AVOID MUSLIM JORDAN

 

 

Jordan As Collateral Damage of the Israel-Hamas War


DEC 29, 2023
BY HUGH FITZGERALD


The war in Gaza has already had a terrible effect on Jordan’s economy. Since the war started, visitors have been cancelling trips to the country, out of worries about spillover violence, not just from the fighting in Gaza, but also the possibility of a major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah on the Israel-Lebanon border, and from the upsurge in violence in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank. By dint of repetition, beginning immediately in 1950 with all the Arab and Muslim delegates using “the West Bank” speeches at the UN, the rest of the world quickly chose to forget the venerable toponyms that had been in constant use for 3000 years, not just by the Jews, but by the entire Western world. Take a look at any American, British, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Russian maps of the area up to 1950, and you will see “Judea” and “Samaria” clearly marked. And nowhere will you find “West Bank.” But here we are, in 2023, and practically everyone now uses, without giving it a thought, “West Bank” for “Judea and Samaria.”)


No one likes to visit what is a war zone, and the result has been a body blow to the tourism sector in Jordan. The country is losing about $250 million each month in revenue from tourism. More on this loss to Jordan’s economy can be found here: “Jordan Losing Over $250 Million Per Month Due to Israel-Hamas War,” Algemeiner, December 27, 2023:


The Israel-Hamas war is having devastating effects on the Jordanian economy, according to the kingdom’s Minister of Tourism Makram Mustafa Queisi.


Queisi said on Tuesday that the rate of tourist cancellation since the beginning of the war in October is around 60 percent, which translates to over 200,000 visitors, according to Al-Arab, a pan-Arab newspaper published in London.


Can you blame those tourists cancelling trips to Jordan? It’s not just the violence in Gaza, though that would by itself be enough to dissuade many tourists, but that exchange of fire across Israel’s northern border between the Jewish state and Hezbollah in Lebanon. And there is also the continuing threat of Houthi drones being fired at ships in the Red Sea, with the Americans successfully shooting down most of those drones, and just now creating a naval task force, consisting of ships from major maritime nations, under American leadership, able to answer the Houthi threat — taking the fight if necessary to Yemen itself — in order to make the Red Sea safe again for commercial shipping. All of these stories that dominate the news, about Israel and Hamas fighting in Gaza, Hezbollah and Israel trading blows across the Lebanese-Israeli border, the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah attacking American bases in Syria and Iraq, quite understandably lead hundreds of thousands of tourists to cancel trips to Jordan. And there is another worry that puts would-be tourists off. Given that the majority of the population in Jordan is Palestinian, and angry at the Americans for continuing to stand by their Israeli ally, attacks on American tourists in Jordan are another source of justified concern.


If we want to reflect this number on income, we are talking approximately 180 to 200 million dinars [$253 to $281 million] per month,” which represents “a loss to the overall economy,” Queisi said.


“There will be significant losses to the economy, which means that every month there will be cancellations in hotel reservations and a decrease in the number of visitors by up to 60 or 70 percent,” he said.


The violence in the region will not soon die down. The Israelis have already said that they expect their campaign to destroy Hamas as a military threat will take “months,” and so the reluctance of visitors to come to Jordan will last at least as long.


In recent years, Jordan and Israel have considered cooperating on multiple joint economic and tourism initiatives including the Jordan Gateway Industrial Park, the construction of solar-power and desalination facilities in Israel, and joint tourism in the Gulf of Eilat-Aqaba….


All of those plans about “joint tourism initiatives” promoted by both Israel and Jordan, where package tours would include both countries’ offerings, and allow Jordan, whose main tourist attractions are the rose-red city of Petra, built by the Nabataeans, and Jerash, one of the best-preserved Roman cities in the world, to benefit from the attractiveness of Israel as a world destination for both religious (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) and cultural tourists. Now, as long as the Gaza war lasts, all talk about joint Israeli-Jordanian tourism initiatives has stopped cold.


Jordan's king hid over $100M in assets offshore, 'Pandora Papers' probe shows

 

Published on  10-04-2021

Israel Hayom

 

Leaked records open a Pandora's Box of financial secrets, name hundreds of world leaders, powerful politicians, billionaires, celebrities, religious leaders and drug dealers as having been hiding their investments in mansions, exclusive beachfront property, yachts and other assets for the past quarter-century.

 

The report released Sunday by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists involved 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries sparked a political and social firestorm by shedding light on the previously hidden financial dealings of the world elite and how they have used offshore accounts to shield assets collectively worth trillions of dollars.

