Geert Wilders, leader of a right-wing Dutch political party, is calling for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to be renamed "Palestine." (See also Melanie Philips' article from the Spectator.) In his view, this will solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as then the Palestinians will have a homeland to go to. Before you say, "Huh?," remember that until Winston Churchill cut off eastern Palestine from Jewish settlement and gave it to the Hashemite clan from Saudi Arabia, all of Mandate Palestine, (modern Jordan and Israel), was to be the Jewish homeland. Today, at least 70% of the Jordanian population is Palestinian. It is not Israel's fault that Jordan was given to the wrong people, and its security today should not be threatened because of this error.
Let me state it unequivocally: I support Geert Wilders' idea. For those who think this is untenable, I would submit that it is no more untenable than the notion that there can reasonably be an Israeli state, and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace, west of the Jordan River. Considering that, overall, the Palestinians have not yet accepted the notion of a Jewish state anywhere west of the Jordan (see their newspaper articles and television shows at MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch), and that a majority of Israelis (I being an exception) have accepted the notion of a Palestinian state in all of the Gaza Strip and in most of Judea and Samaria, the Two State Solution is no solution at all. Only one side has accepted this. There is no chance for this idea to be successful. Yet politicians from all sides maintain that this can happen in our time.
So why not try Geert Wilders' idea? We have had nearly seventeen years of trying to implement a Two State Solution west of the Jordan. Let's try a Two State Solution using both sides of the Jordan.
I,for one,still do not think this would work. Israel could try, but Palestinians do not want peace,..ever, They only want Israels demise.
ReplyDeleteBack during Mandate Palestine, the Jews wanted all of what was promised to them by the British - western Palestine. Then there was the 1947 Partition Plan. The Jews accepted it - something was better than nothing - while the Palestinians rejected it - anything for the Jews was too much. This is the crux of the issue here. If the Palestinians really wanted a a state, they could have had one many times. But you are correct, they just want Israel's destruction.
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