PALESTINE, JORDAN, AND THE HIJACKING OF HISTORY

Palestine, Jordan, and the Hijacking of History by Jason Maoz (Contentions)

Thirty years ago this month, the journalist Sidney Zion wrote an article for New York magazine titled “The Palestine Problem: It’s All in A Name,” which he would update in 2003 for The Jewish Press. Zion essentially supported the right-wing Zionist argument against the historicity of the Kingdom of Jordan, while upending the right-wing Zionist argument against the historicity of a Palestinian people.

Not that the latter was necessarily an exclusively right-wing conceit — Labor party icon Golda Meir, for example, insisted publicly on more than one occasion that “There are no Palestinians, there are only Jordanians.”

“Of course,” wrote Zion, “she was wrong. In fact, there are no Jordanians, only Palestinians.”

Zion’s contention was that by pushing the idea that there was no such thing as a Palestinian Arab and acquiescing in the myth that Jordan is “an immutable entity, as distinct from Palestine as are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq,” Israeli leaders had helped obscure the empirical truths that Jordan was the artificial nation and “Jordanian” the artificial nationality. And their doing so lent important credence to the misperception, by now almost universally accepted, that Israel sits on the entirety of what was once Palestine.

The reality, Zion noted, was that “what began in 1920 as a mandate to turn Palestine into a Jewish homeland turned into a reverse Balfour Declaration, creating an Arab nation in four-fifths of Palestine and leaving the Jews to fight for statehood against the Arabs on the West Bank.”

Writing about Jordan in a 1981 New York Times op-ed column, Zion encapsulated in one paragraph the real history of Jordan and the repercussions of that history having disappeared down the memory hole:

I know people who think it’s two thousand years old. But Jordan was only the name of a river until 1922, when Winston Churchill, then colonial secretary, turned its East Bank into the Emirate of Transjordan - created an emirate out of the British Mandate territory of Palestine. Transjordan was 80 percent of the land mass of Palestine. Transjordan is Palestine. In 1946, by British fiat, [then-King] Hussein’s grandfather, Abdullah, became King of Transjordan. In 1948, Abdullah changed the name of his country to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Presto! The Ancient Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. So what? So everything. What was in every respect Palestine became a refugee camp for Palestinian Arabs, a host country for those “driven out” by the Jews. And so it is viewed today. The Hussein family, brought out of Arabia by Churchill, are the only true non-Palestinians living in Jordan today. Yet the world sees Palestine as wherever the Jews live.

Would history have turned out differently had Israel and its supporters, loudly and consistently, focused on the fact that the real “theft of Palestine” had been pulled off by the British for the sake of an Arab client and that almost without exception “Jordanians” are in fact Palestinians?

In his 1978 New York article, Zion felt that it indeed would make at least some difference “if the world were to understand that Israel now occupies only 20 percent of Palestine” and that “if it becomes clear that the Arab refugees and their children who crossed over to Jordan in 1948 did not enter a ‘host country’ but rather the Arab part of their own country . . . ”

Zion may have had some basis for hope 30 years ago, when Israel was but three decades old and not quite yet the international outcast it has since become. But now that Israel is twice as old as it was in 1978 and the world - including an appreciable number of Jews - has largely come to view the Arab-Israeli conflict through the prism of Israel’s enemies, such conjecture seems like nothing more than a sad joke.

It’s a story of missed opportunities, and of how a people lauded for their smarts permitted their history and patrimony to be hijacked while barely putting up a fight.

HAMAS CONFISCATES JORDANIAN AID SENT TO GAZA

Hamas Confiscates Jordanian Aid Sent to Gaza
Fourteen trucks with humanitarian aid sent by the Jordanian Red Crescent Society to the Palestine Red Crescent Society in Gaza were confiscated by Hamas police on Thursday. A spokesman for the Hamas police said Hamas would decide how to distribute the aid. (DPA/Ha'aretz)

ISRAEL DENIES REPORT OF AGREEMENT TO GIVE TEMPLE MOUNT TO JORDAN

Israel Denies Report of Agreement to Transfer Temple Mount to Jordanian Custody - Herb Keinon (Jerusalem Post)
The Prime Minister's Office denied a report in the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi that Olmert and Abbas had agreed to transfer the Temple Mount's holy sites to Jordanian custody. Israeli government officials warned there would likely be a torrent of reports over the next few weeks about the content of negotiations with the Palestinians, with much of it either trial balloons or wishful thinking by interested parties leaking information.

