The rise of the Palestinian Hamas movement to power has been difficult for Jordan, reports Sana Abdallah from Amman Jordan was unprepared for the sweeping victory of Hamas in the January Palestinian parliamentary elections which took away power from Amman's Fatah allies. Jordan's initial reaction was to welcome the results as the democratic choice of the people and insist that the Palestinian people should not be punished with economic sanctions for their choices. But it was not long before Amman, which signed an unpopular peace treaty with Israel in 1994, shifted towards American-led pressure to isolate the Hamas government by avoiding interaction and promoting Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as the representative of the Palestinian Authority. King Abdullah's talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Jordanian Red Sea resort town of Aqaba last Saturday appeared to seal an undeclared agreement between the two leaders to ignore the Hamas government and do business only with Abbas. During a joint news conference following the bilateral summit at the king's beach-front palace, Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdullah Khatib and his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Abul-Gheit spoke as if the Hamas government did not exist. The top diplomats avoided specific questions regarding the Hamas government and how their countries intended to deal with it. They implicitly stressed their sole recognition of Abbas as head of the Palestinian Authority, saying they would find ways to support the Palestinians economically through him and that the PA was the authorised party to negotiate with Israel. Independent analysts say the king and president focussed their talks on resuming the peace process and finding ways to deliver aid to the Palestinians. They agreed on addressing Western-imposed economic pressure on the Palestinians as a humanitarian issue, ignoring the fact that aid has been used as political leverage on Hamas to force it to recognise Israel and "renounce violence". In the meantime, Jordanian officials privately say, Amman and Cairo -- while snubbing the Hamas government -- are seeking to push the Islamic government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to sanction the 2002 Arab peace initiative that offered Israel peace and normal ties in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967. Analysts predict that should Hamas make that leap by accepting the Arab initiative -- which would be a de facto recognition of the Jewish state and endorsement for a peaceful settlement -- it would likely disprove Jordan's theory that such a move would undermine Israeli pretexts for avoiding resuming Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations. They say that the new Israeli government being formed, led by Kadima Party leader Ehud Olmert, seems adamant on following through with an Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank while annexing the main Jewish settlements. Thereby unilaterally determining the borders dividing Israel and Palestine without negotiation and ignoring Palestinian national rights according to UN Security Council resolutions. Therefore, the analysts add, using the Arab initiative as a carrot could be a Jordanian pretext for continuing to ostracise Hamas. Jordanian critics accuse the Amman government of taking its fight with Hamas too far. They claim that Jordan's accusations that Hamas leaders in Damascus had smuggled contraband weapons and missiles into the kingdom, allegedly seeking to target Jordanian officials, are suspicious at best. The government last month cancelled a visit to Jordan by Palestinian foreign minister, and prominent Hamas figure, Mahmoud Al-Zahhar who was coming to Amman as part of a tour to the region to gather political and financial support. This followed the claim, the day before, about the weapons seizure. A day earlier, Al-Zahhar was also snubbed in Cairo by his Egyptian counterpart. Despite Hamas's persistent denial of the arms allegations and insisting it would never undermine the security of the only Palestinian gateways, Jordan and Egypt, and regardless of the serious scepticism at home on the credibility of the claim, the government stuck to its guns. Whether true or not, the danger in the government's allegation is that it virtually feeds into the Western description of Hamas as a terrorist group, rather than a legitimate resistance organisation as Jordan and the rest of the Arabs have so far officially viewed it. Jordan's fight with Hamas began in 1999 when it cracked down on Hamas's exiled political leaders, shutting down their offices, arresting them and deporting four leaders, including Political Bureau Chief Khaled Meshaal, to Qatar. The fact that the four held Jordanian nationality and that the constitution bans the deportation of Jordanian citizens from their own country made no difference to the government, which insisted that Hamas was not a legitimate Jordanian group and its members could only return if they abandoned their Hamas membership. Only its former spokesman, Ibrahim Ghosheh, has since returned, following his pledge to leave Hamas and join Jordan's legalised Muslim Brotherhood movement, and never again claim responsibility for suicide attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Analysts say neutralising Hamas is a Jordanian and Egyptian predicament. Ostracising stems not only from Jordan and Egypt's peace with Israel and the generous financial and political US support for that peace, but also from the threatening effect of the movement's rise to power in the Palestinian territories next door. To support a Hamas government, which could rule successfully in the Palestinian territories, would further empower the mainstream Islamic movements in Egypt and Jordan. This is where the influential Muslim Brotherhood poses the largest and most-organised opposition force that could ultimately weaken their regimes. But if these two Arab governments push Hamas further towards isolation and failure, they risk being exposed at home and by the rest of the Arab masses as contributing to the further deterioration of conditions in the Palestinian territories and appearing as enemies of a democratically elected government. That's why these Arab governments view their attempts to avoid the starvation of the Palestinians, by maintaining a strong alliance with Abbas, while simultaneously ignoring the Hamas government, as a balancing act that will prevent them from falling off this tightrope.
