When there’s a status quo, usually what shakes everybody up is some sort of military confrontation, at which point we all come running and screaming to pick up the pieces.
Each country its cost analysis is going to be different. So what we are you seeing in Syria, for example, is different than what’s going on in Jordan. The maps are being rewritten.
No matter what’s happening in the Middle East – the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment – the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.
Blowing up buses will not induce the Israelis to move forward, and neither will the killing of Palestinians or the demolition of their homes and their future.
For me, I am left leaning when it comes to health and education, on the right when it comes to defense. So I don’t know where I come on the political spectrum. And I think this the challenge that a lot of Jordanians have to deal with.
When you get billions in aid and your weapons resupplied and your ammunition stock resupplied, you don’t learn the lesson that war is bad and nobody wins.
If you have a government that is elected, they need to do the hard work – because if they don’t, they won’t be around the next time the ballot box is open.
