Palestine - Reunification Trumps Confederation

[Published 20 December 2012]


Reunification of the Arab populated areas of the West Bank with Jordan - as existed between 1948-1967 - has again emerged as the most viable solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict.

This follows revelations in the London- based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper that Palestinian Authority (PA) President and PLO Chairman - Mahmoud Abbas - has asked senior Fatah leaders to prepare for the formation of a confederation between a Palestinian State and Jordan.

Abbas has reportedly instructed his advisors to provide him with detailed strategic reports about the best way to conduct negotiations with Jordan to revive the confederation plan - first discussed in 1988 under very different political circumstances to those now existing.

Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, has told the Jerusalem Post (“Abbas mulls forming confederation with Jordan” - December 13) that the confederation idea would be discussed with Jordan - but only after the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

PLO Executive Committee member Wasel Abu Yusef has also told the Jerusalem Post that any talk about the confederation plan now would hinder efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 lines “because Israel is hoping that a Palestinian state would be part of Jordan.”

The creation of such a state will not occur.

Jordan appears to have been positioning itself to replace the Palestinian Authority as Israel’s negotiating partner - as indicated by the following recent events:

1. King Abdullah’s uncle - Prince Hassan - stated in October that the West Bank was part of Jordan.

2. PLO heavyweight Farouk Kaddumi followed by pointing to the advantages that could follow Jordan’s return to the West Bank.

3. The Jordanian Education Department produced a map in a text book not showing the West Bank as a separate territorial entity.

4. Prince Hassan gave a public address to the Board of Deputies of British Jews at a gala black tie affair in London seven days before Abbas took to the podium at the United Nations on 29 November.

Jordan’s return to centre stage has been further strengthened by Abbas’s decision to proceed with unilateral action to have the “State of Palestine” admitted as a non-observer State at the United Nations with its claim to sovereignty in 100% of the West Bank being recognised at the same time.

Abbas has already paid dearly for his precipitate action in abandoning negotiations with Israel and going it alone to the United Nations - unleashing the following consequences:

1. Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal defiantly opposing a Palestinian State being created anywhere but on the ashes of Israel.

2. Four hundred million dollars in taxation revenues collected by Israel for the Palestinian Authority being withheld over the next four months to meet unpaid water and electricity bills owed by the PA to Israeli utility companies.

3. Israel announcing plans to revive building another 3000 housing units - kept on hold since 2004 to placate and induce the PA to continue negotiations with Israel

4. Abbas being forced to go cap in hand to Arab countries begging to be helped out to the tune of One hundred million dollars a month to stay afloat

Many of those 138 Nations that voted to admit the State of Palestine as a non-observer state must now be shaking their heads in amazement at the latest announcement by Abbas of a possible confederation of that state with Jordan once statehood has been achieved.

It makes a mockery of their decision to grant non-observer status to a state whose chief proponent has now admitted still does not exist.

Even worse Abbas is now flagging that this State - when it achieves its independence - will immediately be prepared to surrender that independence and enter into a confederation with Jordan.

The two-state solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict proposed under the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap is rapidly turning out to be nothing but a chimera

Abbas’s confederation proposal is unlikely to resonate with Jordan - which is well aware of the provision in the PLO Charter proclaiming that Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan is “an indivisible territorial unit”. Confederation would give the PLO a foothold and possible opportunity to repeat its 1970 attempt to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy in pursuit of this stated objective.

The King would also be cognisant of the following resolution supporting reunification of the West Bank and Jordan passed at the 8th meeting of the Palestinian National Council in February- March 1971:

“Jordan is linked to Palestine by a national relationship and a national unity forged by history and culture from the earliest times. The creation of one political entity in Transjordan and another in Palestine would have no basis either in legality or as to the elements universally accepted as fundamental to a political entity. .. In raising the slogan of the liberation of Palestine and presenting the problem of the Palestine revolution, it was not the intention of the Palestine revolution to separate the east of the River from the West, nor did it believe the struggle of the Palestinian people can be separated from the struggle of the masses in Jordan…”

This resolution - unlike the November 29 General Assembly resolution - still has relevance and meaning 41 years later for both Jordan and the PLO.

King Abdullah could do worse than reaffirm his agreement with this resolution and rebuff any attempts at confederation - making it clear at the same time that he is prepared to enter into negotiations with Israel to reunify the West Bank with Jordan and restore the status quo so far as is now possible since Jordan occupied the West Bank 45 years ago.

