Pressure Jordan--not Israel--to end the Jewish-Arab conflict

Continuing pressure on Israel to agree to the creation of a Palestinian Arab state between Israel and Jordan (two-State solution) came with a Joint Statement issued on February 9, 2026 by the Foreign Ministers of the United Arab Emirates, the Republic of Türkiye, the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Republic of Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the State of Qatar.

Their Joint Statement:

“Stressed that the fulfillment of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination and statehood, based on the two-state solution in accordance with resolutions of international legitimacy and the Arab Peace Initiative, remains the only path to achieving just and comprehensive peace that ensures security and stability in the region.”

They are badly mistaken.

There is an alternative to the two-State solution--known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (HKOPS)--authored by Ali Shihabi--an advisor to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS).

HKOPS was first published in the Saudi Government-controlled Al Arabiya News on 8 June 2022 and secretly revised just eleven days later--calling for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into one new territorial entity to be ruled by Jordan’s current Hashemite ruler King Abdullah.

Shihabi’s rationalisation for implementing HKOPS--rather than pursuing the two-state solution--was justified by his following statement:

“Jordanians and Palestinians are as similar as any people can be. They are Sunni Arabs from the same neighbourhood. Merging them will not create any long-term ethnic or sectarian fault lines.”

HKOPS trashed the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy in force since 1982--and could not have been possibly published without the approval of MBS.

Yet Saudi Arabia has now joined in this Joint Statement--along with Egypt and Jordan with whom Israel has had peace treaties since 1979 and 1994 respectively and the United Arab Emirates which is a member of the Abraham Accords.

In January 2025 Shihabi attributed the failure of HKOPS being implemented as due to the Jordanians being shortsighted and getting very irritated with the proposal:

“A few years ago I wrote a paper where I called for a merger between Palestine and Jordan. It got the Jordanians very irritated but it’s really, I think, that Jordan is a country which has, you know, tremendous ties to Palestine and it has a decent government and a good infrastructure and it’s like merging two companies one with a good management team and one with no management team and I think that if you had merged Palestine and Jordan you would negate the excuse that Israelis have that there isn’t a credible government on the Palestinian side to rule it and Jordan which is a very stressed country economically could benefit from a larger population, more land, sea exposure on the Mediterranean with Gaza and a much more important geopolitical position, but I think the Jordanians are very shortsighted, they got very irritated when I wrote that paper and they are just trying to, they feel they want to try to hold on to what they have.”

Rather than vainly continuing to try bashing Israel into committing political suicide by having a hostile Palestinian State on its doorstep--seven of these eight Foreign Ministers would be better off calling on the eighth--Jordan--to implement HKOPS in direct negotiations with Israel.

Jordan’s short-sightedness and irritation fades into insignificance when compared to the deaths and permanent physical and mental injury already sustained by hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Jews because HKOPS remains unimplemented.

Please join my Facebook Page: “Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine supporters”

Author’s note: The cartoon was published in December 2023 by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators--who passed away on 14 April 2025 and whose cartoons graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades

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