne.
Both Jordanian camps are anxiously watching to see which way the wind blows in the White House.
President Barack Obama has a balancing act to resolve: On the one hand, the Jordanian king has long been a staunch American ally and friend, its mainstay in many regional crises. On the other, Obama regards the Muslim Brotherhood as the linchpin of his external policy of outreach to the Muslim world.
you missed out # 4 call in the cavelry (IDF)
@ Alex Sandor, Victoria, Canada:
Yes, but it was the Brits who began calling EVERYBODY west of the River “Palestinians” — they hoped to ‘create’ an omni-ethnic, “Palestinian” identity there (to de-emphasize & even paper over their Mandate obligations to the Jews specifically).
Of course, the only people there who broadly & consistently signed onto taking the name of “Palestinians” WERE the Jews. The local ethnic ARABS of the area between the River & the Sea were insulted & offended by the designation of “Palestinian” — the very NOTION of sharing the name with al-yahud gave them the creeps.
But actually, it was the expressed wish of the Emir Abdullah to call his new domain the “Kingdom of Palestine,” but his British colonial sponsors had conditioned their support for independence [May 1946] partly upon his doing away entirely with the name “Palestine” east of the River. Hence, the “Kingdom of Transjordan.”
Absent the slightest UN objection, the Emirate-qua-Kingdom proceeded to perform the final surgery of gouging out a now-“independent” Transjordan from the Mandate as readily & unconcernedly as it would excise the prefix, “trans,” from its official name 4 yrs later. Hazza al-Majali, aide-de-camp [later, PM: 1959-60] for the newly-titled “King” Abdullah, would then proclaim, “We are the army of Palestine…the overwhelming majority of Palestine Arabs are living in Jordan.”
Actually if the present Abdullah (II) had any sense (not to say, vision), he’d organize a move on the Hijaz, to wrest his homeland back from the Sa’udi clan (originally from the Nejd, next plateau over) who usurped & absorbed the Hijaz
— and force the Sa’udis to share the Peninsula and the oil with him.
As a Hashemite he has a certain legitimacy there — thru Sharif Hussein’s family sinecure of guardianship of the Meccan holy sites since at least AD 1100, and an ancestry extending back to Mohammad’s daughter, Fahtma, & her eldest son, Hassan).
A concerted move on the Hijaz (containing Mecca & Medina) could possibly get the Jordanian Palis AND the Jordanian Bedu to support the action (especially if it meant a Hashemite return to the Peninsula, leaving Jordan to the locals).
— Better to have them WITH him than AGAINST him. . . .
The Jordanian Army was British trained & is more than a match for the Sa’udis — who have never been much more than a repository for nice, shiny, state-of-the-art, military hardware that they’ve never had occasion to use, and (like as not) wouldn’t know how anyway.
When the British split off 78% of the territory of the Palestine Mandate to create trans-Jordan in 1922 they installed the Hashemites from Arabia. The Emir considered the name “Palestine” but as the Jews were called Palestinians at that time, the name “trans-Jordan” won out. Too bad ! When the Arabian king is deposed perhaps the 90 year old error can be corrected. The population exchange during the 1940s and 1950s which included the expulsion of more the 850,000 Jews from Arab states can then be finally completed. The Arabs of Judea and Samaria can then be repatriated to “Palestine” presently called “Jordan” !
Yeah, I’m not a big fan of Debka. Someone I corresponded with in Israel a while back said she knew the guy behind Debka personally, and said he just made stuff up half the time. I remember him predicting forever military action against Iran, not only by Israel, but also by others. Nothing came of it.
But would the overthrow of the Kinglet be such a bad thing? In the short run, the conventional wisdom says yes. In the long run….?
I have the same opinion about this that Yamit does about the re-election of Obama. Looks nasty at first glance but could be the best thing that ever happened to Israel (I don’t agree about Obama…).
A “constitutional monarchy” means majority rule. That means Palestinian Arab rule. That means Jordan is the Palestinian state, not only de facto, as it is now, but de jure. This destroys the whole rationale behind the Palestinian national movement as represented by the PA/PLO, Fatah, Hamas, whatever.
This means that if war breaks out, which has got to happen sooner or later, Israel can annex J&S and kick the Palesinians into Jordan. And this time, the Palestinians can’t go whining that the big bad Israelis are “denying” them a “homeland”. They already have their “homeland”, and it is Jordan.
Yeah, the Kinglet of Jordan is such a great “friend” to Israel… Like his father before him, he tries to push the entire onus for “solving” the “Palestinian problem” completely on Israel’s shoulders. Screw him and good riddance, if Debka is right.
@ Kenneth Mathews:Its difficult to get the real picture, perhaps almost impossible. Do you remember that Debka wrote for mnoths in great detail prior to iraq war that sadam had shipped his WMD to Syria. This may be true but: when bush was being discredited, or after the war, you never heard from debka on this issue again. They neither defended their position or explained it.
I have found that Debka’s reporting to be quite good and infinitely preferable to the garbage put out by CNN, BBC, MSNBC, and the rest of the “mainstream media.” Would any of the mainstream media even consider providing coverage of problems brewing in Jordan? They won’t cover it at all until it blows up in our faces and then they will spend all their energy covering for the Obama administration, the state department and their Islamist anti-Zionist allies.
@ drjb:
Debka has been described as the equivalent of the National Enquirer. Excellent, exquisitely written fiction
Don’t believe a word Debka says. Always exaggerated and inaccurate.
Hopefully, the Arabs in Jordan will do what the Arabs in Syria are doing, killing each other. The more, the better.
And if the Arabs are stupid enough to start a new war with Israel, I pray the Israeli leadership will be smart enough to take advantage of such an opportunity to either transfer Arabs out of Israel, or grab more land, or hopefully both.
I take advantage of this opportunity to wish Ted and everyone else a Gmar Chatima Tova.
Remember Black September? Fake “Jordanian” kings don’t like someone else usurping their own usurping.
now we will see what worthless paper these “treaties” really are. Yesterday I spoke of transferring the pals across the borders of the 3 hostile entities because there are still “treaties” with the other 2 borders. I am rapidly becoming out of date and plans should be drawn up for the 5 borders as soon there will be war. There will be no accomodation of any real advantage with the MB Any accommodation will be to their advantage. If things have reached this far, lets remember it is debka, I do not see even a constitutional monarchy surviving long. One question is where do jordans pals operate some say they are secular but my wager is they will choose the MB as they do in the west bank