When all the wild, desperate, improbable solutions to a problem have been exhausted, there is nothing left to turn to but the obvious. In respect to the Arab-Israel conflict the “obvious” has been staring us in the face for over 40 years. Encapsulated in the mantra “Two States for Two Peoples on Two Banks of the Jordan River,” it has the distinction of being the most ignored testament to rationality and common sense in the history of international diplomacy.
An “invented” nation the so-called Palestinians surely are, but given the world’s acceptance of their claim to sovereignty, it is on the shoulders of the world, not Israel’s, that the realization of that aspiration rests.
Indeed, if it’s solely a “National Home” for which the so-called Palestinian yearn , rather than the liquidation of the Jewish National Home, such an abode – fully furnished – already exists east of the Jordan River. “Jordan” it may be called, but encompassing 77 percent of Biblical Israel expropriated by the British and handed over to a Hashemite desert potentate, it is a “Palestinian State” in the purest post-Biblical sense of the term. That this de facto “Palestinian State,” with its 70 percent “Palestinian” majority, should be allowed to stand on the sidelines, exempt from any material obligation toward its compatriots, boggles the mind.
Gratuitous advice can no longer be accepted as currency for Jordan King Abdullah’s unsettled debt of responsibility for the “ingathering” of his Palestinian “Diaspora.” Nor can further attempts to shift the burden to Israel be accepted. Having made the “Palestinian “ issue the fulcrum of its Middle East policy, the United States should be bringing every material and diplomatic resource at its disposal to the aid of its favorite king in the fulfillment of his national duty. It might even be worth the inception of a modern-day “Marshall Plan” to finance the resettlement of the “Palestinian Arabs” to their “homeland” east of the Jordan River.
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