When Jordan announced the arrest of 16 people last week suspected of possessing missiles and drone manufacturing workshops, the official statement was very carefully worded, apparently to deliver mixed messages.
The announcement by Jordan’s powerful mukhabarat, or General Intelligence Department (GID), said it had arrested the group which was “seeking to undermine national security and create chaos within the country”.
It noted that the group was recruiting and training operatives within both Jordan and Lebanon. In pre-recorded videos released by (GID) later, two alleged plotters said they had travelled to Beirut, where they met members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Lebanese branch who provided them with cash and training on how to manufacture rockets and drones.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam expressed his country’s “full readiness to cooperate with the Jordanian authorities as needed”, rallying support with Jordan.
The arrests were the culmination of a surveillance operation lasting years that had targeted members of the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Jordanian monarchy has long viewed as a destabilising force.
Jordanian state-run television reported that the suspects were apprehended following a lengthy intelligence surveillance operation ongoing since 2021, two years before the war in Gaza started.
Government Spokesperson Mohamed Al-Momani told a news briefing that rockets found in a secret hideout on the outskirts of the capital were being manufactured with a three to five km range for use against targets inside the Kingdom.
The disclosure of the plot came amid rising tension after authorities started crackdown on pro-Gaza protests and criticism of the government’s policies towards Israel, especially in Palestinian refugee population concentrations in Jordan.
However, to many Middle East watchers, a crisis with the country’s Islamists or with the Palestinian refugees would be Jordan’s make-or-break moment. The costs could be dire for the Kingdom, especially if the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict worsens.
Therefore, it was left to the international media to speculate that the group’s members were tied to the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood Organisation and had connections to the Palestinian Hamas movement in Gaza.
Statements by Jordanian officials, parliamentarians, and pro-government commentators confirmed the reports and underscored that the plot by the “outlawed Muslim Brotherhood” Organisation constituted a threat to the Kingdom’s sovereignty and unity.
In a statement, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Jordanian branch disavowed any connection to the plot and claimed that the group has no knowledge of the plans, describing them as “individual acts under the pretext of supporting the [Palestinian] resistance”.
It said it had “always supported Jordan’s security and stability and has always been and continues to be an integral part of the nation’s fabric, putting Jordan’s supreme interests above all other considerations.”
The Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt in 1928, has numerous national branches and offshoots, including the Palestinian militant group Hamas. In a statement, the main organisation hailed those “who participate in the resistance” against Israel, which it described as a “religious duty and honour.”
Jordan’s monarchy has for decades managed to contain the movement and allowed it to operate freely as a religious organisation with limited political activities. It lost its licence and was officially dissolved by the government in 2020, although its political wing, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), continued to operate.
The IAF continued to garner popular support during subsequent elections, and in 2024 it won 31 seats (out of 138) in the country’s parliament, up from the seven seats it had in the previous parliament and becoming the largest political grouping.
Since its inception as a British protectorate following World War I and then as the Hashemite Kingdom in the 1940s, Jordan has been involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, involving political tensions, wars, and other disputes.
Jordan participated in the first Arab-Israeli War in 1948. After the war, Jordan annexed East Jerusalem and large parts of the former Mandate territories given by the United Nations to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The territories became known as the West Bank, or the western bank of the River Jordan, and all Palestinians there immediately gained Jordanian citizenship and received political representation in its parliament.
Huge number of Palestinians who were displaced from the towns and villages by Israel after it declared independence in 1948 also sought refuge in the East Bank of the Kingdom.
Since then, the Palestinian refugee problem has remained at the core of Jordan’s internal politics. It worsened after the 1967 War, when hundreds of thousands more Palestinians fled the West Bank, which fell under Israel’s control, and settled in Jordan.
At present, more than 50 per cent of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian descent, with some 600,000 still do not have citizenship, and therefore the ongoing war in Gaza is expected to have potential impacts on Jordan that some say could be existential.
The war in Gaza has so far left more than 50,000 Palestinians killed, vast areas of the coastal Strip destroyed, and 90 per cent of its population displaced by a combination of blockades, bombing, and forced relocation.
The brutal nature of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, its strategy, and the conduct of its operations show that the forced displacement of the Strip’s Palestinian inhabitants is the key objective of the war.
Israel’s main goal in Gaza is the long-term process of depopulating the Strip of the Palestinians and repopulating it with Israeli settlers. One of its methods is a system of expulsion when it forcibly drives the Palestinians into exile.
With Israel continuing its ethnic cleansing of Gaza, including plans to facilitate Palestinian emigration, US President Donald Trump’s unprecedented statements suggesting a mass transfer of Gazans to Jordan has become a nightmare.
Trump’s talk of resettling Gazans comes close to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank, echoing a vision long propagated by right-wing Israelis of Jordan as an alternative Palestinian home after frustrating the prospects for a two-state solution.
Both Egypt and Jordan, the two neighbouring countries targeted by Trump in his Gaza plan to receive the expelled Palestinians and two of the main recipients of US aid in the Middle East, have vehemently opposed the plan.
In recent weeks, Israel has expelled the residents of three refugee camps in the Occupied West Bank as it steps up a major effort to expel the Palestinians. Amman fears any relocation would then set the stage for the expulsion of another three million Palestinians from the West Bank.
Jordan’s concern is being amplified by the surge of public protests calling for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza, sending shock waves through the country’s political elite and its powerful security establishment.
Estimates now vary about whether Jordan’s looming crisis is overblown and if the regime can weather its security, political, and economic implications. Depending on its severity and ramifications, it remains to be seen how Jordan will be able to live through the existential risk.
Displacing the Palestinians into its territory would pave the way for Israel to champion its project of the “Jordanian option,” which attempts to “solve” the Palestinian issue at Jordan’s expense by forcing it to become an “alternative homeland.”
Any attempt to fulfill Israel’s plans and Trump’s vision to expel the Palestinian population to Jordan would effectively throw its peace treaty with Israel into the abyss.
It would also destabilise Jordan’s monarchy, divide Jordanian society, fuel extremism and turn the country into a launchpad for Palestinian attacks on Israel.
Despite its crackdown on anti-Israel elements, Jordan finds itself again walking a tightrope out of fears of a backlash from its Palestinian population and Islamist activists.
In this region of geopolitical trials, Jordan’s resolve will remain under the microscope. The stakes are high, but if the regime continues to balance domestic needs with strategic resolve, it should be able to survive its predicament.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 24 April, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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