The Jordan Option is now being promoted in the Arab World

T. Belman. I initiated the idea of giving Jordanian citizenship to all Palestinians. Mudar agreed.. Now, so does SA and UAE. But what we haven’t agreed upon is the Jordanian Kingdom including Gaza and West Bank. Nobody does. The Most Jordan will get is area A but I am resisting that.

MEMRI

Saudi Analyst In Article On Al-Arabiya Website: Solution To Palestine Problem Is Naturalizing Palestinians In Jordanian Kingdom That Includes Gaza, West Bank; It’s Time For The Palestinians To Accept Reality, Focus On Living Their Lives

Angry Responses On Social Media And In Arab Press To Article By Saudi Journalist ‘Ali Al-Shihabi Calling To Resolve Palestinian Problem By Naturalizing Palestinians In Expanded Jordanian Kingdom That Incorporates West Bank And Gaza

Saudi Analyst In Article On Al-Arabiya Website: Solution To Palestine Problem Is Naturalizing Palestinians In Jordanian Kingdom That Includes Gaza, West Bank; It’s Time For The Palestinians To Accept Reality, Focus On Living Their Lives

In an article titled “The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine,” posted June 7, 2022 on the website of Al-Arabiya TV, Saudi political analyst ‘Ali Al-Shihabi writes that the Palestinian problem can only be resolved today by rethinking it and redefining it. The Palestinians, he argues, must reconcile themselves to reality and accept the fact of Israel’s existence. Moreover, they must realize that what they crucially need is not to regain their ancestral land but rather to have a globally-respected citizenship that will allow them to operate and thrive in the modern world. The most feasible way to achieve this, he says, is to make them citizens of an expanded Jordanian-Palestinian kingdom that will incorporate the West Bank and Gaza, while withdrawing recognition of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. He also suggests granting Jordanian citizenship to the Palestinians living in other countries, who can continue to live in those countries as legal foreign residents with full civil rights.

This solution, he adds, requires that the Palestinians give up the right of return, which he says is an unfeasible dream encouraged by various Arab regimes in order to avoid naturalizing the Palestinian refugees living in their countries. He also recommends that the Palestinians relinquish any claim to Jerusalem, which will help the Israelis to accept the proposed solution.

Al-Shihabi acknowledges that some Palestinians are likely to violently oppose this idea, but believes that most will accept it once they realize its benefits for them and their children. He anticipates that some Jordanian elites will see it as a threat to their dominance and oppose it as well, but the U.S., Israel, and the GCC, which have considerable influence over these elites, can pressure them to acquiesce. “Lack of imagination, so common among leaders throughout history—with imagination being so necessary to solve this problem—combined with a Palestinian people drowning in a sea of illusions and an Israel drunk on its own power, can only end in a disaster for a region that is already at the precipice,” he concludes.

The following are excerpts from an English translation of the article posted by the Al-Arabiya website on June 8, 2022.

The Right Of Return Is An Illusion Cultivated By Arab Regimes To Serve Their Interests

“The basically insurmountable power imbalance between the Arabs and Israelis, let alone between the Palestinians and Israelis, argues for a radical rethinking of the approach to solving the Palestine problem. Israel is a reality firmly implanted on the ground that has to be accepted, however grudgingly, by the region around it. While it never had a ‘right’ to displace millions of Palestinians and colonize their land, it succeeded, with the help of British imperialism and U.S. support, in doing exactly that. After all, since it was the Germans who had murdered six million Jews in the Holocaust, justice argues that the Jews be given the choicest land in Germany for their state rather than the land of the Palestinian people, who had done them no harm. Justice, however, does not make history; hard power does—and Palestinians must reconcile themselves to this painful reality and move forward with their lives without being held back by false hopes and illusions.

“This is so difficult for Palestinians because they have received probably more emotional and political support from others than any refugee community in modern times. While such support has often involved considerable financial help, it has also generally been more loud political noise than anything substantive that could conceivably help return the Palestinian people to their homes. Yet this still has deluded them and kept them from facing the painful reality that most of their land and homes in historic Palestine have been permanently lost to Jewish settler colonialism.

“In comparison, other refugee populations who were not fed any such illusions of return were forced to accept the stark reality of their permanent displacement. They were also ultimately able to move forward with their lives because they were granted citizenship in their adopted countries and hence built new lives for themselves and their descendants.”

