Trump & Bin Salman: opt for the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine

In a remarkable about face – Ali Shihabi – an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – has abandoned his 2020 plan calling for a new political entity comprising Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) to be created and named The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine (HKOPS).

Writing in the Washington Post on 17 June (before America's attack on Iran's nuclear facilities on 22 June) – Shihabi opined:

The world should wait no longer to formally recognize the State of Palestine. This is not about sentiment or symbolism. It is about urgent, necessary action to rescue a peace process on life support. Recognition is a critical diplomatic tool to shift a stagnant and increasingly dangerous status quo.

Shihabi concluded:

Recognizing a Palestinian state is the last peaceful card the world has left to play. It must be played - before the entire table collapses.

Shihabi is spouting utter nonsense.

HKOPS - with predetermined outcomes clearly enunciated in Shihabi's proposal – trumps the "Palestinian state peaceful card" – pursued unsuccessfully by the United Nations for the last 58 years.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has deliberately buried any mention of HKOPS at the United Nations as an alternative solution to creating an independent State of Palestine between Israel and Jordan for the first time in recorded history.

The revolutionary features of HKOPS were listedin an article I wrote in collaboration with Shihabi in August 2022:

• HKOPS would supersede two previous Saudi peace proposals in 1981 and 2002 calling for Israel to withdraw completely from the West Bank
• The two-state solution - the creation of a separate Palestinian Arab State between Jordan and Israel pursued unsuccessfully by the United Nations under the Oslo Accords for the previous 29 years – would be consigned to the diplomatic graveyard
• Amman, not Jerusalem, would be the capital of The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine
• The right of return to Israel would be abandoned
• Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and stateless refugees would get full citizenship in the merged Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine with all the elements of sovereignty applicable to those Territories that belonging to a fully recognized state in the UN entail

A real window of opportunity to end more than 100 years of conflict between Arabs and Jews has now arrived with the degrading and humiliation of Iran and its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis over the last 630 days of warfare.