I first read about the move-over-one theory of the neoconservatives in George Packer’s book Assassin’s Gate. We occupy Iraq and give it to the Jordanians, the Jordanians make room for the Palestinians, Israel slouches east from Bethlehem. It’s an imperialist stratagem if ever there was one; and they never give up this idea. (Even Tom Segev has endorsed it in the NY Review of Books.) Elliott Abrams lays out his vision for a two-state solution in the Weekly Standard. He says in essence that the Palestinians have sacrificed their right to anything through stupidity or resistance, there is no such thing as “1967 borders,” and Israel gets to hold on to huge chunks of the the West Bank and the Palestinians have to shift for Jordan. (And this religious nationalist worked in the White House? I’m more worried about the U.S. than Israel.) Abrams:
The second potential disaster is a Palestinian effort at the U.N. General Assembly in September, where the “State of Palestine” would be recognized on “1967 borders” and Israel’s presence in the West Bank would become the basis for a further expansion of boycotts, demonstrations, and delegitimization campaigns. These campaigns are well underway and especially in Western Europe would gain great strength from such U.N. action, it is argued….
It is impossible that the Quartet would endorse “1967 borders,” for Americans and even the Europeans understand this would put the Western Wall inside Palestine, an absurd result. The swaps formula is manageable: Israel should reply to it by saying, “Okay, then we all agree, just as President Bush said in 2004 there will be no return to the 1949 Armistice lines. We are glad to see the Quartet acknowledging this basic truth.”
But Israel should not be frozen in fear of a Palestinian declaration of independence or recognition at the U.N. and should in fact head it off. Perhaps the next country to recognize an independent Palestine should be Israel…
In the long run, it is difficult to see a secure Palestine without some link to Jordan, though it may take years to emerge. Whether that is in the end a “dual monarchy” arrangement—one king, two parliaments, two prime ministers, with the formal creation of a Jordanian-Palestinian entity—or a security deal allowing for a significant Jordanian role in trilateral security arrangements among Palestine, Israel, and the Hashemite Kingdom, remains to be seen, but no such options should be discarded.
