Ted Belman’s remarks at Jordan Option Conference in 2017

T. Belman. I have further edited the sub-titles to give you a more coherent reading of what was said. I did so because I believe my remarks are noteworthy.

It is my pleasure and honor to welcome you here to this historic event. The conference will be seen as the beginning of the end of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and hopefully the beginning of the Jordanian presidency of my friend Mudar Zahran.

I met Mudar shortly after making Aliyah some eight years ago and worked with him during those years to pursue and perfect his plans. Mudar wanted to become president of Jordan because he wanted to serve his people, the Palestinians.

Since we started marketing the conference three months ago a well-known right-wing Arab journalist together with some prominent Zionist activists and journalists waged a slanderous campaign against Mudar. I Don’t know, some of you followed social media, it was disgusting what was going on there. So it’s left some scars. We’re here today to show that we’re onward and upward.

On two occasions they said he was ambitious and saw this as a fault.

This allegation reminded me of Mark Anthony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar which I’m sure you’re all familiar with. Marc Anthony in addressing the crowd at Caesar’s burial with the consent of the murders had to tread carefully.
I substituted Khaled here for Brutus.

“Yet Khaled says he was ambitious and Khaled is an honorable man.”

How can you achieve anything without ambition, I said. Without ambition, you can’t …. It was such a ridiculous comment.
Marc Anthony continued “ambition should be made of sterner stuff.” Throughout the last 10 years Mudar exhibited such sterner stuff. He stood up to King Abdullah on many occasions and he had ……. he applied for and got asylum in Britain plus a safe house to keep him safe. Just recently he discovered that that safe house had been made public and he had to rush off to the police to have a new safe house. This is a very treacherous business that he has been applying himself on.

Mudar was tried and convicted in absentia by King Abdullah and sentenced to life imprisonment for slandering the King.
During his exile Mudar earned a PhD in London and he is now working on his second PhD. and by the way I might mention that one of his Masters degrees was earned in the United States. He’s very cosmopolitan. He’s lived in the States. He’s obviously lived in England. He’s lived in Jordan. When he was in Jordan he worked for the American Embassy and got to know the entire intelligence community and by virtue of him working for Condoleezza Rice and others and he was a an Arab interpreter and a very versatile guy.

King Abdullah on a number of occasions offered him substantial bribes and every time Mudar turned them down and presumably, he liked living on welfare and keeping his Integrity. So he turned down serious money like $500 000 to give up the fight. A couple weeks ago, as of the launch of our marketing campaign, King Abdullah declared war on us. He published a rant in the Jordanian press attacking the conference and those involved and the entire Arabic press carried this article and everybody was talking about it. So this Conference isn’t the greatest but I want you to hear how frightened the King was of this this infant operation. Something like that. Obviously we’re a lot bigger than some people think we are.

“There are Jordanians participating in the conference and the state must take all deterring …..;. and the Jordanians state of mind must confirm reacting to these pro…. stances and to punish those taking part and also recalled the Jordanian ……. Ambassador and gave all legal and diplomatic measures to stand in the face of these major changes to come which target the National Security and put together a full program on purpose in a creatively perfect picture to the reader and the mind of the Jordanian State as well as the consciousness of the Jordanian citizen who by the way shall never tolerate anyone touching our national security and is willing to give away his blood and soul for that.”

That was, I took it out, it’s hard to understand it. …….I couldn’t but you could see the threat. You could see the punishment of ……

Yet it is only right that the King abdicate. After all 75% of the Jordanians living in Jordan are Palestinians and the rest are Bedouin.

Also the there’s a component that one time this representative as being a million six of Syrian refugees. They are all going back into the safe zones in Syria and so they’re down to 500 000 and ultimately they’ll be all gone.

Returning to Marc Anthony “Was this ambition? Yet Khaled says he was ambitious and sure he is an honorable man.” ,at least that’s what most people thought, “but here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once not without cause. What cause will hold you then, to praise him now.” Enough with Shakespeare. I couldn’t resist.

Luckily I’m not here to bury Mudar but to praise him.

I remember when Mudar was organizing the Jordanian Opposition Coalition three or four years ago, he drafted the platform …….. and submitted to me for my comments. My concern was that his platform would be well received by Israelis. I wanted it to include the right of all Palestinians to return to Jordan. And he wanted it to include an invitation to Israel to help the Jordan economy.

