Whoever knows Jordan, knows that its fate is tied to the Palestinians. It cannot abandon the open Palestinian wound and doesn’t even want to. The establishment of the two-state solution is in Jordan’s higher interest. Keeping the bleeding wound open makes worry a daily part of life in Jordan.
The fate of Jordan and the Palestinians are interlocked and cannot be broken. Whoever knows King Abdullah II knows that the two-state solution is a fixed article on the agenda of all the meetings he holds with guests and in his vast network of international relations.
Jordan believes the two-state solution is necessary to end the injustice the Palestinians have had to endure for centuries. It believes it is necessary for the stability of Jordan and to repel extremism. It believes that the two-state solution is a Palestinian, Jordanian, Arab and international need. The persistence of the conflict will keep the threat of instability alive. It forces involved countries to deplete their resources in helping ease or deepen their concerns.
Jordan believes that the two-state solution is a condition for building stability in a region that has been on edge since the establishment of the Jewish state. A Palestinian state will fortify the region against projects that rely on the Palestinian oppression in order to achieve agendas related to expanding influence or strengthening roles.
The truth is that the world committed a grave sin when it didn’t rush to douse the flames of the war on Gaza. By world, we mean major influential countries and others involved in the war. It was never a secret that the war on Gaza is bigger than Gaza and that leaving the war raging for nearly a year now only raises the risks in other regional arenas.
The war took on a more horrific turn when the Israeli army decided to uproot resistance hubs in the West Bank. The scenes of the open massacre underway in Gaza are fueling rage across the region. Whoever has followed past Israeli-Palestinian clashes is not at all surprised that the systematic killing and destruction is threatening to spark conflicts beyond Gaza.
The most dangerous aspect of the King Hussein bridge incident on Sunday that left three Israelis dead is that it took place while a reckless extremist Israeli government is in power. The government believes that the current confrontation must end with a knockout blow. Advocates of this position believe that Israel cannot accept a solution that could leave the possibility of a new war erupting in the future.
This is why Israel is trying to take Gaza out of the equation and turn it into a pile of rubble where life is not possible. It has turned to the West Bank to strike fear in its residents of the possibility that the horrors in Gaza could be replicated in their homes and villages so that Israel can impose a new status quo on the ground.
No less dangerous is the Israeli opposition’s inability to oust Benjamin Netanyahu whom it accuses of prolonging the war. This internal failure has been accompanied by an external one. Joe Biden’s administration has been incapable of reining in Netanyahu and of organizing a coup against him. Netanyahu is growing more extreme, and he is taking America along with him on the brink of a regional war that Washington has so far averted.
The Netanyahu government is acting as though the current war is an existential one and it believes the human and financial losses and harm to Israel’s international and regional relations are therefore justified. Netanyahu has managed to make Israel wage a long war, when it was used to waging short ones. He has effectively managed to embroil Israel in a multi-front war that has reached Yemen and Iran. It is an open war that included costly assassinations in Beirut and Tehran.
The incident on the King Hussein bridge took place amid this strained climate in Israel. Israel can exploit the incident to tighten its grip on the West Bank and isolate it even further as it continues to reel from the raids by Israeli tanks, drones and bulldozers.
We can say that the Netanyahu government viewed the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation as a declaration of war, not an attempt to pressure it to hold a prisoner swap. Since the operation, it has sought to highlight Iran’s role in the current confrontation in order to avoid dealing with the essence of the Palestinian conflict. It has framed the operation as an attempt to uproot the Israeli state by the Palestinians, with the backing of Iran and Hezbollah and all other members of the “Resistance Axis.” So, Israel decided to launch a war against the Palestinians, going beyond a response to or punishment for the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation.
Since the beginning of the destructive war on Gaza, Jordan has sounded the alarm on the danger of the spillover of the conflict in the region. It has coupled its warnings with its constant relief efforts and mounting condemnations of Israeli policies. Jordan sensed the rising danger as Israel moved its war on Gaza to war on the West Bank. Its concerns are not limited to fear over the displacement of West Bank residents, but extends to fear that Israel would impose new realities on the ground that would make the two-state solution impossible. This means eliminating the Palestinian cause and ending all hope, leaving open confrontation as the only available option.
Jordan is aware that it is being targeted. It has long resisted Israeli calls to resolve the Palestinian problem at its expense. It is being targeted because it shares the longest border with Israel. It is being targeted because it opted for moderation in its regional and international relations and because it firmly committed to the freedom of its decision-making away, shunning geographic and regional pressure, including from Iran.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Jordan’s stability is a Palestinian and Jordanian need alike. A stable Jordan will help end the oppression against the Palestinians. A stable Jordan is a pressing Arab need because the absence of this stability will create a major and dangerous imbalance in regional equations.
Jordan is an example of living amid dangers. Its realistic policies and constant maintenance of international relations have protected it, so has its united security institution that has been trained in living amid regional fires.
