‘Jordan is Palestine,’ MK Eldad declares at embassy

A handful of Israelis marked Jordanian Independence Day on Tuesday by trying to present the Jordanian Embassy in Ramat Gan with a petition to make the country the official homeland of the Palestinian people.

The initiator of the petition, MK Arye Eldad(National Union), said it asks “that King Abdullah declare Jordan as the national homeland of the Palestinian people. His father [King Hussein] said ‘Jordan is Palestine, Palestine is Jordan.’ Unfortunately Abdullah doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps on this.

“There is already a Palestinian state in Jordan.

Eighty percent of the Jordanian people are Palestinians, and it is built on 65% of the Jewish homeland allocated in the Balfour Declaration and given to us at the San Remo Conference [in 1920]. Once the Palestinians lose their orphan status as a people without a state, their international demands will become much weaker,” Eldad said.

He also invoked the recent popular revolutions in the Middle East, saying, “If what happened in Tahrir Square happens in Amman we could find in a single day that on our eastern border there is no Hashemite Kingdom, but a Palestinian state controlled by 80% of the public.”

Eldad took an elevator up to the Jordanian Embassy in an office tower on Ramat Gan’s Rehov Abba Hillel, but came back down minutes later after he was refused entrance to the embassy.

Eldad’s spokeswoman said that he was able to enter the floor of the embassy but that police who had been called by the Jordanian staff prevented him from entering.

Ron Breiman from the Hatikva Party (which Eldad chairs and which is one of the four parties that make up the National Union) said making Jordan Palestine was not nearly as far-fetched as the traditional solutions for solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“First off, I think the solution of a Palestinian state in the West Bank is not relevant or realistic. It is a lie and the opposite of peace.

“The Palestinian state west of the Jordan River is impossible.

Peace cannot be based on transfer of Jews, on ethnic cleansing of Jews from the heartland of their homeland.

I am against transfer, against ethnic cleansing either of Jews or Arabs,” Breiman said.

The Palestinians who remain in the West Bank would be citizens of the Palestinian state and “can live wherever they like in the West Bank and vote for the Palestinian parliament in Amman,” he said.

“This is the real two-state vision.”

(Jim’s Comment : The Balfour declaration of 1917 set aside all the land which is currently modern day Jordan and Israel as a homeland for the Jews, and then at a later date the British Government reneged. Below is a copy of this declaration).

Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country".
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely
Arthur James BalfourForeign Office,
November 2nd, 1917.