The Hashemites of Jordan are survivors. With British backing, they clawed a little desert kingdom out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire after WWI. Three decades later, they watched as their profligate cousins in Iraq were slaughtered in a coup. They were bested by Israel in the 1967 War and then clobbered Palestinian fighters a few years later.
Through it all, they stayed.
Therefore, when King Abdullah II meets US President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday, he can trumpet the fact that he is the longest-serving Arab ruler in the world, heading one of its oldest family dynasties. He wants to keep it that way.
Abdullah’s mission is clear. He will have to stand his ground to convince Trump that his impoverished, resource-poor kingdom will not accept Palestinian refugees so that the US can "take over" the Gaza Strip and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
The arrival of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the war-ravaged Gaza Strip into Jordan is the type of event that current and former US, European and Arab officials say would spell the death knell to Hashemite rule that he and his ancestors have so deftly avoided.
