Trump pressure pushes Jordan to choose Israel or PLO

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – refusing to bow to pressure by President Trump to cease payments to terrorists and their families currently exceeding US$400 million annually – is looming as a potential threat to end 96 years of unbroken Hashemite rule in Jordan.

PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas - addressing the ninth annual Islamic Beit al-Maqdes International Conference in Ramallah last week – has sent a veiled message of the PLO's intention to challenge Jordan's ruling Hashemite family if PLO demands for a State in the West Bank with Jerusalem as its capital are not met.

Jordan comprised almost 77% of Palestine between 1920 and 1946 until granted independence by Great Britain and being renamed The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan – subsequently being renamed Jordan in 1950 following Transjordan's illegal annexation of Judea and Samaria in 1948 ( redesignated the West Bank).

This semantic sleight of hand could never change the historic and demographic reality that Jordan formed part of the territory comprised in the 1922 Mandate for Palestine – Jordan's Crown Prince Hassan declaring in the Foreign Affairs Review in 1982:

...the Jordanians and Palestinians are now one people, and no political loyalty, however strong, will separate them permanently.

Abbas told the Ramallah Conference:

In Palestine and Jordan, we are one people in two states and we will never accept an alternative homeland.

Abbas's statement mirrored PLO founder Yasser Arafat's in Der Spiegel in 1986:

Jordanians and Palestinians are indeed one people. No one can divide us. We have the same fate.

Farouk Kadoumi - the Head of the Political Department of the PLO - told Newsweek on 14 March 1977:

Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people.

Alleging flagrant bias towards Israel by the Trump Administration – Abbas defiantly declared: