WESTERN powers have long found money a good way of persuading the Hashemites, who rule Jordan, to do their bidding. A century ago, T.E. Lawrence, a charismatic British officer, persuaded them to rebel against the rule of the Ottoman Turks by letting them loot the trains they blew up. In more modern times, hefty dollops of aid have persuaded them to provide military facilities for the Americans in their war in Iraq and to accommodate the region’s periodic splurges of refugees, most recently from Syria. Surely, Western officials say, for the right price, currently estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, the Jordanians will help John Kerry, America’s secretary of state (pictured above with King Abdullah) to fix a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by absorbing the 4.5m Palestinians who live in the kingdom, including the 3.5m who are now Jordanian citizens.

Or will they? Indigenous Bedouin from Jordan’s East Bank, who number about 3m, worry that America’s plans to persuade Palestinian leaders to strip generations of refugees of their claimed “right of return” to what is now Israel would reduce Jordan’s original inhabitants to a permanent minority. Tribal leaders fret that the refugees, barred from Israel, would campaign for full rights in Jordan, over time turning the kingdom into a second Palestinian state. The Bedouin would lose their preferential access to government jobs. They might also be deprived of the skewed electoral system that has hitherto ensured that they control Jordan’s parliament. “Kerry is destroying our home,” says a Jordanian analyst. “He is trying to solve one conflict by creating another.”

Parliamentarians from Jordan’s East Bank (ie, non-Palestinians) intent on scuppering Mr Kerry’s plan say the Palestinians must uphold their right to return to Israel. Campaigners are denounced as American collaborators for calling for more rights for those 1m Palestinians resident in the kingdom who still do not have Jordanian nationality. When Mustafa Hamarneh, a Jordanian MP, suggested giving the children of Palestinian refugees access to Jordanian state education, health care and a driving licence, he was labelled a Zionist agent.

Nervous lest they be accused of selling out, many of Jordan’s own Palestinians are also opposing Mr Kerry. After four generations in Jordan, most are unprepared to go anywhere else, but do not want to admit it. Many also fear that Jordan’s government may pocket any compensation supposedly earmarked for Palestinians to persuade them to drop their demand to get back their old homes in Israel. Jordanian officials suggest that Jordan should receive $500m for each of the 65 years they have hosted the refugees, while the country’s Palestinians suggest that each family should be compensated for the properties that Israelis took after 1948. The Palestinians in Jordan also argue that, far from being a burden, they have been responsible for building up Jordan’s economy.

Nice to be a buffer

Jordan’s king may also have reason to flinch at Mr Kerry’s plans. Not only would a Palestinian state compete for some of the aid that now comes his way, but it might also steal the kingdom’s vaunted role as a buffer between Israel and a turbulent Arab world. If a Palestinian state were to emerge, replete with an American-backed force between Israel and the Jordan river, it could claim that role. The Jordanians are reluctant to lose it.