Jack Cohen – The Jordan Option
One possible aspect of Pres. Trump’s “deal of the century” to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict might be the so-called Jordan Option. This involves giving Jordan the responsibility for the Palestinian Arabs. A French diplomat is reported to have leaked this story.
There could be several reasons for such a plan; first of all Jordan was originally part of Palestine, and was included in the original Mandate for Palestine given to the British in 1920 by the League of Nations, the precursor to the UN. In 1922 Winston Churchill, then a Secretary of State, unilaterally separated the region of Palestine east of the Jordan River and established the new Arab country of Transjordan. This area should have been part of the intended Jewish Homeland, but in effect the area of the Mandate was partitioned between an Arab and a Jewish State, Transjordan and Israel.
The Herut Party under Menachem Begin, the precursor of the Likud Party, adopted the policy and the slogan that “Jordan is Arab Palestine.” Transjordan occupied the area west of the Jordan River from 1948-67 and it was called the West Bank, whereupon Transjordan changed its name to Jordan. As a matter of fact, I designed a pamphlet in 1985 with the same title “Jordan is Arab Palestine” that was distributed in the US (see http://jackcohenart.com/pamphlets.html and scroll down to the bottom one). However, this policy was jettisoned since neither the Palestinian Arabs nor Jordan under the Hashemite monarchy would accept their “betrothal.” The majority of Jordanian citizens were already immigrants from western Palestine (that became Israel) and King Hussein did not want to accept any more. Naturally he felt that would destabilize his country. But, in fact with about 70% of the population from western Palestine, what difference would some more make.
Now Jordan is in dire economic straits, since it houses ca. 1.5 million refugees from the Syrian conflict. It might be possible if the US under Pres. Trump were prepared to give Jordan extensive financial aid to help deal with these refugees and the ca. 2 million Palestinians living in the Palestine Authority on the West Bank, that King Abdullah could be persuaded to take responsibility for the Palestinian Arabs and incorporate them. In fact, Jordan is the only Arab country that has significant numbers of Palestinian refugees that actually gave them citizenship (Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Iraq kept them stateless for 70 years against international law). However, the Jordan option may not be part of the Trump plan since US special Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt has denied it. We will have to wait until June to find out.
