His Excellency Akel Biltaji is King Abdullah II’s advisor on Tourism Promotion, Foreign Direct Investment and Country Branding, and an appointed senator in the upper house of Jordan’s government. We expected his briefing to be over-spiced with positivity and glowing recommendations that might bring our readers—and their tourist dollars—to Jordan.
Certainly his overview of the country’s history was glowing. This was a place withy a deep and ancient heritage. A land fought over by multiple armies, civilizations and earthly powers, and a place that had seen the rise and fall of empires and the birth of religions—a “biblical roadmap.” It was a place in popular imagination—the site of the Arab Revolt and the headquarters of the British officer Lawrence of Arabia. Today it is a relatively stable nation in the midst of those torn by war—Biltaji called it “an oasis of peace in the circle of conflict.”
It borders Israel and the West Bank in the west, Syria in the north, Iraq to the northeast, and Saudi Arabia to the south and east.
But when asked about the ongoing conflict and negotiations in neighbouring Israel-Palestine, he didn’t pull his punches.
There are four Ps in a progression that has twisted our religions and common heritages into anger and war, he said.
Piety comes first. Then Prophesy. Then comes Politics—like the creation of the state of Israel, and lastly Patriotism—like that which is growing in Iran, and in Israel where to be Jewish or Muslim is to be a fundamentalist. He suggested Jews, who have been so persecuted for so long, and who have finally found a homeland, are so terrified of being persecuted again that they have become the persecutors—doing to Arabs and Palestinians within their boarders some of the very things the Nazi’s did to them during the Second World War.
“There are half a million refugees in Jordan and 6 million Palestinians in Israel. Half of Jordan is Palestinian. But by 2020, we will have 15 million Arabs in Israel. The demographics will be much stronger in the future than in the past.”
But the Jewish mentality is distrust, he suggested, because they have suffered years of persecution. “They think if they don’t have a homeland they will be destroyed again. But in doing so they go on the aggressive. They are creating a grand ghetto called Israel.”
He feared what would happen to the Arabs who live under what is increasingly becoming a two-tiered system composed of Occupiers and Occupied. He event went so far as to call the West Bank “the largest prison in the world,” and to suggest Israel was “mightier than the mighty, which to us is the U.S.A.” since Biltaji had hoped President Obama would have done more to stop Jewish settlements being constructed in Palestinian territories.
“Where is the justice in all this?” he asked. “Religion is hijacked. We need to come back to earth and say, where is Moses in this? Where is Christ? Where is Muhammad?”