On the other hand, Mudar had to take this platform and present it to his potential coalition partners and get them to sign on to the program. So he was torn and if he made it too pro-Israel, he might lose some of them and so he negotiated this, this path. Due to his persuasiveness, and I can tell you very persuasive, and leadership, he managed to get their support for his vision of a democratic secular state with the right of return. One that would live in peace and harmony with Israel as Emir Faisal proposed a century ago. And he managed to get the coalition to accept a democratic secular state. That’s huge in the Arab world and a credit to him.

I remember specifically his excitement when he got a million man Bedouin clan to join the coalition. One of their leaders, Abed Amaala is here today representing them to participate in the program and I brought him here from the U.S where he currently lives. He is quite fearful for his life when he returns to Israel. His life is in danger that I can tell you from all the checking that we have done.

The platform was published in August 2015 and is available on my blog Israpundit for all to read.

Mudar planned to take power on creating some kind of insurrection. The right circumstances never presented themselves due in part to Obama’s desire to support the king and support the Muslim Brotherhood who supported the king and you may be aware that the king is very close to Qatar and both Qatar and the King support the Muslim Brotherhood and they create an anomaly in terms of the Arab states who are the Gulf States who are declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization who are boycotting Qatar so there’s a real division between the Arab Gulf States and Jordan.

With the election of President Trump everything changed. Mudar and I both saw the same possibility. If only we got Trump to endorse what we dubbed “the ultimate alternate solution”, then the rest would be easy .

We reasoned that installing the Jordanian Occupation Coalition headed by Mudar in power, it would ultimately lead to the eradication of the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA which is a bonus and we thought the logic of our solution was so compelling that President Trump wouldn’t be able to resist. After all he said he wanted to achieve the ultimate deal and that’s where the word ultimate comes from, from his own reasoning. Out of that realization, this conference was born.

I might mention, this morning is dedicated to providing you with the facts including the expose of the real king Abdullah and what he’s all about. He is often portrayed as a friend but in reality he is the enemy of both the Palestinians and Israel and we see lately so many things and ……….to nail them to the wall …..

I was happy to tell you that that Danny Ayalon is going to be the keynote speaker. Two days ago, Danny said that he would address our conference and last night he wrote that he said he couldn’t make it.  But not to be disappointed.

We have something special. We have the bad boy of the Knesset, Oren Hassan, who is here and he is going to talk but to make that more interesting he is going to be joined in his talk with Abed Amaala and there’s going to be fireworks and so I’m not going to say more to it …… so that should be fun. He will be followed by three panels in the afternoon.

The first deals with the historical background bringing us up to date. The second deals with what Israel can do to capitalize on the Jordanian Opposition Coalition coming into power. What our role is and the third panel is about what kind of government Mudar and his Coalition are proposing.

Thank you for coming and taking an interest. Now the panel,,, our first panel is not all here.

I’m told that Yehuda Glick will be here shortly we’re going to start anyways.

Luckily we have two illustrious people. First, Aryeh Eldad. He has been married to this cause for as long as I have been in Israel and he has had conferences of his own and I think he worked with Benny Alon …..
Aryeh Eldad is a wonderful first speaker based on everything ……… Aryeh..

Ted Belman provides Historical Detail

The Weizmann- Feisal agreement of 1919 which is almost 100 years old today and I just thought I’d give you some historical detail … dealing with the Churchill era. What Churchill did to the Zionist cause.

The Feisal-Weizmann agreement, which was a political accord, was signed on January 3rd, 1919 by Weizmann, the head of the Zionist organization and by Emir Feisal, who at the time was the King of Syria.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Arabs would recognized the Balfour Declaration and would encourage Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. That was their commitment. Freedom of religion and worship in Palestine was set forth as a fundamental principle and the Muslim holy sites which would be under Muslim control, so you know when it comes from.

