T. Belman. Rosner and all the other pundits who dismiss the Jordan Option, which is all of them, do so on the basis that neither the king nor Abbas will agree to it. I am the only one that supports the Jordanian Option and I do so on the basis that both Abbas and the king can be replaced by rulers who are more amenable to it. In my opinion, Mudar Zahran is one such potential ruler to replace the king. As for Abbas, he is already irrelevant.
Another aspect of my version which is different, is that the Jordan River remains the border and there is nothing to negotiate.
A confederation of the West Bank and Jordan is once again under discussion. Is it such a bad idea?
Protesters with Jordanian and Palestinian flags near the American Embassy in Amman, Jordan, last year.Muhammad Hamed/Reuters
TEL AVIV — In January 1968, only a few months after Israel conquered the territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol received a memo. The reasonable way to deal with the newly occupied territory, wrote the memo’s author, a professor named Benjamin Akzin, was to join it to Jordan, the country from which it was taken during the 1967 war.
Akzin’s memo, which is recounted in a new book by the historian Yoav Gelber, was one of the first articulations of what is known as “the Jordanian option.” It’s still alive today.
Last month, Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority reported that the Trump administration had recently presented him with a peace deal based on a Palestinian confederation with Jordan. Both Mr. Abbas and the Jordanians rejected the proposal. But don’t expect the idea to go away. For 50 years, the idea that the solution for the West Bank must include Jordan has proved resilient.
The long-forgotten 1968 memo explains why. An agreement with Jordan might not be stable, wrote Akzin, but one with the Palestinians would be even less so. Plus, a contract between two established states is preferable to a contract with a state that doesn’t yet exist. With Jordan, Israel can trust arrangements such as demilitarization of certain areas. If Jordan breaches the agreement, there are sanctions that can be used to ensure a return to compliance — the kind of sanctions that only a real country comprehends.
Since 1967, Israel hasn’t been able to identify a Palestinian leadership that can be trusted to keep the peace and maintain order. Likewise, Israel doesn’t really believe that a tiny Palestinian enclave trapped between Israel and Jordan could be economically viable. And so it has always hoped that Israel’s eventual separation from Palestinians will include a guarantee of — to put it bluntly — adult supervision.
The “Jordanian option” is much more mainstream than Israel publicly admits. Even Shimon Peres, the foreign minister who forged the Oslo accords with Yasir Arafat 25 years ago, did not believe that a stand-alone Palestinian state was a good idea, recounted Avi Gil, Mr. Peres’s longtime confidant, in a recent book. “He never abandoned the idea of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation,” writes Mr. Gil. (Disclosure: I am the editor of Mr. Gil’s book, as well as Mr. Gelber’s.)
What exactly would this confederacy entail? There are many versions of this idea, but most suggest that the Palestinians get something that is less than a fully independent state, while Israel gets a partner that is more than an unreliable Palestinian neighbor. To achieve this, Jordan takes over some parts of the West Bank, keeps its role as guardian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, and becomes the political and economic center of gravity for Palestinians who live on both sides of the Jordan River. The Palestinians will be the citizens of a confederated Palestine, or Jordan.
The Jordanians oppose the idea of confederation, and so few Israeli leaders are willing to publicly promote it. But from time to time their true colors show. A decade ago, Gen. Giora Eiland, Israel’s national security adviser in the early 2000s under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, wrote several influential articles in which he preached a return to the “the Jordanian confederation option of years past.” Ayelet Shaked, an influential minister from the right-wing Jewish Home party, has likewise envisioned a future in which parts of the West Bank would be linked to Jordan. A few days ago, Gideon Saar, a former minister and a powerful figure in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, spoke about the possibility of a “link in the future between an Arab autonomy in Judea and Samaria and the Kingdom of Jordan.”
And, of course, there are the reports that the Trump administration, led by Jared Kushner, is also pushing the Jordanian option. Though the Israeli government flatly denies it, at least one report said the idea came from the Israelis.
The Jordanians aren’t the only ones skeptical of the Jordanian option. The Palestinians are, too. A poll published this month found that about two-thirds of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza reject the idea. The great opposition to the proposal, wrote the pollster, Khalil Shikaki, “is probably due to lack of trust in the U.S. team and due to a Palestinian suspicion that the idea aims at pre-empting the goal of establishing a Palestinian state.” The Palestinians have a point.
