Jordan’s Teetering Balancing Act

Every Friday, the streets of downtown Amman, Jordan, fill with thousands of demonstrators waving Palestinian flags. “The people want the liberation of Palestine,” the crowds chant, their voices echoing across the city.

For more than a month, Jordanians have demonstrated in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli bombardments in the Gaza Strip and voiced support for armed resistance against Israel.

Aside from the current seven-day truce, Israel has bombed the besieged enclave since Oct. 7, when Hamas broke through Israeli fences and launched an attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking around 240 hostages. Israeli attacks from air, sea, and land have killed more than 14,800 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and caused major destruction of housing and civilian infrastructure.

“We want an immediate ceasefire!” Jordanian Souad Bakir said at the frontline of a protest on Nov. 10. “The hospitals are being destroyed. All aspects of life are being killed. They want to exterminate Gaza.”

“No fuel, no electricity, no food, no water—and Gaza is the terrorist?” a group of young men draped in Palestinian flags said at a demonstration in October after Israel cut all supplies to Gaza.

As Gaza’s humanitarian crisis grows, so does the rage in Jordan’s streets. In addition to the mass protests every Friday, there have been daily demonstrations near the Israeli Embassy and several protests near Western embassies and in Palestinian refugee camps. Jordanians are decrying not just the relentless bombardment of Gaza, but also their own government’s diplomatic ties with Israel and Western leaders’ unwavering support for Israel.

The public outrage from across the political spectrum has put the Jordanian government, which depends heavily on U.S. aid, in a difficult position: Jordan’s monarchy now faces the challenge of maintaining its ties with the United States and Israel while also handling growing domestic unrest.

Jordan and Israel established formal diplomatic ties with the Wadi Araba treaty in 1994. Since then, the two countries have signed several trade and economic cooperation agreements, including a 2016 deal for Jordan to import Israeli gas. Relations were always tense, but they worsened in recent years amid Israel’s continued violation of Palestinian rights and incursions into Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is administered by Jordan.

The relationship was further strained last year when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. That government includes figures such as far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has advocated changing the longstanding agreement that governs access to holy sites in Jerusalem that are under Jordanian custodianship. After the Israeli elections, Jordanian King Abdullah II warned Israel against crossing what he called “red lines” and attempts to undermine Jordan’s “special role” at Jerusalem’s holy sites that Israel recognized in the 1994 treaty.

Since the outbreak of the war, Jordanian officials have taken a strong public stance against Israel. They have accused Israel of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, called for an immediate ceasefire, and tried to secure humanitarian aid to Gaza. Last month, Abdullah denounced Israel’s aggression as a “collective punishment of a besieged and helpless people” and a “flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.” The king also criticized the West’s unwillingness to call for an end to hostilities, saying Palestinian lives appeared to “matter less than Israeli ones.”

Meanwhile, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Israel has crossed “every legal, ethical, and humanitarian red line.” He has also criticized the selective application of international law. “If any other country in the world did a fragment of what Israel did, it would have sanctions imposed on it from every corner of the world,” he said at a security summit on Nov. 18. At a news conference on Monday, he said the events in Gaza “should be classified as genocide.”

Jordan is especially worried about the forced displacement of Palestinians. The creation of Israel in 1948 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians whom Israel never allowed to return. Many found refuge in Jordan, which is now home to more than 2 million registered Palestinian refugees and where more than an estimated half of the population is of Palestinian origin.

With 1.7 million Palestinians—more than half of Gaza’s population—now displaced within the besieged enclave, and Israeli settler attacks surging in the West Bank, fears of another wave of refugees are growing. Abdullah has said the expulsion of Palestinians would be a “red line.” Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher al Khasawneh has warned international displacement would be a “declaration of war” and announced that the Jordanian army is strengthening its presence along its borders.

Some policy changes have accompanied Jordan’s strong rhetoric. On Oct. 17, Abdullah cancelled a summit in Amman with U.S. President Joe Biden after an explosion at the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza killed hundreds of people and sparked global outrage. Jordan also recalled its ambassador from Israel and told the Israeli ambassador in Amman to stay out of the country after Israeli air strikes hit the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp, the largest in Gaza. Safadi said the ambassador’s return would depend on Israel “stopping its war on Gaza” and warned of the war’s potential to spread across the region.

