Biden must champion the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution
Israel’s elimination of 16 Hamas and Hezbollah leaders since 7 October 2023 has paved the way for President Biden to achieve what no other American President has accomplished: A Roadmap to finally end the unresolved 100 years-old conflict between Arabs and Jews.
To assure his place in history Biden has to:
- Abandon his demand that an independent Palestinian state be created between Israel and Jordan (a two-state solution) and
- Call for the commencement of negotiations between Israel and Jordan to create a new territorial entity comprising Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) – by implementing the Saudi-based Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (HKOPS) published on 8 June 2022 in the Saudi Government-controlled Al-Arabiya News.
Ample precedent exists in the history of this long-running conflict recording statements made by past and present Arab and Jewish leaders justifying Biden abandoning his failed two-state solution:
- Israel’s current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who told the United Nations on 11 December 1984:
Clearly, in Eastern and Western Palestine, there are only two peoples, the Arabs and the Jews. Just as clearly, there are only two states in that area, Jordan and Israel. The Arab State of Jordan… does not allow a single Jew to live there… It also contains 4/5 of the territory originally allocated by this body’s predecessor, the League of Nations, for the Jewish National Home. The other State, Israel … contains less than 1/5 of the territory originally allocated to the Jews under the Mandate…. It cannot be said, therefore, that the Arabs of Palestine are lacking a state of their own. The demand for a second Palestinian Arab State in Western Palestine, and a 22nd Arab State in the world, is merely the latest attempt to push Israel back into the hopelessly vulnerable armistice lines of 1949.
- Israel’s former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin who told the Australian newspaper on 27 May 1985:
One tiny State between Israel and Jordan will solve nothing. It will be a time bomb. The Palestinians should have a sovereign State which includes most of the Palestinians. It should be Jordan with a considerable part of the West Bank and Gaza. East of the Jordan River there is enough room to settle the Palestinian refugees
- PLO Leader Yasser Arafat who told the New York Review of Books on 25 June 1987:
Jordan and Palestine until 1945 were one state actually. After the Second World War Churchill himself said “This is Transjordan, and this is Palestine” Before that [Jordan] was an emirate, completely part of Palestine
- King Hussein of Jordan in 2017, wrote in Uneasy Lies the Head page 118:
Palestine and Jordan were both under British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs, they were hardly separate countries. Trans-Jordan being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine.
- Israel’s Knesset declaring 69-0 on 18 July 2024:
“The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region,”
Biden’s championing of HKOPS would trigger the following events before Biden vacates the White House on 19 January 2025:
- A new US strategic deal with Saudi Arabia — including a civil nuclear program, advanced arms and much deeper security ties – which reportedly could be wrapped up in a matter of weeks
- Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel
- Negotiations commenced between Israel and Jordan to implement HKOPS but not necessarily being concluded
Biden’s rendezvous with history has arrived.
Please join my Facebook Page: “Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine supporters”
Author’s note: The cartoon — commissioned exclusively by the author — is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators — whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades
