Jordan’s King Abdullah says Israel has been trying to ‘distrupt’ its nuclear plans. Does placing Israel in the same camp as the anti-nuclear movement in Jordan have negative implications for the success and popularity of the campaign?
Since 2009, when Jordan first announced its nuclear ambitions, the country has been through a parliamentary review of nuclear power, accusations of slander by the head of the Jordanian Atomic Energy Commission and dozens of protests stating that the costs – both financial and environmental – of nuclear power has not been sufficiently assessed. There is now a new plot twist in the Jordanian nuclear ambition saga. King Abdullah has accused Israel of disrupting Jordan’s nuclear programme. Speaking to Ynet News, he remarked: “When we started going down the road of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, we approached some highly responsible countries to work with us. And pretty soon we realized that Israel was putting pressure on those countries to disrupt any cooperation with us.”
This statement is in my view hugely damaging to Jordan’s anti-nuclear movement. Firstly because support for nuclear power will no doubt be given a boost in retaliation to the news that Israel has been interfering. Secondly, because those trying to stop nuclear could now be seen as siding with a national enemy.
It’s a really tricky situation and one which the environmental movement is trying to downplay. I emailed a campaigner at Greenpeace Jordan, which has been actively campaigning against the nuclear plans for two years now, who said that this news won’t have any impact. “I think that the people who are concerned about the health and environmental consequences of the plant won’t stop the Anti-Nuclear campaign… We have the green alternative and even Japan announced that they will phase out the nuclear plant that they have.” They added, “I won’t lose hope.In 2009, it was announced that the country would begin construction of a nuclear plant in 2011 but one year later and there is nothing. Nuclear plants are notoriously difficult to plan but the delay could be one reason that King Abdullah II has chosen to highlight Israeli opposition to his nuclear ambitions now. At a time when support for nuclear is low, equating anti-nuclear sentiment with Israel does seem one cynical way to garner support for nuclear power.Back in June 2012, the nuclear programme was declared ‘hazardous and costly’ by a Jordanian parliamentary committee. A petition signed by hundreds of representatives of professional organisations, political parties and parliamentarians was also handed into the South Korean embassy in Amman asking them to halt work. A South Korean business consortium is tasked with building the nuclear reactor.
:: Originally published at GreenProphet.com on 17 Sept 2012.
Fred Halliday, who died aged 64 in April 2010, wrote widely on many subjects related to the Middle East as well as the Muslim community in the UK, but Shocked and Awed is quite different to his other books. In fact, it’s not really a book but a political dictionary of words, turns of phrases and made up terminology which the general public were exposed to in the aftermath of 9/11 and the subsequent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arranged into twelve chapters, the book studies words that have entered our vocabulary, their meaning, their origins but also- and this is the important bit- they way they influence the way we think and subsequently act. As Halliday reminds us “those who seek to control events, people and their minds also seek to control language.”
I have been looking into biofuels in the Middle East recently (see links below), as its an area of ‘green’ development which could be really problematic for the water and food-scarce region and also because there doesn’t appear to be much realization of the dangers of biofuels amongst many MidEast enviros. One of the biggest problems with biofuels is that it pitches the need for food and the need for fuel against each other, drains important resources used for agriculture and also happens to necessity the destruction of forests to make space for land to grow biofuel crops.
I was lucky enough to get the chance to speak to the two women you see pictured above- Rifia and Seiha who are from Jordan- during their stay in India where they were training to become solar engineers. When I eventually managed to track them down (I just kept repeating ‘Jordan?’ to whoever picked up the phone at the college and it worked!), they seemed eager to speak to anyone who spoke Arabic- even if mine is a little on the dodgy side.
Well, about a month ago I joined Green Prophet as their “Eco-Islam Affairs Editor” which is a very fancy title for saying someone who will cover Muslim related Environment news. So far, its been great!
There was a great campaign called ‘Inspired by Muhammed’ which was attempting to end the association of Islam with terrorism by highlighting the prophet’s love of the environment.
I also broke the story of Cambridge’s plans for a faulous Eco-Mosque with stunning skylights and renewable energy- this story got picked up far and wide and even got picked up by Treehugger! Woohoo!
My latest Green Prophet Blogs