ARAFAT TURNED DOWN JORDANIAN OFFER TO BE DEPUTY P.M.

Arafat Turned Down Jordanian Offer to be Deputy PM (INN)
Jordan's King Hussein offered Yasser Arafat the position of Deputy Prime Minister if he would agree to the annexation of Judea & Samaria to Jordan.

HAMAS PLOT TO ATTACK ISRAELIS IN JORDAN THWARTED

Hamas Plot to Attack Israeli Tourists in Jordan Thwarted
Israeli authorities foiled a plot by a Hamas militant to attack Israeli tourists at a hotel in Jordan, Prime Minister Olmert's office announced Tuesday. Khader Shkeir, from the West Bank village of Ein Arik, admitted to planning the attack during a visit to Jordan in 2005 with an accomplice. The suspects chose the Radisson SAS hotel in Amman and a second hotel as their targets. The pair planned to board a bus carrying tourists to the hotels and carry out a mass shooting attack. They bought two AK-47 automatic weapons for the attack, but then Jordanian authorities arrested Shkeir and deported him to the West Bank. (AP/Jerusalem Post)

JORDAN DECLINES OLMERT'S INVITATION TO ENTER WEST BANK

Jordan Won't Send Troops to West Bank - Herb Keinon (Jerusalem Post)
Jordan has ruled out Prime Minister Olmert's suggestion that Jordanian forces assist the PA in combating terrorism in the West Bank, an idea first reported in the Jerusalem Post on Monday. The Jordanian news service Petra quoted government spokesman Nasser Judeh as saying the idea of sending Jordanian troops to the West Bank "was absolutely rejected by Jordan."

SEE: OLMERT MAY INVITE JORDANIAN ARMY INTO WEST BANK

OLMERT MAY INVITE JORDANIAN ARMY INTO WEST BANK

WOW. 40 YEARS AFTER THE SIX DAY WAR.

Olmert may allow Jordanian Army to help PA in West Bank (JPost)
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is exploring the idea of allowing Jordanian forces, and not NATO troops, into the West Bank to help the Palestinian Authority fight terrorism, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

What Olmert has in mind, and what has been raised in recent meetings with Jordan's King Abdullah II, is not the Badr Brigade - a group of Palestinian soldiers inside the Jordanian Army - but rather "regular" Jordanian Army troops, Beduin who have experience fighting terrorism.

The Badr Brigade is a unit in the Jordanian Army composed of 1,500 to 2,000 Palestinians who receive salaries from the PLO. The introduction of the Badr Brigade into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to support Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has been talked about endlessly and without any concrete results for years.

But Olmert, in recent meetings, has raised the possibility of introducing regular forces from the Jordanian Army. He has said this could be an effective way to help Abbas create a semblance of security in the West Bank.

ARAB MINISTERS IN ISRAEL TO ASK FOR MORE LAND FOR FAKE PEACE

THE ARABS DON'T WANT "PEACE." THEY WANT ALL "PIECES" OF ISRAEL.

Arab ministers in Israel for land-for-peace talks
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Egyptian and Jordanian envoys from the Arab League, on their first visit to Israel to present an Arab land-for-peace plan, called on Wednesday for setting a rapid timetable for talks with the Palestinians over statehood. “We need a precise timetable, a quick timetable and we urge Israel not to waste this historic opportunity. Time is not on our side,” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdelelah al-Khatib, in Jerusalem with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he believed there was “a chance in the near future for the process to ripen into talks that would, in effect, deal with the stages of establishing a Palestinian state.”

JORDAN REJECTS WEST BANK CONFEDERACY

Abdullah rejects W. Bank confederacy (JPost)
Jordan's King Abdullah II flatly rejected a confederation with the Palestinians on Sunday, calling any such proposal at the current time a "conspiracy" against his kingdom and the Palestinians, a local newspaper reported.

Despite government assertions to the contrary, speculation has mounted in recent weeks that Jordan may want to assume a protectorate role in the West Bank by forming a confederation with the Palestinians.

