Jordan monarch's comments on Palestinians raise tensions in kingdom
The Jordanian media censored an interview King Abdullah gave to The Washington Post, where he said 96% of Islamic State terrorists captured and killed last year were of Palestinian origin, which provoked confusion in the kingdom.
While speaking with the local media, King Abdullah typically repeats national talking points on political reform. When addressing foreign audiences, he frequently adopts a different approach: bluntly assessing the country’s challenges and even violating sacred taboos. The Hashemite monarch’s recent interview with The Washington Post followed the same pattern.
In a surprising remark, Abdullah noted in the April 6 interview, “In 2016, for the first time, we captured and killed 40 [Islamic State] terrorists in two major incidents. Ninety-six percent of them were of Palestinian origin.” He added, “So if we don’t move the Israeli-Palestinian process forward, that is a major recruiting [opportunity] for disenfranchised and frustrated people.”
However, when the government media printed the king’s remarks, they inaccurately translated the king to avoid publicizing the potentially uncomfortable sections. The 96% statistic was removed from Petra News, and the regime-censored version did not refer to Palestinians as “terrorists” in contrast to Abdullah’s own words. Even Al-Ghad newspaper, which bills itself as Jordan’s most independent paper with the slogan “Right to Know,” deleted the embarrassing sections from the interview.
Jordanian political analyst Katrina Sammour explained that the explosive nature of the king labeling such a high percentage of IS terrorists as Palestinian forced newspapers to censor this part of the interview. She told Al-Monitor the 96% description would increase “resentment between Palestinians and Jordanians even more. Palestinians will feel that they are being attacked, and Jordanians will feel that Palestinians are a threat to society.” Due to political sensitivities, Amman does not publicize data about the percentage of Jordanians of Palestinian descent, but The New York Times estimates that the number is up to 60%.