The Hashemites by their astute and diplomatic rule in Jordan for the last 93 years have preserved 78% of former Palestine as an exclusive Arab State in an area originally proposed by the League of Nations for the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home.

The peace treaty signed between Jordan and Israel in 1994 has survived intact despite, many occasions when Jordan may have been tempted to end it.This peace treaty already contains negotiating parameters for dealing with such thorny issues in the West Bank as water, refugees and Jerusalem.

Hopefully Israel and Jordan could successfully conclude negotiations where no one - Jew or Arab - would have to leave his present home or business in the West Bank.

Abbas’s provocation of both Israel and Hamas in approaching the United Nations has clearly backfired and his proposal to confederate with Jordan can only have further embarrassed and disaffected many countries that supported him.

In the upcoming diplomatic manoeuvring that is now being undertaken regarding the future of the West Bank there is no doubt that reunification with Jordan certainly trumps confederation.

PM: Jordan will not be a substitute homeland for Palestinians

[Published 26 February 2014]

Petra Jordan News Agency

Doha, Feb. 26 (Petra) -- Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour said that Jordan will not be a substitute homeland for the Palestinians, adding neither will the Palestinians give up their homeland nor will the Jordanians accept that.

Israel, Ensour said, is the only party that accepts such a position.

The prime minister made the remarks during the course of a lengthy interview with the Qatari Al Watan newspaper, conducted by its Director General, Ahmad Ali, and published today.

"We have to take all measures to ensure that Jordan does not become a substitute homeland for the Palestinians," he said, adding that the Kingdom will never accept that.

Regarding the children of Jordanian women married to foreigners, Ensour said that the issue of citizenship is not raised at all and that there are no differences when it comes to demands to grant them the right to education, work, owning property and freedom of travel and movement.

On possible unity between Jordan and the Palestinian state once it becomes independent, the prime minister said the majority of Jordanians and Palestinians believe that this issue should be discussed after the establishment of such an independent Palestinian state.

Ensour voiced the hope that the Palestinians would not surprise Jordan as they did when they signed the Oslo Accord in the past as "we have the issue of the refugees," and noted the presence of two million Palestinians in Jordan who have equal rights in any future Palestine in line with the international law, the UN resolutions and the resolutions of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

He pointed out that Jordan should be fully aware of all the details of the ongoing negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis regarding the final status issues, especially in relation to "Jerusalem, refugees, borders, water and security." Asked about the issue of Jordan's membership in the Gulf Cooperation Council, Ensour said not granting the Kingdom the full membership in the GCC was a historic mistake.

Palestine - Clinton Opens Up Alternatives To Two-State Solution

[Published 21 September 2010]


American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has publicly canvassed the possibility of considering alternative solutions on the future sovereignty of the West Bank as the current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to create a new Arab state between Israel and Jordan - the so called “two-state solution” - continue to go nowhere.

In an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour in Jerusalem this week the following interesting exchange took place:

QUESTION: Do you believe you’ve convinced some of the skeptics - for instance, the [Israeli] Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who you also spoke to - have you convinced him that this two-state solution, this process, is the right one?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I don’t claim to convince someone whose views are very different from that position. I think that he and many Israelis are quite skeptical, just as many Palestinians are quite skeptical. But I’d ask them, what’s the alternative; I mean, what is the alternative? You need, if you are worried about Israel’s future and security, to be living peacefully with a neighbor who has the same aspirations for normal life.

Many commentators such as MJ Rosenberg and Robert Grenier have suggested that the only alternative solution is the “one state bi-national solution” which would see Israel securing sovereignty in 100% of the West Bank in some negotiated bi-national agreement with its West Bank Arab population.

Both Rosenberg and Grenier are equally firm in their prognosis.

Rosenberg writes:

“The alternative, looming just beyond the horizon, is the so-called one state—or bi-national—solution in which Israelis and Palestinians share all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. How can it be more obvious? The alternative to two states is one state, which virtually all Palestinians would accept and virtually all Israelis reject”

Rosenberg’s own conclusion - that the Arabs would accept it and the Jews reject it - guarantees that such an alternative solution is dead in the water before it is even proposed.

Rosenberg offers no evidence to support his claim that virtually all the Palestinian Arabs will accept the one state bi-national alternative and so agree to abandon their 43 years old demand that a sovereign Palestinian Arab State be created for the first time ever in recorded history.

