Jordan as the Palestinian Arab state
By Yael Amishav Medved, Oct. 30, 2002 - Source: Jerusalem Post.
World War II ended only when the Allies forced Nazi Germany and Japan to capitulate. Democratic institutions and long-term disarmament were then imposed. The United States created the Marshall Plan to revive Europe's economies. Six European countries established the European Economic Community (EEC), which is being enlarged to this day.
The above could well serve as a model for the defeat of global Islamic terrorism and the establishment of democratic regimes in the Middle East.
World War III, or the War of Civilizations, is raging today. It is the war of the democratic free world against Islamic despotism and terror.
The terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, those in Kashmir, the Philippines, Bali, and Moscow, to name but a few, show clearly that global terrorism is fueled by Islamic ideology and funded by the oil-rich Arab states. Its leaders are mostly Arabs. For example, the head of the "Chechnyan" terrorists in Moscow was a Jordanian. Arab embassies were the support conduits for the terrorists.
It is essential that we understand that radical Islam is not merely a religion. It is a totalitarian political ideology, as evil and vicious as was Nazism.
Its goal is world domination by territorial conquest. It does not recognize the right to self-determination for non-Muslims. Jihad, war by terror, is its political agenda, its modus operandi, and a religious obligation.
There are 58 Muslim states today, without a single democratic regime among them. Wherever radical Islam gains a foothold, it brings in its wake despotism, oppression and destitution. Its battle cry is the destruction of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
US President George W. Bush understands the magnitude of the threat of global Islamic terrorism. He seems to have opted for a salami approach. After almost defeating Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, he has rightly targeted Iraq's arsenals of chemical, biological and, probably, nuclear weapons, as the next step. He intends to install a democratic regime in Iraq.
However, in order to win the war against global Islamic terrorism, Bush must first posit a new comprehensive policy for the free world, which takes into account the new realities of the 21st century.
The key to such a policy lies in the resolution of the Islamic-Arab-Palestinian conflict with Israel.
As an urgent first step, the free world must unite and adopt a policy of containment towards the world of radical Islam, to arrest its agenda of territorial conquest. The arsenals of weapons of mass destruction in the rogue states must be dismantled.
The success of this containment depends, first and foremost, on the free world's commitment to its own ideology of universal democratic principles.
This must translate into an unconditional commitment to the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in Israel.
It is evident that this tiny sliver of land, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea (27,000 sq. km. and smaller than New Jersey), cannot physically contain two independent states and two incompatible peoples.
The Arabs already possess 22 vast states without Jews. These were either murdered or forced to flee for their lives. It is therefore only just for the Jews to have a state without Arabs, when these threaten their very existence on a daily basis.
In parallel, the Palestinian Arabs, some 10 million to 12 million, who according to their own claims are one and the same people, must be reunited.
Their dispersion, in Jordan, Judea and Samaria, Gaza, pre-1967 Israel, and throughout the Middle East, has been the major cause of global terrorism.
THEIR reunification can only be effected in Jordan, the de-facto Palestinian Arab state, created in 1920, on 77 percent of historic Palestine, which is four times the size of Israel.
Palestinian Arabs have always comprised the vast majority of the population of Jordan, which makes it the Palestinian state, by definition. There is no justification to partition Israel a second time, to create a second Palestinian Arab state.
The reunification of the Palestinian Arabs in their existing home of Jordan is the only just, humane and viable solution to their claims of statehood.
In the past 80 years alone, leaders of the international community have organized exchanges, reunifications and relocations of populations, which involved more than 100 million people. This was considered the most humanitarian solution to seemingly intractable, age-old conflicts, such as between India and Pakistan, Turkey and Greece, the Germans in Russia and elsewhere.
In order to create a framework in which democracy can take root in the Middle East, the US, together with the international community, could and should adopt the European model, and assist in the establishment of a Middle East Economic Community of Democratic States (MECODEMS).
The following is an outline of such a model:
Five states Turkey, Palestine-Jordan, Israel, Lebanon (freed from Syrian occupation), and a post-Saddam Iraq will form the nucleus of MECODEMS.
The international community will recognize, de jure, the Democratic Hashemite Kingdom (or Republic) of Jordan, where the vast majority of the population is Palestinian Arabs, as the Palestinian Arab state.
The international community will recognize that all those who call themselves Palestinian Arabs, wherever they may be living, are one and the same people. As such, they will all be entitled to citizenship in Jordan.
So that most of the Palestinian Arabs may live in peace in their own land and not under foreign or Israeli rule, Jordan-Palestine will adopt a "Law of Return" for Palestinian Arabs, on the model of the Israeli Law of Return for Jews.
The international community will implement a "Marshall Plan" to reunite and resettle the Palestinian Arabs living in the diaspora, in their old/new national home. The billions of taxpayers' US dollars spent by UNRWA on perpetuating the "refugee" camps (where the global terrorist networks were first spawned), as well as the massive foreign aid (which the PA uses to fund suicide bombers), will be redirected for the economic development of the Democratic Palestinian State of Jordan.
Foreign aid earmarked for Middle Eastern states will be allocated to establish democratic institutions and free market economies in the member states of MECODEMS.
MECODEMS will constitute a free-trade zone. Water from Turkey, and oil and gas from the neighboring territories, will be piped to supply the whole region.
In order to maintain demographic stability and safeguard the democratic system of government of each member state, individuals will be able to obtain temporary-resident status in other member states, but will be eligible to vote only in their own states.
A pact of non-aggression, and defense against outside aggression, will bind the members of MECODEMS. The US and the international community will guarantee this pact.
Other Middle Eastern states will join the ME Economic Community, as their leaders and peoples renounce the ideology of jihad and adopt a more democratic, human-rights-oriented form of government.
Only such a plan can bring stability and prosperity to all the inhabitants of the region.
It is in the hands of the American president, who has been vested with awesome powers, to ensure that the 21st century will be one of the extension of democracy and civil society throughout the global village, and not that of Islamic despotism and terror.
The writer, apolitical analyst, is the director of the Council for the Establishment of MECODEMS. (mecodems@netvision.net.il)