Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine offers Gazans hope post-war

The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (HKOPS) is shaping up as the only solution capable of providing the besieged population of Gaza with a better future after the Israel-Gaza war ends.

Published in the Saudi Government-controlled Al-Arabiya News on 8 June 2022 and authored by Ali Shihabi - an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – HKOPS proposes:

Gaza, part of the West Bank and Jordan be merged into one territorial entity named "The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine"

• to be governed by Jordan's current Hashemite rulers and
• to have its capital located in Amman

HKOPS shreds the Saudi-inspired 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and United Nations 2016 Security Council Resolution 2334 which both call for the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab state between Israel and Jordan – when it asserts:

Jordanians and Palestinians are as similar as any people can be. They are Sunni Arabs from the same neighborhood. Merging them will not create any long-term ethnic or sectarian fault lines.

The Security Council's failure between 8 June 2022 and 7 October 2023:

• to acknowledge the existence of HKOPS
• consider rescinding Resolution 2334 and adopting HKOPS

was incomprehensible.

So too was the complete silence of:

• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres who failed to mention HKOPS once at his regular monthly meetings with the Security Council
• Tor Wennesland: United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and the Secretary-General's Personal Representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, as well as the Envoy of the Secretary-General to the Quartet

Jordan's King Abdullah and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas have not voiced their opposition to HKOPS in the 18 months since its publication.

King Abdullah recently referred to Gaza and the West Bank as "an extension of a unified Palestinian state."

Israel however will never allow Gaza to form part of any such unified Palestinian state after the horrific events of October 7.

King Abdullah will be relieved.

Israel won't be withdrawing from Gaza for a considerable period of time after the Israel-Gaza war has ended – if ever - having seen:

• Tens of thousands of missiles fired indiscriminately into Israeli population centers from Gaza following Israel's total disengagement from Gaza in 2005 and
• Gaza being turned into a heavily fortified and armed hell-hole by its Hamas Government

Where does that leave Gaza's population post-war?

HKOPS provides the answer:

The Palestinian problem can only be solved today if it is redefined. The issue in this day and age for people should be not so much the ownership of ancestral land but more the critical need to have a legal identity-a globally respected citizenship that allows a person to operate in the modern world. Labor in this day and age is mobile and having citizenship in a country that facilitates such mobility is critical to human development.

Citizenship and voluntary resettlement of Gazans in the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine is the alternative choice HKOPS offers Gazans - rather than continuing to live in Gaza stateless and under Israeli occupation.

Implementing HKOPS - excluding Gaza - will involve Israel and Jordan:

• Redrawing the existing international border between their two countries
• Determining who has security control of the territory of the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine located west of the Jordan River
• Agreeing a timetable for the voluntary resettlement of Gazans in the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine.

The West Bank Arab population living within the newly-created Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine will also no longer be stateless and won't have to leave their current homes.

The Security Council needs to:

• Rescind Resolution 2334
• Chair Israel/Jordan negotiations to implement HKOPS

Two giant steps that could end the Jewish-Arab conflict between the River and the Sea.

Please join my Facebook Page: "Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine supporters"

Author's note: The cartoon - commissioned exclusively for this article - is by Yaakov Kirschen aka "Dry Bones"- one of Israel's foremost political and social commentators - whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.