In newspaper remarks published Sunday, Abdullah said he was "fed up talking about this issue."

"We reject the formula of confederation and federation and we believe that proposing this issue at this specific period is a conspiracy against both Palestine and Jordan," Abdullah told the independent Al-Ghad newspaper.

This key US ally fears that any confederation before a final settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could give credence to Israeli hard-liners, who have urged making Jordan a home for the West Bank's Arabs.

Under a 1950 deal, Jordan administered the West Bank and east Jerusalem until Israel captured them in the 1967 war. Abdullah's father, the late King Hussein, severed administrative links with the West Bank in 1988, handing responsibility to the Palestine Liberation Organization under its late leader, Yasser Arafat.

Hussein said a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation was possible once the Palestinians had an independent state.

In May, the Israeli Maariv daily said that Jordan was pressing hard for a confederation with the Palestinians.

SEE: ABBAS LOOKS TO JORDAN FOR HELP

ABBAS LOOKS TO JORDAN FOR HELP

I REMEMBER ATTENDING A SPEECH BY FORMER NYC MAYOR ED KOCH OVER 20 YEARS AGO IN WHICH HE ADVOCATED A JORDANIAN/PALESTINIAN CONFEDERATION ON THE WEST BANK, NOT AN INDEPENDENT PALESTINIAN STATE. IT LOOKS AS IF THE PALESTINIANS AND JORDANIANS ARE MOVING TOWARD THE SAME CONCLUSION.

Abbas Seeks to Bolster Fatah with Jordan-Based Force - Adam Entous
Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has asked Israel for permission to bring Fatah forces based in Jordan to the West Bank to try to shore up his control after Hamas' Gaza takeover, Israeli officials said on Tuesday. The Badr Brigade has less than 1,000 fighters of various levels of training, and Abbas had initially intended to send the brigade into Gaza. Analysts say Badr is Fatah's best-trained and best-equipped fighting force, aside from the Presidential Guard. It is considered to be more loyal to Fatah than other forces, and also has strong ties to the Jordanian king. (Reuters/Washington Post)

See also Are There Signs of a Jordanian-Palestinian Reengagement? - Dan Diker and Pinhas Inbari (ICA/JCPA)

See also In the Wake of the Hamas Coup: Rethinking America's "Grand Strategy" for the New Palestinian Authority - Robert Satloff (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)

• Before Washington proceeds too far down the path of propping up Mahmoud Abbas and resuscitating Fatah, the administration should take a critical look at the policies that failed to help develop the Palestinian Authority into a truly effective, accountable, transparent government, or to impede Hamas' rise.
• In this context, pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian "political horizon" may in fact run counter to the interests and preferences of both sides. Instead, investing in an Arab-Palestinian political horizon - including early negotiation on the outline of an eventual Jordanian-Palestinian confederation - may be more realistic, valuable, and effective.
• So far, the administration has responded with the main elements of its previously failed policy: some security assistance, though no demand for the transformation of the PA/Fatah security establishment; some economic assistance, though no requirement for change in the PA's governance or fight against corruption.
• President Bush said in 2002: "A Palestinian state will never be created by terror - it will be built through reform. And reform must be more than cosmetic change, or veiled attempt to preserve the status quo." In practical terms, this would mean the following:

• Abbas should not only outlaw Hamas' extralegal militia - the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades - but also ban Fatah's own extralegal militia - the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - and truly implement a policy of government monopoly on force.

  Abbas should commit to credible mechanisms to ensure that no U.S. funds find their way to either Hamas-controlled Gaza or the various PA and Fatah political, cultural, educational, and media institutions that still advocate violence against Israel and Jews.

  Abbas should implement the full range of existing Oslo-era commitments, which address a vast array of issues from security cooperation to legitimate political activity.

• Rhetoric to the contrary, there is reason to believe that neither Israelis nor Palestinians are actually eager to achieve rapid diplomatic movement. No Israeli government is likely to consider ceding critical assets to a Palestinian interlocutor so weak that it lost power in the one small piece of territory once under its total control. And no rump Palestinian government, still reeling from defeat, is likely to make concessions on the key issues - such as refugees - essential to any peace deal.
• In the current environment, it would be no surprise if leaders on both sides agreed that now is not really the most propitious time to press for diplomatic progress, though they may want the illusion of diplomacy for local political purposes. Yet it is unclear why Washington would want to busy itself with an empty exercise that distracts from the important business of fixing the problems that produced the current situation.