 

Dubbed the "Pandora Papers," for the Greek mythology artifact the opening of which unleashed countless evils into the world, the leaked records name hundreds of world leaders, powerful politicians, billionaires, celebrities, religious leaders and drug dealers as having been hiding their investments in mansions, exclusive beachfront property, yachts and other assets for the past 25 years.

 

The more than 330 current and former politicians identified as beneficiaries of the secret accounts include Jordan's King Abdullah II, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Czech PM Andrej Babis, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, Ecuador's President Guillermo Lasso, and associates of both Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Russian President Vladimir Putin, to name a few.

 

Many of the accounts were designed to evade taxes and conceal assets for other shady reasons, according to the report.

 

The ICIJ's latest investigation dug into accounts registered in familiar offshore havens, including the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong, and Belize. But some of the secret accounts were also scattered around in trusts set up in the US, including 81 in South Dakota and 37 in Florida.

 

Some of the initial findings released Sunday painted a sordid picture of the prominent people involved.

 

The documents show, for example, how King Abdullah of Jordan created a network of offshore companies and tax havens to amass a $100 million property empire from Malibu, California to Washington, and London.

 

Data shows that advisers helped the monarch set up over 35 shell companies from 1995 to 2017, as well as helped him buy 14 homes worth over $106 million in the US and the UK. One was a $23 million California ocean-view property bought in 2017 through a British Virgin Islands company. The advisers were identified as an English accountant in Switzerland and lawyers in the British Virgin Islands.

 

There was no immediate comment from Jordan's Royal Palace.

 

The details are an embarrassing blow to Abdullah, 59, whose government was engulfed in scandal this year when his half brother, former Crown Prince Hamzah, accused the "ruling system" of corruption and incompetence. The king claimed he was the victim of a "malicious plot," placed his half brother under house arrest and put two former close aides on trial.

 

UK attorneys for Abdullah said the king is not required to pay taxes under his country's law and hasn't misused public funds. They stressed that all the properties were bought with King Abdullah's personal wealth, and it was common practice for high-profile individuals to buy properties via offshore companies for privacy and security reasons.

 

"Any implication that there is something improper about ownership of property through companies in offshore jurisdictions is categorically denied," said DLA Piper, the law firm that represents the monarch. "[Abdullah] has not at any point misused public monies or made any use whatsoever of the proceeds of aid or assistance intended for public use."

 

Annelle Sheline, a Middle East scholar. was cited by Arab media as saying that "Jordan doesn't have the kind of money that other Middle Eastern monarchies, like Saudi Arabia, have to allow a king to flaunt his wealth. If the Jordanian monarch were to display his wealth more publicly, it wouldn't only antagonize his people, it would p**s off Western donors who have given him money."

 

The Pandora Papers are a follow-up to a similar ICIJ project released in 2016 called the "Panama Papers."

 

The latest bombshell is even more expansive, porting through nearly 3 terabytes of data – the equivalent of roughly 750,000 photos on a smartphone – leaked from 14 different service providers doing business in 38 different jurisdictions in the world. The records date back to the 1970s, but most of the files span from 1996 to 2020.

 

In contrast, the Panama Papers culled through 2.6 terabytes of data leaked by one now-defunct law firm called Mossack Fonseca that was located in the country that inspired that project's nickname.

 

 

Trump Administration Weighs Cutting Aid to Pressure Jordan to Extradite Convicted Terrorist 

 

Haaretz

6-16-20

 

Amman has refused to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, released in a prisoner exchange nine years ago after being jailed in Israel for her role in a 2001 Jerusalem suicide bombing whose victims included U.S. citizens

 

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is increasing its pressure on Jordan to extradite a Palestinian-Jordanian involved in the murder of U.S. citizens who has been living in that country since her release from an Israeli prison nine years ago.

 

On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported that the White House is considering withholding or cutting military aid to Jordan if it continues to refuse to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, who the United States wants to try for her role in a 2001 suicide bombing in a Jerusalem pizza parlor.

 

Tamimi was convicted of being one of the organizers of that attack, which killed 15 people, including two U.S. citizens. She was sentenced to 16 life sentences by an Israeli court in 2003, but was released from prison in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal in which the government released more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas.

 

After her early release from prison, Tamimi moved to Jordan, where most of her family resides. Over the past nine years, she has become a public persona there, appearing on television programs and giving media interviews. Throughout, the parents of Malki Roth, a 15-year-old Israeli and American dual citizen who was murdered in the Jerusalem attack, have waged a public campaign demanding that she face trial in the U.S.

