@Alon @asayeed @BenRossTransit i wonder whether the discriminator here might not be more when rather than how many. Jordan naturalized many Palestinians before the conflict curdled into something quite so bitter and nihilistic and apocalyptic as it has now become. it did the most important work a state does, made that population not stateless, gave people a state which defines enforces certain rights. 1/

@Alon @asayeed @BenRossTransit Jordan’s Palestinian population is obviously pro-Palestinian and in deep, painful sympathy with their stateless brethren. But they have much more to lose, and are less bitter and radical than those who’ve spent 40 years in the desert hoping for Canaan. 2/

@Alon @asayeed @BenRossTransit Over time, naturalization could offer some degree of contemporary normalcy to migrants to, say, Egypt from Gaza or the West Bank. But if you were governing Egypt, and well aware of your precarity doing so, you might wonder how long it might take for bitter, defiant grievances to fade, whether that population would consent to mix and assimilate as much as Jordan’s much earlier wave did. 3/

@Alon @asayeed @BenRossTransit Putting aside questions of justice or the human rights surrounding “ethnic cleansing”, I think naturalization in neighboring states will be a hard-sell due to these very realist concerns. Of course leaders will say, as Sisi does, that they won’t accept them because they must remain steadfast in their noble cause. But that serves both as pretext + to mollify the passions of their publics. On practical grounds, it’s just dangerous./fin