The Palgrave Handbook of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

P. R. Kumaraswamy

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9789811391668
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Policy
• Index: Economics

This Handbook presents a broad yet nuanced portrait of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, its socio-political rifts, economic challenges, foreign policy priorities and historical complexities.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has traditionally been an oasis of peace and stability in the ever-turbulent Middle East. The political ambitions of regional powers, often expressed in the form of territorial aggrandisement, have followed the Hashemites like an inseparable shadow. The scarcity of natural resources, especially water, has been compounded by the periodic influx of refugees from its neighbours.

As a result, many—Arab and non-Arab alike—have questioned the longevity and survival of Jordan. These uncertainties were compounded when the founding ruler, King Abdullah I, became involved in the nascent Palestinian problem at the end of World War II. The annexation of the eastern part of Mandate Palestine or the West Bank in the wake of the 1948 War transformed the Jordanian demography and sowed the seeds of an uneasy relationship with the Palestinian component of its population, citizens, residents and refugees.

Though better natural resources and stronger leaders have not ensured political stability in many Arab and non-Arab countries, Jordan has been an exception. Indeed, since its formation as an Emirate by the British in 1921, the Kingdom has seen only four rulers, a testimony to the sagacity and political foresight of the Hashemites.

The Hashemites have managed to sustain the semi-rentier model primarily through international aid and assistance, which in turn inhibits Jordan from pursuing rapid political and economic reforms. Though a liberal, multi-religious and multicultural society, Jordan has been hampered by social cleavages especially between the tribal population and the forces of modernization.

Part ISociety

© The Author(s) 2019

P. R. Kumaraswamy (ed.)The Palgrave Handbook of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordanhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9166-8_2

Begin Abstract

From Small Sheikhdom to Over-Population

Onn Winckler¹

(1)

Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

Onn Winckler

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

PalestiniansRefugeesCitizensPopulation growth

End Abstract

Two factors, geography and politics, have strongly influenced Jordan’s demographic history. Geography has played a role since more than 80 per cent of its total area is desert, the majority of the population being concentrated in the northern and central highlands. Politics has had an effect: first, due to Jordan’s need to absorb large numbers of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 War and the June 1967 War; and second, since Jordan controlled the West Bank (including Arab Jerusalem) from 1948, and up to the June 1967 War, it also absorbed non-refugee Palestinians who had immigrated from the West Bank to the East Bank between and after the wars.

Hence, Jordan’s national population is comprised of two components: the original population of the East Bank, namely those who lived in the East Bank before the 1948 War and their descendants, and the Palestinians. Since the mid-1970s, two non-national groups were added to the Jordanian population: foreign workers and their accompanying family members, and since 1991, non-Palestinian refugees.

The aim of this chapter is twofold: first to describe the population growth in Jordan which, with the exception of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, was the fastest growing among the Middle Eastern countries. The second aim is to examine the Jordanian natalist policy. This is because, despite a large number of non-nationals in the Kingdom, the most prominent factor for Jordan’s rapid population growth since its establishment has been the high fertility rate of the national population.

The chapter is organised as follows: following a brief description of the ethno-religious composition of the Jordanian citizenry population, the chapter examines the components of the rapid population growth, namely the influx of Palestinians, the natural increase rate (NIR) of the Jordanian national population, the increase in the number of foreign workers, and lastly, the transformation of the Kingdom into a shelter—first for Iraqi refugees, and since mid-2011, for “Arab Spring refugees” as well. Finally, the chapter examines the Jordanian natalist policy since the 1950s.

Ethno-religious Composition of the Jordanian Citizenry Population

From a religious viewpoint, Jordan is almost homogenous with Arab Sunni Muslims constituting approximately 97 per cent of its citizens. The largest religious minority group is that of the Christians. According to the 1961 census, Christians represented 6.4 per cent of the total population of the East Bank, and their percentage declined to 4.0 per cent as reported in the 1979 census.¹ According to the 2015 census, their percentage declined further to 2.3 per cent.² There is also a small Druze community in Jordan, estimated at 0.5 per cent of the Jordanian citizens.

