Palestinian Olives: Support the best in the business.

Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1994. And although its relations are a little more than a decade in comparison to Egypt’s 3-decade long peace, the former has warmed relations with the Jewish state than the latter.

This owes in part to the position of the Jordanian monarch. Egypt is poor and receives U.S. aid, but the nation is all together confident of its position (it has 75 million people) and the Mubarak regime is secured by a security apparatus numbering 1 million (double the size of the army). Jordan, in contrast, is a small nation with no natural resources, a majority-Palestinian population, and a loathed royal family with a not so robust, albeit thuggish, security police. The Hashemite family only survived an attempted coup a little more than 3-decades ago and that was due in part to Israeli aid. The late Jordanian king (father of the present King) was on the C.I.A. payroll and the secret police was created by the C.I.A. as well. In short, Jordan’s regime is insecure of its position and fears domestic insurrection and while Mubarak is also dependent on U.S. assistance, the survival of King Anduallah is almost exclusively a product of American wishes. Thus Jordan has warmed relations with Israel due really to nothing more than an effort to suck up to the U.S. via Israel in order to maintain U.S. support for the unpopular regime.

Jordan trades with Israel on a pre capita basis more than Egypt, but while the regime may bask in such statistics most Jordanians want solidarity with Palestinians before trade with Israel.

Since Gaza, de-normalization efforts sparked by private groups have increased in Jordan. The regime, of course, fears that its position will be weakened if relations worsen with Israel and has sought to undermine such effort by, for example, denying permits for protests. But Jordanians are unphased:

“A lively public debate was stirred last week in Jordan on whether to continue exporting olives to Israel, in light of official reports of a relatively high rate of sales to the Israeli market.According to the numbers, some 7,630 tons of olives were exported from Jordan to Israel in October, at a pace of some 250 – 300 tons per day.”

That is a lot of olives as a time when Israel prevents Palestinian olive farms from accessing their lands and when illegal Israeli settlers routinely cut down and burn down Palestinian groves with protection and impunity from the occupying Israeli army. If a vote came to this, Jordanians would unanimously vote for boycott, but you may be sure that the regime will stifle any momentum toward that end.

Israel: A nation that requires policy brutality to secure regional “allies”.