Jordan’s Queen Rania Urges U.S. Support of Palestinian Cause

In Jordan, where nearly a third of the population is composed of Palestinian refugees, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank is “a hurt we feel each day,” Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah told a packed audience at Yale on Sept. 22.

The plight of the Palestinians, and the role the United States can play in helping bring peace to the Middle East, were the focus of the Jordanian queen’s address in Sprague Memorial Hall, which was followed by a discussion with President Richard C. Levin.

Queen Rania said that as a Jordanian, she feels she must “speak for those voices that Americans rarely hear, to describe the sense of ‘identity theft’ that Palestinians have endured for over 60 years.”

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza, she told her audience, Palestinians must carry IDs that limit their movement and their potential. Their IDs are “a constant reminder that in others’ eyes, they are less valuable, less important, simply less,” Queen Rania said in her address.

In contrast, she noted, the IDs that Yale students carry actually give them access - to the dining halls and libraries, to their education and their diplomas.

According to the United Nations, almost 40% of the West Bank “is now covered by settlement-related Israeli infrastructure — barriers, buffer zones, military bases, barbed wire and barricades,” Queen Rania told her audience. Likewise, she noted, 400 kilometers of walls are going up.

“Parents can’t go to work,” she added. “Students can’t get to class. Sick people can’t get to hospitals. All traffic is stopped, from people on foot to cars and trucks to ambulances. The wait can be hours, often only to find that passage is refused; relatives detained on their way to a family wedding; schoolchildren searched, their notes ripped from the schoolbooks; grandparents forced to stand for hours holding packages and heavy bags.”

In addition to losing their freedom of movement, Palestinians feel humiliated and degraded when asked by armed Israeli soldiers for their ID, which is akin to being told, “Show me proof that you exist,” Queen Rania said.

Almost 70% of Gaza’s population is composed of refugees living in squalid conditions, according to the Jordanian queen. “Homes lie in rubble,” she explained. “Hospitals lack power. Sewage pipes threaten to burst. The economy has totally, utterly collapsed. Unemployment is ap­proaching 50%.”

One Gaza resident, she revealed, compared his homeland to “a jail where no prisoner knows the length of his sentence.”

The Palestinians’ sense of hopelessness and degradation is “compounded by the sense that no one cares, that the outside world is oblivious” to their hardships, Queen Rania contended. She said because of the large population of Palestinian refugees in her country, Jordanians do not have “the luxury of shifting our focus away.”

She cited a U.S. poll conducted earlier this year that showed that with the exception of terrorism, Americans cited no foreign policy issue among their priorities for the Obama administration.

“Yet, in many ways, [the Middle East] conflict is at the core of U.S.-Arab relations - or, at least, at the core of Arab public opinion of America,” Queen Rania told her audience.

By contrast, when asked in a recent poll about their top priorities, 99% of Arabs said the conflict was among their top five, she stated.

While Arabs were encouraged by President Obama’s outreach and speech in Cairo, his pledge to work toward Middle East peace and the appointment of George Mitchell as a special envoy in the region, they are “impatient,” Queen Rania commented. She noted that other long-term conflicts - including apartheid in South Africa, a divided Germany, the Cold War and violence in Northern Ireland - once considered “intractable, even insoluble” have since found some level of resolution, whereas the situation in Palestine has only deteriorated. Innocent Palestinian children, she added, are the greatest victims of the conflict.

The “worst threat” to stability in the Middle East, Queen Rania stressed, “is the cynicism so many people feel, the sense that ­Middle East peace is hopeless.” That hope­lessness, results in “writing off people’s lives.”

“But let me be clear: It isn’t just the lives of Palestinians at stake. Israelis too need a future of peace and security,” she continued.

One sign of hope, according to the Jordanian queen, is the fact that 64% of Palestinians and 40% of Israelis support a plan proposed by 22 members of the Arab League to give full recognition to Israel in exchange for that country’s withdrawal from the territories it overtook in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

She emphasized that all sides in the conflict, including the Arab world, are responsible for bringing peace to the region.

“We decry the actions of Israeli extremists, but must work harder to rein in our own,” she said. “We look to the West to do more in support of Palestinian needs, but must do our part - and must press the Palestinians toward unity among themselves.”

She urged the United States to play a leadership role by offering a “sustained commitment” to and “creative engagement” in the peace process.

Yet, the attainment of peace in the Middle East requires more than political leadership and will, said the queen.

“[I]t is not just the walls on the land that must go,” she said. “We must take down the walls in our hearts. There has been so much pain, so much loss, so much fear, so much hatred and mistrust. True peace depends on reconnecting the bonds of our common humanity.”

Active in numerous global concerns, Queen Rania has been particularly engaged in improving the lives of families and children, empowering women and promoting education in Jordan. Her Yale visit coincides with the campus exhibit and U.S. premiere of “Breaking the Veils: Women Artists from the Islamic World,” which Queen Rania inaugurated in 2002 with the goal of breaking down stereotypes about Muslim women.

Following her address, Levin asked the Jordanian queen some questions and also read questions posed by audience members. He noted the strides that the University has made to enhance opportunities for students to study the Middle East, among them a new major in Modern Middle East Studies. However, he lamented the fact that there has been a drop in the number of Arab students at Yale since 9/11 (to a current level of 7% of the student population). Levin asked Queen Rania how the University could encourage more students from the region to study at Yale.

She acknowledged that the terrorist attacks resulted in “pervasive” mistrust and stereotyping among Americans and Arabs alike. The United States, she said, can help to quell the fears of young Arab students by holding fast to the core American values of open-mindedness, innovation and philanthropy, and by ensuring Arab students that they will be “treated fairly” in the United States.

“So often, we dread what we do not know,” Queen Rania said in her address. “We live in fear of the things we cannot see. But we’ll never move forward by closing ourselves off. The only way to grow is to reach out.”

The full text of Queen Rania’s address at Yale can be found at http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=6894.

— By Susan Gonzalez