Amman--Jordan should stop withdrawing nationality from Jordanians of Palestinian origin arbitrarily, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released today. Authorities stripped more than 2700 of Jordanians of their nationality between 2004 and 2008, and the practice continued in 2009, according to the New York-based group. The 60-page report, “Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality,” details the arbitrary manner in which Jordan deprives of their nationality citizens who are originally from the West Bank, thereby denying them basic citizenship rights such as access to education and health care. “Jordan is playing politics with the basic rights of thousands of its citizens,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW. “Officials are denying entire families the ability to lead normal lives with the sense of security that most citizens of a country take for granted.” The Jordanian government however on Monday dismissed HRW's charges. Nabil al-Shariff, the cabinet's chief spokesperson, denied that Amman “has been involved in any systematic process of withdrawing nationality from Palestinian-origin citizens.” Stripping nationality is “merely a routine procedural follow-up to the1988 Jordanian decision to disengage with the [Palestinian] West Bank,” Shariff explained. Shariff also implied that HRW is “involved in the ongoing harsh campaign against Jordan at a time where the right of return of Palestinian refuges is being eroded.” Jordanian officials have traditionally defended the practice as a means to counter possible Israeli plans to transfer the Palestinian population of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Jordan. Jordan captured the West Bank in 1949 following the first Arab-Israeli war, and in 1950 extended sovereignty over the territory, granting residents Jordanian nationality. In 1988, however, late King Hussein severed Jordan's legal and administrative ties to the West Bank, relinquishing claims to sovereignty and withdrawing Jordanian nationality from all Palestinians who resided in the West Bank at the time. Other Jordanians of West Bank origin, who were not living in the West Bank at the time, were not affected and kept their Jordanian nationality. According to HRW, Jordan has withdrawn nationality from thousands of these citizens of West Bank origin over the last decade. “Those at particular risk include the quarter of a million Jordanians of Palestinian origin who Kuwait expelled in 1991 and returned to Jordan,” said HRW. HRW said that “Jordanian officials have withdrawn their nationality ostensibly for failing to possess a valid Israeli-issued residency permit for the West Bank. But this condition for citizenship has no clear basis in Jordanian law.” Such permits, according to HRW, are notoriously difficult--if not impossible--to obtain, given Israel's restrictive policies on granting West Bank residency rights to Palestinians. HRW noted that “Jordanians affected by this policy learned they had been stripped of their nationality not from any official notice, but during routine procedures such as renewing a passport or driver's license, or registering a marriage or the birth of a child at the Civil Status Department." The rights group added that “the Interior Ministry provided no clear procedure to appeal these decisions, and that most of those interviewed feared that recourse to the courts would finalize their loss of nationality." “High-handed officials are withdrawing nationality in a wholly arbitrary manner,” Whitson said. “One day you're Jordanian, and the next you've been stripped of your rights as a citizen in your own country.” Shariff, however, denied the accusations, saying that a decision to strip a Palestinian of his Jordanian nationality must be formally approved by the cabinet.
