By David Singer ——Bio and Archives--December 19, 2023
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The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (HKOPS) is shaping up as the only solution capable of providing the besieged population of Gaza with a better future after the Israel-Gaza war ends.
Published in the Saudi Government-controlled Al-Arabiya News on June 8, 2022 and authored by Ali Shihabi--an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman--HKOPS proposes:
HKOPS shreds the Saudi-inspired 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and United Nations 2016 Security Council Resolution 2334 which both call for the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab state between Israel and Jordan--when it asserts:
“Jordanians and Palestinians are as similar as any people can be. They are Sunni Arabs from the same neighborhood. Merging them will not create any long-term ethnic or sectarian fault lines.”
The Security Council’s failure between June 8, 2022 and October 7, 2023:
was incomprehensible.
So too was the complete silence of:
Jordan’s King Abdullah and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas have not voiced their opposition to HKOPS in the 18 months since its publication.
King Abdullah recently referred to Gaza and the West Bank as “an extension of a unified Palestinian state.”
Israel however will never allow Gaza to form part of any such unified Palestinian state after the horrific events of October 7.
King Abdullah will be relieved.
Israel won’t be withdrawing from Gaza for a considerable period of time after the Israel-Gaza war has ended--if ever--having seen:
Where does that leave Gaza’s population post-war?
HKOPS provides the answer:
“The Palestinian problem can only be solved today if it is redefined. The issue in this day and age for people should be not so much the ownership of ancestral land but more the critical need to have a legal identity--a globally respected citizenship that allows a person to operate in the modern world. Labor in this day and age is mobile and having citizenship in a country that facilitates such mobility is critical to human development.”
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Citizenship and voluntary resettlement of Gazans in the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine is the alternative choice HKOPS offers Gazans--rather than continuing to live in Gaza stateless and under Israeli occupation.
Implementing HKOPS--excluding Gaza--will involve Israel and Jordan:
The West Bank Arab population living within the newly-created Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine will also no longer be stateless and won’t have to leave their current homes.
The Security Council needs to:
Two giant steps that could end the Jewish-Arab conflict between the River and the Sea.
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