Mindful, et al,
I apologize for not getting back to this sooner, but I wanted first to hear what other contributors had to say.
King Abdullah’s Flawed Ploy
During his recent visit to Washington to meet with President Obama, King Abdullah II of Jordan was interviewed on “CBS This Morning.” Displaying his keen sense of the terrible neighborhood in which his kingdom is embedded, he identified the war against ISIS jihadi terrorists as “clearly a fight between good and evil.”
The King chose not to mention that Palestinians have rejected every two-state solution since 1937, when the British Peel Commission proposed the second partition of Palestine. The first came fifteen years earlier, when British Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill lopped off three-quarters of Mandatory Palestine as a gift to Abdullah’s great-grandfather for his wartime loyalty to the Allied cause. But unwilling to tolerate a Jewish state of any size in their midst, Arab leaders rejected the Peel proposal, the UN partition plan that followed a decade later, and even the dangerously generous two-state offers, involving huge Israeli land concessions, offered by Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert.
King Abdullah also chose (understandably) to ignore the demographic reality in Jordan, which poses a significant threat to the stability of his own regime. For obvious reasons, his kingdom provides no official census data about its Palestinian inhabitants. Best estimates (including by the U.S. State Department) indicate that they comprise more than half, and perhaps as high as two-thirds, of the Jordanian population.
In sum: the Hashemite king rules over a majority Palestinian population in two-thirds of Palestine. In translation: the Palestinians already have a state named Jordan, located in Palestine, and comprise a majority of its population. That is as it should be: the fulfillment of international assurances to Jews, and British promises to the Hashemites, that date back nearly a century.
King Abdullah s Flawed Ploy Jewish Israel News Algemeiner.com
(COMMENT)
I think His Majesty
(King Abdullah II, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) is one of the most eloquent speakers on the issues of the day in the Middle East. And I think that we need to listen to his words in more that just "sound-bite" fashion.
Yes, clearly --- His Majesty does not just say that it is "a fight between good and evil," but that it is a "generational fight." He makes it plain that it is a Muslim problem --- and that the Muslim countries and leadership must take ownership problem --- draw a line in the sand --- "and that those that believe in right must stand on this side --- and those that don't have to make a decision to stand on the other." That the concepts and foundation of the IS
[Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)] is not "reflection of our religion" --- and that "we must stand up and say what is right and what is wrong." It is not just IS that is the problem and "evil", but that IS is part of a wider global "Jihadist Movement;" and that a "strategic holistic approach" (Pan-Regional Approach) is required. That while there are many different elements that make-up the global "Jihadist Movement" (HM mentions the Sinai, Libya, Somalia, Mali, Nigeria, and Yemen), which have Jihadist of different names --- but very similar, if not the same, beliefs. (MY INSERT: Remembering that HAMAS is a Jihadist Organization and in close association with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.) This is connected directly to the problem of "foreign fighters" flocking to IS (Syria and Iraq Region) from all over the world.
His Majesty indicated that the door is not closed on the Israeli-Palestinian Issue, and that the talks have not failed "YET!"... But that there is a necessity to move the Israeli-Palestinian issues forward since there is the bigger issue to be addressed of the --- global Jihadist movement that needs attention. The "one-arm tied behind their back" was made in the context that the world doesn't want to be addressing both the "Israeli-Palestinian Issue" with one hand --- while struggling with the "global Jihadist movement" with the other. It was not a comment that attempted to assign blame for the lack of a solution.
Most Respectfully,
R
