Jordan’s King Abdullah II on Sunday urged the US to give its “undivided attention” to set the tone for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, warning that if the two-state solution became unviable, the Middle East would be doomed to many decades of instability.
“We are waiting for the US to give us undivided attention on this issue,” the king told CNN in an exclusive interview. “If we don’t get a clear mandate over the next month or so, I’m not convinced we will be able to move forward.”
Abdullah stressed that people on both sides were becoming “disheartened and unconvinced,” and urged the US to press forward to ensure that the two-state solution be implemented.
“Sooner or later there’s an invisible line in the sand that we will cross that will be clear to everyone whether the viability of a two-state solution is there, and I hope we haven’t crossed that yet. When we cross that line, God forbid, the Middle East will be doomed to many decades of instability,” Jordan’s king warned.
“The overwhelming majority of Israelis and Palestinians want a two-state solution as soon as possible... The problem is getting past the politicians to the people... The Israelis are so disheartened that they don’t believe this is going to happen,” Abdullah said.
“Our challenge and the international community’s challenge is reaching out to the Israeli public and saying – Do you want to continue being ‘Fortress Israel’? We want a two-state solution so that you can be accepted into the neighborhood,” Abdullah said.
The king rejected proposals that Jordan annex the West Bank or serve as the Palestinian state, saying that “that is never going to work.”
The two-state solution is the only option out there, Abdullah said,
stressing that “Jordan absolutely does not want anything to do with the
West Bank, the Palestinians don’t want us replacing Israel, they want
their own state. Trying to make Jordan Palestine does not make any
sense to me.”
When asked whether the issue of Iran was not, in fact, the central
cause of instability in the region, the Jordanian monarch explained
that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would help solve the
conflict with Iran.
Iran and al-Qaida had both recently announced their support of the
Palestinian cause, and “it is the injustice felt towards the
Palestinians that allows state actors and non-state actors to take the
role of the defenders of Palestine,” Abdullah said.