Biden opens UN door to Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution

President Biden has seemingly indicated that he is now prepared to consider backing the normalization of relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia--if both acknowledge they favour implementing any solution--other than Biden’s preferred two-state solution--to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This breakthrough came when Biden stated:

“There are a number of types of two-state solutions. There’s a number of countries that are members of the U.N. that are still--don’t have their own militaries. Number of states that have limitations. And so I think there’s ways in which this could work.”

Previous to this statement--Biden had embraced only one two-state solution--that proposed by the United Nations in Security Council Resolution 2334 on December 23, 2016 calling for the creation of a Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan.

Resolution 2334 had only been adopted because the outgoing Obama-Biden US administration had abstained--rather than vetoed--Resolution 2334.

Then Secretary of State--John Kerry--had explained the reasons for the Obama-Biden abstention:

“... the vote in the United Nations was about preserving the two-state solution. That’s what we were standing up for: Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, living side by side in peace and security with its neighbors. That’s what we are trying to preserve for our sake and for theirs...

... Today, there are a number--there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state, or they can separate into two states.”

On June, 8 2022 the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (HKOPS) came onto the international stage--proposing a radical solution that trashed the two-state solution espoused by Resolution 2334--calling instead for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank into one single territorial entity to be called “The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine”

HKOPS author--Ali Shihabi--an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman--subsequently approved an article written by me--before its publication on August 14, 2022--stating HKOPS:

• “would supersede two previous Saudi peace proposals in 1981 and 2002 calling for Israel to withdraw completely from the West Bank
• The two-state solution--the creation of a separate Palestinian Arab State between Jordan and Israel promoted unsuccessfully by the United Nations for the last 29 years--is consigned to the diplomatic graveyard
• Amman, not Jerusalem, will be the capital of The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine
• The right of return to Israel is abandoned.
• Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and stateless refugees get full citizenship in the merged Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine with all the elements of sovereignty applicable to those Territories that belonging to a fully recognized state in the UN entail.”

The Security Council--and President Biden--have not mentioned HKOPS as a possible replacement for Resolution 2334 in the 19 months since HKOPS publication.

Biden’s latest statement has now opened the door to HKOPS being discussed at the United Nations as a possible solution to ending a conflict which threatens to rapidly escalate and career out of control in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Iran--following Gaza’s invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing still-unresolved Israel-Gaza War.

Implementing HKOPS--without including Gaza--would offer Gaza’s residents the choice of voluntarily moving from Gaza and resettling in the newly-created Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine created by the merger of Jordan and part of the West Bank.

The Security Council needs to urgently consider HKOPS to replace its own 2016 failed two-state solution.

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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