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Jordanian MPs demand citizenship be withdrawn from Palestinians

June 4, 2015 at 3:10 pm

A number of Jordanian members of parliament demanded the Ministry of Interior untie its legal and administrative ties with the West Bank and consider a number of Jordanian nationals as Palestinians, Quds Press revealed.

In a memorandum presented to the parliament speaker, Atef Tarawneh, the MPs asked for citizens who lived in the occupied West Bank before 31 July 1988, those who hold green ID cards when crossing the Allenby Bridge, those who work or worked in the Palestinian National Authority, the cadres of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) excluding those who entered Jordan before 1983, those who leave the West Bank through Israeli ports under Israeli travel documents, and those who left the West Bank after 1 June 1988 amongst others be considered Palestinian and not Jordanian citizens.

The execution of this disengagement, according to the memorandum, will result in withdrawing the Jordanian nationality from more than 300,000 Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin who have been living in Jordan since 1948.

The memorandum, which was issued under the theme of “disengagement decisions”, was signed by MP Raed Al-Khalayleh, Abdul Raheem Al-Beqa’i and Nidal Al-Hiyari.

This comes after the developments that followed the FIFA presidential elections, after reports said that the head of the Palestinian Football Union, Jibril al-Rajoub, did not give Palestine’s vote for the Jordanian Prince, Ali Bin Al Hussein, which was later denied by al-Rajoub in official statements.

An official document, obtained by Quds Press, a request by the Director of Monitoring and Inspection Directorate, of the Interior Ministry in Jordan, in which he asked the Director of the Civil Status and Passport Directorate to probe into the grounds that the decision to grant the President of the Palestinian Football Union, Jibril al-Rajoub, a Jordanian nationality was based on.

The document, written on June 1, 2015, under the title of “Jibril al-Rajoub, born on 1953”, details the request submitted by the Director of Monitoring and Inspection Directorate to inquire about the legal basis for the decision to grant al-Rajoub a Jordanian nationality, and details of his civil registration, and any changes thereto.

The document, finished and sealed by the governor of the circuit and issued by the Jordanian Ministry of Interior, also reads urgent at its bottom.