UN should start focusing on the Jordan-Israel two-state solution

• The government of Egypt and the government of Israel dated February 24, 1949; and
• the government of the Hashemite Jordan Kingdom and the government of Israel dated April 3, 1949

Those lines were not set in concrete but were agreed on without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines.

Secretary-General Guterres would do well to start focusing on the realistically-attainable Jordan-Israel two-state solution – so eloquently expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the New York Times on 27 August 1972:

The Secretary-General should digest what former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog wrote in the Wall Street Journal on 26 November 1980 [Ed: my underlining]:

The Jordan-Israel two-state solution requires two sets of negotiators – armed only with pencils and rubbers – to redraw the existing internationally-recognised boundary between Israel and Jordan to enable the allocation of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza between those two States.

Not one Jew or Arab would need to move from his present home. Jordanian citizenship would be restored to West Bank Arab residents – as existed between 1950 and 1988.

The UN's continuing pursuit of a third-state solution has reached a dead end and should be consigned to the diplomatic graveyard.