Trump’s Israel-Palestine Deal to Pile Pressure on Jordan
- Trump’s Israel-Palestine Deal to Pile Pressure on Jordan
by RAY HANANIA, http://www.arabnews.com/
US President Donald Trump is due to unveil his much-hyped “deal of the century” plan for Israeli and Palestinian peace following the end of Ramadan next month. It is being shepherded by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is his special envoy to the Middle East, and by lawyer Jason Greenblatt.
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Although everyone is focused on how the peace plan seems set to destroy any hopes of a two-state solution — and while many Arab nations and the Palestinian leadership have already rejected it as biased and unworkable — the consequences of the proposal are expected to place Jordan in immediate political jeopardy.
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The Hashemite Kingdom was created at about the same time as Mandatory Palestine following the conclusion of the First World War. Israeli extremists often argue that “Jordan is Palestine” and point to it as the “true” two-state solution. This perception was aggravated by the 1947-48 Jewish militia drive to control Palestine, during which Israel was created. Since then, Israel has done everything to rebuff all efforts to satisfy Palestinians’ demands for civil rights and statehood.
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The wars of 1947-48 and 1967, as well as many other skirmishes, created a surge of Palestinian refugees who fled to neighboring Arab nations, with the largest groups ending up in Lebanon and Jordan.
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Of the estimated 5.5 million Palestinians in the global diaspora, about half live in Jordan, most with Jordanian citizenship and many still with refugee status. Jordan was the only nation to offer Palestinian refugees citizenship as part of its political agenda in the 1950s. It aimed to define itself as the caretaker of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both of which were lost to Israel in the Six-Day War of June 1967.
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A peace plan that fails to create two states will have drastic negative consequences, not just for Israel but for the region, including Jordan.
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