Palestine - Abdullah’s plea is Obama’s poisoned tea

This proposed solution has been attempted and has failed, despite the most intensive efforts ever seen in international diplomacy over the last 16 years. Led initially by the United States between 1993-2003 and thereafter by the Quartet - the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations - this proposal has failed to achieve any breakthrough of even minimal proportions during the last 16 years.

It also failed when rejected by the Arabs in 1937 and 1947. It could have happened at any time between 1948-1967 but was never even contemplated or pursued by the Arab League.

This dead horse has well and truly become an artefact of history along with the “peace process” - and no amount of wishful thinking can bring it back to life. Events on the ground have made such a proposal impossible to achieve without massive human displacement and humanitarian suffering.

Three states - one Jewish and two Arab - in former Palestine - is not going to happen. To countenance that proposal would certainly invite possible claims to establish a second Jewish State in the West Bank or a third Arab State in Gaza. One can imagine the level of international support such proposals would receive.

The West Bank at the present time is no mans land - the Wild West of the Middle East - where no one exercises internationally recognised sovereignty.

However, a plan of negotiations that can resolve sovereignty and achieve concrete results within the framework of a two-state solution - one Jewish, one Arab - in former Palestine without necessitating one person leaving his current home should be encouraged and promoted as a welcome step in the right direction.

Jordan and Israel’s Peace Treaty signed in 1994 and their status as the Jewish and Arab successor States in Palestine provide the vehicle - and legal justification - for establishing such a plan of negotiations that can achieve results to end the “untenable status quo” in the West Bank by the simple expedient of redrawing the existing international boundary between Jordan and Israel.

In accordance with King Abdullah’s ideas, such a plan of negotiations can achieve concrete results quickly involving, as they would, face to face negotiations between these two key players and immediately adjoining neighbours in the region for the last 60 years.

Viewed as a border dispute between two peaceful neighbours, the resolution of the current conflict takes on an entirely different perspective.

Perhaps creative American leadership - involving offers of diplomatic, military and financial assistance - can encourage such negotiations being undertaken between Jordan and Israel.

But America would do well to leave the conduct of any such negotiations to the chairmanship of someone else like the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

America needs some time out from the tortuous peace processes that have engaged successive American Presidents with very little to show except for egg on their faces.