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Jordanians, Palestinians, and the Hashemite Kingdom in the Middle East Peace Process

Adnan Abu-Odeh
Reviewed by By L. Carl Brown
March/April 2000
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Adnan Abu-Odeh
United States Institute of Peace Press
1999
286 pp.
1878379887
$37.50

The territory known eight decades ago as the British Mandate of Palestine, which later split into Palestine and Transjordan and emerged after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as Israel and Jordan, now seems destined to add a third state, Palestine. But even if that happens, the Palestinians -- those Arabs tracing their roots to the west of the Jordan River -- will remain a significant minority in Israel (around 20 percent). And although some observers dispute the estimate, Palestinians may well form a majority in Jordan. The sorting out of territorial boundaries and national identities is a complex story, told here from the special perspective of Jordan. Abu-Odeh, a long-time political adviser to the late King Hussein, offers a positive but not uncritical account of the Hashemite policies. A Palestinian native of Nablus, he also elucidates an issue often overlooked: the tensions within Jordan between East-Bank Jordanians ("Transjordanians") and Palestinian-Jordanians.

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