Palestinians will not be expelled to Jordan

The Straits Times - Feb 7, 2003 Fri

AMMAN - Rejecting suspicions of Israeli intentions, Israel's Ambassador to Amman said on Wednesday that the idea of expelling Palestinians en masse from the occupied territories to Jordan was morally repellent and contrary to his country's interests.

Jordanian leaders had in the past voiced fears that Israel might take advantage of a United States-led war on Iraq to 'transfer' large numbers of Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan.

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'It can't happen,' Israeli ambassador David Dadonn said in an interview. 'I can't imagine any Israeli government ordering the transfer of population.'

Besides, he said, the international community would not tolerate any such action. 'At the bottom of their hearts, I believe the Jordanians understand that,' he said.

Some Israeli right-wingers have flirted publicly with the idea that Palestinians from the West Bank could find a home in Jordan. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had in the past declared that 'Jordan is Palestine', but not while serving as prime minister.

Mr Sharon is reviled across the Arab world for his role in the 1982 Lebanon invasion that led to the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila camps.

Many Palestinians, Jordanians and other Arabs believe he is capable of orchestrating the 'ethnic cleansing' of the West Bank while the world's attention is fixed on an Iraq war.

Lebanon has installed barbed wire and barriers at 10 to 15 possible points of entry in case Israel tries to take advantage of the chaos of a war on Iraq to expel Palestinians, security sources and witnesses said on Wednesday.

Mr Dadonn said several Israeli politicians had toyed with the notion of a mass expulsion of Palestinians since the 1948 creation of the Jewish state, but those politicians were not the ones in power.

'No responsible leader in Israel can believe that this option is possible, moral, logical or desirable,' he said, adding that successive Israeli governments had viewed stability in Jordan as a strategic interest.

'The transfer of population is against the deepest interests of the state of Israel and all its moral values.'

Mr Dadonn, interviewed at the heavily fortified Israeli embassy in Amman's wealthy Rabieh district, acknowledged that 'the people hate us', but said Jordanian officials were correct, businesslike and accessible in their dealings with Israelis.

Meanwhile, in Beirut, the militant Islamic group Hamas said it had rejected formally an Egyptian truce proposal but added that it would consider halting attacks on Israeli civilians if the Jewish state agreed to similar terms.

'Our position is clear. We do not think the truce is in the interests of the Palestinian people,' said its representative Usama Hamdan in Lebanon. --Reuters