Backward reels the news — The Washington Times
Israel’s unspoken ulterior motive, which Jordan’s King Abdullah and ranking officials know all too well, is to make Jordan the Palestinian state, leaving what’s left of the West Bank as a sort of no-man’s-land buffer between the two countries. While Mr. Sharon was still prime minister, he suggested to King Abdullah he resume responsibility for the West Bank, which was Jordan’s mandate prior to the 1967 war.
King Abdullah understood, as his late father King Hussein did, this would be the first step in a geostrategic gambit to turn Jordan into a full-fledged Palestinian state.
Hamas also knows there’s no way Israel would accept this implied return to its pre-1967 war borders. But jihadists would see what’s left of the West Bank, with no land link to East Jerusalem, which most Palestinians see as their capital, becoming a base for terrorist activity against Israel and Jordan.
Nor will there be a land link between Gaza, with its 1.2 million Palestinians, and the West Bank with 2.4 million, under future Palestinian control. The Hashemite kingdom across the river, whose population is 65 percent Palestinian, would come under great pressure to allow free movement of Palestinians between the West Bank and Jordan.
Jordan is already reeling under the pressure of 1 million Iraqis who moved across the border in the three years since the U.S. invasion. Many are wealthy businessmen who made Saddam-authorized fortunes with the now-defunct oil-for-food rackets when the U.N. was in charge. Real estate prices are out reach even for comfortably off Jordanians. Palestinian extremist sympathizers of Hamas have been stoking the fires of Jordanian resentment.