There is a raging memefest in the Arab world about the Jordanian King Abdullah II. One of the most caustic meme images is of the Arab King wearing an Israeli Military uniform. It is particularly damaging for the Hashemite King Abdullah, who is considered the 41st direct descendant of the Holy Prophet. But King Abdullah’s recent and unprecedented act of authorizing the shooting down of Iranian drones that were targeting Israel has puzzled, shocked, and riled average emotions on the Arab street.

As it is, most Arabs had been disillusioned at the meek, platitudinous and pusillanimous reaction of their leaders as Israel has gone about pulverizing the Gaza Strip (killing over 30,000 Palestinians) ~ but for a Arab leader to shoot down Iranian missiles that were aimed at Israel (not even at Jordan) tantamount to defending Israel, even as Tel Aviv has been relentless with its attacks on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The Arab monarchies have been widely discredited and are unpopular with their own masses for their excesses, illiberality, and duplicitous anchorages.

In 2021, the infamous Pandora Papers revealed a disturbing amount of the Jordanian King’s stashed wealth through offshore entities and dodgy Swiss accounts, but as always, the news led to a combination of suppression, deflection and contextualisation to remain unanswerable. However, this recent act of being seen to be aiding Israel (at the cost of fellow-Arab Palestinian interests) is bound to worsen perceptions about the Jordanian Royal Family even further. The Jordanian citizenry is smarting under the latest betrayal of its leader while commenting, for example, “Jordan following the money as usual”.

Even though the Iranians are not particularly popular, shooting down Iranian drones to help Israel is altogether different. The Jordanians have had a complicated and inconsistent history with all three principal parties in the recent conflict i.e., Iranians, Palestinians, and Israelis. Almost always, the Jordanians have seemingly forsaken morality, commitments and even purported official positions at the altar of short-term gratification, unsavoury side-deals, and regime-protection instincts. Even though Jordan had fought four wars with Israel (all ostensibly for Palestine) in its short history, it had also signed the peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and was amongst the first Arab countries to open reciprocal embassies. However even prior to the official normalisation, clandestine ‘backchannels’ between Amman and Tel Aviv were thriving.

Historically, many Arabs have dissed the dubious commitment of Jordanians towards Palestinians after Jordan annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem (Old City) in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War only to lose these areas in the 1967 SixDay War. More importantly, the Jordanians had done precious little to create the Palestinian state when they had occupied the old Palestinian swathes, other than annexing the same, and then humiliatingly losing them in another 18 years or so. If the Israelis denied the Palestine state with forced occupation since 1948, the Jordanians in the interim till 1967 did no better.

More importantly, even though there are an estimated three million Palestinians out of a total population of 12 million in Jordan, the relations internally are testy. The fact that King Abdullah’s wife, Queen Rania, is also a Palestinian does not help fray nerves within. But perhaps the most wounded emotion (till the recent ‘support’ to Israel) was the unforgettable memory of ‘Black September’ 1970-71. Then Jordanian King Hussein (the current King’s father) had responded to louds calls by Palestinians to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy with brutal counter attacks to drive out Palestinian fedayeens (and an estimated 5000 were killed).

King Hussein had stated that the Palestinians in Jordan had become the foremost security risk. The memories of the assassination of his grandfather, King Abdullah I, at the hands of a disgruntled Palestinian in 1951 would certainly have played a role. Years later, when Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 ~ many Palestinians perceived it to be a ‘sell-out’, and more recently with the virtual impracticality of a ‘two-state’ solution, the Jordanians did not want the Palestinians’ predicament to be at their expense. Beyond all posturing and purported concern for the Palestinians, the Jordanians have had the most accommodative, thawing, and non-confrontationist equation with the Israelis in the last three-four decades. With the invisible but sure hand of their mutual ally i.e., USA (also the strongest ally for both countries), the publicly posited differences against Israel are quietly handled away from the media glare.

The fact that Jordan was amongst the foremost Arab nations to join the ‘War on Terror’ and subsequently in taking on the religious extremist organisations like Al Qaida, ISIL and other offshoots adds a lot more commonality between Amman and Tel Aviv. Relations between Jordan and Iran are given to natural sectarian differences (SunniShia respectively) and post the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Jordan supported Saddam Hussein in the decade long Iran-Iraq War. Later Iran despised Jordan for its proximity to its staunch enemies like the US and Saudi Arabia, and the fact that Jordan had normalised relations with Israel. Later Jordan was pitted on the exact opposite side to Tehran in the Syrian Civil War where Iran was supporting co-sectarian Bassad-al-Assad’s Syrian forces. In 2004, King Abdullah coined the term ‘Shia Crescent’ (with the crescent shape landscape beginning in Iran, moving to Iraq, and thence to Syria and Lebanon).

It envisaged a post-Saddam Iraq now controlled by Shiite powers, running up Syrian swathes controlled by Alawite (Shia-offshoot) Bassad-al-Assad’s forces and completion of the dreaded arc with Shia Hezbollah ruling the roost in Lebanon. Clearly, King Hussein spewed more venom and concern at Iran then he did practically against Israel. In a way, the Jordanian King Abdullah’s action of downing Iranian drones only confirmed the worst kept secret in the region where Arabs have had more fear of the Iranians then they did of the Israelis, the actual oppressors of Palestinians.

The tight rope could also be owing to the cash-strapped situation in Jordan which survives on a $1.5 billion annual US aid package. It will be mindful of the danger of the same getting withdrawn should it adopt a belligerent stand against Israel. So, while a balancing act of keeping the US and the Israelis on the right side is understandable given their socio-economic and monarchical predicament, to shoot down Iranian drones that were targeting Israel is simply another level of brazen obsequiousness. The worms are coming out of the woodwork. The hypocrisy of the Arabs in general and of Jordanians in particular towards

(The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry the Palestinian cause is getting exposed.)