Senior Hamas officials announced Monday that they will move to Jordan, which has expelled them in the past, if they are forced to leave Qatar. The kingdom issued a statement shortly after saying any Palestinian who requests to move to Jordan will be required to prove they have severed ties with the terrorist group.
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Jordan's King Abdullah II, Ismail Haniyeh
(Photo: YOAN VALAT/Pool via REUTERS, Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/REUTERS )
Jordanian senior officials rushed to recruit veteran diplomat Ziad Majali, son of one of the kingdom's important and influential families, to attack Hamas' deputy political head Mousa Abu Marzouk, who said: "If Qatar decides to remove us, we’ll move to Jordan."
Abu Marzouk chose intentionally to be interviewed by the Iranian channel Al-Alam (The World) to clarify that "many senior officials and positions holders in Hamas are in possession of Jordanian passports or residency visas."
Qatar has hinted at its intention to remove senior Hamas officials from its soil and to close the offices and luxury apartments that have been at their disposal for a decade in the capital, Doha. A clear instruction to leave the life of luxury has not been conveyed to Hamas leadership, but it seems both sides are no longer satisfied with the cooperation, while Qatar also adds the United States is the one that has pressed its officials "to host" the organization's senior leaders and "supervise" their actions.
Meanwhile, Qatari channel Al-Jazeera has geared up to criticize Hamas’ leadership and sharply condemn the organization's opponents.
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Mousa Abu Marzouk
(Photo: AFP PHOTO /HO / GAZA STRIP MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR / WAEL ABU OMAR)
In 1999, Hamas’ leadership was permanently expelled from Jordan. Senior Hamas member Khaled Mashal, political head of the terror group Ismail Haniyeh, and their senior aides were required to leave immediately, put on a plane and transferred, by prior coordination between the authorities, to Qatar. "We hold Jordanian passports. They tell us to move to Syria, Iraq or Turkey, but we intend to move to Jordan," Abu Marzouk said.
The statements reached the Jordanian Royal Palace and security and intelligence establishments, much to their dismay. Majali said in response: "Hamas behaves as if there’s no state and no authority in Jordan that will decide and determine how to act and how to conduct itself."
He added that "Jordan has closed the book on Palestinian cells - and we do not intend to reopen it." Jordanian intelligence sources estimate that Abu Marzouk didn’t hastily choose Jordan as the new target and that the Iranians were the ones behind the idea after trying and failing to bomb Jordan and faced the U.S.-headed coalition acting against them.
"Many Jordanian Palestinians participate in demonstrations in support of Gaza residents, against Israel, every night," said senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan, who serves as Haniyeh’s second-in-command.
A senior security source in Jordan reported many of those detained during these protests aren’t released. "Some of the detainees from the demonstrations," the source said, "are exposed as doing Hamas’ leadership’s bidding or have received money to attend protests. We keep them in custody because the era of Palestinian organizations doing as they please in Jordan is over. We’re an organized kingdom with policy priorities and won’t allow anybody to interfere in our affairs."
Meanwhile, Abu Marzouk’s higher-up Haniyeh backed him by saying: "The Jordanian people support the Palestinians and don’t accept Hamas’s expulsion from Jordan." Haniyeh also criticized senior Jordanian officials including the king, ministers, parliament members and senior security officials, for not sending him their condolence on the deaths of his three children and four grandchildren in the Gaza Strip.