Mandate for Palestine - July 24, 1922

Mandate for Palestine - July 24, 1922
Jordan is 77% of former Palestine - Israel, the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza comprise 23%.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Should Jordan be Palestine?

[Published 23 February 2013]

The Jerusalem Post - Daniel Tauber

If you’ve heard former MK Aryeh Eldad speak in the past few years (before recent Knesset elections, at least), you probably heard him say something like this:

“The vast majority of Jordan is Palestinian. In fear of an uprising, the King of Jordan has his private airplane running 24 hours a day, seven days a week to whisk him away in case of a revolt. He should declare that Jordan is the Palestinian national homeland or seek asylum in London.”

Such language (there was also a petition and a pamphlet) is only the most recent incarnation of a push for “Jordan is Palestine,” a slogan many on the Right still adhere to.

In a lengthy 1988 article on the topic for Commentary (rejecting “Jordan is Palestine”), Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes and international affairs expert Adam Garfinkle documented many proponents of the theory, even practical Israeli plans for potentially realizing it, and Pipes continues to update the article on his website with quotations of relevant personalities who maintain the opinion.

As Eldad has explained, the goal of making Jordan into Palestine is to lessen pressure on Israel to implement the “two-state solution.

” Once Jordan becomes Palestine, the “the Palestinians [would] lose their orphan status as a people without a state” and “their international demands will become much weaker.”

The two-state solution would become meaningless as there would already be a Palestinian state, and there would therefore be much less of an argument for Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, something Jordan-is-Palestine proponents rightly fear would lead to grave danger for Israel.

If only it were that simple.

Please read the full article here

No comments: