Ambiguous elimination: Jordan’s denationalisation of West Bank Palestinians

Many studies focus on cases where domestic political imperatives animate the timing, framing and adoption of eliminationist policies. This article directs attention to the regional geopolitical pressures that can motivate, or even force, such policies, particularly non-deadly eliminationist policies. Through an in-depth analysis of Jordan's 1988 disengagement from the West Bank and the accompanying denationalisation of its roughly one million residents, I make two main contributions to this special issue. First, I show that states can frame eliminationist policies as geopolitically necessary and externally imposed—many Jordanian officials portrayed the disengagement as supporting Palestinian nationalism. These officials viewed the erasure of West Bank Palestinians from the Jordanian citizenry as a prerequisite for becoming citizens of a future Palestinian state. Second, I demonstrate that eliminationist policies can be intentionally ambiguous to facilitate reversing them if political circumstances change—the Jordanian disengagement is riddled with legal ambiguities, including whether the policy was legal and if it constituted law. Overall, drawing from extensive archival research and personal interviews with Jordanian ministers, bureaucrats and lawyers, this article highlights that the rhetoric of eliminationist policies can reflect external pressures, while the legally ambiguous adoption of these policies can reveal domestic leaders' resistance to those pressures.