Jordanian Ex-intel chief: Jordan can’t take in Syrian refugees

 General Abu Rashid visits J’lem, says that Israel must think carefully about having so many Palestinians on its border.

 

Jordan is fearful of receiving Palestinian refugees from Syria, as it has neither the resources nor the infrastructure to accommodate them, Gen.

Mansour Abu Rashid, chairman of the Amman Center for Peace and Development, said in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Jordan Muslim Brotherhood supporters

Jordan Muslim Brotherhood supporters - Photo By Reuters/Muhammad Hamed

Abu Rashid, a former head of Jordanian intelligence, was participating in a symposium hosted by the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace and the Israeli Council on Foreign Relations to honor the memory of Dave Kimche, who had been a central figure in the Mossad and a Foreign Ministry director-general.

Kimche was a member of the board of trustees at the Truman Institute, as well as the founding president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a dedicated peace activist.

Abu Rashid, who enjoyed a 20-year friendship with Kimche and collaborated on various peace projects with him, said that 81,000 people had already crossed from Syria to Jordan, where they were being treated as visitors, not as refugees. Jordan already has to cope with 400,000 Palestinians who came from Kuwait and 700,000 Iraqis, Sudanese, and people from other parts of the region, he said, and it simply cannot take in Palestinians from Syria.

In response to the Truman Institute’s Dr. Assaf David, who has been engaged in dialogue on several levels with the Jordanians and who has said that there is an increasing Israeli movement to the political Right that sees Jordan as an alternative homeland for the Palestinians, Abu Rashid suggested that Israelis think carefully about whether they want such concentrated Palestinian power on their eastern border.

 

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