Not even Jordon or Lebanon want the Palestinians. So much for Arab brotherhood:

With reports about the Israeli proposals to the Palestinians replete with hints about progress on the issues of the refugees and border demarcation, Jordan and Lebanon have cause for concern - particularly with regard to the refugee question.

“The Jordanian option does not exist,” King Abdullah made a point of declaring last week in an interview to the French weekly L’Express. Abdullah is worried about what Abbas told Arab newspapers last month after visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Back then the Palestinian president said he could not demand that Israel accept all the refugees, but that this need not mean that none of them would return. “It is untenable for me to propose that five million refugees return to Israel, because they [the Israelis] will immediately tell me that I am out to liquidate the state. But it is also untenable for me to say that none of them will return. Compensation must be paid to those who return and to those who do not return, and also to the countries that hosted the refugees.”

For Jordan, whose population is more than 60 percent Palestinian, the problem concerns the country’s character and identity. Even before the second intifada, and more so in its course, when concern arose that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would cross the border into Jordan, the prime minister at the time, Ali Abu al-Ragheb, announced that his government would not grant citizenship to even one additional Palestinian. That approach is even more deeply ingrained today.

With nearly two million Palestinians and another 700,000 refugees from Iraq living in Jordan, the country is barely able to create its own national identity. The slogan “We are one family,” intended to show Jordan’s solidarity with the Palestinian problem, was changed to “Jordan first.” Publicists in Jordan have written that the slogan should really be “Jordanians first,” implying that the Palestinians who hold Jordanian citizenship are not truly brothers.

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