The Zionist organization promised to look into the economic possibilities of an Arab State and to help the government with resources. In short, “We welcome you. You help us with the economy”. In the words of Feisal himself

“We Arabs look with the deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our delegation here in Paris is only acquainted with a proposal solutions by the Zionist organization to the peace conference and we regard them as moderate and proper. We will do our best insofar as we are concerned to help them through. We will wish Jews a most hearty welcome home. I look forward and my people with me look forward to the future in which we will help you and you will help us so that the countries in which we are mutually invested may once again take their places in the community of the civilized peoples of the world.”

Now that’s really a hearty welcome and that’s a welcome that Mudar is hoping to usher in today.

Once you keep in mind from that doctrine that I read, that the Balfour Declaration that he was referring to, considered Palestine to include Jordan and he is saying we’ll accept the original Palestinian entity which covers both what’s Jordan now and Israel. so that’s the first thing to point out. Though Weizmann accepted the requirement that Muslims would control their holy places, the holy places were never defined. Obviously, the al-Aksa Mosque is a holy place but that doesn’t mean the Temple Mounts is a holy place to the Muslims. It isn’t. They can look upon the mosque and a perimeter around it as their holy place but there’s no basis in that initial agreement to deny Jews the Temple Mount in general as their own holy place.

That’s a huge problem and that’s a distinction we should keep in mind. There’s no reason why they can’t be limited. Arab speakers, every time they want to have some kind of riot, say,  “we have to defend the Al Aksa Mosque.” It’s never “we have to defend the Temple Mount.”
That difference is important. That particular agreement, by the way, was not accepted by other Arabs nor was it accepted by the British Administration.

Three years later after that agreement died its death, Britain denied the Zionist rights in Transjordan thanks to Winston Churchill.

Churchill was appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies in 1921, and he was only there for a little over a year until his government fell.

So in a very short break but in that period of time he tabled a White Paper on June 3rd 1922. So what did that White Paper say? It redefined a Jewish National home to be only a cultural or spiritual center rather than a state. That’s how draconian that White Paper was. That created over the years a huge debate. Did the Balfour Declaration mean a real state or is the national home something different than a state and whatever. He certainly fueled the fire in that White Paper. That’s number one.

He also called for the limitation of Jewish immigration to “the economic capacity of the country to absorb new arrivals”.

Now that condition, if you will, enabled the Brits to forever reduce immigration by simply saying that the economic capacity isn’t there as is  the water. So Churchill was responsible for enabling Britain to have a foothold on how to deny our settlement rights. That’s Churchill.

But Churchill went further as is indicated the British government because Lawrence of Arabia wanted to find a kingdom for Emir Abdullah at the time and they decided that TransJordan would be the kingdom. Now TransJordan was already part of the Jewish Homeland. So what happened was Churchill inserted a clause in the Mandate which itself expressed the fact that it was temporary and it was expected, it would only be there for six months, by other things that he had said. That cause is the famous Clause 25 that he inserted in the Mandate suspending the right of Jews to settle in Transjordan.

So no Zionist settlement project, anything to do with the purpose of the Balfour Declaration, didn’t apply to Transjordan. And he sugarcoated that saying it’s only six months but at the same time he was promising Abdullah that it was permanent. . But the White Paper, the one saving grace .. it recognized that the Jewish community in Palestine should be able to increase its numbers by immigration “as of right, not of sufferance”. That’s a huge issue. We have the right to settle there. We didn’t need permission to settle there and that’s what that clause meant. “As of right not of sufferance”.

So in that regard, the Transjordan at the time contained about 77 to 78% of the entire Mandate. and Colonel Meinerzhagen, when he got wind of it, stormed into Churchill’s office, figuratively, and violently objected.

For those who’ve know this history, Meinerzhagen was a Christian and a very good friend of the Jews and the Zionist project.
Quite famous as a friend. No question about it. And this is what he said to Churchill:

“In my considered legal opinion, the state of Israel has a dormant right or legal right to Transjordan so let’s just see he’s saying which however cannot be exercised unless Jordan as a state disintegrates.”

“This will allow Israel to reclaim historic Jewish territories of Gilead and the conquered kingdoms of Moab and Edom all of which were included in the Israelite kingdom of David and Saul.”

He was a Christian friend of the Jews and knew his Bible and knew that just on the east side of the Jordan River it was a major part of the Jewish Kingdom.

