As conflicts rage from Gaza to Lebanon to Iran, one country that hasn’t been making headlines is Jordan, Israel’s neighbor to the east. Jordan and Israel share a 300-mile border and a 30-year-old peace treaty, both of which have remained stable, making them regional outliers. What factors account for Jordan’s stability? And can it last? Moment Editor-in-Chief Nadine Epstein talked about Jordan’s past, present and political future with Taylor Luck, a regional expert and longtime correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, who has spent the past 17 years reporting from Jordan’s capital, Amman.
How does Jordan’s constitutional monarchy work, and what accounts for the level of popular support it commands?
Jordan, compared to other Arab states, has had a long period of stability, really since the 1920s. Jordan as a monarchy was formed by popular consensus, first as an emirate and later as a kingdom established by the Hashemites. Anyone who’s watched Lawrence of Arabia would know a bit about the Hashemite family and the role they played in the great Arab revolts that were the first step in forming Jordan. So compared to other Arab states, it’s had a fair bit of public buy-in, a social contract between the Hashemites, who came from outside, and the native tribes, essentially saying, “We’ll form a state with you, as long as you provide us with resources and protection.”
I call Jordan the Midwest of the Middle East.
Jordan has always played the role of being the moderate middle of the Arab world. I call it the Midwest of the Middle East. It never got caught up in the ideologies that have swept through the region, and it tried to maintain a good-neighbor approach. Under King Abdullah, who came to the throne in 1999, it really pushed itself as a pro-Western, pro-America, pro-globalization country that was a safe oasis, while also helping to facilitate America’s national security interests.
What is the history of the Jordan-Israel relationship?
The Hashemites have had ties and contacts with the Jewish communities in what is now Israel since the 1920s. This relationship has gone through a lot of ups and downs in just the last 20 or 30 years, since the peace treaty was signed. There was so much hope for a lot more economic and social peace with normalization, people-to-people ties on top of the security and governmental ties.
Unfortunately, from the Second Intifada onward, those people-to-people ties lessened while the state-to-state, security-to-security, army-to-army ties strengthened. Fifteen or sixteen years ago, you would still see Israeli tourists in Jordan and a vocal peace camp in Jordan that was willing to talk about cooperation. Pre-October 7, I think that had already dissipated. In the last several years, it’s been mainly a peace upheld by security coordination.
What is Jordan’s perspective on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas/Hezbollah?
There’s no love lost between Jordan and Hezbollah. At the same time, Jordan is very concerned about the stability and social fabric of Lebanon, which it sees as key to the stability of the region. Jordan doesn’t want to see another country fall apart in the region, with the prospect of extremism filling the void. Just as the war was starting up between Israel and Hezbollah, Jordan sent its top diplomat to help with negotiations to try to create a new government coalition in Lebanon.
Likewise, no one in Jordan would cry over Hamas losing control of Gaza and disappearing from Palestinian politics. But if Hamas is not an option for Gaza—and from Israel’s point of view, it isn’t—then the obvious viable candidate is the Palestinian Authority, which needs to be strengthened. And Jordan has a lot of interest in having a viable Palestinian Authority. But those channels, and having discussion about a new Palestinian entity or a revamped Palestinian Authority, have all been closed by the Israeli side. And that’s been very frustrating for Jordan.
What do ordinary Jordanians think of the peace treaty with Israel?
The average person might say that the peace treaty is Jordan’s only leverage with Israel and that now is the time to break off relations, to send a message, so that there’s some sort of accountability for the Israeli government’s actions. If there were a vote, I’d say 99 percent of Jordanians would vote to get rid of the peace treaty. And for young Jordanians in particular, they see peace as something that’s being forced upon them.
But any Jordanian official, from the palace on down, would say that, if you look at all the net positives and negatives, having full ties with Israel allows you to do more for the Palestinians than having no relations at all.
Is there still hope for a two-state solution?
This conflict has been different from any other in my experience: the amount of dehumanization from the October 7 attack and the fate of Israeli hostages to what’s happening in Gaza and with settler violence in the West Bank. It will take a generation to heal. But the desire for and the long term necessity for a two-state solution is still there.