Georgia and Jordan
Later on I had a proper chat with Alan and Katka, the French-Georgian couple I’d met on the bus. To be frank, I’m not sure his name is Alan and I’m certain hers isn’t Katka but she looks like a Katka and I’ve got to call her something.
They met in Jordan 18 months ago. He as a French traveller, she as a Georgian tour guide working in Petra (I think). Getting married required overcoming considerable hurdles. He needed to go to Tblisi, as well as negotiate the labyrinthine French bureaucracy. But now all is well at last and they are living in Paris.
I showed Katka the Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan Lonely Planet I bought in Goreme, which now pointlessly helps weigh down my bag. I learnt something I didn’t know about too, the Georgian secessionist drama surrounding Abkhazia which, so I read yesterday, threatens to kick off again with Russian approval if Kosovan independence is recognized without Serbian approval. Serbia doesn’t look likely to approve anything of the sort, and the US, at the very least, looks set to recognize Kosovo, with or without UN support. So we’ll have to see what happens.
I knew nothing about this sensitive issue before. This is what comes from living in ‘your own world’ as it is said, which I did for much of the 90s.
I asked her about Shevardnaze, a man in many of our headlines in the late 80s as the Soviet Foreign Secretary during the years of Glastnost and the death of the USSR. As I’d suspected, she told me Georgians hated this former President of their sixteen year old republic. But I didn’t know by quite how much. Apparently mired in all kinds of corruption, partiality and general incompetence, he inflicted on his country a period of stagnation and inertia that has only been reversed since Saakashvili took power in 2003. I’m not sure this would be quite how he’d read this, but it’s what she told me and no doubt she knows more about this than I.
I’d ignorantly thought Georgians were Slavs, just because I’d known they were Christians and were bang next to Russia. But they’re not, they’re apparently descendants of what the Greeks called the Colchians and the Iberians. The former group had the Golden Fleece taken from them by Jason, if you recall. As for the Iberians, I’m guessing this suggests a Spanish connection, geography posing no objection, presumably.
Katka speaks good Arabic, which helped us in our negotiations with drivers to get us to the castle cheaply and easily. She told me, too simplistically or not, that the Jordanians, with whom she’s been working, hate the Palestinians. Less of a burden since the PLO was ejected from Jordan in Black September in 1970, there are still nevertheless two million Palestinian refugees living in Jordan. She didn’t explain exactly why they're hated but I got the impression they’re just not trusted, and looked down on as rootless foreigners, which of course they are; though this being no fault of theirs. It is an additional burden that the displaced, stateless Palestinians must face; not only have they lost their ancestral lands over the past 59 years at the hands of the Israelis, they have hardly been given much of a welcome or helped much by the Arab regimes to which they have fled.
Whether this is because, and if so to what extent, the Palestinian refugees are deliberately being kept in a state of poverty and misery to inflame anti-Israeli feelings is an interesting question. Certainly, regimes that want internal security, to hold back the floodgates of internal dissent, would do well to find an external entity to hate, someone or something around which to encourage national unity and obedience in defiance of this diabolized other. For sure, if the exiled Palestinians had found a happy life for themselves outside their ancestral lands; if they didn’t have to live as so many do in refugee camps, a strong case could still be made against Israel, given the fact that Israel was the original cause of their leaving. But I’m sure it wouldn’t be such a strong case.
Naturally, I hope this is untrue. But if it is: ‘Why must the Palestinians still suffer so much, outside of as well as inside the occupied territories?’ is a question that springs to mind. It’s hardly that the Arabic world is not rich enough to help them, is it?
Might it be a question of Arabic pride? ‘The wound was caused by Israel. It is Israel’s to heal by rolling into the sea, or letting the refugees back, at least. If we, the rich Arab states help the Palestinians too much, this will lessen the wound and might work towards legitimizing Israel.’
What do I know, I’m just asking questions.
They met in Jordan 18 months ago. He as a French traveller, she as a Georgian tour guide working in Petra (I think). Getting married required overcoming considerable hurdles. He needed to go to Tblisi, as well as negotiate the labyrinthine French bureaucracy. But now all is well at last and they are living in Paris.
I showed Katka the Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan Lonely Planet I bought in Goreme, which now pointlessly helps weigh down my bag. I learnt something I didn’t know about too, the Georgian secessionist drama surrounding Abkhazia which, so I read yesterday, threatens to kick off again with Russian approval if Kosovan independence is recognized without Serbian approval. Serbia doesn’t look likely to approve anything of the sort, and the US, at the very least, looks set to recognize Kosovo, with or without UN support. So we’ll have to see what happens.
I knew nothing about this sensitive issue before. This is what comes from living in ‘your own world’ as it is said, which I did for much of the 90s.
I asked her about Shevardnaze, a man in many of our headlines in the late 80s as the Soviet Foreign Secretary during the years of Glastnost and the death of the USSR. As I’d suspected, she told me Georgians hated this former President of their sixteen year old republic. But I didn’t know by quite how much. Apparently mired in all kinds of corruption, partiality and general incompetence, he inflicted on his country a period of stagnation and inertia that has only been reversed since Saakashvili took power in 2003. I’m not sure this would be quite how he’d read this, but it’s what she told me and no doubt she knows more about this than I.
I’d ignorantly thought Georgians were Slavs, just because I’d known they were Christians and were bang next to Russia. But they’re not, they’re apparently descendants of what the Greeks called the Colchians and the Iberians. The former group had the Golden Fleece taken from them by Jason, if you recall. As for the Iberians, I’m guessing this suggests a Spanish connection, geography posing no objection, presumably.
Katka speaks good Arabic, which helped us in our negotiations with drivers to get us to the castle cheaply and easily. She told me, too simplistically or not, that the Jordanians, with whom she’s been working, hate the Palestinians. Less of a burden since the PLO was ejected from Jordan in Black September in 1970, there are still nevertheless two million Palestinian refugees living in Jordan. She didn’t explain exactly why they're hated but I got the impression they’re just not trusted, and looked down on as rootless foreigners, which of course they are; though this being no fault of theirs. It is an additional burden that the displaced, stateless Palestinians must face; not only have they lost their ancestral lands over the past 59 years at the hands of the Israelis, they have hardly been given much of a welcome or helped much by the Arab regimes to which they have fled.
Whether this is because, and if so to what extent, the Palestinian refugees are deliberately being kept in a state of poverty and misery to inflame anti-Israeli feelings is an interesting question. Certainly, regimes that want internal security, to hold back the floodgates of internal dissent, would do well to find an external entity to hate, someone or something around which to encourage national unity and obedience in defiance of this diabolized other. For sure, if the exiled Palestinians had found a happy life for themselves outside their ancestral lands; if they didn’t have to live as so many do in refugee camps, a strong case could still be made against Israel, given the fact that Israel was the original cause of their leaving. But I’m sure it wouldn’t be such a strong case.
Naturally, I hope this is untrue. But if it is: ‘Why must the Palestinians still suffer so much, outside of as well as inside the occupied territories?’ is a question that springs to mind. It’s hardly that the Arabic world is not rich enough to help them, is it?
Might it be a question of Arabic pride? ‘The wound was caused by Israel. It is Israel’s to heal by rolling into the sea, or letting the refugees back, at least. If we, the rich Arab states help the Palestinians too much, this will lessen the wound and might work towards legitimizing Israel.’
What do I know, I’m just asking questions.
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