FOOD AND FUEL FLOW INTO GAZA

Ten trucks of Jordan-provided foodstuffs enter Gaza through Israel (Haaretz )
Ten truckloads of full of basic foodstuffs, provided by King Abdullah II of Jordan, entered the Gaza Strip on Thursday through the Kerem Shalom crossing. The shipment, which was coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces, included 30 tons of margarine, 33 tons of lentils, 34 tons of noodles, 20 tons of beans, and 15 tons of garbanzo beans.

The IDF said over 400 tons of food and 200,000 liters of fuel were brought into the Gaza Strip from Israel on Thursday. In addition, the IDF said, eight Palestinians in need of medical treatment were transferred to hospitals in Israel, and some 100 dual citizens were evacuated from the Strip.

According to a security source, despite warnings of starvation among the Palestinian population, a shortage of foodstuffs is not expected in the near future, due to the fact that until Hamas' takeover large quantities of food were brought into the Strip through the Karni crossing.

The source said that local merchants tend to provide false reports of shortages during times of crisis in order to raise prices.

Meanwhile, the Customs Authority issued new orders Thursday, saying that medical equipment, food and other vital goods would be released if its importers proved they were needed for humanitarian aims.

"In addition, a release can be filed under the name of a Gaza Strip importer if the cargo is immediately transferred to storage or shops in Judea and Samaria," customs official Reuven Meltzer said in a letter obtained by Reuters.

SHIN BET ARRESTS JORDANIAN PLOTTING KIDNAPPINGS

Shin Bet arrests Jordanian terrorist (JPost)
A day after the Shin Bet announced that it had foiled a planned terror attack on a Modi'in synagogue, the agency said Wednesday that a Jordanian man who planned to kidnap Israelis in Jerusalem had been arrested by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and the Jerusalem Police in November 2006.

During his interrogation, Allah Hamad, 28, revealed that he had been recruited by Hamas operatives in Syria. Hamad holds Israeli as well as Jordanian citizenship, and was sent to live in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Zur Bahar.

Hamad reportedly collected intelligence by walking the streets and scoping out potential kidnapping targets, whom his recruiters hoped to use as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Israel.

According to the report, Hamad, 28, received special training in how to make himself inconspicuous among Israelis. He was also taught how to construct bombs with timing devices. Security forces who arrested Hamad found materials that could be used to construct a bomb.

Hamad told his interrogators that he was arrested approximately two weeks before attempting to execute his kidnapping plans.

PALESTINIANS' HISTORY OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

Palestinian Arabs Doing Violence to Own Cause By YOUSSEF IBRAHIM (NY Sun)
Syria and Al Qaeda laid siege to northern Lebanon this week at the aptly named Nahr al-Bared, or "Cold River," Palestinian Arab refugee camp, but it fell to the ever-obliging Palestinians to do the killing. The ongoing fighting between the Palestinian Arabs and the Lebanese army in Tripoli says a lot about a skewered sense of entitlement felt by Palestinian refugees in many of the countries that play host to them and not much about their gratitude.

For its part, the Lebanese government has asserted that the Fatah al-Islam gang fighting its army is no more than a band of Syrian hired guns bent on disrupting Lebanon's latest effort to set up an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.

U.N. investigators have ascertained that virtually all of the defendants prosecutors are likely to name are Syrian officials, including President Al-Assad, his brother, and a brother-in-law, among others.

Mayhem is always to be expected from Syria, but why are the Palestinian Arabs offering themselves up as tools of Syria, destroying whatever sympathy is still left for their cause, and turning themselves into pariahs in the Arab world? And why do they keep doing it over and over?

In 1990, some 400,000 Palestinian Arab residents of Kuwait cheered on, and even collaborated with, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army during his invasion of the Gulf state; when the Gulf War liberated Kuwait a year and a half later, the Kuwaitis threw all their Palestinians out.

Twenty years earlier in Jordan, armed Palestinian Arab gangs waged the so-called Black September Civil War in an effort to overthrow King Hussein and take over the country.

