-Analysis-
AMMAN — The Muslim Brotherhood’s winning nearly 25% of parliament seats in last week’s Jordanian legislative elections is notable — but not the most notable result.
Rather, it was the Jordanian regime’s decision to allow the group to join the race in the first place, to be part of the political scene in the kingdom after more than three decades of electoral siege that had been imposed on the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Brotherhood in Jordan.
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The Jordanian elections were held with a fair degree of integrity, as the Brotherhood itself admits. This time the Royal Court allowed the Islamist group back into parliament, after its long years of tense relations with the state at its various levels.
The last time the Jordanian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood was allowed to join the legislative election was in 1989, when they won 27% of the seats. However they were subsequently excluded from Parliament following the 1994 peace deal between Israel and Jordan, as well as Amman’s decision disengage from the West Bank. The Israeli-Jordanian settlement at the time required excluding the Brotherhood from legislative politics.
Peace ousted the Brotherhood; war brought them back
With a little exaggeration, it can be said that the peace agreement between Jordan and Israel ousted the Brotherhood from the Jordanian parliament, and the war on Gaza and the West Bank brought them back.
During the years of tensions between the Brotherhood and the Jordanian monarchy, Hamas’ influence within the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan has always been a major concern for the power circles in Amman. The government has always expressed its frustration with the extent of Hamas’s influence within the Jordanian wing of the group.
Hamas support among the Jordanian Brotherhood has only increased.
Senior Brotherhood officials were imprisoned on that charge, and the Islamic Center, the economic and educational arm of the group, was also closed on this charge.
Indeed, the Brotherhood eventually turned into a Palestinian organization in Jordan, after its influence and leadership moved from the East Jordanian sphere to the Palestinian-Jordanian sphere. The government has long noted that most Hamas leaders hold Jordanian passports, and have organizational and political relations with the Jordan branch of the Brotherhood. It’s a relationship the state has been unable to control at its borders.
The level of Hamas support among the Jordanian Brotherhood today, in light of the war in Gaza, has only increased over the past 11 months. Amman is the only Arab city that has witnessed mass demonstrations in support of Hamas in Gaza — and that has caused serious consternation for Jordan government officials.
Existential threat
Despite the tense context, the decision was clear in the current elections: allow the Brotherhood to have limited access to parliament. This can only be interpreted as a Jordanian response to Israel’s efforts and intentions to force the transfer of the residents of the West Bank to Jordan, and the existential risks that this represents for the kingdom.
For Jordan, the potential transfer means a threat to the nation, and a massive demographic change that would overthrow the foundations of the kingdom. Jordan is aware that the equation of the “alternative homeland” for Palestinians in Jordan has always been a cornerstone of the Israeli right-wing consciousness since the establishment of the entity.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently mentioned Vladimir Jabotinsky, a Zionist leader who founded the militant Zionist Revisionist movement that played an important role in the establishment of Israel. He was behind the “alternative homeland” theory.
Today, the West Bank is witnessing daily events that can only be understood as steps to get rid of the Palestinian population by pushing them to migrate to the eastern bank of the Jordan River, ie, in Jordan. The arrival of about two million Palestinians to Jordan would mean its transformation into a Palestinian state, and the completion of the features of the “alternative homeland.”
The Muslim Brotherhood are a Jordanian response to what is happening in the West Bank.
Israel is waging a different kind of war on Jordan, in parallel with its military campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. But there is a fundamental difference between those wars and the cold war on Amman.
Sovereignty over al-Aqsa
Jordan feels that such a war is an existential threat due to the demographic threat coming from the West Bank, not to mention the targeting of its sovereignty over al-Aqsa Mosque, through the continuous invasions of the mosque by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The Muslim Brotherhood — as “partners” in the new Jordanian parliament, and in light of the elections held in parallel with the war on Gaza — are one of the Jordanian responses to what is happening in the West Bank.
The parliament is the political structure of Israel’s eastern neighbor, and the sensitivity in Amman towards Hamas’ influence within the Brotherhood in Jordan has receded in the face of the existential risks posed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
