By David Singer ——Bio and Archives--August 8, 2023
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The possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia doing a peace deal rests on the shoulders of one man--Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS).
MBS has to clarify whether any peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia is dependent solely on a Palestinian State being created between Israel and Jordan--by answering this one question:
“Will Israel’s agreement to implement the 2022 Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine Solution (HKOPS) - rather than the 2002 Saudi Arabia-Arab Peace Initiative--enable you to commence negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to conclude a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia?”
If MBS answers “Yes”: An Israel-Saudi Arabia peace deal is highly possible. If MBS answers “No”: why is HKOPS unacceptable?
HKOPS is the revolutionary and circuit-breaking solution that burst onto the international stage on June 8, 2022. It calls for merger of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank into one territorial entity to be named the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine with its capital being located in Amman--not Jerusalem.
Authored by a confidante of MBS--Ali Shihabi--HKOPS was first published in the Saudi Government-controlled Al Arabiya News. The solution was amended shortly thereafter but surprisingly was not published in Al Arabiya News or any other Saudi news outlet.
Amazingly HKOPS has received virtually:
This international silence has been all the more difficult to comprehend since HKOPS:
MBS--and the leaders of the parties most affected by HKOPS--Jordan’s King Abdullah, PLO President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh--have not raised any objections to the implementation of HKOPS to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the 14 months since HKOPS publication.
Before anyone gets too carried away with the current discussions between Washington, Riyadh and Jerusalem--MBS needs to come clean and unambiguously confirm he will attempt to negotiate a peace deal with Netanyahu if Netanyahu agrees to implement HKOPS to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
MBS needs to take ownership of HKOPS to see the unresolved 100 years-old Jewish-Arab conflict finally ended.
Please join my Facebook Page: “Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine supporters”
Author’s note: The cartoon--commissioned exclusively for this article--is by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators--whose cartoons have graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.
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David Singer is an Australian Lawyer, a Foundation Member of the International Analyst Network and Convenor of Jordan is Palestine International—an organization calling for sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza to be allocated between Israel and Jordan as the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine. Previous articles written by him can be found at: jordanispalestine.blogspot.com