Should Jordan be Palestine?

On Friday I wrote a post supporting the concept of establishing a Palestinian state in Jordan in place of the colonially empowered government of the Hashemite kingdom. This would correct the situation where the majority population is dictatorially ruled by the minority descendants of a foreign tribe.

And after all, even King al-Husayn said in 1981 that "Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan."

Reader Mohammad (presumably from Jordan) just commented on a post from July where we discussed how the Jordanian kingdom was not allowing religious Jews to visit their neighboring peace partner.

Both the Jordanian government and reader Mohammad explain that this decision to not allow in any one identifiably Jewish into their country is for our own safety, as Jews are simply not safe in Jordan.

This leads me to the question as to whether we should be supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state in Jordan.

Foreign policy in America has typically been to support dictators that would maintain positive relationships with the US (particularly where there was a national interest in maintaining that relationship), as opposed to a less oppressive government that wouldn’t necessarily maintain such a positive rapport.

But how did that really work out?

The foreign governments maintained strong ties with the US, but the citizens of many of those oppressed countries hate the US as a result of their supporting these despotic regimes – is it any wonder that Al Qaida sprung from the soil of Saudi Arabia?


On one hand, we have a peace treaty with the weak kingdom of Jordan, which hasn’t been in any position to physically attack us in a long time (and even quietly worked with Israel before the treaty, recognizing the benefits of such a relationship). The peace treaty changed very little on the ground other than Israelis can more openly travel to Petra than they used to (when Israeli would instead sneak over the border to visit), and we now have to give them a lot of water every year - and we can wave a paper that says we have peace with an Arab country.

On the other hand, we are supporting a despotic government which is oppressing its citizens.

But what would happen if there was a Palestinian state in Jordan?

Would the situation be better for us?

Not only would we have there a government controlled by an out-and-out enemy, but it would have the support of the local population (and hence easier access to weapons and terror).

There would hardly be reason to assume that a Palestinian state in Jordan would be much different than the Palestinian state currently in Gaza, or the other Palestinian state in our Administered Territories.

Both versions in Jordan would be working towards Israel’s destruction, instead of building their own society - and would have much better tools than now to achieve those goals.

So perhaps having a dictatorial government embedded across the river, keeping the enemy population in check is good for Israel.

The only conclusion it seems that can be reached here is that a Palestinian state is a bad idea all around, which leaves us with a solution that Moshe Feiglin was discussing last week…



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