fbpx
Scroll Top

Black September and Identity Construction in Jordan

The events of Black September were a turning point in the development of Jordanian identity. As a result of the attempt on King Hussein’s life on 1st September 1970 and the subsequent bloody civil war that played out between the Palestinian Resistance Movements that had acted as a “state within a state” inside Jordan, the Hashemite government expelled the Palestinian Liberation Organization from the country and other Fedayeen groups that comprised the Palestinian Resistance Movements. A second consequence of the war was the increased distrust of Palestinians and the crystallization of a distinct Jordanian identity as a reaction to the developing Palestinian identity. After a brief overview of the events leading up to Black September and the war itself.
The question of Jordanian identity has always been a contentious point in Jordanian national dialogue. Palestinian Jordanians and Transjordanians (the original inhabitants of the East Bank of the Jordan River) see themselves as two different nationalities within the Jordanian state and social structure, the question of national allegiance lying at the heart of the matter. After the annexation of the West Bank in 1950, the Jordanian state had worked to integrate Palestinians into Jordanian society and “insisted that the population on both banks constituted one indivisible people.”

Though Jordanian citizenship laws reflect this, Palestinian Jordanians must deal with subtle structural and social discrimination because of the state’s identity practices that appeared shortly after the Black September events. These practices seek to simultaneously distance the Jordanian state from Palestinian identity markers while building its own identity by affirming “Jordanian” identity markers. The problem of identity has been compounded by the Palestine-Israel conflict and the successive waves of Palestinian refugees flooding across the Jordan River from the West Bank, bringing with it the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Fedayeen groups. The differences between Palestinian Jordanians and Transjordanians came to a head during the events of 1970-1, most commonly referred to as Black September because of the dark stain it has left on Jordanian history. In what began as a campaign to eliminate the Fedayeen groups from Jordan, Black September provided the impetus that spurred the development of a distinct Jordanian identity as a reaction to the developing Palestinian identity.

1970-1: An Overview
After the 1967 loss of the West Bank to Israel, Jordan suddenly found itself without its most a valuable piece of territory and thousands of displaced Palestinians within its new borders. Without the West Bank, Jordan had lost the majority of its agricultural land as well as its most developed territory, the income earned from the important tourist sites that fell within the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and, most importantly, its status as The Holy Land. In addition to the thousands of new refugees, Jordan was also forced to deal with the PLO headed Palestinian Resistance Movements (PRM) within its own borders.

The PRM comprised multiple Fedayeen organizations in addition to the PLO, the most important being Fateh, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. These well-organized groups were able to operate freely within Jordanian territory because of the large Palestinian population in Jordan. By 1969, the PRM essentially functioned as a “state within a state.” The state-like system of the PRM was particularly strong in the Wahadat and Husseini refugee camps, which were popularly referred to as independent republics. Within the camps, the PRM provided welfare and educational services to Palestinians in addition to having their own headquarters, offices, militias, and recruiting offices.

The military and the Fedayeen militias clashed with increasing frequency after the 1967 war. Despite attempts at reconciliation from both sides, a full-scale war broke out between the Jordanian government and the PRM on 16th September after the PFLP attempted to assassinate King Hussein on 1st September 1970 and then blew up three hijacked airplanes on 12th September. The Jordanian military retaliated by shelling the Wahadat and Husseini refugee camps, which housed the PRM headquarters and was their primary bastion of support. As a result of pressure from neighboring Arab states, Jordan was forced to sign the Cairo Agreement on 27th September 1970, after eleven days of intense fighting that resulted in the deaths of approximately 3,400 Palestinians.
While the agreement led to a ceasefire, the agreement also forced Jordan to recognize the Fedayeen’s right to remain in Jordan and continue their opposition to the Israeli occupation
of Palestine. Despite the agreement, the Jordanian military continued their attempts to push the PRM out of its borders with limited success. Fighting resumed in March 1971, but the PRM was not completely expelled until the 18th of July that same year.

Al-Tall: From Integration to Differentiation
Wasfi al-Tall was the son of a famous poet from a well-established family. Educated at the American University of Beirut, he was also a distinguished battalion commander in the First Arab-Israeli War and was known as a good administrator and diplomat. Al-Tall was appointed as Prime Minister of Jordan for the first time on 27th January 1962, and again in 1965. He was known to be extremely loyal to the Hashemite crown and critical of Nasser’s brand of Arab nationalism. During both periods as Prime Minister, al-Tall distinguished himself because of his loyalty to the crown. He also played an important role as advisor to King Hussein, even after his resignation as Prime Minister, and was among those who had advised King Hussein to crack down on the PRM even before Black September. His unwavering loyalty to the Hashemite dynasty in the face of a multitude of challenges contributed to his reappointment as Prime Minister on 28th October 1970, one month after the Cairo Agreement was signed.

