Biden & UN must rethink two Arab States in former Palestine

Security Council Resolution 2735 adopted on 10 June calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza-Israel War -has included a call for the creation of a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan – the two successor States to the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and currently sovereign rulers in 94% of former Palestine:

• Jordan in the 76.9% of Palestine located entirely east of the Jordan River since 1946 and
• Israel in 17.1% of Palestine located west of the Jordan River since 1948.

Creating a second Arab state in the remaining 6% of former Palestine west of the Jordan River - where sovereignty remains unallocated – was drafted and driven in Resolution 2735 by President Biden in the following terms:

The Security Council reiterates its unwavering commitment to the vision of the two-State solution where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognised borders, consistent with international law and relevant UN resolutions, and in this regard stresses the importance of unifying the Gaza Strip with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.

It is an invented mantra devoid of any foundation.

Unification of the Gaza Strip with the West Bank to create a second Arab state in Palestine – in addition to Jordan - was furthest from the minds of the drafters of the Mandate for Palestine in 1922 when articles 6 and 25 of the Mandate document included these two areas of the Mandate in the area set aside for Jewish self-determination and the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home.

When the League of Nations was dissolved in 1945 these provisions of the Mandate were expressly preserved in favour of the Jewish people under Article 80 of the newly-created United Nations Charter and continue to be so.

Article 80 was flagrantly violated when the Obama-Biden administration instructed America's Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Powell, to abstain on, rather than veto, Security Council resolution 2334, leading to its adoption on 23 December 2016 at the very time Obama and Biden were vacating the White House to make way for a triumphant Donald Trump.

The Obama-Biden administrations own well-intentioned, but failed, efforts between 2011 and 2017 to end 100-years of unresolved conflict between Arabs and Jews, had ended in complete failure after Obama had announced his own solution on 19 May 2011:

The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.

This solution like those of Obama's predecessors - Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton – had all remained unfulfilled when their time to vacate the White House arrived.

Obama and Biden opted to keep their idea of an Arab state between Israel and Jordan alive in the United Nations by abstaining on – rather than vetoing - Resolution 2334.

Now seven years later the creation of another Arab state between Israel and Jordan has proved impossible to achieve – but Biden has not given up.

Since 2022 a proposal from Saudi Arabia authored by an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has been urging a different approach – arguing for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank into one territorial entity based on the fact that:

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.

Its time Biden and the Security Council started discussing implementing this Saudi-based solution, the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution, before the region explodes into one giant killing field.