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Special Dispatch No. 10028

Angry Responses On Social Media And In Arab Press To Article By Saudi Journalist ‘Ali Al-Shihabi Calling To Resolve Palestinian Problem By Naturalizing Palestinians In Expanded Jordanian Kingdom That

In an article titled “The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine,” published June 7, 2022 on the website of the Saudi Al-Arabiya channel, ‘Ali Al-Shihabi, a Saudi journalist and commentator on Middle East affairs, called to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by naturalizing millions of Palestinians in an expanded Jordanian Kingdom that will incorporate the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, while revoking the recognition of the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. He also suggested granting Jordanian citizenship to the Palestinians living in other countries, who can continue to live in those countries as legal foreign residents with full civil rights. The Palestinians and Arabs, he argues, must reconcile themselves to reality and accept the fact of Israel’s existence, while relinquishing the “illusion” of the right of return.  (To read Al-Shihabi’s article, see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 10028, Saudi Analyst In Article On Al-Arabiya Website: Solution To Palestine Problem Is Naturalizing Palestinians In Jordanian Kingdom That Includes Gaza, West Bank; It’s Time For The Palestinians To Accept Reality, Focus On Living Their Lives, June 21, 2022.)

Al-Shihabi, who has held senior official positions in Saudi Arabia, mostly in telecommunications and finance, is reportedly a close associate of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. Since 2020 he has served on the advisory board of Neom, bin Salman’s flagship project for building a new city in northwestern Saudi Arabia.   

In light of this, and since the article was published on Al-Arabiya, a prominent Saudi website, many considered it a trial balloon sent up by the Saudi decision-makers to gauge the public reaction to the solution it proposes for the Palestinian problem.

While Al-Shihabi’s article prompted no response from Arab officials, it evoked intense reactions on social media, most of them attacking him and accusing him of promoting the position of the Israeli political right, of endorsing the idea of Jordan as an alternative Palestinian homeland, and of attempting to eliminate the Palestinian cause and the right of return at Jordan’s expense. Among the critics were no few journalists, analysts and academics from the Arab world and beyond. Al-Shihabi replied to his critics, prompting a heated debate on Twitter.  

Responses to Al-Shihabi’s suggestion also appeared in the Jordanian press, both state-run and independent. The responses called it a conspiracy and a betrayal of the Palestinians and Jordan. Some of the writers regarded his article as a message from the Saudi regime to Jordan.

Surprisingly, the press in other Arab countries largely ignored Al-Shihabi’s article, including the Palestinian press. Although the article includes a far-reaching solution to the Palestinian problem, the Palestinian papers published only a handful of responses to it. Two Palestinian journalists attacked Al-Shihabi and described his article as another indication that the Gulf states have abandoned the Palestinians to their fate and are willing to eliminate the Palestinian cause.  

On June 17, 2022, the online daily Raialyoum.com reported that, in response to a torrent of furious responses received at the Al-Arabiya office in Amman, the channel had announced that it would publish on its website any article by a Jordanian writer responding to Al-Shihabi’s proposal. Also according to the report, Al-Arabiya unofficially conveyed to the Jordanians that the article did not represent the position of the channel or its management, but only the opinion of its author.

Al-Shihabi’s tweet linking to Ismaik’s article

This report reviews the reactions to Al-Shihabi’s article.

Heated Exchange Between Al-Shihabi And Journalists, Intellectuals In Arab World And West

As stated, the article evoked angry reactions on social media, from users who slammed Al-Shihabi and his proposal, accusing him of promoting the narrative of the Israeli political right and seeking to eliminate the Palestinian cause and the Palestinians’ right of return at Jordan’s expense. It was possibly the flurry of angry responses that prompted Al-Arabiya to remove the link to Al-Shihabi’s article from its Twitter page. Al-Shihabi, who promoted the article on his personal Twitter page, received furious responses as well, including from journalists and academics in the Arab world and beyond.

Al-Shihabi’s Critics: This Proposal Is Radically Pro-Israel, Resembles The Plan Of Ariel Sharon

Several hours after the article appeared on Al-Arabiya, ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, a senior Saudi journalist and a former editor of the Al-Arabiya website, shared a link to the article and commented: “This is a position [in favor of] returning the situation to what it was before the 1974 Arab Summit in Rabat that put an end to Jordan’s control of Palestine and recognized the PLO as the sole legitimate representative [of the Palestinian people].”

This tweet by Al-Rashed, which provided a link to Al-Shihabi’s article and did not harshly attack him, was seen by some as an expression of support for Al-Shihabi and evoked criticism against Al-Rashed himself. Jordanian user Amjad ‘Alawneh addressed Al-Rashed, saying: “Has the insolence of making proposals at the expense of the [Jordanian] state become a ‘position’?…”

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