ABU ODEH, ADNAN (Abu Udeh, Abu Oudeh, Abu Aoudeh; 1933–)

Jordanian political figure. Adnan Abu Odeh was born in 1933 in Nablus, Mandatory Palestine. Following literature studies in Syria, he taught English in Jordan from 1951 to 1959, then in Kuwait from 1959 to 1964. Upon his return to Jordan in 1965, he joined the Jordanian intelligence service, the General Intelligence Department (GID) headed by Muhammad Rasoul Kilani. On 15 September 1970, when the regime of King Hussein of Jordan was threatened by a Palestinian revolt, Abu Odeh was named minister of culture and information in the new military government of General Daoud. In October 1972 he resigned from his post to become general secretary of the Arab National Union Party. In March 1973 he was named minister of culture and information again, replacing Maʿan Abu Nawar, who had succeeded him at this post one year earlier.

In September 1977 Abu Odeh represented Jordan at the Euro-Arab Conference in Paris. In March 1979 he assumed the functions of interim prime minister. In June he chaired a delegation appointed to raise funds for the inhabitants of territories occupied by Israel; Palestinian Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazin) was a member of the delegation, and he and Abu Odeh later formed a friendship. In January 1984 Abu Odeh was named minister to the court, in charge of the Royal Cabinet. From then on, Abu Odeh became one of King Hussein of Jordan's principal advisors. In November 1991 he resigned his position as advisor to the king and founded the Party for Progress and Justice in early 1992. A few weeks later, in April 1992, he was appointed Jordanian ambassador to the United Nations, participating as such in some of the negotiations in the Israeli-Arab peace process. In 1995, after having resigned this position, he remained in the United States as a senior fellow of the United States Institute of Peace (1995–1996) to study history and to write.

In May 1998, upon his return to Jordan, he became a member of the Jordanian parliament. In early March 1999 he was appointed minister (chief) of the Royal Court and political advisor to the new king, Abdullah II of Jordan. That same year he published his book, Jordanians, Palestinians and the Hashimite Kingdom in the Middle East Peace Process, in which he discussed the injustices suffered by the Palestinians, notably in Jordan, creating a stir in Jordanian political circles. Since leaving his official post in 2000, Abu Odeh has written and consulted extensively on Palestinian-Israeli-Jordanian issues. He is a regular commentator for the Daily Star, a Lebanese English-language newspaper with an international readership. In March 2004 he was elected to the board of the International Crisis Group, an independent nongovernmental organization headquartered in Brussels.

SEE ALSO Abdullah II ibn Hussein;Hussein ibn Talal.