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March 29, 2024

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Saudi Arabia has sent US President Joe Biden and the United Nations (UN) a clear message to abandon the idea of creating a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan in an article published in Al-Arabiya News on 8 June headlined: The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine.

Its author – Ali Shihabi – is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill journalist. He supports and has the ear of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) – the controversial next successor to the Saudi throne.

MBS is the driving force behind NEOM – a brand new US $500 billion megacity to be built on 26500km in northern Saudi Arabia – an area larger than Israel – powered by 100% renewable energy. The project includes a bridge spanning the Red Sea – connecting NEOM to Africa. NEOM will be close to the borders of Jordan, Egypt, and Israel.

Shihabi has been a member of NEOM’s Advisory Board since 2020.

MBS has not sought to publicly distance himself from Shihabi’s article.

Al-Arabiya is 60% owned by the Saudi government. Nothing published in it can appear without the approval of the Saudi monarchy, which means the approval of the Kingdom’s de-facto ruler, MBS. Shihabi sits on the Advisory Board of NEOM, the gigantic, $500 billion megacity that MBS is building as his monument. He’s closer to MBS than any other journalist. What he writes can be assumed to reflect precisely the view of the Crown Prince.

Shihabi dismisses Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), and Jordan, claims to be separate entities:

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.”

Remember Zuheir Mohsen, the leader of the Palestinian terror group As-Saiqa? He’s the one who famously noted that the “Palestinian people” did not exist, but were invented by the Arabs for propagandistic reasons so that the Arab gang-up on little Israel could be presented as a war to defend the rights of the “Palestinian people” against the oppressive Zionists.

In a March 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, Mohsen stated that “between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of one people, the Arab nation […] Just for political reasons; we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons”.

Significantly Shihabi’s proposal does not call for Saudi Arabia to replace Jordan as Custodian of the Islamic Holy Sites in Jerusalem – a fear long-held by Jordan.

No doubt, MBS has decided to drop any Saudi attempt to share, with Jordan in the custodianship of the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, because he wants to keep Jordan on his side as he tries to promote his, and Ali Shilabi’s, insistence that Jordan must assume the politically challenging task of incorporating the Palestinian-ruled parts of the West Bank, and possibly Gaza, too, into an enlarged Jordan.

This Saudi concession should help embolden Jordan to begin negotiations with Israel on this Saudi Arabian initiative – which could see…

The two-state solution contemplated by article 6 of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the 1945 UN Charter finally brought to fruition.

Here I beg to differ with the Elder of Ziyon, at whose site the news about Shilabi’s article first appeared in English. Article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine does not mention any “two-state solution.” Read it here:

ART. 6.

The Administration of Palestine, while ensuring that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced, shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.

In fact, right up until late 1947, there was no suggestion by anyone that the territory “from the river to the sea” should be divided into two states. It was only on 29 November 1947 that the UN General Assembly voted for a Partition Plan, by 33 votes for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions, that would override the original provisions of the Palestine Mandate, and instead, divide the territory “between the river and the sea” between a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish side, desperate to have a state where hundreds of thousands of Jews who had somehow survived the Nazis could be taken in, accepted the UN plan for the establishment of two states. The Arabs rejected it, and five Arab armies launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish state. When the war ended, Egypt held Gaza and Jordan held the West Bank, but neither Arab state made a move to create a “Palestinian” state incorporating those two territories. Nor did any Arab state mention the “Palestinian people” until after the Six-Day War, when – as Zuheir Mohsen noted – it proved useful to invent that separate people and demand that the international community provide that “Palestinian people” with a state of their own.

Now the de facto ruler of the most important Arab state, speaking through his close friend Ali Shihabi, is denying that the “Palestinians” are a separate people; they are exactly like the Jordanians in language, religion, culture: “Jordanians and Palestinians are as similar as any people can be.”

The Jordanian state is built on 78% of the land that was originally supposed to be included in the territory assigned to the Mandate for Palestine, but the British, for their own reasons, turned into the Emirate of Transjordan, and handed the new state over to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah, as his consolation prize for not trying to seize Syria from the French.

The Crown Prince is no fan of the Palestinians. He’s tired of their constant litany of lament, their demands for more financial aid, their refusal to accept any of the generous territorial offers made by the Israelis, including Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, for a “two-state solution.” He has told Mahmoud Abbas, in exasperation, to “just take whatever deal the Americans offer you.” MBS knows — he can’t be fooled by his fellow Arabs, even if Westerners are taken in — that any separate state of “Palestine” that is created west of the Jordan River will not bring peace but will whet, rather than sate, Palestinian appetites. The determination of many Palestinians to destroy the state of Israel will only have been reinforced. But MBS wants quiet, not conflict, on his northwestern border, right across from where the NEOM megacity is now beginning to be built. He wants nothing to happen that might endanger the security of his project. He wants the Jordanians to enlarge their state to include the “Palestinians” now living in the PA-ruled parts of the West Bank.

It’s unclear what MBS would wish for Gaza. Perhaps he wants the Egyptians to again take control of Gaza, as they did between 1949 and 1967. And just as the Saudis have paid Egypt $25 billion for the transfer to the Kingdom of two islands, Tiran and Sanafir, in the Red Sea, MBS could pay much more if the Egyptians were willing to take on the task of incorporating Gaza into their state. But if Egypt refuses, then Gaza could become an exclave of Jordan, connected by a network of roads and tunnels that would be used exclusively by Arabs to travel to and from the Jordanian parts of the West Bank.

The “Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine.” That sounds good to you, and to me, and obviously to Ali Shihabi and, above all, to the Saudi Crown Prince. The idea has now been run up the flagpole of Al-Arabiya. We can hear the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in Ramallah, but so what? Let’s see who else, tired of the “Palestinian problem,” thinks the best solution has now been found.

Photo Credit: Issam Rimawi – Saudi Pundit Calls for Palestinian State in Jordan: Welcome to the ‘Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine.’

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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