West Bank and Jerusalem Generate Jitters For Jordan

King Abdullah however seeks to instil a climate of fear into the West Bank’s existing Arab population and to totally mislead and misrepresent what Jordan’s return to the West Bank will entail for the refugees in Syria and Lebanon when he states:

“In America specifically, you hear, well, why doesn't Jordan take the Palestinians into our country? That would create tremendous instability. So if the Israelis want to push the Palestinians into Jordan, I don't see how that makes sense and how the international community will accept that because that would be an exodus of 1.8 million Palestinians from their homes into Jordan, Lebanon and Syria."

Negotiations between Jordan and Israel on the future status of the West Bank need not involve one Arab having to pack up and leave his current residence or business in the West Bank, He will stay where he currently is with Jordanian citizenship in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Where the West Bank Arab population falls within the expanded borders of Greater Israel - those Arabs affected can be offered Israeli citizenship or compensation to move to the other side of the new international boundary between Israel and Jordan if that is their wish. A similar option will be afforded to those West Bank Jews finding themselves within the boundaries of Greater Jordan.

Those refugees living in Syria and Lebanon can be offered the alternatives of absorption and citizenship in Syria or Lebanon or offered financial compensation to move and settle within the expanded borders of Greater Jordan and being granted Jordanian citizenship. Their miserable existence as stateless refugees will be ended after 62 years of interminable hardship and suffering.

These efforts may not end the Arab-Jewish conflict but will certainly bring about a major change in the existing status quo and hopefully avert the consequences of war and suffering predicted by King Abdullah.

The King can continue to sit on the sidelines and criticise and deprecate. He will be committing a gross error of judgement if he does so - which could ultimately see an attempt to overthrow his ruling Hashemite regime in Jordan - as was attempted in 1970 by the PLO but ultimately failed. The King is already jittery at the thought of such a possibility.

International financial aid and international military assistance should be offered as inducements to Jordan to assist its re-entry into the West Bank once again - coupled with a mutual defence pact between Israel and Jordan to prevent  any attempted takeover of Jordan by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Brotherhood or Islamic Jihad.

Jordan must be ruing the day in 1967 when it decided to join in the Six Day War in defiance of Israel’s request not to do so - and lost the then Jew-free West Bank and East Jerusalem as a result.

Now is the time for Jordan to make amends for that decision. The sooner it does so - the sooner the world might be able to focus and concentrate its efforts on resolving far more serious issues involving human and political rights in places such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Haiti, Thailand, Sri Lanka and North Korea.