If I may, and speaking aside, I was talking to Nadia Matar about the conference in September and she said “I can’t support anything about relinquishing our Jewish claim to Jordan” and I said “our plan doesn’t require you to relinquish anything. At the moment what is, is. Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan. We’re not asking you to put a stamp on that agreement. Actually Israel isn’t being asked to do anything in order to fulfill the hopes and desires of Mudar of taking office there. We had no job there as a matter of fact we should fight it because it’s a death knell to the Jordan opposition that Israel should be supporting it.

It serves no purpose. So the optics of it are that our government and our people should be totally against this happening. But that’s our position.

Now. so how come the Zionist Organization signed it?

Churchill forced Weizmann to accept the clause 25 in the Mandate by saying “if you don’t accept the clause, we don’t sign the Mandate “. That was his demand. So Weizmann decided that he really had no choice. He needed to get the Mandate with or without Transjordan and he accepted that clause and said after all, its only temporary. But Churchill is an honorable man.

So that’s how come, only one month later, that the Mandate was officially confirmed and signed into law.

It’s very interesting to know that shortly thereafter, (Britain, by the way, wasn’t a member of the League of Nations at that time) and this I think even before the Mandate was officially confirmed, a joint resolution of both houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the Mandate for Palestine confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settled in Palestine anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Now since so much today involves Congressional resolutions, it’s easy to get the unanimous consent of the resolution when AIPAC is saying to you we want you to sign if you want us to support us and then very you mean we get 90-.95% Congressional support for anything that’s good for Israel but it’s meaningless. Nobody acts on it. It’s just cheap to do it because it doesn’t cost anything to do it. Now, similarly with this. You can’t take it to the bank. It’s just a unanimous resolution.

According to the Congressional Record that at the time this was being debated with respect to the Arabs living the Jewish Palestine the Congressional Record contained the following that “if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, they shall be required to sell their lands at a just valuation”, since domination is rule I think that’s what’s referred to by the word domination, “they shall be required to sell their lands at a just valuation and retire into the Arab territory which was assigned to them by the League of Nations in the general reconstruction of countries to the east.” TransJordan is to the east so the as far as congress was concerned….. record that he thought that they should have to be required to sell their land at fair prices and emigrate to the east.

But he went further “That if they will not consent to Jewish government and domination, under the conditions of right and Justice”, nobody’s saying forced or whatever, “or to sell their lands at a just valuation and to retire into their own countries, they shall be driven from Palestine by force”.

This is American Congressional discussion. That’s in the record. That doesn’t mean this was the unanimous position of Congress but I just wanted you to know that a sentiment existing in congress, not a sole sentiment, that sometimes force is necessary.

That’s not such a strange thing. In all kinds of major peace agreements population transfer is a very necessary part when you look at the second world war the amount of population transfers were enormous. It facilitates settlement of the agreement. If you look at the separation of India and Pakistan, similarly there were millions that were moved to facilitate the new borders because they appreciated, as Martin Sherman pointed out, that if you want to have a stable state you have to have a stable people inside who share those same values and aspirations and if you don’t, its eternal damnation. So how can you do that? It’s a necessary thing to achieve stability and peace.

Now the US went further.  In order to be able to protect the American interests in Palestine and have influenced there, the US entered into the 1924 Anglo- American Convention in which the U.S bound itself to the terms of the Mandate. Now a congressional resolution is one thing, a Treaty obligation, that’s a whole different thing because obviously, you can be sued by the other countries if you’re signing the Treaty. The Treaty is a real contract. They need to be sued.

But more than that if you’re a beneficiary of a Treaty, you can sue the government that’ violated it.

Now as a matter of fact, in Canada today, people prepared a whole application to the U.S Supreme Court in order to challenge the US because they were violating the treaty obligation to uphold the Mandate. Now that particular movement didn’t get off the ground that a lot of the data why not but it was significant enough that papers were drawn up to make the case that America was violating the terms of Mandate. You can think about that for a bit.

As it turned out, Weizmann never gave up hope for Transjordan’s reattachment to the Jewish National home and I think one of the speeches mentioned it.  Certainly Meinerzhagen often talked about that idea but the hope that if Jordan fell, it could obviously, we could reclaim our right whatever at least that’s all thinking but that the time that this was happening, they knew that Jewish rights were really being denied so it was something of some value that it could be repatriated. Wishful thinking? Whatever. It was.