Rosenberg is on a trip to fantasyland.

Grenier’s pessimism in achieving the two state solution is succinctly expressed as follows:

“That the Israelis and Palestinians could reach agreement on a comprehensive two-state settlement under the current circumstances is hard to imagine. That they could actually implement such an agreement is impossible."

Grenier’s only alternative is also the one-state bi-national solution as he continues:

“The fact of the matter, however, is that the idea of a two-state solution in Palestine is finished. Israeli settlements in the West Bank and their attendant infrastructure have made a viable and independent Palestinian state impossible. The settlements, moreover, cannot be undone. Their existence obviates the need for formal Israeli annexation: The de-facto annexation of the West Bank has already taken place. The only remaining solution is a single, unified, bi-national state.”

The one-state bi-national alternative certainly will not dispel Clinton’s expressed concern for Israel’s future and security. It will become a demographic time bomb, a recipe for future conflict and an even more hopeless exercise to bring to fruition than the discredited two-state solution.

There is however another far more practical and readily achievable alternative solution to that suggested by Rosenberg and Grenier.

That solution involves the division of sovereignty of the West Bank between Israel and Jordan.

Separation of Arabs and Jews in Palestine - as far as is possible - has been the policy that has guided international diplomacy in the region since 1920. It has been sponsored by the League of Nations, the United Nations and several Commissions of Inquiry. It remains the policy currently favoured and supported by America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.

This policy - with one notable exception - has failed for one reason - Arab refusal to accept anything less than sovereignty in 100% of the territory available for allocation between Jews and Arabs.

That one exception was Arab acceptance of the League of Nations decision on 23 September 1922 denying the Jews any entitlement to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in 77% of Palestine - laying the groundwork for the creation of an exclusively Arab State there in 1946 that is today called Jordan.

It was not until 1948 that the Jews were able to create their own State in 17% of Palestine.

Sovereignty in the remaining 6% of Palestine - the West Bank and Gaza - is still up for grabs.

Although Jordan and Israel have fought several wars following the War of Independence in 1948 they have enjoyed a signed and sealed peace treaty between their respective states since 1994 - which has withstood many political and diplomatic pressures that could have heralded its demise.

Jordan indeed fits the Clinton mould of Israel “living peacefully with a neighbor who has the same aspirations for normal life.”

Presently stuck between their two respective States is the West Bank with a population of 2 million Arabs and 500000 Jews - whose territorial sovereignty remains undetermined.

Division of that sovereignty between Israel and Jordan resonates as a just and fair solution for the following reasons:

(i) It will restore Jordanian governance to the major part of the West Bank as existed from 1950 up to its loss to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967.
(ii) It will bring the overwhelming majority of its 2 million West Bank Arabs under Jordanian protection, free them from Israeli control and restore the freedom of movement and citizenship rights enjoyed by them between 1948 - 1967
(iii) Not one Jew or Arab will have to leave his present home or business in the West Bank
(iv) Issues presently seen as contentious such as water, refugees and Jerusalem have already been identified and proposed solutions flagged in the 1994 Treaty.
(v) Drawing the new international boundary between Israel and Jordan to end sovereignty claims by Jews and Arabs in the West Bank should be capable of being achieved within three months.
(vi) There will be a dramatic and immediate change in the current status quo which most agree is dangerous and untenable
(vii) Jordan is the only Arab partner that can honour and enforce any agreement on the West Bank that Israel is prepared to sign.
(viii) It will finalize the allocation of sovereignty of former Palestine between the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine.

Jordan cannot be allowed to simply reject such an alternative out of hand and seek to walk away from the looming conflict that must inevitably fill the void after the collapse of the two-state solution.

Jordan has been part of the problem surrounding the issue of sovereignty in the West Bank since 1920. It now is time for Jordan to step up to the plate and take responsibility for being part of the solution in 2010.

Goodbye Palestinian Authority - Welcome Jordan

[Published 30 June 2010]


The Palestinian Authority (PA) is likely to be wound up at the end of the year according to PA Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat - if no agreement is reached with Israel on the so called “two-state solution” - the creation of a new Arab state between Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

Mr Erekat made the threat at a meeting in New York on 25 June hosted by the International Peace Institute (IPI) - which also featured Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister - Dan Meridor.

Mr Erekat warned that if by the end of this year there was no two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Authority then Israel will “sweat.”

He explained that the Palestinian Authority was founded to establish the institutions for a Palestinian state, not to keep Israel as a source of authority forever.

