When will Jordan, the anointed "oasis of calm" in the Middle East, admit it's stuck in quicksand?
That moment may be upon us sooner than we think, though Friday nights in Amman's Abdali boulevard — a copy of the Gulf's glass-ridden skyline — still heaves with Jordanian youth, iced lattes in hand, puffing the tobacco industries' latest, if equally carcinogenic invention.
This is brochure Amman: a cacophony of Arab influence and Western compulsions, complete with noughties stereotypes of malls, jocks, and coffee shops. Rental cars bump Mahraganat while Saudi tourists, with customary detachment, stroll by, stopping only to ogle and stare.
It almost felt fitting, then, in such a bubble, my phone began pinging with news of Israel's assassination of Hassan Nasrallah 300km away in Beirut, pushing the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan ever closer to an all-out regional war — not that anyone seemed to notice.
This image is not indicative of Jordan as a whole; it's barely even Amman. But what it does reflect is the natural reflex of Jordanians and the political establishment for normalcy at any cost, even if it means lulling the hyphenated Jordanian population into acedia.
Despite two extensive Iranian rocket salvos, one year into Israel's genocide in Gaza and one week into Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon, Jordan thankfully remains unscathed, in line with the country's raison d'etre of powder keg management.
Daily demonstrations outside Al-Kalouti Mosque in Rabieh — the closest protesters can get to the Israeli Embassy — have since become weekly, then monthly, now sparingly. In the face of heavy police presence, threats to "besiege" the US embassy are as fleeting as the lifespan of the Instagram Stories they appear on.
To say this is entirely unwelcome would, however, be misleading. In the negotiated state of Jordan, citizens consent to a social contract of securitisation, knowing they are not Palestine, Lebanon, or Syria — a negation of regional chaos rather than an assertion of national freedom. Jordan has the most to lose, as one Palestinian taxi driver from Zarqa reminded me, his car diffuser a cut-out of the Jordanian flag.
Jordan caught in the crosshairs
But as Israel expands its unhinged, messianic drive in occupied Palestine, Gaza, and Lebanon, posing an existential threat to tens of millions around the Levant, how worried should Jordan be, and how long can its balancing act last?
It's increasingly apparent that Jordan is stuck between a Zionist rock and a hard place, its external security stretched beyond its control. For the second time in six months, the skies above Amman flickered with hypersonic Iranian missiles, causing windows to shake and debris to fall above heads. I was told that the resonance came from south-easterly winds carrying the sounds of missiles striking their target 150km away in Tel Aviv. In truth, they were being intercepted by US fighter jets above Amman and ricocheting off Jordanian territory, all the more evidence of winds of change.
The region has undergone significant transformation since the 1990s — the heyday of Jordan's bargaining power. The Hashemite's role as a regional mediator has since been overshadowed by the Gulf's material dominance, with Qatar emerging as the preferred partner for the Palestinians and the UAE all too willing to launder Israel's crimes.
In return, Jordan has been left with the crumbs of neo-liberal NGOization, lasting US military infrastructure, and a refugee problem — and this desperate situation is, at least on the international stage, starting to show.
On the eve of Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon, an exasperated Ayman Safadi, Jordan's Foreign Minister, departed from the typically measured Jordanian response, telling a UNGA press conference that Israel has not only destroyed decades of peace talks but any hope for a two-state solution. He also implied that Ze'ev Jabotinsky's brand of revisionist Zionism has since become Israeli scripture.
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Ayman Safadi is right to be concerned. The two-state solution and "status quo" for Jordan is its insurance policy. The Jordanian Wafq Council maintains custodianship of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound — an integral part of a future Palestinian state with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital — and Palestinian refugees and their descendants make up approximately 50% of the population, with major implications for the Palestinian right of return.
But rather than Palestine being Jordan's insurance policy, Jordan is fast becoming Israel's geopolitical human shield, caught in the crosshairs of its genocidal march. Netanyahu plans to annex the occupied West Bank — decimating UNSC Resolution 242 — and his government is comprised of kingmakers like Bezalel Smotrich, who writes in his 2017 "Decisive Plan" that Palestinians have three choices: suffer under Israeli apartheid, leave for Jordan or other Arab countries, or be killed.
The past year has proven there's no limit to Israel's settler-colonial expansionism. Under the cover of crumbling US hegemony, Israel's playbook has been mirrored from Gaza to Beirut, with Arab life not only expendable but a point of humour across the Western world. And there are now fears this blueprint may next be applied to Jordan. Last week Roni Mizrachi, a well-known Israeli contractor and friend of Netanyahu, sent Jordan a thinly veiled threat: "What we're seeing today in Lebanon [in terms of Iranian influence] will be Jordan next."
Iran doesn't have any influence in Jordan and won't do. But as Israel continues to double down on its murderous solipsism, gripped by politicians who view Herzl's fictional Greater Israel, "from the brook of the Nile to the banks of the Euphrates" as a messianic directive, it will be all the more difficult to predict Israel's end goal in Jordan or the security of the region as a whole.
Benjamin Ashraf is an Editor at The New Arab. He was previously a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies.
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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff, or the author's employer.