As late as 1943, Weizmann was told by Clement Attlee, who became the Prime Minister of Britain shortly thereafter, that “something should be done while allowing the Jews to settle in Transjordan after the war.” I think to myself, what Jews? Transjordan was a lot more crucial before the Holocaust than after. At that time, the land would really have been of some value.

In 1946 Jordan declared its independence. Now I’m going to jump over a little bit of Jordan History.

As you may recall last summer, a year ago summer, the GOP unanimously approved a provision in their platform at their convention in July 2016 which stipulated quote “the U.S seeks to assist in the establishment of a comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East to be negotiated among those living in the region”. Very interesting. “those living in the region” and not between Israel and the PA. That’s the essence of that fact. They weren’t limiting the solution to a deal between Israel and the PA. Donald Trump was in complete agreement with that final text and both Greenblatt and Friedman were there when the discussion of the issues would take the place to pass that historic resolution for the GOP which obviously, as you know it’s the Republicans moving to the right the Democrats are moving to the left. That’s the reality of region.

When you look at that statement, gone was any reference to the Palestinian people or to a two-state solution or to the PA. These things don’t get omitted by chance or by mistake. It’s by design and what Trump’s advisors in the resolution were trying to do was to open up the door for all kinds of solutions. The ultimate solution, we might say. And now, along comes Mudar Zahran who is devoted to the vision of Jordan as the Arab State and Israel, to the Jordan River, as the state of the Jews and he attempts to open up the doors to Jordan so that all Arabs currently called Palestinians could return to Jordan and be full citizens. Plus he intends to open the door to Jordan so that Israel can fulfill Feisal’s vision of the Jews aiding the Arabs in their economic development. His vision is like having a border between Canada and the United States totally we do have an arguments but totally friendly and positive, with respect.

I just want to say something about the rate of return that he is proposing and it will depend ……… citizenship rights. Maybe this will come up but ………

It’s my pleasure to introduce Michael to you to give you a full understanding of what citizenship rights the Palestinians have in Jordan. Very key and very confusing to most people. I have never read an article that satisfied me of that issue.

Yishai Fleisher introduced me to give details of the Jordan Option

Ted made aliya in 2009 and he kept making aliya by being for the last fifteen years editor publisher of this Israpundit, a popular nationalist political blog. Ted Belman just one more second time

Ted Belman
I was interviewed on ISRAEL television in English just five minutes and the way it worked out I managed to say everything I wanted to say in a nutshell and sometimes when in your interviews if you go on to a long one part you don’t have time to do another part. This worked out fine.

Now what was interesting about the video, why I mentioning it. Mudar then got his people to translate and dub it into Arabic and he started circulating it into Jordan and he just told me yesterday, a hundred thousand people have seen this message. We are calling for a coup, nothing less. This is huge noise and news in the Arab world and Mudar monitors the Arab world and he sees how many newspaper articles, how many Facebook, how many that whatever that it’s covered like it’s the biggest story as you can imagine. The problem is all the kings loyalists are commenting and trashing but nobody who’s yelling hurrah is allowed to speak because that’s a death trap so there’s no opposite voice so as Mudar says the fact that the total number of comments are so few tells us a lot.

I just wanted to share that. That’s the kind of fascination there is.

Now, basically, this plan or the Jordan Opposition Coalition work that Mudar and I are doing is, to as I said before, to interest Trump in the solution and I said this in the interview so the Arabs are seeing and one of the questions they asked me how are you going to remove Abdullah from power? and I said that Mubarak was removed from power. it didn’t require Congress to vote. It didn’t require the Israeli public to agree. It is a pure executive action. That is the heart of what we are planning for and acting for. It is an executive action and it’s all been planned out .

As a matter of fact. Mudar and his various people have already written a 15-page document saying how it should do it. How it will happen and whatever and so the word that I use, that America isn’t going to strong arm anybody. But in their fashion we hope that they will enable it. And they will give the king his walking papers, making it clear that he has no choice He can bow out gracefully or not. And Mudar, hopefully will be installed. So this is not just an academic discussion as I said to some other people. Everybody’s got a plan.

