ABSTRACT
The decision of King Abdullah II in November 1999 to deport Hamas political bureau chief Khalid Masha’al, along with three other officials, to Qatar opened a new and unpredictable twist to the drama over Masha’al that first began to unfold years ago. In September 1997, Abdullah’s late father King Hussein was instrumental in saving the life of Masha’al when Israeli agents made an unsuccessful attempt to murder him. Condemned both inside and outside Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt helped consolidate the influence of Hamas and brought Israeli-Jordanian relations to their lowest point since the June 1967 war. In 1999, however, Hussein’s successor Abdullah realized that Masha’al was a threat not only to Israel but also to the Hashemite Kingdom. In short, the unsuccessful assassination attempt in September 1997 and the deportation in November 1999 mark two sides of the same problem: the presence of Hamas in Jordan.
