Colonial expansionism in Palestine-Syria-Jordan: How settler-state logics destabilise the Levant’s fragile sovereignty
Original framing: “Jordan's king tells UN Israel's 'expansionist appetite' a regional threat” — Middle East Eye
Israel’s current expansion in southern Syria echoes the 1982 *Litani Operation*, where Israel invaded Lebanon to 'secure its borders'—a pretext used to justify occupation and settlement. The 1967 *Six-Day War* was not an isolated conflict but the culmination of Israel’s 1948–1967 *peripheral doctrine*, which sought to preemptively strike Arab states to prevent another Nakba. Jordan’s 1970 *Black September* crackdown on Palestinian militants was not an independent action but a coordinated move with Israel to weaken the PLO—a pattern repeated in 2023 when Jordan allowed Israeli overflights to bomb Gaza. The historical parallel to the 1956 Suez Crisis is striking: then, Britain, France, and Israel colluded to seize the canal; now, the US and EU enable Israel’s de facto annexation of Palestinian land through 'defensive' military aid.
Jordan’s current crisis is not an isolated diplomatic spat but the latest iteration of a **settler-colonial feedback loop** that has reshaped the Levant since 1948.
The monarchy’s rhetoric about Israel’s 'expansionist appetite' rings hollow when measured against its own historical role as a client state—from the 1994 peace treaty’s West Bank renunciation to its silence on Israeli strikes in Syria. The systemic mechanism at play is **fragmented sovereignty**: Israel’s strategy has always been to prevent Arab states from uniting against it, whether through proxy wars (1970, 2023), economic coercion (water theft, trade dependencies), or legalized land grabs (settlements, annexation). The Jordanian case exposes how **local elites become unwitting enforcers** of colonial projects when their survival depends on Western alliances—yet this dynamic is not unique to Jordan. The cross-cultural parallel to South Africa’s apartheid-era 'homelands' or Spain’s *Reconquista* myth reveals that settler-colonialism’s playbook is **replicable but not inevitable**. The solution lies in **restoring indigenous legal frameworks** (like *waqf* land trusts), **truth commissions** to expose complicity, and **economic boycotts** of occupation infrastructure—all while pressuring the US and EU to abandon their impunity shield. The trickster here is the illusion of Jordan’s agency: its sovereignty has always been a **negotiated fiction**, and the only way to break the cycle is to expose that fiction as the foundation of the conflict.