 

Jordan and the U.S. have a joint extradition agreement, but Jordan’s reply to the growing pressure over the years to extradite Tamimi has been that the agreement is invalid. Last year, the State Department rejected the Jordanian claim and insisted in a written report that the extradition agreement was valid and applied to Tamimi’s case. 

 

The U.S. filed terrorism-related charges against Tamimi in 2017, but just days later, Jordan’s highest court ruled that Jordanian law prohibited her extradition. Ever since, Jordan has consistently refused to take any action regarding the extradition request.

 

In September, two senior members of Congress were pressing the Trump administration to act on the subject. Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, and Republican Congressman Doug Collins, the committee’s ranking member, sent a joint letter seeking answers to the Justice Department.

 

The two lawmakers noted in their letter that despite previous indications that legal action against Tamimi would move forward, no progress had been made. The main obstacle, they wrote, had been the Jordanian government’s refusal to cooperate with U.S. authorities.

 

This week, the Trump administration’s nominee for ambassador to Jordan, Henry Wooster, told a Senate committee that when it comes to the Tamimi extradition, “all options are on the table.” He further said that Washington “has multiple options and different types of leverage to secure Tamimi’s extradition.”

 

Wooster added that “[w]e will continue to engage Jordanian officials at all levels not only on this issue, but also on the extradition treaty more broadly. U.S. generosity to Jordan in Foreign Military Financing as well as economic support and other assistance is carefully calibrated to protect and advance the range of U.S. interests in Jordan and in the region.” Wooster was specifically asked about using military aid as a form of leverage and did not deny this was one of the options.

 

Jordan is one of the United States’ closest allies in the Middle East, but there have been tensions in the relationship in recent months over the Israeli government’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank. Jordan strongly opposes Israeli annexation, and has been trying to convince the Trump administration to stop it from happening. Jordan also opposed the administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem in 2017.

 

A large part of Jordan’s population has Palestinian origins, and Israeli security officials are also worried about how annexation could impact stability in that countrt, which has had a peace agreement with Israel since 1994. Jordan’s King Abdullah is supposed to brief senior members of Congress on the annexation issue later this week, in an attempt to increase opposition in Washington to potential annexation moves.

 

The U.S. has provided billions of dollars in aid to Jordan in recent years, and in 2018 the Trump administration committed to provide more than $6 billion in aid over a five year period. Jordan has used much of the aid to handle the millions of refugees that have settled within the country from the wars in Syria and Iraq over the past two decades.

 

 

Jordan Charges Stabbing Attack Suspect with Terrorism

 

Sunday, 26 January, 2020

Asharq Al-Awsat

 

A Jordanian court on Sunday leveled terrorism charges against a man suspected of wounding eight people in a November knife attack at the popular Jerash tourist site.


The suspect, Moustafa Abourouis, 22, faces up to 20 years in prison after the stabbing of three Mexicans, a Swiss woman, a Jordanian tour guide and a security officer.


At a hearing open to the press, prosecutors accused Abourouis of committing a "terrorist act" and "promoting the ideas of a terrorist group" -- a reference to the ISIS group.


Abourouis, who is of Palestinian origins and grew up in the refugee camp of Souf, was arrested immediately after the attack at Jerash, close to the camp and around 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Amman.


The Jordanian prosecutor accused Abourouis of trying to join ISIS, an operative of which in Syria had "ordered him to commit attacks against foreigners".


Two alleged accomplices, also Jordanians of Palestinian origin, were charged with "terrorism" in the same case. All three pleaded not guilty, reported AFP.


The court is scheduled to hear witnesses next Sunday, with the date for a verdict to be confirmed.


In December 2016, in Karak, 10 people were killed in an attack claimed by ISIS that also left 34 wounded.


Four violent incidents struck the country the same year, including a suicide attack in June claimed by ISIS that killed seven Jordanian border guards near the frontier with Syria.

 

 

How "progressive" is Jordan now? New court ruling on veiled women may suggest otherwise....

 

Published March 23rd, 2014

albawaba.com

 

The Jordanian Women’s Union, along with lawyers across the Hashemite Kingdom, expressed shock last week after a ruling discriminating against women who do not wear the Islamic hijab was issued by the Amman Sharia Court of Appeal, according to Al Medanah News.

 

The court announced late last week that it agreed with one lawyer's statement - based on a fatwa - that says a woman who does not cover up or wear a hijab is considered a “slut” and shouldn't be allowed to testify in court.