“If Israel insists on maintaining control the Palestinian Authority cannot stand - it’s irrelevant,”

Mr Erekat’s statement was a direct rebuff to Mr Meridor who had earlier stated:

“I hope that if we can’t get a full agreement on the outstanding issues regarding Jerusalem, refugees, final borders and security, we will not let negotiations collapse but alongside that build up from what we have now - a good economic growth - over 8% growth last year in the West Bank and I hope more this year - and an absence of terror - into more steps towards a Palestinian State."”

The New York meeting added a new dimension to the past direct negotiations and the current proximity negotiations that one might call “in your face public negotiations” - when two of the most senior politicians from either side of the conflict traded blows for two hours.

The gaps between them were wide and obviously unbridgeable by next December - especially given the fractured relations between Hamas and the PA and the division of the West Bank and Gaza into two separately governed areas.

Mr Meridor claimed that the PA had had 288 meetings with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert following the Annapolis Conference in November 2007 and that no response had been received to the offer made to the PA by Israel.

Brandishing two maps Mr Erekat angrily responded that Israel’s offer of a land swap of 6.5% of the West Bank in exchange for an equal area from Israel’s sovereign territory had been met by a counter offer by the PA of a land swap equal to 1.9% on 30 July 2008.

Absent was any mention of their hopelessly polarised views on Jerusalem, refugees and water or what was going to happen to 500000 Jews who had been living in the West Bank for the last four decades.

IPI President - Terje Rod Larsen - who chaired the meeting - is a veteran of past negotiations between Israel and the PA that have failed to achieve the two state solution more than 17 years after the fanfare which greeted its introduction and projected conclusion by May 1999 following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

Mr Larsen came to wide international prominence as a key figure in the negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords that created the PA. In 1993, he was appointed Ambassador and Special Adviser for the Middle East Peace process to the Norwegian Foreign Minister, and the following year, he became the United Nations Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories at the rank of Under-Secretary-General. He served as the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Personal Representative of the Secretary-General to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority from 1999 to 2004.

His understanding of the hopelessness of ever reaching a two state solution was apparent in his remarks to both Mr Erekat and Mr Meridor - when he said that this New York meeting between them had come at a crucial time in the Middle East process and continued:

“Nearly two decades have passed and we are in dire need of new hope and new energy and creative solutions in order for negotiations to move forward.”

Mr Erekat’s lack of any creative solutions became apparent when he told the meeting:

“Israel has three options - a two-state solution, a single state including Jews and Palestinians, or a continuation of Israel’s racism and apartheid system in the West Bank where Arabs and Christians can’t use roads reserved only for Israelis.”

Notably missing was a fourth option - that Jordan and Israel negotiate to divide sovereignty of the West Bank between their respective States.

If the PA implodes the Jordanian option will become the only option that can have any possible chance of ending the current impasse.

Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994 that deals with settling all the contentious issues mentioned by Mr Meridor - but which the PA seems unable to contemplate or accept.

Reunification of the major Arab populated areas of the West Bank with Jordan - as existed between 1948-1967 - will transform the lives of the West Bank Arab population. They will use roads reserved only for Arabs and Christians - not Jews. They will have their dignity restored to that existing at 4 June 1967 - again becoming citizens of an exclusively Arab country - no longer under or subject to Israeli occupation.

Certainly any such negotiations between Jordan and Israel will not usher in any final end to the ongoing conflict between the Arabs and the Jews. But their successful conclusion will end the current plight of the West Bank Arabs who remain stateless and separated from their Arab brothers across the Jordan River.

Under such a solution no resident of the West Bank - be he Jew or Arab - would have to leave his home or business.

Hopefully the PA will indeed dissolve itself in December - which could open the way to Jordan becoming Israel’s negotiating partner on the future of the West Bank.

The Six Day War in 1967 between Jordan and Israel originated the problems that have befallen the Arab population of the West Bank since then. It would indeed be real justice if those two former combatants - now at peace with each other - were to became part of the solution in 2011.

Organizations such as the IPI do have a role to play in seeing Israel and Jordan come together to solve the problems of the West Bank.

Bringing Mr Erekat and Mr Meridor to the public stage may have been the catalyst towards bringing this creative solution a little nearer to fruition.

Mr Larsen may well have - unwittingly - achieved the beginning of the real breakthrough in the 130 years old conflict between Jews and Arabs that has managed to elude him for so many years.

