The Jordon solution in the West Bank

NY Times:

Inside a drab cellphone shop, set deep inside the sprawling Baqaa refugee camp on the outskirts of this city, Muhammad Khalil and his friends were as gloomy as the fluorescent lights that flickered on the ceiling.

“Everything has been ruined for us — we’ve been fighting for 60 years and nothing is left,” Mr. Khalil said, speaking of the Palestinian cause. Just weeks earlier, he might have been speaking enthusiastically to his friends here, in their usual hangout, about resistance, of fighting for his rights as a Palestinian and of one day returning to a Palestinian state.

Last Wednesday, however, he spoke of what he saw as a less satisfying goal for the Palestinians here and one that raises concerns for many other Jordanians: Palestinian union with Jordan.

“It would be better if Jordan ran things in Palestine, if King Abdullah could take control of the West Bank,” Mr. Khalil said, as his friends nodded. “The issue would be over if Jordan just took control.”

Even a few months ago, talk of some kind of Palestinian union with Jordan would have sounded quaint or even conspiratorial, 40 years after Jordan lost control of the West Bank in the 1967 war and nearly two decades after King Abdullah’s father, King Hussein, formally ceded administrative control of the territory to the Palestinians.

But as the Palestinian territories have been engulfed in turmoil, with Gaza and the West Bank now divided economically and politically, as well as physically, talk of a less ambitious, but no less delicate, federation between Jordan and the West Bank has begun rippling through many Jordanian and Palestinian circles.

Some Palestinians who have begun speaking of the subject see Jordan as a last resort to bring about security and stability to the West Bank and to prevent it from falling under the control of the militant Hamas faction, as Gaza has. Israeli officials who have spoken of the idea also say Jordan could help peace efforts by taking over security conditions — shorthand, many fear, for Jordan inheriting Israeli responsibility for security there. In any event, when Israel and the United States have spoken of a Palestinian state, they have talked of a demilitarized one, so some solution for Palestinian national security would be needed.

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Wars usually end when one side comes to believe that its goals are hopeless. At long last it appears that the Palestinians are realizing that reality. Jordon has shown itself to be a responsible state and a responsible partner for peace with Israel and Israel has actually helped Jordon in its fight against the Islamist religious bigots. It was Israeli intelligence that warned Jordon of the planned Palestinian coups which resulted in the Palestinians being chased out of the country. Israeli business have set up production facilities in Jordon. The Palestinians desperately need the kind of stability that Jordon can bring to the West Bank.