We have action. We really believe that if we can move on this and convince the Trump Administration to enable it, we’re talking about before the end of next year that this will happen. This is real. So I’m telling you this is more than a discussion. And everyone is looking for the aftermath of the conference. As a matter of fact we put this idea on the map even before the conference. It’s so talked about in the Arab world. I just wanted to let you know.

Now, if Mudar gets into power then obviously, they’re going to have a law of return and they’re not going to actively go into the West Bank and say come over to us. They’re just passing normal laws where a person can go back to the country for which he has citizenship. So the question comes up what’s Israel going to do once this is the scenario. So I worked together with another person, who wants to remain nameless. I’m really proud of the work he’s done and he really knows what economic feasibilities studies are and most of what I have I’m going to tell you comes from him.

And we spent many hours working on it this summer. Now one of the words that I use, we want to incentivize emigration and Martin Sherman also has the notion of incentivizing emigration and he wants to, in his words, offer three hundred thousand dollars a family to emigrate where they want. There are all kinds of countries would take them in because far better than taking in a pauper or a refugee that has no money. These people are coming in with three hundred thousand dollars. That is music to the ears of many countries who need that capital coming in.

Now the reason he is on board is because he recognizes we’re only a part of his grander plan then. If we can start a process of people being compensated to move to Jordan as far as he is concerned it doesn’t matter what country.

Okay now, how do we do that? So let me give you some numbers and some ideas that I think will fascinate you as they fascinated me.
I think Mike Wise is here. He’s one of the principals of the Israel Demographic Research Group which includes Yoram Ettinger. They developed new numbers. Well Mike is here to observe.

There are according to these demographic people, 1,530,000 Arabs in Judea and Samaria including up to the Jordan River. 1,530 ,000 that’s all. That’s an insignificant number compared to the number of refugees now in Syria. Now there’s roughly 400 000 in Jerusalem which is a different kettle of fish because they been given some rights and some of them exercise such rights to become citizens and many people who want to exercise to become citizens. Israel is now getting smarter and they’re stonewalling and they’re making it difficult for people to actually get citizenship but they have all kinds of evidence, so it’s a different category because of the benefits. So, the total of 1,930,000 if you include the Arabs of Jerusalem.

Now the numbers show that there are 4.67 people per family. 4.67 Arabs per family on average and the number of families then, in Judea and Samaria are 330,000 families based on that number. And there are 85 000 families in Jerusalem, totaling 415,000 families.
Now of these people, eight hundred thousand, which is roughly half, are refugees.

In a sense, for whatever reason, they are indeed refugees living in refugee camps, not part of normal Arab society and the reason they are in refugee camps is one reason and that is that they, there, will be pressure on Israel to allow the refugees to return to Israel. So Jordan, like all of their Arab countries, doesn’t want to normalize them so that’s why they’re still refugees.

My friend has calculated the cost of building housing in Jordan for this number of families including University scholarships, pensions for the elderly, the infrastructural investment and the Jordan Water have been calculated in Jordan for this number of families. I’m talking about a scientist calculating, not broad strokes, to be fifteen thousand dollars per person, to build housing for four hundred and fifteen thousand families and why, because housing in Jordan as I recall is about 30,000 per unit whereas the land alone required for an apartment in Israel is 150 000 per unit. So looking at the full idea of resettling in Jordan, it is so inexpensive we could give the houses away and wouldn’t even blink.

So, talk about incentives, We can say we’ll build you a house you can have for free just emigrate to Jordan and you’ll get benefits. This is how strong the incentivization is. Now, our calculations 90% of the registered UNRWA refugees will take this offer and go to Jordan, ninety percent, Because they have nothing at the moment. We took a rough guestimate and decided 35% of Jerusalem residents, because they have the benefits, and sixty percent of the population will move due to exceptional financial support. We’re talking about a total 1.3 million Palestinians will move east of the Jordan River based on a few things. 60% that surveys have told 60% of the Palestinians in the West Bank are prepared to leave. That’s without incentives.

What’s the total amount? I’m coming to that. Hold your horses okay.

In Economics when you learn economics you always learn if you spent X dollars, there’s a multiplying effect and the X dollars that you spend is going to be multiplied maybe two three times over and it expands the benefit of the initial dollars that are spent. We haven’t even calculated what’s called the multiplier effect.

