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Jordan seeks to halt new wave of Palestinian immigrants

Special to World Tribune.com
MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE
Thursday, October 17, 2002

AMMAN Ñ Jordan has demanded financial guarantees that Palestinians entering the kingdom will leave within a few weeks.

Jordanian officials said the Hashemite kingdom has issued new regulations meant to prevent the migration of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The regulations are meant to stop Palestinians from entering Jordan as tourists and staying permanently in the country.

Under the regulations, Palestinians wishing to enter Jordan must pay 5,000 dinars [$7,500] to obtain a visa. The money guarantees that Palestinian visitors will leave the kingdom within three weeks.

Palestinians can either pay the money or have a Jordanian citizen issue a financial bond for the visitors. Officials said Jordanian authorities have been strict with the new regulation and have rarely waived the requirement.

The bond has affected Palestinians who want to enter Jordan on their way to other destinations in the Arab world. This has affected the entry by Palestinians to the Hashemite kingdom on their way to such countries as Iraq and Syria.

Hundreds of Palestinians are said to have registered for entry into Iraq, officials said. Many of them seek to be recruited into the military to defend Iraq against any U.S.-led invasion.

On Wednesday, the pro-government A-Rai daily reported that Jordan has refused citizenship to 100,000 Palestinians and their ancestors who arrived from the Gaza Strip during the 1967 war. The newspaper quoted a Jordanian official said Amman's refusal represents its policy of rejecting the use of the kingdom as a second Palestinian homeland.

Officials estimate that around 150,000 Gaza-origin Palestinians have been issued Jordanian passports. About 25,000 of them live in the refugee camp in Jarash, north of Amman.

Jordan has undergone three waves of Palestinian immigration over the last 54 years.

The first was during the establishment of Israel in 1948. The second was during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the final wave was during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990.

Officials said Jordan is concerned that any U.S.-led war against Iraq would prompt another wave of migration into the Hashemite kingdom. They said Palestinians have transferred billions of dollars from banks in the West Bank and Gaza to financial institutions in Jordan.

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