Jerash, Jordan – Izzaat al-Hindi trudged a passage of the Jerash refugee camp and navigated potholes, pile of rubbish and haunting buildings. He still remembers the day when his family fled from Gaza here almost 57 years ago.
“I didn't want to come. I jumped out of the car three times. My parents had to follow me, ”recalled the 73-year-old. “It's like I knew what was waiting for us here. I wish we died in Gaza instead. “
When President Trump suggests that up to 2 million Palestinians violently move from the Gaza Strip to dilapidated camps like this, many of the approximately 35,000 refugees in Jerash have a message for their brothers.
“I still said to my relatives in the Gaza: 'Don't come,” said the white beard Al-Hindi. “Even with the Israeli bombings and everything else, it is better there.”
At the beginning of this month, Trump said that Gaza was no longer worth living after 16 months of Israeli bombing, and Jordan and Egypt would have to take the residents of Gaza while the United States had to take over the enclave. Trump said Gaza could be the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Jordan, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world rejected such a shift, even as Trump as indicated that he could ward off the help of the best Arab allies in Washington if they did not bow.
King Abdullah of Jordan has proposed that the Arab nations represent an alternative reconstruction plan, although one has not yet been completed.
In the meantime, Trump's proposal Fury has triggered Fury from all quarter of Jordanian society, with many considering nothing less than an existential crisis for the kingdom.
Jordan already houses the world's largest population of Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations, many of whom arrived in 1948 in 1948, but also after the war of 1967, when Israel confiscated the West Bank of Jordan and Gaza from Egypt.
Decades later, the Palestinians have become an essential part of the Jordan Society, which in this tiny desert kingdom of 11 million people count around 2.39 million people and form a hybrid identity that keeps Jordanier deep connections to families in West Bank and Gaza.
It has created a disabled relationship with Jordan's long -standing families and tribes from the east bank of the Jordan river.
The Hashemite monarchy also regarded Palestinian activism as a threat. King Hussein, father of Abdullah, fought against the Palestinian liberation organization, which led to the group of the group in 1970. Jordan's security services have long been afraid of radicalization in the 10 Palestinian refugee camps that are spreading around the kingdom.
Refugees from Gaza have always separated. In 1968 around 11,500 were brought to Jerash, a few miles from the magnificent Roman ruins of the city. In the years since then, the 1,500 tents in which they were accommodated have hardened to more permanent structures.
In contrast to other Palestinians from the state of education, there is still limited to the types of jobs for which you can apply, and even those who need a work permit – some can only wear a few.
“It costs hundreds of dollars. How can I afford it without salary? “Asked Feras, a 25-year-old who only gave his first name. “I can't even get a cell phone line, let alone a job.”
Feras played with his little daughter in front of the two-room house, which he had shared with his three children, his wife and parents.
“Here we all get married and just start getting babies – there is nothing else to do,” he said.
Ayman Bakkar, who acts as head of the Unrwa office in Northern Jordan, said that more than half of the residents of the Jerash refugee camp are unemployed.
“It is the poorest and most overcrowded camp of the country,” he said.
Over the decades, Jordan has protected many other foreigners from the nearby violence, be it Iraqis, Syrer, Libyan or Yemen. As a result, Jordan has little appetite for another wave of Palestinian shift, said Oraib Al-Rantawi, an analyst in Amman who heads the Al-Quds Center for Political Studies.
“The position for everyone here – whether Jordanian of the Palestinian origin or the Jordanian of Ostbank – is that Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine for Palestinians,” he said. “If you change, this leads to internal conflicts from all sides.”
When Abdullah returned from a meeting in Washington with Trump last week, thousands of Jordanians lined the streets and collected posters that have meanwhile become known as Jordan's “three No”: no to Palestinian displacement; No, Jordan is the alternative home for Palestinians; And no to leave the Palestinian thing.
At the same time, the government has to step carefully: it is based on the size of Washington, which pays about 1.45 billion US dollars in state coffers and $ 425 million more military aid.
Washington gets a lot back, said Jawad al-Anani, a Jordan commentator and former Minister of Economics. Apart from an agreement with defense cooperation that enables the US armed forces to operate in the country, Jordan was a steadfast partner against terrorist groups in Syria and the Iranian influence in the region. Last year it mixed up fighter planes when Iran started ballistic rockets against Israel.
“This help did not come free and Jordan does a lot,” said Al-Anani. He added that “the collaboration with Trump would make Jordan an accessories for crime for the forced postponement. And all of this to help a right -wing Israeli government? Why?”
Back in the Jerash refugee camp, Nimr Rmeilat, an octagonal darier who was sitting in a courtyard with friends and smoking a hookah, said he and others would wait and see which plan the Arab nations would find. But he predicted that his relatives would not play in Gaza Strip.
“When you see Trump,” he said, “tell him that the Gazans are the most stubborn people in the world. You don't go anywhere. “