WSJ: A Jordanian Future for the West Bank?

T. Belman. The author served as a Min of Foreign Affairs for a Labour Government. I have marked in red what incensed me in his first paragraph. I couldn’t read on.

IDSF made reference to such a confederation as one of plans that have been suggested. I was dead set against it when I first read of it and wrote to Brigadier General (res.) Amir Avivi, the CEO of  IDSF telling him so and included this article.  The Jordanian Confederation/Federation Plan as per the IDSF with Israpundit’s critique” Our discussions are ongoing.

With an independent Palestinian state as remote as ever, the idea of a Palestine-Jordan confederation deserves a new look

By Shlomo Ben-Ami, WSJ    June 9/22

In April, the Jewish holiday of Passover overlapped with the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, raising tensions throughout the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which is home to approximately 2.5 million Arabs and 500,000 Jews. Ominous clashes took place at Jerusalem’s Haram alSharif, known to Jews as the Temple Mount—a holy site for both faiths that has become a defining symbol of the Palestinian national cause. Conflict there has the potential to escalate into an apocalyptic confrontation that would inflame the entire Muslim world.

Since all other attempts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have failed, it may be time to revisit the Jordanian option. The West Bank was ruled by Jordan from 1948 to 1967, when Israel conquered it in the Six Day War. Since 1988, when the late King Hussein of Jordan renounced his country’s sovereignty claims in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the West Bank has presented Jordan with an insoluble conundrum.

The Palestinian struggle for the creation of an independent state, which Jordan claims to be vital to its own national security, has failed monumentally. An Israeli annexation of the West Bank, another Jordanian nightmare, hasn’t been officially proclaimed, but it is an uncontested reality on the ground.

Israel’s dwindling peace camp has lately advocated the idea of creating an Israeli-Palestinian confederation, with the Jewish state linked to a new Palestinian state in the West Bank. This, they hope, would prevent the rise of a single state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, in which Jews and Arabs would each make up about half the population. The problem is that an Israeli-Palestinian confederation would be an explosive fusion between a The Palestinian struggle for the creation of an independent state, which Jordan claims to be vital to its own national security, has failed monumentally.

The problem is that an Israeli-Palestinian confederation would be an explosive fusion between a prosperous Western society and a destitute one. The friction between an overclass of Israelis and a persecuted Palestinian population would not be much different than that which existed under South Africa’s apartheid system.

A Jordanian-Palestinian confederation has a more compelling logic in terms of economics, religion, history and memory. The idea has a long pedigree. In 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter suggested it to Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat supported a confederation, and so did Henry Kissinger, who lobbied for it as Secretary of State in the twilight of Gerald Ford’s presidency. Prophetically, Mr. Kissinger believed that Israel simply could not handle the PLO’s expectations.

King Hussein, like Israel and most Arab leaders, never favored a fully independent Palestinian state. He feared it could be radicalized and fall into the hands of “a Qadhafi-like leader,” as Mr. Carter had put it. To Hussein, a Palestinian state was bound to inherit the revolutionary traits of the Palestinian national movement. In 1985, Hussein reached an understanding with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in which Palestinians would exercise their “inalienable right of self-determination” within the context of a confederated Arab States of Jordan and Palestine. Hussein defended this as a question of “joint destiny,” “a matter of shared history, experience, culture, economy and social structure.” He believed that the chaotic Palestinian national movement would be saved by linking its destiny with Jordan, “a sovereign state which enjoys credible international standing.”

When King Abdullah II of Jordan visited the West Bank in March 2021, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas echoed the sentiment, proclaiming “We are one.” Indeed, since the Emirate of Transjordan was created in 1921 out of territory that belonged to British-ruled Palestine, its destiny has been inextricably linked to the Palestinian question. The kingdom’s 1994 peace agreement with Israel codified its custodianship of the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem. Many Palestinians on the West Bank can still recall a time before 1967 when they enjoyed a now-lost freedom of movement, an outlet into the Arab world and the opportunities it offered. Even today, Amman, not Tel Aviv, is the business capital for West Bank Palestinians.