European Union Finally Seeing Reality

[Published November 2009]

The veiled threat by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to approach the United Nations (UN) Security Council to seek its consent to the establishment of a new Arab state between Jordan, Israel and Egypt has received the short shrift it deserved from the European Union (EU).

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt whose country holds the European Union’s rotating Presidency said on 17 November 2009 in Brussels:

“I don’t think we are there yet. I would hope that we would be in a position to recognise a Palestinian state but there has to be one first, so I think it is somewhat premature.

The PA appears to have a totally misconceived notion of the UN as a body that can create states rather than give recognition to States once they have been established - for the purposes of admitting them to membership of the UN.

Mere declarations of statehood are insufficient to receive recognition by the UN and admission to membership.

Applicants seeking admission to the UN need to establish:

1. The borders of the new state
2. Complete and effective control within those borders

It is painstakingly obvious that the PA went way out on a limb when PA Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat declared:

“We have reached a decision to go to the UN Security Council to ask for recognition of an independent Palestinian state with Al-Quds as its capital within June-1967 borders. We are going to seek support from EU countries, Russia and other countries.”

The PA has no authority or control in Gaza and only has control of about 40% of the West Bank with Israel’s current consent.

The “June - 1967 borders” are not borders - only armistice lines agreed with Jordan and Egypt who occupied Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 until they were lost to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967.

The last recognized sovereign occupier of the West Bank and Gaza was Great Britain as Mandatory Authority under the Mandate for Palestine conferred on it by the now defunct League of Nations.

However the provisions of the Mandate in relation to the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Gaza and the West Bank “without prejudice to the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities” living there - still prevail today by virtue of Article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

As in the case of the PA‘s refusal to resume negotiations with Israel on the future sovereignty of the West Bank without preconditions, the current threatened approach to the UN appears to have been some public relations ploy to put pressure on Israel and keep the cause of a Palestinian State in the media spotlight.

It has in fact achieved the opposite result and blown up in the PA’s face.

The PA is clearly desperate and frustrated as it unsuccessfully pursues alternative diplomatic paths to keep the “two state” solution alive.

Negotiations have hit a brick wall as the PA refuses to change its negotiating stance of the last 16 years by even the slightest concession or admission that Israel also has claims at least as good as the PA to sovereignty in at least those parts of the West Bank in which Jews currently reside.

There are a few other home truths the PA seem to have ignored in its proposed UN tour de force:

* The Arabs were offered - and refused - a state by the UN in 1947 in 100% of the West Bank and Gaza plus additional land in what is now Israel.

* The Arabs could have created a state in 100% of the West Bank and Gaza between 1948-1967 when not one Jew lived there ( having all been driven out by the Arabs) and it was under complete Arab occupation and control - yet failed to do so.

* The current demand that Israel now cede 100% of the West Bank and Gaza in the current changed environment of the Middle East to give the PA what could have been achieved 40- 60 years ago is not going to happen.

* UN Security Council resolution 242 has made it clear that the 1967 armistice lines must be replaced by secure and recognized boundaries that ensure Israel’s safety and security.

* Negotiations involving PA territorial concessions in the West Bank to Israel is the only possible way forward. If the PA refuses to offer any such concessions then they can kiss goodbye to any new state being created. The opportunities existing between 1947-1967 will not be returning in 2009 or at any time thereafter.

* The 500000 Jews now living in the West Bank are legally entitled to do so by virtue of the legal rights conferred on them under the League of Nations and United Nations Charter.

* The PA rejected two Israeli proposals in 2000 and 2008 that would have seen the PA receive sovereignty in 90-100% of the West Bank or its territorial equivalent in area. This offer is unlikely to be renewed by the current Israeli government in the light of Israel’s invasion of Gaza in January, the subsequent Goldstone Commission Report and the continuing power struggle between Hamas and Fatah that threatens to divide the West bank and Gaza into warring fiefdoms for the hearts and minds of the Arab residents who live in both areas.

* If the territorial division of the West Bank cannot be agreed upon then discussion on more difficult issues like refugees, Jerusalem, water and demilitarization will be a complete waste of time.

Arab rejectionism for the last 62 years has come - and will continue to come - at a high price.

The Arabs have had 90 years to mature their views since the small territory of “Palestine” was slated for reconstitution of the Jewish National Home and severed from the other 99.99% of the land freed from the Ottoman Empire by the British and the French and designated for Arab self-determination.

