The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan recently announced that it has decided to strip several Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Liberation Organization leaders of their Jordanian citizenship.

This decision is the latest incarnation of an ongoing trend of anti-Palestinian reforms in which the Jordanian government has, seemingly without cause, revoked the Jordanian citizenship of thousands of Palestinian Arabs, many of whom have been living in Jordan for generations. According to an article last year in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab Al-Yawm, the Jordanian government plans on revoking the citizenship of close to 1.5 million Palestinian Arabs who currently live in Jordan.

The loss of citizenship presents major problems for Palestinian Arabs living in Jordan. They lose their rights to free education and to certain positions, such as legal and government jobs.

They also have to pay much higher fees for driver's licenses and passports.

Human Rights Watch has reported over 3,000 cases of Palestinians being stripped of Jordanian citizenship since 2004.

According to the organization's formal report on the issue, titled "Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality," "No official informs those whose nationality has been withdrawn of that decision: rather, they are told that they are no longer Jordanian nationals during routine interactions with the bureaucracy such as renewing passports, registering a child's birth, renewing a driver's license, or trying to sell shares."
This removal of citizenship is illegal according to Jordan's 1954 Law of Nationality, which grants citizenship to anyone born of a Jordanian father or of a stateless father and a Jordanian mother. The law also guarantees citizenship to all Arabs living in Jordanian land between 1949 and 1954, provided that they are not Jewish.

Not only do the Jordanian anti-Palestinian reforms disenfranchise Palestinian Arabs currently living in Jordan, they also imperil those who struggle to flee proximal war zones. For instance, of the almost half a million Palestinians who live in Syria, a portion are attempting to flee civil war and find refuge in Jordan where they have family. However, the Jordanian government is actively trying to keep them from immigrating. According to an April 4 article from The Jerusalem Post, around 1,000 Palestinians are currently stranded on the dangerous Syrian-Jordanian border, their entry to Jordan prevented by the government.

The Jordanian parliament also recently passed a law that aims to restrict Palestinian representation in the government. Cities with large Palestinian populations, such as Russeifa, a city with a population of 700,000, are no longer being proportionately represented in the parliament.

Many of these cities are losing seats in the government for the unstated purpose of minimizing Palestinian presence in the legislature.

Jordan is trying to force the Palestinian refugee problem entirely on Israel. Nearly half-about 2.5 million people-of the Jordanian population is Palestinian, and many have lived there for years and want to remain there.

The Jordanian government is disenfranchising its Palestinian Arab population, but this story rarely makes the news. Jordan strategically uses the media's obsession with Israel to shift public attention away from its treatment of the Jordanian Palestinians.

Pro-Palestinian activists largely ignore what is happening in Jordan, choosing instead to focus all of their attention on Israel. They care so deeply about Palestinians not being able to enter Jerusalem in an expedient manner, yet do not say anything about the mistreatment of Palestinians by the Jordanian government.

When was the last time one of the pro-Palestinian groups at Brandeis staged an event to protest Jordan's treatment of its Palestinians? When was the last time any group at Brandeis held a similar event?

If we do not stand up for the rights of Jordan's Palestinians, we will allow the refugee problem to intensify exponentially. The United Nations Refugee Agency considers resettlement one of the desired solutions to a refugee problem.

In the case of the millions of Palestinians living in Jordan, the solution should be simple. They should be allowed to remain in their homes.

They already have Jordanian citizenship and have lived in Jordan with their families for decades. Most of them were not expelled from Israel.

Before 1967, there was no practical difference for Palestinians living on the East or West banks of the Jordan River, so many left of their own accord.

Many of these Jordanian citizens identify with Jordan, and want to continue living their lives as full citizens in Jordan.

They are being thrust into limbo by the Jordanian government-not by Israel. If we care about the Palestinian people, we must protest Jordan's treatment of them.

The writer is the Brandeis campus fellow for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
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