History has moved on, of course. Palestinian nationalists, galvanized by resistance to Zionism and Israeli occupation, now want an independent state of their own. But polls taken in 2013 and again in 2016 suggest that the Jordanian option can potentially win adherents if it promises an end to Israeli occupation.

The Jordanian establishment has lost none of King Hussein’s fears of a radical, disorderly Palestinian state. Although King Abdullah has professed more than once to be “fed up” with talks of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation, he has always left a door open to such an arrangement “once a Palestinian state is created.” This sequence—a Palestinian state first and confederation later—represents a consensus among the supporters of the idea in Jordan.

But national security options are generally weighed against an environment of threats and opportunities. Jordan would consider a confederation only as a last resort to safeguard its own security, not as a way to solve an Israeli predicament. The Israeli right’s proclaimed ambition to annex the West Bank, and the recent Abraham Peace Accords between Israel and four Arab states that practically pronounced the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict while ignoring the Palestinian issue, could force Jordan to reassess its attitude to the West Bank.

King Hussein’s waiving of Jordan’s claim on the West Bank was never ratified by the country’s parliament and was seen by many, including former Crown Prince Hassan bin Talal, as unconstitutional. In 2012, he said that since no two-state solution was still possible, the Palestinian Authority should let Jordan recover its control of the territory.

The call for Jordan’s return to the West Bank was also supported by former royal adviser Adnan Abu-Odeh and two former Jordanian prime ministers, Abdel Salaam Majali and Taher al-Masri. In 2008, Mr. Majali announced a confederation plan, spurred by his fear that Israeli disengagement would provoke a massive migration or forced transfer of Palestinians into 6/11/22, 2:41 PM A Jordanian Future for the West Bank? – WSJ

Jordan also has every reason to fear a Hamas takeover of the West Bank if Israel departs. As an old peace negotiator with Israel, Mr. Majali knew that a bilateral Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement was unlikely. He believed that a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation and all the guarantees that go with it should be part of a peace deal among all three parties, not something to be negotiated after a Palestinian state is created.

Israelis and Palestinians were incapable of accomplishing it on their own.

In Mr. Majali’s plan, both legislative and executive authority in the confederation would be based on equal representation for the two states, with a Palestinian and a Jordanian rotating in the positions of speaker and prime minister. The king would be the head of state not in his capacity as Jordan’s king but as a descendant of the Hashemite dynasty and as such also of the Prophet. Palestinians living in Jordan would have the option to choose between Palestinian and Jordanian nationality.

This plan was a trial balloon that could not have been launched without King Abdullah’s acquiescence. After Mr. Majali lobbied for it again on a March 2016 visit to the West Bank, hundreds of Palestinian notables arrived in Amman to express to the king their support for the idea.

The specter of the loss of Jewish demographic predominance in historical Palestine may one day revive plans for unilateral Israeli withdrawal from much of the West Bank, as proposed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2007. The ensuing mayhem would force Jordan back into the affairs of Palestine.

Appeared in the June 11, 2022, print edition as ‘A Jordanian Future For the West Bank?’. Ideally, Gaza should be part of the confederate Palestinian state. The alternative is for it to become an Egyptian dominion. One of the most beleaguered environments on earth, Gaza was ruled by Egypt before the 1967 war. “Gaza is our common border with Iran, which is why ensuring governmental sustainability there is a vital security concern to us,” the late Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief, told me in a meeting in Cairo in 2008.

A joint Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli agreement may be the last remaining hope for Palestinian statehood. With Jordan back in the equation, Israel would finally have a reliable interlocutor with a tradition of, and a vested interest in, compliance. It could no longer use the convenient pretext of Palestinian institutional weakness to perpetuate the occupation of the West Bank.

—Mr. Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, is Vice President of the Toledo International Center for Peace and the author of “Prophets Without Honor: The 2000 Camp David Summit and the End of the Two-State Solution,” published by Oxford University Press