Jordan’s Queen Rania says ‘anti-Semitism has been weaponised to shut down criticism of Israel’ and says ‘being pro-Palestine does not mean being pro-Hamas.’ She said there was a ‘glaring double standard’ around the world when it came to sympathy for the war’s victims.
Her family are Palestinian and Jordan has taken in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, from the initial 1948 Nakba displacement and following violence and settler encroachment on their land in later years.
‘Even if Israel defeats every last Hamas member, then what?’ she said in a CNN interview. ‘Haven’t they left a trail of terrible memories that will create a new generation of resistance that is fiercer and more violent?’ ‘Most networks are covering the story under the title of Israel at War. But for many Palestinians on the other side of the separation wall, and the other side of the barbed wire, war has never left.’
She was born on 31 August 1970 in Kuwait, did a degree in in business administration, worked in marketing for Citibank, then with Apple Inc. in Jordan. After her 1993 marriage to Crown Prince Abdullah she had four children and was crowned Queen when he succeeded his father in 1999.
She is a Sun in Virgo, with a Virgo/Leo Moon and an intense, communicative Mercury Pluto in Virgo as well. Her Mars in Leo conjunct BML squares onto a Neptune opposition Saturn in Taurus. She is go-ahead and attention-seeking as she promotes her favourite causes in seeking to improve children’s education and health and in creating cross-cultural and interfaith dialogue to foster greater understanding and tolerance.
Mars, Saturn, Neptune is a powerful and uncomfortable T Square indicating a life involving risk, hardship and fear along with courage and determination. Transiting Uranus is rattling up the T square from this year right through till early 2026 so her life will be on edge and unsettled. Though she has tr Pluto square her Jupiter in Scorpio in 2024/25 so will be pushing confidently ahead, no matter what; with 2025 being an especially visible year as her lucky SA Jupiter squares her Pluto and a year later her Solar Arc Sun is conjunct her Jupiter so she won’t be backing down.
ADDENDUM:
A wise and informed piece in today’s Times by Max Hastings trying to make sense of an impossible deadlock.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/israel-may-destroy-hamas-but-then-what-d830t9xll
‘In every modern “war among the people”, politics have eventually proved to play a more important role in outcomes than did soldiers. This is not a pacifist argument: force is indispensable to counter-insurgencies, for the elimination of irreconcilable terrorists.’
‘ We should dismiss the nonsensical debate about the characterisation of Hamas. Of course its members are terrorists, just as were the 1950s EOKA killers in Cyprus and the Kenyan Mau Mau, the 1980s German Red Brigades and the IRA. Their chosen method of pursuing political aims is to perpetrate outrageous violence. Margaret Thatcher, as opposition leader, threatened to refuse to meet Menachem Begin because he was a former terrorist, leader of Irgun (militant Israeli group). Advisers persuaded her to relent, since in 1977 Begin had become Israel’s prime minister.’
‘One (Israeli) spymaster avowed that since the 1995 assassination of the prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, successive governments had made no serious attempt to pursue a peace process, instead contracting to the security forces the containment of Palestinian rage.’
‘They suspect that Netanyahu identifies his own political survival with a long war.’
‘The question persists: can the IDF defy the precedents of history and destroy Hamas by mere force of arms? It can kill terrorists who have forfeited any claim upon mercy. But can it root out the idea of resistance, among millions of Palestinians in a Gaza reduced to rubble, and the West Bank subject to creeping and indefensible Israeli annexation? The principal motive force among these people is not Islam but despair.’
Below is a recent article with senior U.S. executive-branch staff discussing the likelihood of Netanyahu being ousted, given his unpopularity among Israeli populace over his failure to prevent the Hamas attack.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/01/biden-administration-thinks-netanyahu-may-not-last-politically-00124849
Given the recent Hamas trip to Russia and Netanyahu’s closeness to Putin, I continue to wonder if the October 7th attack and the horrendously disproportionate response from Netanyahu’s right-wing government is meant as a checkmate to Biden’s 2nd-term aspirations. With very few exceptions, however Biden reacted would have cleaved his coalition support (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/upshot/polls-biden-trump-2024.html), which helps Trump’s campaign and weakening U.S. as a geopolitical counterweight to Putin.
I can only hope that the Democrats can come up with a viable alternative for 2024.
More pressingly, I hope Queen Rainia and others with geopolitical influence will be able to stop the bloodbath these narcissistic mass killers persist in letting flow.
I believe the Britain asked for 3 divisions of US troops to help police Palestine in 1947 but received no assistance which was the deciding factor in its giving up the Mandate suddenly in 1948. I agree with Max Hastings that any purely military solution is doomed to fail without some sort of political follow up. General Gerald Templar who guided Malaysia to independence and defeated the Communist insurgency said on 25% of his success was down to shooting and 75% was down to politics. The problem in Palestine has always been maintaining peace between Israelis and Palestinians long enough for a political solution to be implemented. There are simply too many people in the area who have a vested interest in maintaining conflict.
I agree that there are plenty of right wing Israeli politicians to replace Netanyahu but few who have his political cunning. John Banner the ahead of the CIA from 2013-2017 identified him as one of the major obstacles to a settlement in Palestine. One of the things to note is that Israel is very much a divided society as the anti Netanyahu protests in the summer revealed. The Hamas attack has very helpfully enabled him to unite the Israelis and to defer the political reckoning that awaits him. In many ways both Hamas and Netanyahu need conflict to justify their existence.
I remember Arafat years back when peace was nearly possible pulling back and wrecking it. A journalist remarked that he was an old war horse, who could not envisage a life without constant jousting.
Pluto in Capricorn – we seriously need to look at the motives/temperament of almost everyone who takes the helm as ruler across a huge range of countries. They act against the interests of their ‘electorate’ whose priorities are to do the shopping without being bombed shot or knifed, get their kids educated, have food on the table and have a job. Everything else is a frill or manna for those on a power trip.
The tragedy of Palestinians is that have no real friends in international politics. Certain Israelis clearly want them entirely removed from the region. The global powers just see them as a distraction from what they seem more important strategic tussles elsewhere on the planet. The regional powers such as Turkey, Iran and Saudis Arabia use them as pawns in their own struggle for Middle Eastern influence. Islamic fundamentalist see Palestinians as sacrificial victims to promote the ideas of a caliphate. This includes Hamas whose historical connection with the Muslim Brotherhood means they don’t really have a Palestinian national state as their ultimate aim. Jordan might be as near as a true long term ally but their own relationship with Palestinians going back to Black September has a troubled past. It is perhaps worth remembering that without the Jordanian Arab legion, ironically largely trained and commanded by about 60 British officers and led by John Glubb, the Palestinians in the West Bank might have been expelled by the Israelis in 1948. The problem is that there are too many bad actors in the region, particularly Netanyahu who one way or another needs to be removed (with extreme prejudice if necessary). Only the USA really has the power to change the current disastrous situation but Biden seems unwilling or incapable of using it.
The problem is it isn’t just Netanyahu. There is a whole rancid, rabble-rousing Arab-hating cohort of far right whackjobs, many of them from the extreme fundamentalist end of Orthodox Judaism. So behead one and the others step up.
There should have been international policing put in at the start in 1948 but the west was otherwise occupied. It needs the people on the ground on both sides to boot out their leaders and start to build a shared future. But with so much bad blood it is tricky to see how – though the mothers in Northern Ireland did finally have enough and stood up and said so.
“visible” seems to b common word in coming year forecasts for leo n virgo ..I got same in mine for 2024