Abdullah-Biden meeting will not help resolve Jewish-Arab conflict

The meeting between Jordan's King Abdullah and President Biden at the White House on 19 July seems set to achieve absolutely nothing towards resolving the 100 years-old conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Biden's Press Secretary - Jen Psaki – has claimed:

It will be an opportunity to discuss the many challenges facing the Middle East and showcase Jordan's leadership role in promoting peace and stability in the region.

The King has shown no leadership in resolving the conflict between Jews and Arabs over sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) ["Disputed Territory"] and Gaza – comprising the remaining 5% of the territory of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine where sovereignty still remains unallocated ("Unallocated Territories").

Sovereignty in the remaining 95% of the Mandate territory was divided between:

• Jordan - 78% – upon the establishment of the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946
• Israel - 17% – upon its establishment in 1948.

Concerted attempts over the last 25 years to create an additional Arab State in the Unallocated Territories for the first time in recorded history ("two-state solution") have all failed. Abdullah has been a principal protagonist for this solution.

Jordan's failure to take a leadership role in agreeing to an alternative solution - division of the Unallocated Territories between Jordan and Israel within the framework of their existing 1994 Peace Treaty – has gone begging during Abdullah's 22 year reign.

The following historic, geographic and demographic realities bind Jordan with the Disputed Territory:

• Transjordan in 1948 conquered and occupied the Disputed Territory until 1967 – renaming the newly-merged territorial entity "Jordan" in 1950.
• The Arab residents of the Disputed Territory were Jordanian citizens between 1950 and 1988 and elected their own representatives to the Jordanian Parliament in Amman.
• Statements made by Arab leaders over decades have attested to the territorial and population ties between Jordan and the Disputed Territory:

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. – Yasser Arafat New York Review of Books 25 June 1987