The EU’s instant dismissal of the PA’s proposed approach to the UN serves as a warning notice to the PA to return to the negotiating table and be more flexible in its negotiations with Israel if it ever wants to see the two-state option achieved.

The EU has at long last injected some air of reality into the Middle East. Its about time it did.

Jordan's King Abdullah - The Ham In The Sandwich

[Published March 2007]

Jordan's King Abdullah is a desperate man judging by his historic speech to the United States Congress on 7 March 2007 - and with good reason.

The Road Map - designed to create a second Arab state in former Palestine, in addition to Jordan -has unfolded in total disarray.

The Road Map had begun as a vision of President George Bush on 24 June 2002. It was an answer to, and a rejection of, the Arab Peace Initiative endorsed by the Arab League in Beirut just three months earlier.

The detailed provisions of the Road Map were finally endorsed and launched in a blaze of publicity in April 2003 by the strongest negotiating team ever assembled in world history -America, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - affectionately dubbed the Quartet.

The Quartet's newly created State was to be born by 2005. But as of today, it is still only a twinkle in the eyes of its' sponsors and any prospects of conception, let alone its' birth, passed long ago.

On the face of it the Road Map was a sure fire winner. However its' failure to predict intransigent Arab negotiating positions was to prove its' downfall.

Only 6000 square kilometres of land known as the West Bank and Gaza was involved - an area about the size of Tokyo or Chicago.

Israel had already agreed to forego its' claims to at least 4000 square kilometres and possibly even more - depending on whose version you accept - in negotiations at Camp David presided over by President Clinton in 2000.

Surely all that was needed was a push and a shove, a tweak here and a tweak there, to divide the remaining 2000 square kilometres between the disputants thus ending what the Quartet seriously claimed to be the most intractable problem facing the world.

This has not occurred for two reasons - the Arabs wanted it all and they demanded that the 400000 Jews living there be thrown out.

Now King Abdullah has appeared before the US Congress to promote the Arab Peace Initiative as the way forward out of the Quartet's dilemma. But this Initiative demands precisely these very same unacceptable outcomes.

One must feel sorry for the predicament of King Abdullah being caught up as the unwilling filling in the Road Map - Arab Peace Initiative sandwich.

Arab unity demands he stand by the Arab Initiative and be seen to be one of its' major sponsors as the Arab world tries to rally international support for this totally flawed and outdated plan.

History and his heart should tell him something else - he needs to give the hapless Quartet the opportunity to re-route its' Road Map by announcing his readiness to negotiate the division of sovereignty of the West Bank between Jordan and Israel.

The reasons for this are compelling:

(i) Jordan was the last sovereign Arab occupier of the West Bank from 1948 -1967 during which time its' Arab residents were Jordanian citizens and subject to Jordanian law.

(ii) Such negotiations would conclude the division of the land contained in the Mandate for Palestine between the two successor States to the Mandate - Jordan and Israel.

(iii) The negotiations would take place within the parameters of the existing peace treaty signed by Israel and Jordan in 1994, where "deal breakers" such as refugees, Jerusalem and water have already been identified and solutions prescribed.

(iv) The negotiations could be concluded within a relatively short period of time based on the general principle that the heavily populated Arab areas would become part of Jordan whilst the heavily populated Jewish areas would become part of Israel

(v) No Arabs or Jews would be forced to leave their present homes. Where Jews or Arabs found themselves on the wrong side of the new border, they could be given the option of staying as citizens or being compensated if they wanted to move.

Jordan clearly does not have the strength to announce and enter into these negotiations of its own volition.

It needs the political, financial, and military support of the Quartet and the endorsement of the Arab League.

King Abdullah's plea to the Congress for "America's leadership in a peace process that delivers results not next year, not in five years, but this year" must be understood in the light of the choices now facing the Quartet, Jordan and the Arab League.

Following the Road Map in the direction of the Arab Peace Initiative can only lead to a dead end and guarantee many more years of death and suffering for the Jewish and Arab inhabitants in the region.

Dividing the West Bank between Jordan and Israel can open a new page in the Road Map that will answer His Majesty's emotional plea before the Congress for all people in the region to be allowed to live in peace and harmony.

Let us hope that the ingredients for the new peace sandwich will include lashings of encouragement and support by the Quartet and the Arab League for Jordan's central role in resolving the conflict.

If it doesn't, who will eat the stale sandwiches and who will be left to pick up the crumbs?