Given the King’s desire to eradicate the PRM from Jordan and create order in the kingdom, the choice of al-Tall as Prime Minister was strategically sound. His appointment marked a distinct shift in the stance of the Jordanian government towards the Palestinians within its borders. Where its policies had previously focused on ridding the country of the PLO and the Fedayeen organizations because it saw no link between them and the Palestinian residents, the government under al-Tall began to view the entire Palestinian population in the East Bank as a potential problem.

The growing Palestinian national sentiments, resulting in particular from PLO activities in Jordan, started challenging the power structure as early as 1964 and strengthened after the 1967 defeat of Jordan and loss of the West Bank to Israel. Al-Tall, who was sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, was known as a staunch anti-Fedayeen person particularly because of the PLO’s involvement in “subversion against the Jordanian regime.” Despite his anti-Fedayeen stance and his insistence on “the strict observance of all previous agreements with the government by all Fedayeen organizations,” al-Tall garnered strong public support among both Transjordan and, ironically, Palestinians. As he worked to rid Jordan of the PRM, al-Tall also embarked on a strong “Jordanization” policy. Because of the extensive powers al-Tall held as Prime Minister and his strong public support, he was strategically positioned to carry out this mass restructuring of the Jordanian government and, to a large extent, the public and private sectors.

After the appointment of al-Tall, the Jordanian government witnessed a shift from King Hussein’s integration policy to al-Tall’s policy of “Jordanization,” through which al-Tall strove to “radically diminish the political influence of the Palestinians in Jordan.” The events leading up to and those during Black September had exacerbated the pre-existing tensions between Transjordanians and Palestinians in Jordan. As a result of the growing distrust between the two groups, the al-Tall administration wanted to clear the government apparatus of potential threats. The King had appointed al-Tall to ensure the safety of the state and, as the PLO and other Fedayeen groups posed serious threats to stability, he allowed al-Tall to pursue his “Jorganization” plan. In her article, Fruchter-Ronen differentiates between the negative and positive Jordanization that occurred under al-Tall.

Negative Jordanization saw the overhaul of the bureaucratic system, which included the “extensive firing of Palestinian officials from government offices which were considered traditional Palestinian ‘property,’ such as health, education, and tourism.” These positions were then filled by Transjordanians who were known to be loyal to the King. A similar restructuring occurred within the military and the state’s security services. Outside the government itself, al-Tall eliminated and recreated Palestinian-run organizations, placing them under government supervision.

Likewise, government oversight of the press strengthened. Palestinian and pro-Palestinian newspapers were closed while, in an act of positive Jordanization, two new pro-government newspapers, al-Urdun, and al-Rai were established under Jordanian editors. While reconstituting the government and the military with Jordanian personnel constituted one form of positive Jordanization that took advantage of al-Tall’s negative Jordanization policies, al-Tall also suggested an attempt at institutionalized reconciliation as a result of the King’s discomfort at the growing societal division between Palestinian Jordanians and Transjordanians. The fear that the tensions between the two groups could lead to a polarized conflict resulted in the establishment of the Jordanian National Union, which was meant to bring political activists from both groups together under the King’s direction. Though the Union ultimately failed because of its ineffectiveness, its message that Palestinian Jordanians and Transjordanians are one people was successful at preventing the polarization of the communities.

Identity Rupture
The fault lines along which Jordanian identity fractured existed before the events of 1970- 71. One of the primary sources of this rupture was the activities carried out by the PRM within Jordan’s borders leading up to and during Black September. The PRM lost support both domestically and internationally because of its militant activities, its refusal to abide by Jordanian law, and the constant cycle of making agreements with the government before breaking them shortly afterward.

The rising tension between the Palestinian and Jordanian national identities manifested itself in the discourse and propaganda stemming from both sides. An iconic example is found in the 1968 Israeli Karameh Operation. Both PRM fighters and the Jordanian military took part in defending the Jordanian town of Karameh from an invading force of 15,000 IDF soldiers. The accepted statistics place the number of PRM fighters at around 300 and the number of Jordanian soldiers involved around 15,000. Although one would expect that fighting on the same side against the Israelis would build solidarity between the PRM and the Jordanian military, both sides tell a story that highlights the importance of their own role in the battle at the expense of the other.