Both episodes cost the Palestinian Arab cause dearly. Those in Kuwait lost some of the best living standards they ever enjoyed. In Jordan, after killing some 7,000 Palestine Liberation Organization fighters, Hussein threw the rest out along with their leader, Yasser Arafat, who had found his way to Lebanon by 1971.

Within a decade, Arafat and his PLO gangs had brought turmoil to Lebanon, in effect triggering the 1975 Lebanese Civil War and, in 1982, inviting an Israeli invasion of the country. Those travesties got the gangster leadership of the PLO evicted once again, this time to Tunisia, leaving behind some 350,000 Palestinian Arabs holed up in refugee camps of Lebanon, which quickly became 12 cesspools of radicalism. They are where Syria and Al Qaeda went to recruit the newest gang of mercenary Palestinian Arabs, Fatah al-Islam.

All of this invites the question of what makes our Palestinian Arab brethren gravitate constantly toward such lowest possible denominators and end up as the prime losers.

After the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993 offered a chance for much of the gang leadership to return to the West Bank and Gaza, it took Arafat's crew less than two years to alienate even the most die-hard Israeli doves. Suicide bombings led to checkpoints, which led to two intifadas, thus ending the Palestinian Spring.

Shortly after Prime Minister Sharon pulled the Israeli army out of Gaza in the summer of 2005, handing the Palestinian Arabs their own territory to govern for the first time ever, they quickly transformed it into a " Mad Max" arena of shootings, kidnappings, and lawlessness. Unable to agree on anything, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigades, Popular Resistance Committees, and the other factions all went for each other's throats.

Similarly self-destructive impulses were seen in Lebanon this week, as Fatah al-Islam gang members made their way back to their camp — from a bank robbery — with the Lebanese army in hot pursuit. Because of a Byzantine pan-Arab agreement brokered in 1969, Lebanese forces cannot set foot in any of the camps hosting Palestinian Arab "guests" of Lebanon.

As you read this, the-bank-robbers-turned-freedom-fighters are likely shooting at the Lebanese army in the name of a free Arab Palestine. Sadly, this is the sort of bankruptcy the Palestinian mind has come to.

But the times, they are a-changing. When the Tripoli episode is done, and internecine fighting among the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza resumes, the world will have moved further away from any sense of commitment to the Palestinian cause, and so will other Arabs.

Writing in a mass circulation Egyptian daily, Al-Akhbar, one of the most widely read columnists in Egypt, Ahmad Ragab, ended a biting commentary about the Palestinian infighting with what seems to be a spreading sentiment: "A curse upon all your houses."

JORDANIAN OPPOSITION PROTESTS VISIT BY ISRAELI PEACENIKS

Jordanian Opposition Blasts Visit by Israeli Peace Activists
A coalition of Jordanian opposition parties and trade unions Thursday condemned a planned visit by 50 Israeli peace activists for a meeting with Jordanian opinion leaders. The Executive Committee for Confronting Normalization with Israel urged a cessation of all forms of normalization of ties with Israel (Ha'aretz)

UPDATE ON KIDNAPPED BBC REPORTER

Group says it's holding BBC's Mideast reporter (MSNBC)
DUBAI - A little-known Islamist group said it was holding the BBC's Middle East correspondent Alan Johnston who disappeared eight weeks ago, according to an audio recording posted on the Internet on Wednesday.

"We demand that Britain free our prisoners, particularly the honorable Sheikh Abu Qatada al Filistini," said a speaker on the tape from the Jaysh al Islam (Army of Islam) group. The authenticity of the tape could not immediately be verified.

The recording was posted on an Islamist Web site often used by al-Qaida and other militant groups, and was accompanied by what appeared to be a picture of Johnston's BBC identification card.

Johnston's Captors Make Three Demands (CAMERA)
Palestinian Ma'an News Agency reports today that the Gazans holding BBC reporter Alan Johnston have finally issued their demands:

The first demand is to be fulfilled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and is for the captors to be illegally given an area of land. The sources gave no further details about this demand.

The second demand is to be met by the Jordanian authorities and is the release of the Iraqi female captive, Sajida Rishawi, who is accused of planning the explosions in the Jordanian capital of Amman on the 9th of November 2006.

The third demand is for the BBC to pay a ransom of $5million.

