Jordan Strips Nationality from Citizens of Palestinian Origin
A rights watchdog has released a report documenting thousands of cases of Jordanians being stripped of citizenship -- a practice the government defends.
Words by Laith Abou-Ragheb.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH ON February 1 published a report that claims Jordan arbitrarily withdrew nationality from more than 2,700 Jordanians of Palestinian origin between 2004 and 2008. HRW called on the Kingdom to halt the ongoing practice, which could strip hundreds of thousands of their basic citizenship rights such as access to public education and health care, as well as legal employment and property ownership.
“Jordan is playing politics with the basic rights of thousands of its citizens,” said the rights watchdog's Middle East Director Sarah Leah Whitson, in a statement accompanying the report’s release. “Officials are denying entire families the ability to lead normal lives with the sense of security that most citizens take for granted.”
Jordanian officials defended the practice as a means to counter any future Israeli plans to transfer the Palestinian population of the occupied West Bank to Jordan.
The roots of the process can be traced back to 1949, when Jordan captured the West Bank during the first Arab-Israeli war. In 1950, the Kingdom extended sovereignty there, granting all residents Jordanian nationality. But in 1988, HM the late King Hussein severed Jordan’s legal and administrative ties to the West Bank, relinquishing claims to sovereignty there and withdrawing nationality from all Palestinians who resided in the West Bank at the time.
Other Jordanians of West Bank origin, but who were not living there at the time, were not affected and kept their Jordanian nationality. Yet over the last decade or so, HRW says Jordan has arbitrarily stripped its nationality from thousands of these citizens. Those in particular jeopardy include the roughly 250,000 Jordanians of Palestinian origin who returned to the Kingdom after being expelled from Kuwait in 1991 in the wake of the first Gulf War.
Jordanian officials have withdrawn nationality from citizens ostensibly for failing to possess a valid Israeli-issued residency permit for the West Bank. However, HRW says this condition for citizenship has no clear basis in Jordanian law, and such permits are notoriously difficult to obtain, if not impossible, due to Israel’s restrictive policies regarding Palestinians.
The report adds that Jordanians who have been affected by this policy learned they had been stripped of their nationality not through any type of official notice, but rather during routine procedures such as renewing a passport or driver’s license. Withdrawal of nationality appears to be as random as it is arbitrary, HRW said, adding there was no clear appeals procedure in place.
The Interior Ministry said its official response was summed up by government spokesman Nabil Sharif, who told local media on February 1 that the HRW report involved several inaccuracies and incorrect assertions, and was not based on facts and laws.
He noted the Interior Ministry does not have the legal authority to withdraw the nationality of any Jordanian citizen, pointing out that the measures taken fall under a “status rectification” that became necessary following the disengagement decision, and which, he added, came in response to demands by the Palestinians.
“The suspicious campaigns against Jordan will not deter us from doing our duty towards the Palestinians, and will not impede their legitimate pursuit of a sovereign Palestinian state on Palestinian national soil with Jerusalem as its capital,” he said.
The full report by Human Rights Watch can be read at www.hrw.org/node/87906.