The “Jordanian option” hasn’t stuck around because Israelis love the idea of handing over the historically and religiously significant territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River to Jordan. Indeed, many Israelis would be devastated to see some of their holiest sites ruled over from Amman, Jordan’s capital. But the other options have ultimately come to seem even worse: Military occupation of the West Bank is not a permanent solution, even though it has proved more stable than many outsiders assumed it would. Jewish Israelis will never agree to the idea of a Jewish state being replaced by a single state to be shared equally with the Palestinians. The other much-discussed option, a “two-state solution” with a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel, seems less likely than ever, as the multiple attempts to achieve it have demonstrated.
Is a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation currently viable? To be honest, it is not. Jordan vehemently rejects this idea, not wanting to be destabilized by a large new population of Palestinians. The Palestinians, for their part, still hold on to their dream of a state of their own. And among the international community, where the two-state solution is still orthodoxy, the idea is dismissed as a ploy of right-wing rejectionists.
And yet, look at the situation in the Middle East right now. We are marking the 25th anniversary to the Oslo accords, the much-celebrated deal that never produced the much-anticipated peace. Meanwhile, we are preparing to hear more details about the Trump administration’s plans, plans that are being devised by people who say they are ready to strip away the “false realities” around efforts to bring peace in the Middle East. Given all of this, the idea of Palestinian-Jordanian confederacy does not seem less viable than the other unviable ideas. And it’s certainly no less durable.
Shmuel Rosner (@rosnersdomain) is the political editor at The Jewish Journal, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute and a contributing opinion writer.
@ Edgar G.:
Sorry, I misread the meaning of your “lets try again” which was because the links you posted had disappeared. Again, apologies for my unfair peevishness..
@ Honigman:
No need to “try this again” …even before my response. I can get this info on the internet I expect, although I’ve been aware of it since ….maybe the mid 1960s– perhaps earlier..
We are not fighting the Saud-Hashemi battles all over again. If we are, than I capitulate……..
@ Honigman:
I am well aware that the Sauds and the Hashemis had ongoing violent disputes for many years, in fact I read variously, that there was a family feud between them for generations. The British backing buoyed them up temporarily and gave the elderly, not very stable Sharif, an unfounded sense of his importance. What the Arabs did in their “Revolt” was rather negligible by comparison with the larger picture. They were kicked out of Mecca when it was captured at the end of December 1924, which is purely why I specified their complete defeat and departure as “and after”……. So although I didn’t know Rogan’s book, it meshes to a degree with what I posted.
I know I’m merely detailing superfluous information already known to you.However….I’m not as painstaking as you, unless I am deeply involved in my subject, and in this case it’s rather “old hat” to me.
Okay, let’s try this again. Hopefully, here’s the link to the 1st Hash-Saudi War from 1918-1919…….6 years before the Hashemites’ final defeat:
https://www.revolvy.com/page/Al%252DKhurma-dispute
I don’t see the links I just thought I posted here (ugh!!!!!).
So, here’s some excerpts…
Saudi conquest of Hejaz
“The Saudi conquest of Hejaz or the Second Saudi-Hashemite War was a campaign engaged by Saudi Sultan Abdulaziz Ibn Saud to take over the Hashemite Kingdom of Hejaz in 1924-1925, ending with conquest and incorporation of Hejaz into the Saudi domain.
Background
The 1924 campaign came within the scope of the historic conflict between the Hashemites of Hejaz and the Saudis of Riyadh (Nejd), which had already sparked the First Saudi-Hashemite War in 1919.
Saudi campaign
The pretext for renewed hostilities between Nejd and Hejaz came when the pilgrims from Nejd were denied access to the holy places in Hejaz.[3] On August 29, 1924, Ibn-Saud began his military campaign against Hejaz by advancing towards Taif, which surrendered without a major struggle.[3] ”
https://www.revolvy.com/page/Saudi-conquest-of-Hejaz
This above paragraph is a quote from Rogan’s book so should have quotation marks around it…
“The vast Arabian Peninsula was not big enough to accommodate the ambitions of both men. Between 1916 and 1918, the balance began to shift in Ibn Saud’s favor. Conflict between the Saudis and the Hashemites became inevitable when … of unpublished letters written by the two desert monarchs captures the rivalry just …”
If you Google… Hashemite-Saudi rivalry in the Arabian Peninsula… you’ll find this link. It has multiple pages documenting this eventual eviction.
Now, check out these links (which I probably won’t be able to do again) to the 1st and 2nd major wars between the Hashemites and Ibn Saud:
The 2nd war is what you were referring to in your comment…but that was the culmination of the process of ejection I mentioned which you took issue about:
Yes, I’m well aware of the trade offs which occurred due to the French bursting the Hashemite bubble of a Greater Syria by booting Emir Faisal out of there.
Edgar G., I choose my words very carefully. Please look above again at what I actually said–not what you claim I said.
