Arab Literary Travels

Jordanian National Identity with Regard to Refugees

     In his extensively researched book, Joseph Massad begins exploring Jordanian national identity with regard to those who are considered outsiders, usually in the form of refugees, beginning with the Jordanian relationship to the Palestinian cause. Ultimately, Massad argues that Jordanian identity has always been an “elastic entity,” “expanding and contracting” to include many peoples over the course of several decades, but ultimately in the current climate Jordan has used these other peoples to solidify what it means to be a Jordanian, creating an “other” out of those for whom Jordan has become a refuge.

     According to Massad, ideas concerning national Jordanian identity began long before Jordan became a country in 1946; the competing identities began as far back as the Ottoman Empire, with sparing definitions including Transjordan, a Jordanian identity that included parts of Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon, Hashemite Jordan, which created a much more exclusive idea of Jordan, and then just plain Jordan, an identity that relied on political borders to define who and what Jordan was. Unification of these ideas came legally in 1950 upon the annexation of the West Bank into Transjordan, which, despite losing the West Bank in the 1967 War, used the idea of the West Bank to incorporate ideas of “natural and geographic unity” into its rhetoric (Massad).

    In Massad’s argument, the acceptance of this originally Palestinian territory showed that the Jordanians were eager “to establish itself as the representative of the aggrieved Palestinians,” setting the precedent for Jordan to become a safe haven for Arab refugees everywhere (Massad). Even as the ties between the West Bank and the rest of Jordan were severed, which happened over the course of the seventies and early eighties, the king still advocated for the Arab Palestinian’s right to a national identity, further solidifying the idea that Jordan was a champion of the Arab peoples facing hardship. Over the course of the twentieth and twenty first century, this perception of Jordan has put them on the international stage because of their hospitality. In my Story Map on the following page, I will try to give a brief overview of the multiple conflicts that led diverse people groups inside the borders of Jordan. 

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