HEY, THEY FORGOT TO MENTION THEIR ZIONIST ENEMY OR THE RELEASE OF THE TERRORISTS ISRAEL HAS IMPRISONED. IT APPEARS THEIR GRIEVENCE IS WITH THE PA, JORDAN AND THE BBC. I ALSO HAVE GRIEVENCES WITH THE PA, JORDAN AND THE BBC. I DON'T THINK I'LL BE KIDNAPPING ANYONE HOWEVER (EVEN THOUGH I COULD USE THE MONEY).

THE FOLLOWING MAY EXPLAIN WHY THE DEMANDS ARE NOT FULL OF ISLAMO-FASCIST RHETORIC (ALTHOUGH I'M SURE, AS WITH PRIOR HOSTAGES, THEY WILL MAKE JOHNSON TO CONVERT TO ISLAM).

Hamasniks Tell Captors to Drop Islamic Justification (CAMERA)
The irony has a distinctly mideastern flavor. The AP reports:

Palestinian officials are trying to persuade the kidnappers of a long-held BBC journalist that they are mistaken in using Islamic justifications for their actions, an aide to the Palestinian premier said yesterday.

Ahmed Youssef, an aide to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, said there had been contacts with the kidnappers of Alan Johnston, who has been held for 50 days, by far the longest time in captivity for a Western hostage.

"It's on the way to being resolved. It's being addressed religiously and ideologically," he said, but would not say whether he expected Johnston to be released in days or weeks.

Youssef said negotiators were trying to convince kidnappers that the extremist Islamic ideology they used to justify holding Westerners was incorrect. Last week
Haniyeh suggested the kidnappers belonged to an Islamic extremist group.

An Islamic extremist group, as opposed to say, Haniyeh's Hamas, listed as a terror group by the U.S., EU and Israel and whose charter calls for Muslims to kill "the Jews." The AP article also says that Youssef denies earlier reports about the captors' demands.

CARTER AND HITLER: BESTSELLERS IN JORDAN

Jordanian Bestsellers: Jimmy and Adolf (LGF)

From The David Project, here's a photograph of a lovely display in the window of a bookstore in Amman, Jordan, featuring the latest bestsellers in Arabic: Jimmy Carter's "Apartheid" book, and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

JORDANIAN MEDIA ANTI-SEMITISM

The Hate Industry: Articles and Cartoons in the Jordanian Press (Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center)
The Jordanian media publishes articles and cartoons which combine vicious messages of hate against Israel with anti-Semitic and, at times, anti-American themes. The Jordanian government, which signed a peace treaty with Israel, does not put an end to these publications, which contribute towards an atmosphere of hate and hostility against Israel and the Jewish people.

On April 12, 2007, the Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab al-Yawm published an article titled, "From the Holocaust Industry to Terrorism," dealing with Holocaust denial, by Muwaffaq Muhaddin, which begins: "Not a single country in history was founded by turning fiction into fact - save for the country of the Jewish enemy." On March 9, 2007, Ad-Dustour published an article titled "The Integral Relationship between Zionism and Nazism, by Rakan al-Majali, a regular columnist.

JORDAN BUYING UP LAND AROUND TEMPLE MOUNT

Jordan quietly gaining Temple Mount control (WND)
JERUSALEM – Jordan has been quietly purchasing real estate surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in hopes of gaining more control over the area accessing the holy site, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.

The officials confirmed to WND the Jordanian Kingdom has been using shell companies during the past year to purchase several apartments and shops located at key peripheral sections of the Temple Mount.

The officials said Jordan also set up a commission to use the companies to petition mostly Arab landowners adjacent to eastern sections of the Temple Mount to sell their properties. They said profits from sales at any purchased shops would be reinvested to buy more real estate near the Mount and in eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods.

The shell companies at times have presented themselves as acting on behalf of the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, WND has learned.

Sheik Azzam Khateeb, who was installed last month as the new manager of the Waqf, is known to be close to the Jordanian monarchy. The previous Waqf manager, Sheik Adnon Husseini, was loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party and had relations with Israel and some Jewish groups.

"Khateeb answers directly to Jordan," a Fatah official told WND.

