Jordan and Egypt are the only two nations in the region that have signed peace treaties with Israel. According to the monarch:
If the policy is to annex the West Bank, then that is going to have a major impact on the Israeli-Jordanian relationship and also in the Egyptian-Israeli relationship, because we are the only two Arab countries that have peace with Israel....If there is a box that is being ticked on a certain government getting everything that it wants, without giving anything in return, what is the future? Where are we going to go unless we are going to be able to get Israelis and Palestinians to come together, to live together, and be the message for the future?
Abdullah, of all people, should know what happens when the PA (then known as the PLO) is entrenched in a country. He was but an eight-year old child when the Palestinian terrorists that fled to Jordan after Israel’s rebirth tried to overthrow his father, King Hussein. The ensuing battles that raged between September 16 and 27, 1970, came to be known as “Black September.” Perhaps the reigning monarch has not heard of philosopher George Santayana and his statement: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Jordan lost control of the West Bank during the Six-day War in 1967. Afterward, Palestinian fedayeen fighters moved into Jordan. By late 1970, the terrorists embedded within the population began to plot the overthrow of the Hashemite monarch. The PLO began to totally disregard the laws of the land. According to author Avi Shlaim:
[PLO Fedayeen] drove noisily around Amman in jeeps with loaded weapons, like an army of occupation...they disregarded routine traffic regulations,...and refused to stop at army checkpoints....Their very presence in Amman, far from the battlefield, seemed like a challenge to the regime.
Ultimately, the PLO was forcefully driven into Southern Lebanon. Its presence precipitated the Lebanon Civil War which led to Arafat and his cronies being banished to Tunisia.
Andrea Mitchell, in her opening question of the interview, seemed to excuse the Palestinians of all responsibility for the current state of affairs between them and Israel: “The Palestinians have been shut out of the process. Jerusalem is now the capital – no longer a negotiating point for a final solution. So where do we stand now, given how supportive the US has been of Netanyahu’s policies, and this has shut out the Palestinians from any role in diplomacy?”
Does Benjamin Netanyahu knows something that we do not know ? What if Major PARTs of Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan valley are in the deal of the century?
Mike Evans is a #1 New York Times bestselling author with 96 published books. He is the founder of Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem of which the late President Shimon Peres, Israel’s ninth president, was the chair. He also serves on the Trump Evangelical Faith Initiative.