King Abdullah cannot exclude Jordan from any two-state solution

King Abdullah's continuing attempt to exclude Jordan from being part of any two-state solution remains the major obstacle to ending the 100 years old unresolved Arab-Jewish conflict.

The King's intransigent position came in this exchange with CNN's Fareed Zakaria this week:

Zakaria: Dore Gold, an influential adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, recently said, Jordan needs to start thinking of itself as the Palestinian state. In other words, there is a two-state solution, the Palestinian state is Jordan, I think the implication would be, of course, you have 60-70 percent Palestinians, you could absorb the Palestinians in the West Bank. This has been touted before, but here you have a fairly influential Israeli saying it. What is your reaction?

King: Well, again, that type of rhetoric is nothing new, and basically, those people have agendas that they want to do at the expense of others. Jordan is Jordan. We have a mixed society from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. I would maybe contest the percentage in the figures that you have mentioned, but it is our country. The Palestinians do not want to be in Jordan; they want their lands, they want their football team, they want their flag to fly above their houses."

King Abdullah ignored Jordan's chequered origins in asserting:

• "Jordan is Jordan",
• "it is our country" and
• "the Palestinians do not want to be in Jordan"

The following historic, geographic and demographic realities contradict King Abdullah's remarks:

Jordan – then called Transjordan - comprised 78% of the territory of former Palestine designated in the 1920-1948 Mandate for Palestine (British Mandate).

Transjordan only became an independent state in 1946

Abdullah's great-grandfather and Transjordan's first ruler - King Abdullah I - told a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on 12 April 1948:

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

Israel achieved its independence in May 1948 in 17% of the territory comprised in the British Mandate.

• Transjordan was unified with Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem into one territorial entity and renamed Jordan in 1950 after Transjordan had conquered those areas in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War – which lasted until their loss to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.
• Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem were designated "the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" in the founding 1964 Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Charter – whilst regional sovereignty was not claimed by the PLO.
• The 1964 PLO Charter asserted that "Palestine with its boundaries at the time of the British Mandate is a regional indivisible unit."
• The revised 1968 PLO Charter confirmed that "Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit".
• Arab residents of Judea and Samaria were Jordanian citizens between 1950 and 1988
• Abdullah's uncle – Prince Hassan – told the Jordanian National Assembly on 2 February 1970:
  Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine, there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate
• The PLO unsuccessfully tried to seize power in Jordan in 1970
• Prime PLO political strategist – Abu Iyad – declared in Near East Report on 8 January 1990:
  All those who tried in the past and are still trying to create divisions between theJordanian and Palestinian people have failed. We indeed constitute one people.

Abdullah ignores these long-standing realities at his peril.

Abdullah is deluding himself in denying the role Jordan must inevitably play in achieving the long sought-after two-state solution: Redrawing the international border between Jordan and Israel - the two successor States to the British Mandate – allocating sovereignty between them in Judea Samaria and Gaza - without creating another state.