In Defense of the ‘Jordan Is Palestine’ Proposal

By David Haivri, TOI

For many years I had been very skeptical of the Jordan is Palestine idea for number of reasons. Of course we cannot simply dismiss the Zeev Jabotinsky ideology which called for two banks of the Jordan river this one is mine and so is the other.

Of course many Zionists and particularly Betar youth grew up with the idea of the greater land of Israel that extended to both sides of the Jordan River within the framework of the historical British Mandate for Palestine. Regardless to the fact that the Israeli political parties who are descendants to the Jabotinsky movement and particularly the leading we could party abandoned this concept years ago. And in fact the State of Israel signed a peace treaty with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan recognizing the sovereignty of the State of Jordan to the east of the Jordan River.

One of the events that actually a made this a proposal more relevant for me was being exposed to Arab writers and readers Mudar Zahran who are in favor of this idea and believe that this can be base for peace between Israel and our Arab neighbors.

Israel as a country has existed for the past 70 years without two banks of the Jordan River, and over the past 50 years as controlled all of the Heartland in Judea and Samaria. Our challenges today are to reach estate of normalization in the region and to assert Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.

One of the issues that must be dealt with is the permanent status of the individuals who fled from Israel in 1948 and the individuals who came under Israel’s control in 1967. The majority of the residents of Jordan today are so-called Palestinians and of course the ruling tribe the Hashemites are actually immigrants from Saudi Arabia, not local. A logical permanent solution or these people would be to grant them citizenship in the country of their birth Jordan and being that they are the majority and allow them to control their own country. If they wish naked call Jordan, Palestine or whatever the else they please.

It would be in the interest of this country to have good relations with Israel and it would be in the interest of Israel the help the neighboring country develop workplaces and should be inviting or migration to the Arab population from west of the Jordan River.

This in fact is a perfect paradigm for nations living in peace side by side with the Jordan River in between them.