The Jordanian Condominium by Amiel Ungar September 2009 The Fatah Congress has come and gone, marked by generational change but dogged by ideological persistence. Fatah's second-generation hard men Muhammad Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and Tawfik Tirawi have ascended to the leadership. These are people who turned their control over the hydra-headed Palestinian security apparatus into lucrative protection rackets. Dahlan, when he controlled Gaza as head of the Preventive Security Forces, received a rake off on every bag of cement that entered the strip. Israel invested great hope in these strongmen, who, following Yitzhak Rabin's faulty logic, would assist Arafat in stamping out terror without the inconveniences posed by the courts and human rights organizations. They did nothing of the sort as they learned from Arafat, the master, how to navigate between "statesman" by day and terrorist by night. Even as strongmen they failed - witness Hamas's swift takeover of Gaza. The rhetoric emanating from the Fatah congress sought to compete with Hamas in lauding the resistance option and insisting that all refugees would return to Israel, thereby assuring its liquidation. Peace processers are undaunted by such realities, while for the U.S. administration under Obama increased radicalism only provides added incentive for engagement. Some would argue that a sham peace process is better than no process at all and the alternative to Fatah is Hamas. But if both groups embrace the identical goal, albeit with slightly different rhetoric, we need a new alternative. The traditional reply by leftist liberals to charges that they are in denial is to demand that their critics supply an alternative other than interminable conflict. One can adequately parry that protracted war, however grim, still trumps self-assisted liquidation. However, I will not attempt to evade the issue. The best prospects for a long-term interim solution hark back to the original Palestine Mandate promised by Britain to the Jews that comprised what is today Israel, Jordan, Gaza and Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the West Bank). Jordan was a consolation prize to the Emir Abdullah (the current king's great-grandfather), Britain's client, for his father Hussein's ejection from the Hijaz by the Saudis, and the award of Syria to France rather than to his brother Faisal (who received Iraq in return). Let me clarify immediately that, as opposed to the Jordan-is-Palestine approach, calling for moving the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria to Jordan, I recommend joint Israeli-Jordanian sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, i.e., a condominium. Israel and Jordan will be areas of exclusive Jewish and Arab sovereignty. Judea and Samaria will be jointly administered, allowing Jewish settlement in proportion to the Arab population of Israel. Jews will vote for the Knesset in Jerusalem. Arabs will vote for the parliament in Amman. As part of an annual charade, the reigning Jordanian monarch visits Washington to threaten imminent apocalypse if a Palestinian state is not established forthwith. Take this with an entire cellar of salt. The last regime interested in a Palestinian state is Jordan as Jordan is just as much irredenta for the Palestinians as Israel. Jordan has a Palestinian majority and all major positions from prime minister to queen have beenoccasionally filled by Palestinians with two exceptions - king and intelligence minister. Family and commercial ties between Judea and Samaria and Jordan are far stronger than with Gaza. Until Arab pressure forced Jordan to withdraw from the scene, Abdullah's predecessors fought to maintain Jordanian influence. It was not the Israeli right but Abdullah's uncle, Hassan, who declared that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan. If Jordan is factored into the equation, many problems become malleable. We are dealing with a more generous and forgiving territorial framework. Sovereign Israel including the Golan Heights (22,000 sq km) accommodates an Arab population of 1,200,000. In Judea and Samaria (5,640 sq km) 300,000 Jews reside. Jordan (89,324 sq km) has 0 Jews together with a law imposing the death penalty on the sale of land to Jews, and Gaza (360 sq km) likewise has 0 Jews. In this larger picture, a Jewish population and Jewish land ownership in Judea and Samaria proportional to the Arab population and land ownership in the original mandate is more than reasonable. Security arrangements will be far less tortuous with Jordan than with a Palestinian entity that will prove as demilitarized as Hizballah or Hamas. Here, a distinction can clearly be established between a police force and a full-blown army. Hereditary monarchies survive in this region thanks to their security acumen and the service they render the citizenry. We are not talking about dynasties with the seniority and legitimacy of the Houses of Windsor or Orange. The House of Saud has reigned in the Arabian Peninsula less than 90 years. U.S. State Department documents from the 1950s considered Jordan's Hashemites a walking dead dynasty. The Hashernites proved them wrong thanks to their pluck and ability to provide a functioning state. This recommends them over Fatah and Hamas, who can promise only another Somalia or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. -------------- Amiel Ungar is a columnist for the Makor Rishon daily and the national religious monthly Nekuda.