Now the demographic composition of Jordan will remain virtually unchanged from the current 75% of the Jordanian population is Palestinian. Mudar likes to argue it’s 80 percent, so I say 75 percent. If you add another 1.3 million I think that was a number of Palestinians in the West Bank to Jordan it will increase the Palestinian percentage by only four percent to 79% . So changing from 75 to 79%, hardly matters in terms of their national demographics. And the increase in the population per year over a seven year plan would be just 2.4 percent. But this is 2.4% that’s coming there that says give me welfare. I need to be taken care of and give me healthcare.

What we want to do is build a city for a million people so we create the employment of all these people and the vast majority of people would rather work than do nothing. So our plan is to build a city or city suburbs and that construction will provide jobs and benefits and so on. That’s part of a plan that we are envisaging. The total number is $19.5 billion let’s say 20 billion dollars that’s the total investment for the total plan of moving out 1.3 million giving them homes giving them welfare giving them everything they imagined is only 20 billion dollars.

Now compare that with Sherman’s plan to offer $300 000 per family. We’re talking more like 200 billion dollars compared to this 20 billion because we’re moving them to Jordan a low-cost area and the jobs are going to be what’s employing all these people, okay. Now what does that mean to our economy?

It’s still a lot of money that our economy so this is what that means.

First of all, if you go to the two-state solution according to the numbers here you’ve got to evacuate a hundred thousand Jews outside the settlement blocks. I think it’s more like 150 thousand. The reason I say 150 000 is whenever anybody says you can keep the settlement blocks, they never identify what blocks they’re talking about and there’s a debate. Ariel…. There’s a debate and they never say what blocks, so even of all the blocks and there’s no consensus of a smaller blocks so it could be as high as 150,000. That’s all I said.

Now, you may recall when ten thousand Jews were evacuated from Gush Katif, the cost was 10 billion shekels, Well I had a debate yesterday with someone. I thought it was 10 billion dollars and I haven’t had a chance to check it  …who knows. Is it 10 billion dollars or shekels? Does anybody know? Shekels you think. If its shekels, to move that many Jews out of Judean Samaria because the Palestinians don’t want them and from my point of view we would never leave them there that would be criminal and as a young person oh we can let them stay there. No it ain’t gonna happen.

It’s 55 billion dollars that we will have to spend, if its shekels, to move them compared to the 20 billion to send the 1.3 million to Jordan. The numbers are mind-boggled. Okay.

There is just another issue I want to mention.

What does Israel say about the return of the refugees? What does Israel say about the internal refugees. Nobody know how many refugees are coming into Israel. That’s basically where we are and I say does that mean you want a million or two million refugees to come into the West Bank and add to the 800,000 that are there already there?

They could have a million man march on the fence and tear it down and enter Israel. Then they would all living inside Israel and let me tell you If it ever came to discussion among the Israelis or the government they will agree. They don’t want the return of them to Palestine, let alone Israel because it would create such a problem for Israel and they wouldn’t get citizenship in Palestine. They would be refugees forced to move back into Israel. That issue has not yet been debated in Israel about, they shouldn’t be allowed in at all.

We have trouble when we talk about, “we have an agreement” or “you can’t bring your refugees”, really how are we going to enforce that. Like it’s an non-starter.

You have to understand that all of which argues for this plan of compensated immigration. Now I had an Arab speaker I don’t think he showed up but he wanted to who came from Hebron and he was going to talk about whether Arabs would move to Jordan and what it would take to get them to move to Jordan.

And I just posted an article a few days ago by Bassam Eid, a wonderful writer and he was saying what the Palestinians really want.
But in any case, he tells what they really want. They want what normal people want.

They certainly don’t want the PA government. They want Health Care they want jobs normal stuff….. and they’re not getting it where they are, especially the refugees under the PA and they are more amenable to moving to Jordan than you might think.

Now I’ve had conversations with these people and they agreed with that. They say the same thing. Now, another issue that I just mentioned to my economic advisor. I’m happy to give away the 400,000 homes for nothing because it’s so small on the scale of things, but here’s a political problem How can you give free homes to 400,000 families coming to Jordan when everybody else there doesn’t get one. That’s explosive. We don’t have an answer for that. We have to work on that issue but it would be so divisive to society if all of a sudden these privileged few are getting homes paid for, no mortgage, we’re talking paid for while everybody else is struggling so that’s an issue we don’t have the answer for yet.

