King Abdullah cannot exclude Jordan from any two-state solution

Zakaria: Dore Gold, an influential adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, recently said, Jordan needs to start thinking of itself as the Palestinian state. In other words, there is a two-state solution, the Palestinian state is Jordan, I think the implication would be, of course, you have 60-70 percent Palestinians, you could absorb the Palestinians in the West Bank. This has been touted before, but here you have a fairly influential Israeli saying it. What is your reaction? King: Well, again, that type of rhetoric is nothing new, and basically, those people have agendas that they want to do at the expense of others. Jordan is Jordan. We have a mixed society from different ethnic and religious backgrounds. I would maybe contest the percentage in the figures that you have mentioned, but it is our country. The Palestinians do not want to be in Jordan; they want their lands, they want their football team, they want their flag to fly above their houses." 

• "Jordan is Jordan", 
• "it is our country" and 
• "the Palestinians do not want to be in Jordan" 

• Jordan--then called Transjordan--comprised 78% of the territory of former Palestine designated in the 1920-1948 Mandate for Palestine (British Mandate).
• Transjordan only became an independent state in 1946 
• Abdullah's great-grandfather and Transjordan's first ruler--King Abdullah I--told a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on April 12,  1948:

  "Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country"

• Israel achieved its independence in May 1948 in 17% of the territory comprised in the British Mandate.  
• Transjordan was unified with Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem into one territorial entity and renamed Jordan in 1950 after Transjordan had conquered those areas in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War--which lasted until their loss to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. 
• Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem were designated "the West Bank of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" in the founding 1964 Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Charter--whilst regional sovereignty was not claimed by the PLO.
• The 1964 PLO Charter asserted that "Palestine with its boundaries at the time of the British Mandate is a regional indivisible unit."
• The revised 1968 PLO Charter confirmed that "Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit".
• Arab residents of Judea and Samaria were Jordanian citizens between 1950 and 1988
• Abdullah's uncle--Prince Hassan--told the Jordanian National Assembly on February 2, 1970:

  Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine, there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate"

• The PLO unsuccessfully tried to seize power in Jordan in 1970
• Prime PLO political strategist--Abu Iyad--declared in Near East Report on January 8, 1990:

  "All those who tried in the past and are still trying to create divisions between the  Jordanian and Palestinian people have failed. We indeed constitute one people"

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