Abdullah II, ruler of Jordan, once called TransJordan, once called the East Bank of Palestine, is once again in Washington.

The pattern is all too familiar. The Americans install a new Administration in Washington; the Arab chieftains, heading up the American-sponsored "client regimes", come to pay homage, get their instructions, collect their money. The Egyptians, the Jordanians, and the Saudis, are usually at the top of the queue -- closely following the Israelis of course who usually come first, and then continually throughout.

When it comes to the Hashemites, it all started with the British really when Abdullah the first, namesame of today's Abdullah the second, traveled from Arabia to Cairo to meet with British officials in the days before World War I when the Brits were planning to unravel the Ottoman Empire, carve up the region to their own designs, pursue their famous "divide and conquer" strategy, and install a variety of "client regimes" in a few key places. Indeed, a few of those then chosen to unofficially join the British Empire -- the Hashemites in Jordan and the al-Sauds in Arabia at the top of the list -- have so tragically persisted to this very day.

Now that's the origins of today's "Jordan" and the Hashemite regime which rules it. Back then it only cost the British about a thousand pounds a month to hire the Hashemites. Then, when Abdullah's clan lost out to the al-Sauds in Arabia, the Brits brought Abdullah to a desert place he'd never seen before and proclaimed him King of this new largely desert region. Wallah -- the birth of Transjordan and the castration of then Palestine. It was also during this time that another part of the British strategy was th help establish a "Jewish homeland" on the other side of the Jordan; and to make sure those in both the remains of Palestine as well as Transjordan didn't get in the way.

The British did their work quite competently; the Americans inheriting the arrangements after World War II. Indeed, today's Abdullah required a constitutional change in order to take the throne in Amman, for his mother is a British woman and his schooling pure British and American. To this day in fact Abdullah speaks English better than Arabic and seems more at home with his Western friends in Georgetown than anywhere in the Arab world...other than the Royal Palaces that is.

That said, it's important to remember that no regime has done more to help the British, and then the Americans, rule the Middle East; and no regime has done more to make it possible for Israel to come into existence as a "Jewish State" and survive. In short, no regime has done more under the table to undermine the Palestinians in their struggle with the Israelis. And no regime has been more clever in its use of secret police, co-optation, and international public relations as well. And the rewards have been many indeed. At the time of King Hussein's death the estimate is the extended Hashemite family divied up approximately $25 billion among themselves.

But even so, behind the dark scenes of today's Middle East machinations the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan may be nearing its end more than 40 years after its cousin Hashemite regime in Baghdad was brought down in a bloody revolutionary moment. That's why all demonstrations, especially those in support of the Palestinian Intifada, have been banned in Jordan. That's why the American CIA is working ever more closely with the Jordanian Muhabarat (secret police) these days -- with nobody in Jordan allowed to remind everyone that King Hussein was actually on the CIA payroll for many years. And that's really what Abdullah and his crowd are really doing here in Washington at this time -- pleading their case to the new Rome, just as they did with the Brits before, that they be kept on to continue doing the biding of the Western powers.

But the usefulness of the Hashemite regime comes up against the realities of Palestinian aspirations and numbers as well as Zionist ideology. For what's really going on in the Middle East region at this moment is a speeding up of the big chess game of nations. Under the table, somewhat hidden from plain sight at the moment, the Zionist Revisionists, Ariel Sharon now in charge, have never really given up the notion that "Jordan is Palestine". True, at this particular moment is it convenient for Sharon to pretent otherwise, and indeed the Hashemites have been courting Sharon personally for many years now, with all kinds of secrets meetings in Amman and Aqaba in the years since the Gulf War. Indeed, without such Arab help in fact Sharon probably would never have become Netanyahu's Foreign Minister and then today's Prime Minister; for they helped him considerably to build up his stature and credibility and thus to resurrect himself from political oblivion (see MER articles about Sharon and Jordan in previous years). But if and when the Americans and the Israelis are able to push forward their plans to once again reconfigure the region with even more regimes of their choosing, they might then well decide to put a friendly one in Baghdad and to let the Palestinians finally have the East Bank so that the Israelis can more easily hold control of all of the area West of the Jordan River and not be so troubled and bothered by all the Palestinians now living there.

The ghost of Vladimir Jabotinsky is still alive and well in the Middle East; and when Sharon took power Jabotinsky's picture was on the wall right behind him.