The Palestinian version of the battle is “exaggerated, fraught with romanticism, falsified, filled with distorted descriptions, and frequently inconsistent.” The Palestinian narrative highlighted the prominence of their role in the battle and, like its Jordanian counterpart, the Palestinian narrative also reflected the PRM’s clear desire for “the military show in the country to be exclusively their own.” This distortion fed the Palestinian distrust of the Jordanian government, glorified the PRM’s position within the country, and fed the growing gap between Transjordanians and Palestinians.

The Jordanian account is also narrated with the same heroic tone to boost sentiments of Jordanian identity vis-à-vis Palestinian national sentiment. Despite the reality that Palestinians took part in the fighting, the Jordanian version of the story minimizes their involvement in order to frame it as a uniquely Jordanian victory. The government manipulated the number of Palestinian casualties to decrease their visibility and also openly ridiculed the role of Palestinians in the battle itself. The Jordanian narrative states that the Palestinians insisted on manning their bunkers against the advice of the Jordanian military, resulting in multiple Palestinian casualties.

Though the narrative does not blatantly state it, this example demonstrates the perceived inferiority of the Palestinians, who – according to the Jordanians – were not intelligent enough to heed the advice of the Jordanian military. Such discourse allowed the Jordanians to transform Karameh into a “purely Jordanian event.” The numbers vary depending on the sources used – whether Palestinian, Jordanian, or Israeli. As such, it is difficult to discern the real number of casualties; however, these sources demonstrate how both sides used the Karamah narrative in order to downplay the other’s identity while strengthening their own identity.

After Black September, the divisions within Jordan widened. Transjordanians increasingly distanced themselves from any previous identity they might have shared with Palestinians and, to a lesser extent, with Palestinian Jordanians. As the Jordanian Minister of Information, Lila Sharaf, said in 1991, “The national identity of Jordanians started to delineate itself since 1970 when there was a clash between Palestinian and Jordanian identity.” The identity clash Sharaf speaks of is Black September. The events of the fighting between the Jordanian military and the PRM forced Transjordanians and Palestinians in Jordan to question where their loyalty lay, in turn forcing both groups to delineate a clear identity boundary based on family origin. It was after 1970 that the societal factor of “being Palestinian” began creating a marked rift between Palestinian Jordanians and Transjordanians.

For their part, Transjordanians believed that the Jordanian state and military actions in 1970 and 1971 were an important factor in protecting Jordanian identity. Palestinians were perceived as a threat to the state structure and, as such, the actions taken by the state and security bodies were viewed as the solution to the problem. Ridding Jordan of the PRM allowed Transjordanians a more prominent position, especially as a result of al-Tall’s Jordanization policies that led to the restructuring of the government, military, Mukhaberat, and public sectors. Transjordanians viewed Palestinians and Palestinian Jordanians suspiciously because of their dual loyalties.

By perpetuating this suspicion, the Jordanian state was able to consolidate control over its citizens, as evidenced by the fact that Transjordanians actually viewed the Mukhaberat favorably following Black September. By making sure the state was not being infiltrated by people they could not trust Palestinian nationalists – the Mukhaberat was seen as a vehicle for the protection of Jordanian identity. The suspicion held about the loyalty of the state’s Palestinian Jordanian citizens only grew after the Jordanian government’s reluctant acceptance of the 1974 Rabat formula in which the PLO was recognized as “the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian People.” If the PLO was the representative of the Palestinians and a majority of Jordan’s population was of Palestinian origin, Palestinian Jordanians’ ambiguous position led Transjordanians and the state itself to question their loyalty.

Palestinian Jordanians were caught in the middle of the identity debate. As Adnan AbuOdeh put it, they were “torn between two nationalisms.” Jordan had taken them in and given them more political rights than any other nation was willing to. King Hussein maintained that all Jordanians, whether of Palestinian or East Bank origins, were full members of society. But Palestinian Jordanians still considered Palestine to be their homeland. While they realized that they could not return, their desire for their homeland prevented them from internalizing the Jordanian identity that should have accompanied their citizenship.