From an ethnic viewpoint, there are two significant minorities in Jordan. One is the Circassians, who were deliberately planted in the area of current Jordan by the Ottomans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the late 2000s, their number was estimated at approximately 45,000, and they were concentrated in Amman and some villages around the capital. The second ethnic minority is the Chechens (sometimes called Shishanis), most of whom arrived in Jordan during and following World War I. In the late 2000s, their number was estimated at 15,000.³

The Components of Population Growth

In 1922, as Transjordan was being established, it was estimated that 122,430 people were living in villages and another 102,950 were living as nomads, bringing the total population of Transjordan to 225,380. By late 1930, this figure had grown to 300,214, including 31,500 who were added when the southern border of Transjordan was extended beyond Ma‘an and ‘Aqaba. In 1946, the population was estimated to be 433,659.⁴ According to the first population census which was conducted in 1952, the East Bank population numbered 586,885, and according to the second census in November 1961, it amounted to 900,776. This number increased to 2.133 million in November 1979. The December 1994 census measured 4.096 million, among them 3.779 million Jordanian citizens and the remaining foreigners, the vast majority of whom were foreign workers.⁵ According to the 2004 census, the population numbered 5.104 million; among them, 4.682 million were Jordanian citizens. According to the latest census, which was carried out in November 2015, the national population numbered 6.579 million (see Table 1). The total number of the Jordanian population, including both foreign workers and refugees, amounted to 9.532 million.⁶ In mid-2019, the population numbered 10.4 million.⁷ Thus, within less than a century, Jordan’s population increased 44 times! (Fig. 1).

Table 1

Jordan’s national population, 1952–2015

Year	Population (thousands)
1952 (c)^a	586.2
1961 (c)^a	900.8
1965^a	1028.0
1970	1508.2
1975	1810.5
1979 (c)	2133.0
1985	2700.0
1990	3268.0
1994 (c)	3795.0
2004	4682.0
2010	6113.0
2015 (c)	6578.6

(c) = Census

^aEast Bank only

Sources: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Department of Statistics (DoS), Statistical Yearbook, various issues; idem, Housing and Population Census of 1994, 2004, 2015

Fig. 1

Jordan’s national population, 1952–2015

Four components led to this unprecedented growth rate of the Jordanian population during the past century, and they are being examined in the following sections.

The Influx of Palestinians into the East Bank

The incursion of Palestinians into the East Bank started in late 1947 with the beginning of the armed struggle in Palestine. According to the UN estimate, in 1949, following the end of the Palestine War, the number of Palestinian refugees in the East Bank was approximately 70,000.⁸ It should be noted that the only Arab country which granted citizenship to the Palestinian refugees was Jordan. Following the annexation of the West Bank, including Arab Jerusalem, to Jordan in 1949, there was large-scale emigration from the West Bank to the East Bank, and this was welcomed by the Jordanian authorities who aspired to develop the East Bank. The third wave of migration from the West Bank to the East Bank occurred following the June 1967 War. The overall number of Palestinian refugees (including internal refugees from the West Bank), which found refuge in the East Bank as a result of the occupation by Israel of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the June 1967 War, was estimated at between 310,000⁹ and 360,000.¹⁰ Overall, the number of Palestinians in the West Bank in late 1987, on the eve of the onset of the first Palestinian Intifada , was estimated at 1.2 million.¹¹ The continuation of emigration from the West Bank to the East Bank, together with the continuation of the high NIR, led to the rapid growth in the percentage of the Palestinian composition in Jordan.

Since the Jordanian authorities do not publish any official data regarding the distribution of the citizenry population according to origin of nationality, the only option to evaluate the percentage of the “Jordanians,” that is, those who were living on the East Bank of the Jordan River before the 1948 War and their offsprings, as a total of the Kingdom’s citizenry population, is to add the NIR to the number of the East Bank population before 1948, assuming a zero net migration balance. This is because there are neither official nor unofficial figures regarding the scale of Jordanian citizens who emigrated from the Kingdom according to their nationality “origin.” The population of Transjordan in 1946, namely the last British figure, was 433,659. Assuming a net population growth¹² of 3 per cent on an annual average since 1948, by 2017, the number of “original Jordanians” in Jordan is about 3.2 million. Taking into consideration that according to the November 2015 census, the number of Jordanian citizens was 6.578 million, this means that the “original Jordanians” and their offsprings represented some 47–48 per cent of the total Jordanian citizens. If we add the 634,182 Palestinians refugees who do not have Jordanian nationality but are living permanently in Jordan, then the percentage of the “original Jordanians” of the total Jordanian population (not including the foreign workers and the non-Palestinian refugees) is reduced to about 44 per cent.

High Natural Increase Rate (NIR) of the Jordanian National Population

Throughout the period under discussion, the fertility rates of Jordanian women were among the highest in the Arab region. In the early 1950s, Jordan’s crude birth rate (CBR) was estimated at 47.4 per 1000 people and peaked to almost 50 during the second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s, while the total fertility rate (TFR)¹³ was more than seven children ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Introduction
• Part I. Society
• Part II. Economy and Environment
• Part III. Politics and Identity
• Part IV. Foreign Policy and Security
• Back Matter