King Abdullah II of Jordan condemned the international community for allegedly failing their “moral duty” to protect Palestinian civilians during his U.N. General Assembly speech on Tuesday, but took a moment to categorically reject the possibility of Jordan taking in Palestinians fleeing war.
The king dedicated the entirety of his speech to condemning Israel’s self-defense operations against the jihadist terror organization Hamas. Israel launched a sweeping anti-terrorist initiative in Hamas-controlled Gaza following the invasion of the country by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023. On that occasion, Hamas jihadists stormed residential neighborhoods in Israel, killing entire families in their homes, engaging in gang-rape and torture, and taking hostages. The Israeli government believed 101 people remain in Hamas captivity at press time, while approximately 1,200 were killed on the day of the attack.
King Abdullah did not mention Hamas by name during his speech, though he mentioned “October 7” on several occasions – not as the date of an unprecedented slaughter by jihadists, but as the start of what he claimed was a massacre of Palestinians. Absent recognition of the October 7 attack, the king made the Israeli military operation appear to not be prompted by anything.
“This Israeli government has killed more children, more journalists, more aid workers, and more medical personnel than any other war in recent memory,” the king claimed. “Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7 – so is it any wonder that many are questioning how can this war not be perceived as deliberately targeting the Palestinians?”
“The level of civilian suffering cannot be written off as unavoidable collateral,” he added.
The alleged death toll of 42,000 people appears to be a reference to numbers published by the “Gaza Health Ministry,” a Hamas entity.
King Abdullah continued to declare that world nations must act to protect Palestinians – except Jordan, which would not accept Palestinian refugees in the name of rejecting “forced displacement.”
“Now is the time to ensure the protection of the Palestinian people,” he declared. “It is the moral duty of this international community to establish a protection mechanism for them across the occupied territories. This will guarantee the safety of Palestinians and Israelis from extremists who are taking our region to the brink of an all-out war.”
Among those “extremists,” he claimed, were individuals urging Jordan to take in Palestinian refugees.
“That includes those who continue to propagate the idea of Jordan as an alternative homeland,” he added, “so let me be very, very clear: that will never happen. We will never accept the forced displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime.”
Israel’s attempts to eliminate the genocidal terrorists of Hamas, the king claimed, had created the impression that “some nations are above international law, that global justice does bend to the will of power and that human rights are selective, a privilege to be granted or denied at will.”
Israel declared war on Hamas following the barbaric October 7 attacks, aiming to target its terrorist infrastructure in Gaza and ensure that it cannot repeat a similar massacre in the future. Complicating Israeli efforts is Hamas’s longstanding policy of using Palestinian civilians as human shields – hiding weapons and terror tunnels throughout Gaza’s schools, hospitals, and even children’s bedrooms. Absent any mention of Hamas, King Abdullah also failed to address Hamas’s use of Palestinians as human shields.
Jordan is among the neighboring Mideast states in which residents have apparently expressed support for Hamas terrorism in the past year. Most notoriously, entrepreneurs opened a restaurant in the country called “October 7” shortly after the attack, but changed the name in response to international outrage.
While the West has been open to the possibility of taking in Palestinian refugees, including the administration of leftist President Joe Biden in the United States, Gaza’s neighbors have been far less enthusiastic. In addition to Jordan, the government of Egypt – the only nation besides Israel to share a border with Gaza – has adamantly rejected the idea of offering safe haven to Palestinian refugees, while simultaneously decrying Israel for attempting to liberate them from Hamas.
“Egypt rejects any attempt to resolve the Palestinian issue by military means or through the forced displacement of Palestinians from their land, which would come at the expense of the countries of the region,” Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi proclaimed in October, shortly after the Hamas attack. Sisi suggested displacing Palestinians into the middle of the arid Negev Desert in Israel instead.
“If there is an idea to displace Palestinians from Gaza, why not transfer them to the Negev until the armed groups in Gaza, such as Hamas and PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad], are eliminated?” he asked.
Egypt’s resistance to opening the Rafah border crossing into Gaza, even to allow the entry of humanitarian aid, has repeatedly obstructed the delivery of vital food and medicine. The United Nations has largely supported Egypt in its refusal to allow Palestinian civilians to avoid the Gaza war zone.