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The Return of the Jordan Option For Palestine

Geoffrey Aronson writes on the emergence in Jordan of the view that Palestine is Jordan.
Vehicles drive towards the Allenby Bridge Crossing July 9, 2009. Israel said on Wednesday it would allow the crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan to remain open 24 hours a day to help the Palestinian economy. The Israeli-controlled terminal leading to the Allenby Bridge across the Jordan River is the West Bank's only land link to the Arab world.  REUTERS/Ammar Awad (WEST BANK POLITICS TRANSPORT) - RTR25HIM

A recent visitor to Amman reports some senior Jordanians declaring openly that “there never was a place called Palestine. There is no such thing as Palestine, only Jordan.” Such sentiments, while still a minority view, mark a sea change in the long-standing Jordanian deference to the PLO on developments west of the Jordan River. According to one Palestinian, such views are being encouraged by some voices in Fatah, who fear Hamas' baton more than Amman's reluctant embrace, and who no doubt believe, as many veterans in Fatah do, that all it will take to turn Jordan into Palestine is a Palestinian decision to do so.

“Jordan is Palestine” is the mirror image of  “Palestine is Jordan." Jordanians identified with the latter are not contemplating a confederal agreement between respective Jordanian and and Palestinian states, but rather the restoration of Jordan's uncontested place in Jerusalem and the West Bank on the eve of the June 1967 war.

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