Israel’s expansion since 1948 has done much to effectively destroy Palestinian sovereignty. In doing so, however, it has indirectly created a crisis-level situation in its other Arab neighbor, Jordan.
Today, as Israel continues its war in Gaza, the status quo risks triggering a regional crisis that could spiral far beyond anyone’s control.
Shortly after World War II (1939-1945), Britain, failing to mediate increased violence between Jewish and Arab people and overstretched after six years of total war, gave up its mandate over the land known then as Palestine.
In its place, the United Nations (UN) proposed the Partition Plan, which would split Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.
However, while the plan did not officially force population transfers from one side of the new border to the other, long-held socio-religious tensions over Jewish immigration from Europe prior to WWII boiled over to open war.
In an event known as the Nakba, or catastrophe in Arabic, 700,000 Arab Palestinians and 850,000 Jewish fled or were expelled from their homes, hundreds of villages were depopulated and burned. Thousands of people were killed, triggering a massive migration crisis in the region.
Arab partners Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan intervened to prevent Israeli statehood, but this failed spectacularly with defeat after defeat in the Arab-Israeli Wars.
With each war and eventually each loss, Palestine shrank in size and power, Israel grew and Arab displacements continued to soar.
As great as this news was for Israel’s immediate security and development, this presented a big problem — former enemies were now too weak to attack Israel with any expectation of winning, but also too weak to function.
This likely would have had a limited impact if not for the scale, but the current situation now poses severe political, economic and social consequences that will indirectly erode Israel’s national security, creating a dangerous loop.
Jordan, however, arguably has it the worst off. According to both Human Rights Watch and the Times of Israel, 50 to 60 percent of all people in Jordan are of Palestinian origin.
This has real impacts, because while some of the refugees have, over the decades, gained employment, housing and citizenship, over a third of Jordan’s 11 million population are still classified as refugees or stateless people, so what becomes of them?
Jordan’s refugees still need food and water, housing and education for their children and they often require medical treatment, but who pays for this?
Critical aid from USAID and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has gone to building and operating 161 schools, 25 health centers, as well as cash subsidies and food aid to the refugees, but Jordan is still a main contributor to these programs.
Despite billions in foreign aid, Jordan is forced to spend a quarter of its state budget on refugee support every year, causing public debt to balloon to almost 117 percent of annual GDP, among the highest in the world.
Despite their integration over the decades, tensions between native Jordanians and Palestinians strain national identity, political representation and economic opportunity in the country.
The situation is made messier by the fact that refugee status is often inherited, creating a perpetual, ever-growing lower class of people denied full rights.
Take Ali, for example, a 35-year-old born and raised in Jordan. His parents fled Gaza after the 1967 Arab-Israeli Warand despite being born and raised in the country.
Ali is only given temporary citizen status and therefore is barred from full political and economic participation. In an article by Al Jazeera, he expresses his frustration.
“I’m stuck in between; if I’m Jordanian, give me full citizenship. If you think I’m Palestinian, get me back to Palestine.”
Despite Jordan’s early invitations to their Arab brethren fleeing danger at home, the refugee situation has spiraled out of control. And it’s not just Palestinians. The 14-year-long civil war in Syria added over a million refugees to Jordan’s population. The Jordanian people are now feeling the pressure and they’ve had enough.
For instance, a 2013 article from The Guardian highlights the experience of Mohammed Mashagbeh, a 35-year-old Jordanian carpenter.
“You walk into a bakery, there are Syrians; you walk into a factory, there are Syrians.” After losing work to Syrians and being forced to leave his home city for a job paying half his normal pay, Mohammed lamented that “there is no longer room in Jordan for Jordanians.”
Additionally, a 2021 UNHCR survey found that 95 percent of Jordanians agreed with the statement “there are too many refugees in Jordan,” indicating widespread concern over the country’s capacity to host more refugees.
Then on October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks began.
In its aftermath, King Abdullah II issued stark warnings about Jordan’s capacity and willingness to absorb another wave of Palestinian refugees.
At the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva in December 2023, he warned that “Jordan is hosting millions of refugees and the new crises are overshadowing the plight of existing refugees and their host communities.”
Just weeks earlier, in an October press conference in Berlin, the King drew a firm line, stating unequivocally: “There will be no refugees in Jordan. This is a red line.”
This crisis is only set to worsen in 2025, as President Trump has effectively cut U.S. AID and is expected to reinstate his 2018 decision to slash U.S. funding for the UN’s Relief and Works Agency aid programs for Palestinians.
As in 2018, the cut will force Jordan to stretch resources even thinner, leaving Jordan in an incredibly unenviable position.
The state can’t raise expenses on refugee support without limiting investment in its own people, nor can it lower expenses without triggering a humanitarian crisis and popular revolt.
Without the crucial lifeline, tensions will boil between an increasingly nativist population in Jordan and an equally desperate refugee population.
Soon, the economic strain might influence the local Jordanians to turn against their large refugees, advocating for the government to push them out as being the source of their economic woes.
If Jordan were a large country, with 100 million people or more, the concerns of 2 million refugees would be powerful, but not enough to threaten the state. For the leaders in Jordan’s capital, Amman, this is unfortunately not the case.
President Trump traveled to Amman in February 2025 to pressure King Abdullah II to absorb the bulk of Gaza’s two million displaced civilians.
The request was met with an immediate and firm rejection, with the king reiterating that Jordan simply cannot bear another massive influx, economically, socially, or politically. There are not enough jobs to employ them, not enough schools to educate them, not even enough food and water to go around, but they’ve become too large to ignore.
With Palestinians already comprising over half of Jordan’s eleven million people, adding millions more refugees threatens to fracture the social contract entirely. Under such strain, old fault lines between East Bank Jordanians and those of Palestinian origin could erupt into civil conflict.
Public services would collapse, the monarchy’s delicate tribal and urban alliances would unravel and the very viability of the state could hang in the balance. In that vacuum, extremist militias, claiming to defend disenfranchised Palestinians, would find fertile recruiting grounds.
It is my belief that these groups, blaming Israel for indirectly engineering Jordan’s collapse, would launch attacks from within refugee camps, forcing Israel to choose between inaction and military intervention on Jordanian soil. The result: a hotbed of instability not just for months, but years or decades, with an Israeli security presence forever altering the regional balance of power.
Israel must understand that wars are no longer fought solely on the battlefield. Its victories in Gaza may come at the cost of long-term regional stability.
As homes are leveled and survivors seek refuge elsewhere, Israel cannot assume Arab neighbors will continue absorbing the consequences. Jordan’s red line is not just diplomatic posturing, it is a last stand to preserve national survival.
If Israel pushes too hard and wins too much, it risks creating the very instability that will define the next war, not on its borders, but within the very states that once kept the peace.
Copy edited by Anijah Franklin
