“Ridiculous”: Jordan rebuffs ‘Israeli’ ministers’ statements on Palestinian-‘Israeli’ conflict

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi has rejected what he called “frankly ridiculous indications” by ‘Israeli’ ministers that the Palestinian issue could be resolved at the expense of Jordan.

Speaking during a media event by the Global Alliance for the Two-State Solution at the United Nations, Safadi said such suggestions were impossible and that Jordan would prevent them “with all our capabilities.”

He described recent statements by ‘Israeli’ government ministers as reflecting a “methodology of war” aimed at ending the two-state solution.

Safadi warned that ‘Israeli’ settlement expansion was proceeding at an unprecedented pace in both numbers and area, with the clear aim of eliminating any remaining chance of a two-state solution.

He singled out the planned E1 settlement project east of Jerusalem, noting that ‘Israel’ had already issued tenders for parts of it and was preparing new ones.

If built, he said, the settlement would sever the northern West Bank from the south and pose a major threat to the viability of a future Palestinian state.

He also cited rising settler violence, the displacement of more than 1,400 Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank through attacks and home demolitions, accelerating land confiscation, and assaults on Islamic and Christian holy sites.

These actions, he argued, form part of an effort to alter the historical and legal status quo at the holy places and risk igniting a religious war that “Israel can start, but that no one will be able to end.”

Safadi said the window for implementing the two-state solution was narrowing but had not yet closed.

Without collective international action to reverse the Israeli government’s “aggressiveness and expansionism,” he warned, there would be no two-state solution left to discuss, only a sustained and escalating conflict.

Jordan has long maintained that any resolution of the Palestinian-‘Israeli’ conflict must be based on the two-state solution along the 1967 lines and has consistently rejected proposals that would involve the displacement of Palestinians or treat Jordan as an alternative homeland.

The statements Safadi was responding to center on recent ‘Israeli’ political rhetoric suggesting solutions to the Palestinian issue that would force Palestinians out of the West Bank into Jordan.

Most recently, Avigdor Liberman, leader of the opposition Yisrael Beiteinu party (and former defense minister), in an interview with the right-wing B’Sheva podcast, called for an “Israeli-Jordanian confederation” in which Jordan would assume security and administrative control over Areas A and B of the West Bank (the areas currently under Palestinian Authority civil administration, with Israel retaining overall security in Area B).

‘Israel’ would keep full control of Area C.

Liberman argued that the Palestinian Authority is “bankrupt,” that a vacuum cannot be allowed (lest groups like Hamas fill it), and that Jordan has “no choice” because “the Palestinian issue is far more acute for Jordan than for the State of Israel” – as he claims.

He suggested Jordan could deploy its own forces or establish units under Jordanian command.

There are also other longer-standing “Jordan option” or “Jordan is Palestine” ideas in ‘Israeli’ right-wing discourse, which frame Jordan as the actual or alternative Palestinian homeland, rather than establishing a state in the West Bank and Gaza.

Jordan has consistently and firmly rejected any such ideas as a “red line,” insisting that the solution to the Palestinian issue must be a sovereign Palestinian state on Palestinian territory (the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines) and that “Jordan is for Jordanians, Palestine for Palestinians.”

King Abdullah II has repeatedly warned against displacement of Palestinians or any resolution at the expense of Jordan's sovereignty.