I wrote that the Hashemites were in the process of being ejected,,, and that is spot on. Ibn Saud’s win did not come in one fell swoop. It was gradual, with one victory over another against the Hashemite forces.. Please see this and scroll up and down . Notice it says from 1916-1918 things started to turn sour for Sheriff Hussein’s position– and the source gives plenty of detail
Ted knows I’m a dinosaur with the computer, so don’t know if I did the url thing correct…so let’s try this too:
The Arabs: A History
– Google Books Result
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0465032486
Eugene Rogan – 2012 – ?History
The vast Arabian Peninsula was not big enough to accommodate the ambitions of both men. Between 1916 and 1918, the balance began to shift in Ibn Saud’s favor. Conflict between the Saudis and the Hashemites became inevitable when … of unpublished letters written by the two desert monarchs captures the rivalry just …
Worrying about the timing of the Hashemite ejection, you missed my main point which you totally ignored… Why was the virtual separation (actually was still part ’til ’46) of Transjordan ignored in the article above with Jordan being treated as if it was always independent from “Palestine.” This is the same manure the mainstream media does all the time too–buys right into the Arab claim that Israel got almost all of the Mandate’s territory.
Well, if you don’t count the 78% of the land handed over to Arab nationalism (in one of its many stripes) in 1922 by Churchill’s imperial games as being part of the original 1920 Palestine Mandate’s territory–and then you use the ’47 partition plan as your gauge instead, the picture looks very different.
Instead of Arabs claiming they only wound up being offered next to nothing vis-à-vis the Jews, had they accepted the ’47 partition, they would have wound up with almost 90% of the original Mandate’s territory. So, is it a wonder that they choose to ignore this point when spreading their taqiyya around?
But why do WE have to assist them by not repeatedly driving home this point–as the article we’re discussing fails to do…and what my original comment was really
all about/
Edgar G,, in trying to make your (incorrect) point about what I (supposedly) said about the Saudi-Hashemite rivalry, you missed–or ignored–THE point.
@ Ira:
Bibi has said he had nothing to do with the Trump Team bringing it up to Abbas.
Isn’t about time to start pushing PM Natanyahu publicly state his opinion about the Jordanian Option? Or is he too scare to lose the friendship of our “best friend” in the Arab world? What is the Israeli government official policy in the matter, Or maybe they don’t have any?
Israel and Jordan signed a massive gas deal with will supply about 85% of the gas needs of Jordan, providing the energy for their electricity needs. Israel (via Noble Energy, a Texas Company) is building a pipeline direct to Jordan. So Israel is investing quite a bit into the viability of Jordan as an economic partner. Jordan will also be dependent on Israel.
So it is in Israels interests that Jordan does not fall apart and is able to pay its bills. Jordan currently has about an 18% unemployment rate which broods for potential unrest. Finding a way to stir economic activity in Jordan and create jobs there would go a long way towards stability.
Info on the gas deal is at the following link. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-04/jordan-pipeline-for-israeli-gas-set-for-completion-by-end-2019
Rosner and all the other pundits who dismiss the Jordan Option, which is all of them, do so on the basis that neither the king nor Abbas will agree to it. I am the only one that supports the Jordanian Option and I do so on the basis that both Abbas and the king can be replaced by rulers who are more amenable to it. In my opinion, Mudar Zahran is one such potential ruler to replace the king. As for Abbas, he is already irrelevant.
@ Honigman:
Ibn Saud didn’t kick the Husseins out until after mid 1920s. The reason Churchill gave Transjordan to Abdullah was as follows. (I’ve posted this before).
Christopher Sykes, (son of Sykes-Picot fame) in his seminal book “Crossroads to Israel” said…. Abdullah in Hejaz, heard that the French had kicked Faisal (Lawrence’s friend) out from Damascus where he’s seized the throne, as it was part of the French Mandate. So Abdullah gathered a few hundred (900) ragged thieves and bandits, to attack the French and avenge the “Family Honour”, and they straggled up as far as Amman in the next 8-9 months. They got tired and rested there for a few months.
Churchill heard about it, and, very upset (because the French were distrustful and testy) flew out “in a rickety old WW1 bomber”, to talk to him. It ended with offering Abdullah the Emirate of Trans-Jordan, to which Abdullah immediately agreed. It was arranged that Britain would subsidise him with 20,000 gold sovereigns at regular intervals conveyed by camel or donkey and in leather sacks. Britain supplied weapons, training troops, and Glubb Pasha in command. It was a British controlled “state”.
