Jordan: The Next Victim of West Bank Annexation? For Jordan, the most frightening consequence of Israel’s accelerating occupation and de facto annexation of the West Bank with no opposition from Western nations and the international community may not be another war, but the slow destruction of the political and demographic equilibrium on which the Hashemite kingdom rests. As Sean Yom argues in Foreign Policy, Jordanian officials and analysts increasingly see Israeli violent annexation of the West Bank as an existential danger, more consequential than Iran’s attacks on Jordanian territory, which target American bases and multiple military facilities in Jordan. The nightmare is straightforward: if the international community allows Israel to formally annex parts or all of the West Bank, Palestinians could be progressively pushed eastward, whether through direct expulsion, deteriorating living conditions, settlement expansion or the gradual destruction of viable Palestinian enclaves. Jordanian strategists estimate that even an annexation limited largely to Area C could eventually produce hundreds of thousands of additional Palestinians entering Jordan. A full annexation could generate far greater displacement. For Jordan, this is not simply a refugee problem. It touches the kingdom’s most sensitive political fault line: the unresolved relationship between Palestinians and citizens of Transjordanian tribal origin. The country already hosts enormous refugee populations and faces high public debt, poverty, and youth unemployment. A new influx of people from the West Bank could intensify competition over political representation, resources, and national identity, potentially triggering a destabilizing cycle of protest, repression, and communal tension.The geopolitical danger is even greater. Jordan is one of Israel’s few Arab neighbors with which it maintains a peace treaty, and its territory provides Israel with a strategically important eastern buffer. Yet if Israel continues expanding settlements and territorial control while facing little effective international resistance, the calculation in Jerusalem could change: Jordanian stability may become a secondary concern compared with the ideological and territorial ambitions of Israeli annexationists. Yom argues that this is precisely what increasingly frightens Amman.And Jordan has very little room for maneuvering. Its border with the West Bank is relatively close to Amman and difficult to close completely. If Palestinians begin fleeing eastward, the Hashemite monarchy could face an agonizing choice between closing its borders to Palestinians in desperate need and allowing an influx capable of transforming Jordan itself. This is why the absence of effective international opposition to Israeli annexation of the West Bank is so dangerous. What begins as the territorial transformation of the West Bank could ultimately become the destabilization of Jordan. And if Jordan—the region’s relatively stable Western ally—were destabilized, the consequences would extend far beyond the Jordan River.