The Israeli and Palestinian officials said Jordan recently placed a bid to purchase Jerusalem's Intercontinental Hotel, which is situated on an important road that leads to an ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, adjacent to the Temple Mount. Informed sources tell WND the hotel is owned by groups representing the Israeli government and is leased every 10 years to a new company. The last lease was signed in 1997 and expires later this year. It was not immediately clear whether Jordan's bid was accepted.

The Mount of Olives is site of many biblical events and is considered important to Judaism and Christianity.

Real estate ownership in Jerusalem's Old City is widely considered a sensitive matter. Previous Israeli-Palestinian peace proposals tentatively divided parts of the city based on Jewish or Arab residence.

Jordan previously controlled eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from 1948 until Israel liberated the territory in the 1967 Six Day War. During the period of Jordanian control, Jews were barred from the Western Wall and Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest sites, and hundreds of synagogues were destroyed. Jordan constructed a road to the Intercontinental Hotel that stretched across the Mount of Olives, bulldozing hundreds of Jewish gravestones.

Jordan the past few months has boosted its public profile on the Temple Mount.

The appointment of Khateeb as the new Waqf manager for the Temple Mount was widely seen as a nod to Jordan.

In January, Israel granted Jordan permission to replace the main podium in the Al Aqsa Mosque from which Islamic preachers deliver their sermons. The podium is considered one of the most important stands in the Muslim world. Muslims believe it marks the "exact spot" their prophet Muhammad went up to heaven to receive revelations from Allah.

The new stand bears the emblem of the Jordanian Kingdom. It replaces a 1,000-year-old podium believed to have been shipped to Jerusalem by the Islamic conqueror Saladin. That stand was destroyed in 1969, when an Australian tourist set fire to the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Last month WND first reported Prime Minister Ehud Olmert granted permission to Jordan to construct a large minaret at a site on the Temple Mount where Jewish groups here had petitioned to build a synagogue.

KING ABDULLAH IS WRONG AND DISINGENUOUS

Gall of the Hashemites - Editorial (New York Sun)

• Jordan's King Abdullah II, speaking before a joint meeting of Congress Wednesday, seemed to blame Israel for all the world's problems. "The denial of justice and peace in Palestine," the king said, "is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world."
• Balderdash is the kindest way to describe it. If the terrorists are upset about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, why are they setting off bombs in Indonesia and Spain and Saudi Arabia and Iraq, which are hardly in the vanguard of support for Israel? Given that the terrorists state publicly that their end goal is to make all of Europe and America subject to Islamic law, why should we believe that in fact they have the far more modest goal of merely seizing land belonging to the Jewish state?
• The gall of the son of King Hussein, who perpetrated what the Arabs call Black September on the Palestinians [when Jordan expelled the PLO in 1970], to lecture the Americans on Palestinian Arab dispossession is astounding. Abdullah well knows that Jordan controlled the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. If the Palestinian Arabs were dispossessed during that period, it was no one's fault but the Hashemites', who didn't exactly use those decades to establish a Palestinian Arab state.
• Abdullah made reference to a Saudi proposal from 2002 that he described as the "Arab Peace Initiative." That plan would be more accurately described as the Arab Destruction of Israel Initiative. Its aim was to give the Palestinian Arabs half of the Israeli capital of Jerusalem, [force an Israeli] retreat to militarily indefensible borders, and absorb within those borders enough Arab "refugees" so that its character as a Jewish state would be eradicated.
• One of the effects of the Islamist terrorist onslaught of recent years is that more Americans have thought more deeply about these matters. They will not be gulled by a foreign potentate offering up Israel as a scapegoat for troubles that originate with the failings of the Arab and Islamic world and their nondemocratic leaders, Abdullah among them.

ARAB BANK ACCUSED OF FUNDING TERRORISTS

Arab Bank Accused of Funding Terrorists - Josh Meyer
The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into the New York branch of Jordan-based Arab Bank and its financial links to organizations and individuals accused of terrorism, according to three former

Lawyers suing Arab Bank on behalf of Americans and Israelis injured in terror attacks accuse the firm of facilitating acts of terrorism by providing accounts and other financial services to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and similar groups. Arab Bank also acted as the administrator of a plan in which suicide bombers and others designated as "martyrs" by the PA and other organizations were compensated for their actions. The lawsuits charge that the payments provided an incentive for suicide bombings. (Los Angeles Times)