This expenditure of 20 billion dollars represents 6.1 percent of the Israeli GDP. That’s all. Not an insignificant amount but not one that we can’t handle. That’s assuming we do it in one year – we’re not going to do it in one year. If we do it over seven years it is less than one percent of Israel’s GDP – if we had to pay for it ourselves if nobody else was helping us with the expenditure you wouldn’t even notice that.

But more important than that is that Moshe Feiglin analyzed that since Oslo our internal defense has cost us over a trillion shekels. There are all kinds of costs involved in managing the status quo which I don’t think is sustainable because we’re being labeled; our kids on campus are being attacked, whatever, We have to get rid of the status quo. So, in any event it’s a very small number that we can manage.

Okay now one other thing. Does anyone know what our national debt is. We’re 62 percent of our GDP. 62%. That Canada compared to that 62% is 84 percent, Germany 80 percent, the UK 89 percent, and get this, the United States 104 percent They’re 20 trillion dollar debt thanks to Obama is a hundred and four percent of the U.S gross national product and Singapore is 111% – beating out the US.

Now if Israel pays for it by borrowing, we just go to 68 percent of our GDP as a debt compared to everybody else. So don’t let anybody tell you we can’t afford it.

And I got one other issue, I’m playing on your time here, you know this is my stuff. We also have a plan for Egypt.

I remember about 10,000 people were homeless from the last Gaza war and I said “don’t rehabilitate. Get them to emigrate. It’s cheaper”. And I was against rehabilitation and so then my financial expert did a study and he found out that homes in Egypt are half the price of the homes in Jordan. Half the price.

So, and Egypt has 98.5 million population, so if you take 1.5 million Gazans and move them into Egypt, it’s nothing. And if you give them free homes. And this just shows you how much our government is not looking for, you know, the obvious. That’s the obvious. Why are we perpetuating these problems? So that is it for Jordan.

Yishai Fleisher
Ted, that was great stuff and it’s it’s up to the depth of thought that you’ve, you and the rest of the folks have put into this uh and that’s what conference is about just one point that Ted made that may have slipped past you ..he said that if a Palestine, the one we know today, would take in refugees, they would continue to be refugees and that they would pine away for financial assistance. What did he mean by that? So when you travel from Gush Etzion to Hebron on the left side there is a refugee camp called …… but that refugee camp is under the Palestinian Authority. It’s in Palestine. it’s in Palestine. Why is there a refugees? You can’t be under a Palestine. Isn’t that weird? I thought that they got Palestine so that they wouldn’t be any refugees anymore. Great day, Palestine is here, right?

No, they continue to remain refugees. Maybe it’s in somebody’s interest to continue to get paid as refugees, educate those people who are treated as refugees to be the next jihadists or use it as a tool to blacken Israel’s eye but the fact is that the point that Ted was making is that influx of refugees to Palestine may may very well continue that name of refugees and may very well get that status be put into refugee status with the subjugated status and continue to be the next Warriors against Israel.

Ted Belman
Hold on, I remember one point I want to share. Liberman came up with the asinine plan to double the population in Qalquilya,
I had a heart attack. What Insanity. We should be moving the residents of Qalquilya out of the area not adding to them.

Now Martin Sherman points out how can you have authority over Area C when you have all these cheese holes all the way through it? How do you do the border? What do you do with all that? So from my point of view, we have to focus. We have to empty out Qalquilya. Empty out Tulqarm. Empty out any refugee camps that are in our heartland right at the middle, right adjacent to Highway 6 and we have to clean out all those area B lands and then do Area C.

Thank you and just to show you how magnanimous I am I’m quite prepared to have the Palestinians in Hebron have an emirate as proposed by Mordechai Kedar. They want to be removed from the PA. They’re ready for self-government. They want to live in peace. They can stay and be an Emirate plus all the cities that are on the ridge, of Ramallah, of Shiloh, of Jenin. You know how far Ramallah is from Amman? 40 miles. We can make a highway. They could stay there and they could travel by highway to Amman.

There are rational halfway houses.

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