Britain likely planned this even long before the Mandate, because they got the rest of the League of Nations to agree to give them the option of reserving the Eastern Palestine Province of Trans’Jordan to be used as they wished.
The British also consoled Faisal by making Mesopotamia into a kingdom and installed him there…”Happy as Larry” (an old Irish expression)
That’s how Sykes described it, and I believe him, he would have had all the facts at his fingertips. Of course oil was at the bottom of it all, and British Imperialism.
@ Bear Klein:
Yes I am, and still going strong… weell, not so strong but stronger than many others.
I owned 18 multiplied by 18 slaves, total 324. And to save myself to trouble of telling this to people I’d just say….” chai-chai ” and they would immediately know what I meant, because naturally I only mixed with other Jews. Judah Benjamin and I used to go out together at nights chasing women. I got them -he was a bit chubby and too slow. In fact his stumbling gait later gave inspiration to that popular dance “The Charlston”, a very patriotic dance. In fact my chai-chai took to it like experts. I was very lenient, and used to have them up to the big house for Friday night Shabbat dinner so that they had a good relaxative… (as Mae West used to say).
Ah…those were the days….!!
Am I missing something in that article above?
Is the fact that, right from the get-go, in 1922, what was to become an independent Jordan in 1946, was separated from the original post-WWI 1920 Mandate of Palestine as a gift from the Brits to their Hashemite allies from Arabia (who were in the process of being ejected there by Ibn Saud’s folks…remember the movie “Lawrence of Arabia?”) not relevant to this discussion? It’s no accident why the Hashemites don’t like the idea…Jordan sits on some 78% of the original post-Ottoman Turkish Empire territory of “Palestine.” And however you define “Palestinian” Arabs–many if not most of whom were recent arrivals from the mid-19th century onwards (and especially after the Mandate was formed in 1920) from other areas like Egypt, Syria, etc., those folks make up the vast majority of “Jordan.” No surprise that the Hashemites don’t want the apple cart unbalanced any further.
The problem with articles like this one–which has some good points, for sure–is that the way they’re written, it appears that Jordan was always an independent Arab state with no connection to “Palestine.” Indeed, that’s how the Arabs like to sell their claim for a 22nd state—adding one for “stateless” Palestinians.
It is not Zionist propaganda to state the fact of the1922 separation of Transjordan from western Palestine as a result of Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill’s schemes at the Cairo Conference in 1921. Nor the conquest of Judea and Samaria by a British-led Arab Legion during the attack on a resurrected Israel in 1948.
All of this must be taken into account when balance sheet of rights of Jews and Arabs in the region are being discussed.
@ Edgar G.:
You are that old? So how many slaves did you own?
@ Bear Klein:
And the other Sherman -a relative maybe..?- had the same idea that I have about Gaza.
Although my sympathy was completely with the South.
sure give them some space in J-S + dome of rock + al-aqsa mosq to be shipped to any other place that they wish to call JERUSALEM the mosq built on DAVIDs stable to be returned to its original state. in exchange no worker visas, no route to ben gurion airport, no arab presence in JERUSALEM. right of arab return only to east side of Jordon. no presence within 242 boundary. remove arafarts tomb to Egypt or france or Hell.
Sherman has the right idea. Build Build and get more Jews into Judea/Samaria plus start the process of incentivizing Arabs to emigrate to the Arab Countries or elsewhere if decide such as Turkey, where some Gazans have moved to.
Last but NOT least destroy in a systematic fashion all the terror Groups (PA, PLO, Hamas, etc.). If enough Arabs leave and the terrorists are destroyed Israel will find a way to deal civilly the Arabs who remain who are peaceful and want to co-exist plus normalize relations.
Israel can not rely on foreign nations to secure its land west of the Jordan River.
All it means to me is that some bean head professor (aren’t they nearly all) calmly contemplated handing over 30% of Israel’s already massively truncated territory to Arabs who have no right to it. Jordan won’t be able to handle the Arab terrorism that will continue and grow worse, seeing that the country is and has been for years, on the verge of collapse, propped up only by Israel since 1970, later joined by the US. Instead of the Jordan govt. controlling the YESHA Arabs ( to the benefit of Israel) the reverse could easily happen.
And the Jordanians being the same people, hate the Jews just as much as the YESHA Arabs do, perhaps more, feeling themselves to be protected by the River, and being a separate country…. All this talk about sanctions and etc, are for civilised states, not derivatives of 7th century ideology.
And what’s going to happen in Israel with the large and ever growing Sovereignty Movement………… It that going to sit back and quietly acquiesce…..?? it will be a thorn in the side of any Israeli govt. that gave away our Land to enemies, for ever.