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Abdullah abdicates rationality on West Bank nationality

By David Singer - posted Wednesday, 24 February 2010


On December 1, 1948 the Palestinian National Conference in Jericho decided to place the West Bank under the sovereignty of Transjordan, which in 1949 then changed its name to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

On April 11, 1950 elections were held for a new Jordanian Parliament in which the West Bank Arabs were equally represented.

On April 24, 1950 the Parliament unanimously passed the following resolution:

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In the expression of the people's faith in the efforts spent by His Majesty, Abdullah, toward attainment of natural aspirations, and basing itself on the right of self-determination and on the existing de facto position between Jordan and Palestine and their national, natural and geographic unity and their common interests and living space, Parliament, which represents both sides of the Jordan, resolves this day and declares:

First, its support for complete unity between the two sides of the Jordan and their union into one State, which is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, at whose head reigns King Abdullah Ibn al Husain, on a basis of constitutional representative government and equality of the rights and duties of all citizens …

Only Great Britain and Pakistan recognised this unification but it continued to exist uninterrupted until 1967 when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six Day War. The opportunity to create a separate state by West Bank Arabs was not sought during those 19 years.

The relevance of these historic, geographic and demographic facts becomes very apparent when looking to solutions to allocate sovereignty in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 2010.

Jordan’s current ruler - King Abdullah - in a recent interview asserted:

There are pushes by certain elements of the Israeli government to say Jordan takes a role in the West Bank. That is never going to work and we have to be very clear that Jordan absolutely does not want to have anything to do with the West Bank.

All we will be doing is replacing Israeli military with Jordanian military. The Palestinians do not want that. They want to have their own statehood.

And again, what type of West Bank are we talking about? We are talking about a viable entity. What I think these people are offering to try and pull Jordan in is really nothing that would create enough statehood or make the Palestinians feel that they have something that’s called their home. So Jordan - I’m on the record; we’ve said this so many times - we will not have any role in the West Bank.

King Abdullah is deluding himself in seeking to believe his re-entry to the West Bank would merely involve replacing the Israeli Army with the Jordanian army.

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As easily as:

  • his great-grandfather, Abdullah, was able to unify the West Bank and the East Bank and make West Bank Arabs Jordanian citizens; and
  • his father, Hussein, was able to sever the West Bank from Jordan and make the West Bank Arabs “stateless Palestinians”.

So Abdullah can once again as easily re-unify the West Bank with the East Bank, free the stateless Palestinians from Israeli occupation and make them once again Jordanian citizens.

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About the Author

David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International - an organisation calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Previous articles written by him can be found at www.jordanispalestine.blogspot.com.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by David Singer

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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