April 20, 2004

Jordan Leader Delays Meeting With Bush

The king of Jordan, one of America's closest allies in the Middle East, postponed a White House meeting with President Bush this week, questioning the U.S. commitment to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
[What he really means is that Abdullah's doubting that Bush will end the conflict in his, Abdullah's, favor. Which he won't.--Jen]

The snub from King Abdullah II comes amid Arab anger at Bush for endorsing an Israeli proposal to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank but keep Jewish settlements on other West Bank land claimed by the Palestinians.

Abdullah is under pressure at home to demonstrate his U.S. ties can further Arab positions on the Israeli-Palestinian question as well as on the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
[Oh, yeah. If you can call a nearly successful chemical attack by Al Queda "pressure," which I would if I were he.]
[...]
Jordan is considered a key moderate ally of the United States and is one of only two of Israel's Arab neighbors to have a peace treaty with the Jewish state. [I take it that the other one is Egypt and Bush already squared it with Mubarrak as they met the day before the President met with Sharon.--J.T.] But some Jordanian citizens question their government's relationship with the United States, which they accuse of siding with Israel against the Palestinians.
[That would be correct.
Israel plays fair and is a democracy; the PA uses terror and is under the despotic rule of Arafat.]

Jordan is especially concerned that a final peace settlement would be at its expense if refugees were dumped into the kingdom, exhausting its meager resources and disturbing its demographic balance. Roughly half of Jordan's 5.1 million population is composed of Palestinian families who fled or were forced out of their homes in 1948 and 1967 Mideast wars.
[Notice how the AP forgets to tell us that most of the Paleostinians are and were Jordanians who were booted out of Jordan in 1970 by Abdullah's father, King Hussein.]

The rift between the Bush administration and its moderate Arab allies over Bush's statement on Israeli settlements is one of the worst to emerge in years - and has exacerbated the already tense relations between the United States and Arab countries over the war in Iraq.

Arab leaders have accused the administration of essentially taking away from the Palestinians their primary negotiating levers in any final peace deal - the disputes over whether Israel must remove all settlements from the West Bank, and whether Israel must allow back some Palestinian refugees.

Bush embraced Israeli rejection of any "right of return" for Palestinian refugees after his meeting with Sharon. Tensions also were inflamed in the Arab world by an Israeli helicopter strike that killed the Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
[What Schadenfreude I'm feeling for these jihadis! It makes me smile. God bless President Bush for talking turkey to the Paleos, if for nothing else. Bout time someone called these killers to task and quit rewarding them for murder!]
[...]
Last week, Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher said his government wants assurances that Washington is still committed to an Arab-Israeli settlement based on exchanging land-for-peace and creating a Palestinian state by next year in line with the U.S.-backed road map.
[Heads up to Jordan: Nope. Not if the Palestinians won't give up terror, which they don't show any signs of doing.
Otherwise, the whole "land for peace (Islamist murder)" concept was blown up by the Intifada and 9/11.]

Relations between the two countries also were close under Abdullah's late father, King Hussein. The United States is Jordan's largest Western aid donor, with contributions estimated at $456 million this year. The United States gave Jordan $1.1 billion last year to offset the kingdom's losses because of the war on Iraq.

I almost--almost--pity the poor, rich boy king!
One of these days very, very soon, he's going to have to decide which side of the WOT he's really on: ours or the Islamist terrorists.
No matter which side he chooses, he's going to get grief from the other.
But if he chooses wisely, he'll pick the side of the U.S. and her ally, Israel.
The "Palestinians" aren't looking good to win their fight with the Israelis.
Never have they been farther from pushing the Jews into the sea and wiping out the "Zionist entity."
And they are seemingly eternally wedded to jihadi murder as their sole tactic to gain a state of their own, which President Bush has told them time and again they will only have if they give up terror.
Abdullah's dad should have given more thought to his actions before he expelled Arafat and his people from Jordan as a way to deal with that problem, the whole "Black September" uprising.
We've all been told that if you don't deal with a problem, it will come back to haunt you.
Well, Abdullah may be about to find out the truth of that in spades;
when the Palis can't get their own state, they will come running back to their homes in Jordan.
It's home. It's where they belong.
President Bush has already turned a blind eye to King Abdullah's cosy relationship with Saddam and his sons before the war.
And if Bush can get even Mubarrak on board with his backing of Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan, who is King Abdullah to oppose its consequences for the Palestinian areas in the West Bank?
The worm is turning in the Middle East for the better.
Abdullah's playing hard to get, as evidenced by the postponement of his appointment at the White House, won't make that go away or make Bush change his mind.