Reinforced by social and structural discrimination, Palestinians have remained a separate entity from their Transjordanian compatriots. The Black September events compounded the identity issue because many Palestinian Jordanians felt “a hushed sense of Palestinian nationalism” resulting from the PRM activities against Israel. Because the PRM was resisting the Israeli occupation, Palestinian Jordanians felt a certain amount of national pride at knowing the PRM was fighting for their homeland. At the same time, many chose not to voice their support or did not support in the first place the PRM’s militant activities within Jordan’s borders. For them, Black September and everything that then occurred left them feeling both guilty and full of hate; they felt guilty for what the PRM had done, but hated the state for how it reacted afterward. Palestinian Jordanian sentiments towards the Black September events are complicated precisely because of their intersecting identities, which led them to have conflicting feelings towards both the PRM and the Jordanian state. Despite the differences in identity stances, one thing that both Palestinian Jordanians and Transjordanians could agree on was that “Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine.” This became important for both sides because affirming that both nations were in fact distinct nations combatted the idea of Jordan being al-watn al-badil, the substitute Palestinian homeland, for Palestinians, which could have provided Israel with an answer to their Palestinian Question.51 And this is not to mention that Palestinians wanted their
homeland returned to them; they did not want a replacement.52 As for the Transjordanians, the idea that Jordan is Jordan and nothing else remains true to their concept of national identity, which developed largely in response to growing Palestinian national identity.

Consolidation of Jordanian Identity
The revival of the Transjordan nationalist movement in the 1970s “was a reaction to the perceived Palestinian threat to Transjordanian identity” that stemmed from the refugees still crossing into Jordan from the West Bank. Jordanian nationalism eventually coalesced around “east-Jordanian tribal and Islamic values, loyalty to the royal family and to the king’s army, and more pertinently, cleansed of Palestinian, pan-Arab progressive ideologies.” The tribal aspect of Jordanian identity manifested itself through the pronounced increase in the consumption of Bedouin stories, folklore, and poetry following the Black September events. The cultural identification with the Bedouin heritage of Transjordanians served as an identity statement. Similarly, displaying an image of the King in prominent locations a common practice in Jordan even today marks the cultural manifestation of loyalty to the Hashemite crown.

The emerging Jordanian identity and its cultural facets were reinforced by the 1974 Rabat formula, which established the self-determination of the Palestinians. This allowed Jordanians to proceed with their nationalization efforts without having to worry about the Palestinian question as much as they had previously; because the PLO was their representative, Jordan was no longer directly responsible for the Palestinians. In effect, the Rabat formula reinforced the opinion of those who believed that “the king should stop clinging to his policy of being the official representative of Palestinians on the West Bank” following Black September and the assassination of al-Tall.
While the Jordanian identity emerged largely from Transjordanian nationalism, it also encompasses Palestinian Jordanians, at the very least at a state level. Though Palestinian Jordanians struggle with the duality of their identity, they are considered fully Jordanian as far as Jordanian law is concerned. This is evident in Jordanian citizenship law, which gives five-year passports to Jordanians of both Transjordanian and Palestinian Jordanian origins. However, despite official discourse, Palestinian Jordanians do still face structural and social discrimination.

Societal Manifestations of Difference
This structural and social imbalance between Palestinian Jordanians and Transjordanians following Black September manifested and continues to manifest itself in a number of ways. Though the law viewed Palestinian Jordanians and Transjordanians as one and the same both before and after Black September, the actual practices of government bodies did not necessarily reflect this. Such structural discrimination results directly from alTall’s Jordanization policies implemented immediately after Black September, starting with the complete restructuring of the government and the removal of most Palestinians from positions of prominence. The problem of reality not reflecting the Jordanian legal code surfaced in 1995 with the question of passports. Legally, all East Bankers, Palestinian Jordanian, and Transjordanian alike, are supposed to be issued five-year passports. After a series of complaints, an investigation found numerous instances in which Palestinian Jordanians were denied the five-year passports and instead given the two-year passport that is issued to West Bank Palestinians in Jordan.
Black September and its aftermath had an enormous impact on the relationship between Jordan and Palestine, ultimately leading to Jordan relinquishing its claim over the West Bank in 1988. Within its borders, Jordan faced a conflict of identity. Jordanian nationalism, built on Transjordanian identity, developed a distinct identity as a reaction to Palestinian nationalism. In terms of their identity, this left Jordanians of Palestinian origin in a difficult position. The ousting of the Palestinian Resistance Movements was politically necessary for the stability of the Jordanian state, but the subsequent Jordanization of the government apparatus, including the public sector and the military, and Palestinian Jordanian ties to Palestine served to alienate Palestinian Jordanians from the nascent Jordanian identity. Transjordanian identity was built around their tribal ties and their allegiance to the Hashemite King Hussein. Tribal support allowed the Hashemite family to claim legitimacy and became the basis upon which the King maintains popular support. In a similar manner, King Hussein worked to integrate Palestinian Jordanians into the Jordanian state system. Though he achieved it on paper, the state apparatus and social structure of Jordan ensured their continued marginalization.

By Sanjida Jannat

Related Posts