Trump, Israel, Jordan and PLO need to define Palestine's boundaries

1. Abba Eban - Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations - said in Newsweek on 2 December 1974:

Palestine comes into modern history as a region extending on both sides of the Jordan, comprising the present sovereign territories of Israel and Jordan and the administered areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Of this original Palestine, 80 per cent became an exclusively Arab domain through the separation of Trans-Jordan from Palestine.

2. Yasser Arafat – the first PLO Chairman told the New York Review of Books on 25 June 1987:

Jordan and Palestine until 1945 were one State, actually. After the Second World War, Churchill himself said, "This is Transjordan, and this is Palestine. Before that Jordan was an emirate … completely part of Palestine

3. Transjordan's King Abdullah addressed the Arab League meeting in Cairo on 12 April 1948:

Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country.

Many more similar statements exist from Jewish, Arab and other sources.

If Trump concludes that a second Arab State, in addition to Jordan, is required in the Mandate territory, then Jordan - not only Israel, Judea and Samaria (West Bank), East Jerusalem and Gaza, should be included in determining that third State's possible location.

However such a second Arab State would, if governed by the PLO - the sole spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs since 1974 - pose an existential threat to the continued existence of both Jordan and Israel as sovereign independent States since article 2 of the PLO Charter expressly states:

Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.

One Jewish State and two Arab States in the territory of the Mandate will exacerbate, not resolve, the conflict.

Jordan, 78% of the Mandate territory, must be part of any territorial resolution.

Territorial negotiations, like gridiron and basketball, can only be played out within clearly designated boundaries.

Defining Palestine's boundaries is indeed the key to Trump succeeding where all others have failed.