Jordan News

Illustrated by: Nasser Al-Jaafari – Written by: Muhammad Al-Rantissi

In writing about Adnan Abu Odeh, there are intellectual and mental clashes that the writer falls under before he writes one letter in the biography and trajectory of a “not easy” man, who is considered one of the most interesting and controversial figures since his childhood through hot political and security stations, until his death on February 2 February 2022.

Abu Odeh, born in Nablus in 1933, and as it is documented, lived a humble childhood in a simple family with a limited income, as his father worked as a soap maker and his mother was a housewife. His secondary education was in Nablus, which is what actually happened, so he continued there and traveled to study in Jordan and later to Britain.

In his early youth, during his studies in Amman, Abu Odeh joined the ranks of the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir, and at that time he was a friend of the son of the party’s founder, Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani, but he decided to leave the party in 1955 in the wake of the events of the Baghdad Pact, to join the Communist Party, which he left because of the July 14 revolution. In Iraq, before deciding to emigrate permanently to the parties, he says, “I discovered that I was not fit to be a party… I don’t want anyone to think about me.”

After that, coincidence led Abu Odeh to the “bomb of the intelligence”, as while he was walking on a street in Amman, a person called him from inside his car, only to find that he was a “study friend,” the late Muhammad Rasoul al-Kilani (a former intelligence director), so he went up with him after hesitation for fear And embarrassed that anyone sees him and believes that the communist works in the intelligence service or is affiliated with it.

Al-Kilani took his friend Abu Odeh to his office in the Intelligence Department, to end the conversation and controversy between them, with Abu Odeh agreeing to work in Palestine to spy on Israel, after he refused to do so because he was a member of the Communist Party, and he did not imagine himself as a security man, but that happened and he actually joined the The device” as an intelligence officer in 1966.

Soon, Abu Odeh moved to political analysis in the Intelligence Department, to benefit more from his skills and capabilities, before he moved, at the rank of major, to take over the media portfolio in the military government that was formed in 1970, and returned again to receive it in the government of Ahmed Toukan that was formed in the same year, and then in The government of Martyr Wasfi in 1971, which is the same portfolio he assumed in subsequent governments, the last of which was in 1984.

His entry into the intelligence services and then the governments, put Abu Odeh under bombardment on more than one front, as a communist thinker opposed to the regimes and official policies, in addition to the fact that this coincided with the events known as “Black September”, which also made him vulnerable to a fierce attack by” Fedayeen” and prominent Palestinian figures.

The matter was settled, and Abu Odeh went on to enter the Senate membership club in 1974, which he returned to in 1997 after he held several positions, including a member of the National Consultative Council, Minister of the Royal Court, political advisor to the late His Majesty King Hussein bin Talal, head of the royal court, and delegate of Jordan Permanent Mission to the United Nations, while later serving as an advisor to His Majesty King Abdullah II.

Speaking about Abu Odeh, it is not possible to skip an important and sensitive detail that the man faced in 2006, when he was a guest on the “Private Visit” program on Al-Jazeera satellite channel. About the rights holders.

Although the court later closed the case file without convicting Abu Odeh, the man’s defense of himself by saying that he had been misunderstood, and that he could not offend the state, the system and the people, did not intercede for him with many who drew their swords to attack him and “attribute him nationally,” among them, for example. Not limited to, the former Prime Minister, Abdel Raouf Al Rawabdeh, the former Director of Intelligence, Nazir Rashid, and the former Minister of Information, Saleh Al-Qallab.

In his last years, Abu Odeh continued to write his memoirs “The Diary of Adnan Abu Odeh” and “The Mustadrak on the Diary of Adnan Abu Odeh,” which are full of important and interesting events and novels for those who agree or disagree with them, and for those who believe or deny them, while until his death he did not stop reading Writing and participating in seminars and conferences “on his crutch”, with an active mind, remarkable interaction, and an iron memory.

Today, Abu Odeh is leaving with what he has and what he is, and he is in all cases and far from any interactions, with a vision, thought and performance in which he is right and wrong, and in all cases as well, he will remain present whenever the biography of “men of the state and its history” attends, with its good and its bad.