Monday, January 23, 2012

The Two State Solution

A two-state solution already exists and has for several decades, Israel and Jordan. This is the ideal solution. Anyone who opposes it and insists that “palestinian” statehood can only come about through Israeli territorial concessions, exposes themselves as having the destruction of Israel as their real goal, not the well-being of the “palestinians” which they have long claimed to be concerned about.

Via Israpundit:

The Path to Peace for Palestinians and the Hashemites By Alan Bergreen, AMERICAN THINKER

The only viable peace settlement between the Palestinians and Israelis which satisfies the legitimate national aspirations of both parties within geopolitically stable and rational boundaries requires inclusion of the territories, institutions, and resources of former eastern Palestine (presently Jordan) as part of the mix.

That added venue would greatly enhance prospects for a Palestinian state in a territory adequate to its needs, and it would be minimally threatening, strategically and demographically, to Israel. It would also provide the added advantage and example of an overwhelmingly Palestinian polity, already operating with vastly greater success than the dysfunctional, warring camps west of the Jordan River.

Moreover, such an arrangement would provide a requirement critical to Israel’s future security: namely, an outlet for Palestinian demographic pressures west of the Jordan River, while potentially relieving Israel of administrative responsibilities for the Arabs remaining there. This would result either from the migration of Palestinians eastward, attracted by the prospects of a newborn Palestinian state, or by arrangement with the government of future Jordan/Palestine to provide citizenship and local administration to Arab communities remaining in Judea and Samaria.

But what is crucial from the standpoint of selling this idea to the Jordanians is the fact that this approach also confers critically needed long-term legitimacy on the Hashemite regime, itself an alien oligarchy which has ruled the area since British authorities acquiesced in what was effectively the invasion of the territory in late 1920 by the Bedouin forces of Abdullah I.

Consideration of these benefits and their implications have been consistently overlooked or blithely dismissed by commentators on the region and, mysteriously, omitted from serious public policy discussions. It is imperative for Israel’s sake, and for that of the Palestinians as well, that they now be explored.

Truth be told, the Hashemites’ days may be numbered in any event. Historically, they are clearly interlopers in the region and heirs to the arbitrary legacies of British imperialism. Moreover, they rule a nation composed overwhelmingly of ethnic “Palestinians,” by whatever definition that may be assessed. In many instances they are blood relations of the residents of the territories west of the Jordan, who, in their own right, were Jordanian citizens prior to 1967.

And if the “shell game” of Jordanian/Palestinian national identities were any more confused, it might be noted that in 1948, the Second Arab-Palestinian conference proclaimed then-Transjordanian monarch Abdullah I “King of Palestine” and called for the unification of the territories west of the Jordan River, with the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan to the east.

For that matter, the present Jordanian queen, Rania Al Abdullah (née Al Yassin), was born to Palestinian parents formerly from Tulkarm, large portions of which were captured by Israel in the War of Independence and incorporated into the city of Netanya and a number of Arab villages today in Israel proper. Hence, the question “Where’s Palestine?” is not a frivolous one, and the relationship between Palestinians and Jordanians is not a foreign one. In fact, said relationship can be summed up thus:

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