A day after an Israeli air strike injured seven staff members at a Jordanian field hospital in Gaza on Nov. 15, Safadi announced that Jordan would not sign a deal to provide solar energy to Israel in exchange for desalinated water. “Can you imagine a Jordanian minister sitting next to an Israeli minister to sign a water and electricity agreement while Israel continues to kill children in Gaza?” he asked.

Jordanian protesters had been pushing their government to scrap the water-for-energy deal since it was announced in 2021. A grassroots campaign called “I’m not paying” has urged Jordanians to boycott electricity and water bills to protest deals with Israel, including the 2016 agreement whereby Jordan’s government—away from parliamentary or public scrutiny—agreed to pay Israel $10 billion for gas supplies over 15 years.

But as Israel cut off water, fuel, and electricity to Gaza, many Jordanians worried even more about the risks of giving Israel control over a key sector. The Arabic saying “blood does not become water”—similar to “blood is thicker than water” in English—appeared on signs and stickers across Amman to denounce the deal as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

Many protesters want the government to do more. For Hisham Bustani, a Jordanian writer and activist who helped organize a national campaign against Israeli gas imports, not signing the water-for-energy deal is a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough. “We demand complete disengagement with Israel, and an end to the funneling of billions of Jordanian taxpayers’ money to the Israeli war and occupation economy through gas deals,” he said.

Ending all diplomatic ties with Israel is a core demand of many protesters. The day Jordan announced that it would recall its ambassador to Israel, demonstrators gathered near the Israeli Embassy in Amman, chanting, “It’s not enough.”

The monarchy’s relationship with Israel is deeply unpopular among Jordanians, many of whom feel the partnership primarily serves Jordan’s elite. “It has not benefitted the population at large,” said Tariq Tell, a Jordanian political economist who teaches at the American University of Beirut. “There is a lot of questioning of the whole structure of the regime’s political economy because it’s creating greater inequalities. People are falling through the cracks.”

Many Jordanians see normalization with Israel and the monarchy’s U.S.-aligned policy as linked to neoliberal economic reforms and austerity policies that have weakened social protections. Even before the war, a worsening economy, 23 percent unemployment rate, and perceived corruption fueled growing popular discontent across the country, which the authorities responded to with increased repression.

Protesters have widely denounced the United States and other Western governments for their complicity in Israel’s assault as the West continues to provide military, economic, and political support to Israel. Strong anti-U.S. sentiment is expressed at every demonstration. One sign held up at a protest near the U.S. Embassy in Amman last month labeled Biden and Netanyahu “war criminals” and “partners in crime.” Another read: “We will not forget war crimes in Gaza sponsored by the U.S.”

A key U.S. ally, Jordan is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel, receiving $1.45 billion a year. The Hashemite monarchy’s dependence on Washington raises internal challenges. “The reaction in the West has been almost uniformly supportive of Israel,” Tell said. “It opens awkward questions about what Jordan is doing as a pro-Western monarchy. … The regime is on a tightrope, and it will be difficult to land safely.”

As Washington sends warships and fighter aircraft to the Middle East to bolster its military presence in the region, many demonstrators are demanding an end to Jordan’s military cooperation with the United States. In 2021, a U.S.-Jordan defense agreement allowed U.S. forces, aircraft, and vehicles free entry to Jordanian territory and gave an estimated 3,000 U.S. troops stationed at bases in the country immunity from Jordanian courts. This deal, which was highly controversial in Jordan, “amounts to putting Jordan under a U.S. mandate and facilitates the use of Jordan as a military base to support American plans for rearranging the region,” Bustani said.

But Jillian Schwedler, a political scientist at the City University of New York’s Hunter College, said the Jordanian monarchy’s dependence on U.S. funds means it is unlikely to risk the bilateral relationship. “They are going to express outrage but won’t put the relation in peril,” she said.

As domestic pressures mount, the government has increased its efforts to contain popular anger. It has forbidden demonstrations or gatherings in the Jordan Valley and near border areas. In Amman, Jordanian forces have fired tear gas at demonstrators trying to storm the Israeli Embassy, closed roads, and prevented protestors from reaching the U.S. and European embassies.

Several protestors have been detained on charges of unlawful assembly, vandalism, disturbing public order, and assaulting security and public officers. Protesters have demanded the release of all detainees, chanting “enough arrests!” in the streets.

Still, the war has allowed the emergence of a unified street. “Jordanians are just as supportive of Gaza as Palestinians,” Tell said. “There is a coherent nationalist discourse that is able to overcome the communal divide the regime usually plays upon.” Carrying on without taking public opinion into account, he said, “could be dangerous for the current regime.”