 

In response, The Women’s Union released a statement published on Amman net that describes the court’s decision as discrimination against women and a violation of the Jordanian Constitution, which considers all Jordanian men and women as equals.

 

“The Amman Sharia Court of Appeal has accepted the lawyer’s objection to a female witness from testifying for not wearing the hijab, which the court said would affect the fairness and honesty in her testimony from 3/2/2014.

 

According to the fatwa, which the court’s decision was based on, women who aren’t covered up are “sluts,” and that gives those women a bad name. Furthermore, the court was unable to support this fatwa apart from with something written in the introduction of a book by Egyptian Islamic Theologian Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi.

 

Seeing as this decision violates the provisions of the Jordanian Constitution which calls for equality between all Jordanians, and which protects their personal freedoms, we are demanding all the concerned parties to reconsider the mentioned decision above. Meanwhile we stress the following:


1. Women’s attire is a personal choice and no one should challenge it as long as they’re not breaking the law and stepping out of line. An attack on those freedoms is considered a crime and explicitly violates Article VII of the Constitution.

2. The court’s decision is an attack on women and their honesty and dignity, especially that the decision was made by the highest court in the religious judiciary.


3. The Personal status Law is unconstitutional as it affects the principle of equality as between men and women.


4. Making room for jurisprudence in courts is dangerous, and gives the judge the opportunity to rule according to his own beliefs.

 

The Women’s Union therefore demands the following:

 

1. Going back on the court’s decision to consider those who aren’t wearing the hijab as not fit or honest to testify in court.


2. We stress the importance of revising the Personal Status Law as it still discriminates against women."


Lawyers throughout the Kingdom have also expressed opposition to the ruling publicly, with some calling for wider scale protests and demonstrations.


 

Jordanian Parliament Supports Impunity For Honor Killings

 

(01/27/00) -- Human Rights Watch today condemned the failure of the Jordanian Lower House to end impunity for men who murder female family members in the name of preserving the "honor" of the family.

 

"For too long, men in Jordan have been getting away with murder," said Regan Ralph, executive director of the Women's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. "This vote is a slap in the face of Jordanian women who have been organizing to stop the killings." Since August 1999, women's and human rights activists have gathered over 13,000 signatures calling for an end to honor killings. An estimated 25-30 women are killed in Jordan every year to protect family "honor."


This is the second time in two months that the Jordanian Lower House has failed to abolish Article 340 of the Penal Code, which provides for lenient sentences when men kill their female relatives in the name of "honor." Parliamentarians justified their defense of honor killings as protection of Jordan's traditional and moral values against western influences. The Upper House last month had agreed to abolish Article 340. The Upper and Lower Houses will meet for a final vote before the end of the parliamentary session in March.


Jordan is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which proscribe discrimination based on sex. The UN Committee on Eliminating All Forms of Discrimination Against Women criticized yesterday Jordan's performance on "honor" crimes.


Human Rights Watch further called on the Jordanian parliament to provide protection for women threatened by their family members on the basis of "honor," and to abolish other laws that discriminate against women, including the rape law, citizenship law, passport law, and social security law.

 

 

Jordanian Islamists blast Gadhafi, Turabi

 

AMMAN, Jordan, April 12 (UPI) -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's invitation to Christians and Jews to visit Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine, has sparked outrage among Jordanian Islamists.

 

The outlawed but tolerated Muslim Brotherhood Organization also blasted Sudanese Islamic leader Hassan al-Turabi for issuing edicts allowing Muslim women to wear a less rigid veil.

 

Salem Falahat, spiritual guide of the Brotherhood, whose political wing, the Islamic Action Front, controls the biggest opposition bloc in parliament, told United Press International Wednesday, "al-Turabi is condemned for issuing edicts rejected by any Muslim ulema."

 

Falahat said "we are used to President Gadhafi's crazes as he makes edicts as he pleases... He invited Christians and Jews to enter the grand mosque in Mecca although he knows that such a thing is prohibited by Islamic laws."

 

He argued that Gadhafi might have made such declarations "only to outrage the Saudi authorities due to his country's tense relations with Saudi Arabia."

 

Falahat said he believes there are political motives behind issuing the controversial edicts which contradict religious texts.

 

For his part, the head of the Shura Council of the Islamic Action Front, Hamza Mansour, said "the declarations made by certain Arab leaders and thinkers are strange and indicate a complete ignorance and submission to Western culture."

 

 

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