a swell idea whose time always comes

Ian Bremmer the other day heralded the latest bout of "Jordan Option" trial balloons which always float when the going gets tough in Palestine:

Debate has begun in Palestinian and Jordanian newspapers - and in official circles on both sides of the Jordan river - over a plan to incorporate West Bank Palestinians into a confederation with Jordan, creating a kind of bi-national state with two governing assemblies.

Since I've been arguing for many years now that there is "no Jordan option," I might be expected to say the same thing now.  But... here's the thing.  The non-existence of a Jordan option rested on the argument that a national consensus in Jordan had been achieved on the severing of ties between Jordan and the West Bank - achieved in the 1991 National Pact, and then consolidated in the 1994 peace treaty with Israel.  This consensus extended from powerful East Bank nationalists through the main Palestinian movements.  Even Hamas, which never officially recognized the severing of ties, in practice honored it - with containing the Hamas trend being one of the main services Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood provided to the regime.  It was one of the main domestic selling points of Jordan's peace treaty with Israel that it supposedly offered a final Israeli recognition that "Jordan is Jordan and not Palestine."   

That consensus is as strong as ever, in some ways.  The Jordanian public debate which Bremmer referenced has actually not been much of a debate - from what I've seen, it has been lots of columnists and politicians lining up to warn against any return to Palestine or confederation schemes (al-Ghad editor Ayman Safadi's piece yesterday, for instance, which labeled confederation a defeat for Jordan and for Palestinians and a victory for Israel).  The difference now, however, is that King Abdullah simply doesn't care in the slightest about Jordanian public opinion.  Unlike King Hussein, who for all his political flaws carefully monitored opinion in his kingdom and kept in close touch with trends, Abdullah doesn't seem to care much about the opinion of anyone other than his small team of Western-oriented advisors (the PowerPoint team) and his constituency in Washington.  Since he put an end to the political crisis of 2004-2005, he has overseen a steady de-liberalization of the Kingdom, cracking down on public freedoms and going after the Islamist movement aggressively, with nary a peep from the Bush administration.  Public opposition to the so-called Jordan option is as strong as ever, but the ability of public opinion to constrain Jordanian policy has dramatically shrunk.

On the Palestinian side, Mahmoud Abass may find himself with so few options, and so desperate to save his own (and Fatah's) skin that he's willing to do anything - even confederation with Jordan.  No, this wouldn't be popular with Palestinians, but what does public opinion have to do with it?   Fatah isn't popular either - don't believe the idea that Hamas rules Gaza while Fatah dominates the West Bank.  Memories of Fatah's corrupt and ineffective rule of the Palestinian Authority haven't faded, and its open and close relations with the US and Israel won't endear Fatah to many Palestinians.  Pushed to the wall, Abass might even go along with this out of a lack of options. 

Hamas, for its part, might see less reason to honor its side of the old bargain under current conditions - hence the importance of Khaled Mishal's conversation with radical Jordanian nationalist Nahid Hattar, in which he tried to reassure Jordanians that it would.  There is a lively debate in the Jordanian press about the future relations between a Hamas which controls Gaza and the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, even if there isn't really one about confederation.

Finally, in Israel there's always been a Likud interest in pushing the Jordan option, which could return with Netanyah, and the Bush administration has never been shy of figures aligned with the Likud. 

It wouldn't work, of course.  It wouldn't solve Palestinian aspirations, and wouldn't solve Palestinian problems.  Quite the contrary - it would remove what little buffer remains protecting Jordan from Palestine's problems.   It quite probably would be the straw which finally breaks the Hashemite back. I know that everyone's been predicting Jordan's collapse for so many decades that everyone stops paying attention, but things are changing fast across the region. The country's already reeling with the effects of the Iraq crisis, which has transformed large chunks of the country (extending into Amman) into an extension of Iraq.  The Palestinian crisis has been tearing up Jordanian politics, and right now most Jordanians just want to keep their country out of the way.  If Abdullah's dumb enough to pursue this option - which, in effect, means that if American officials are dumb enough to push him to pursue it -  that won't be an option.   But after years and years of the Bush administration seizing every opportunity to make stupid mistakes which make things worse in the region, how confident can we be that it won't?

Comments

[Anonymous]

"but things are changing fast across the region"

If you'll indulge my intrusion on this point for a moment. You are so completely right. We are in the early stages of a period of turmoil for the Arab world as big or bigger than the revolutions of the 1950s and 1960s. The ones which brought us such luminaries as Saddam Hussein, Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi, and Hafez al-Asad. The current order is going to be turned upside down in numerous locales over the next decade or two. And as I think much of what you write points to, it is not going to be replaced with a US-friendly new order. I do have hope though that the end results - while messy - will come out better than the 50s and 60s. Lessons have been learned, communication is more open, the stodgy old regimes - both US allies and US opponents - represent have no grass roots while their challengers tend to represent a genuine base. Not "the base" of their entire country and therein lies the root of problems and convulsions, but more of a base than Hosni or the Abdullah twins can claim in any case.

[anon]

Probably not a popular idea here, but the more turmoil that's seen in the Middle East, the more likely that there will be only one answer: Islam. That's what will unite the people and bring security insha'allah. Thanks, Bush, Rice, Olmert, Abbas...

[Abu Tabakh]

Is it me or is the current discussion of the Gaza/West Bank situation totally moronic, particularly among some of the folks who used to work this issue?

A utopian West Bank at peace with Israel? Yeah right. There are no bad actors in the West Bank. As if Abu Mazen controls the al-Aqsa Martyrs brigade. And, by the way no one in the WB voted for Hamas. What about those 400,000 settlers and their by-pass roads, walls, and guard towers. Somehow they aren't going to get in the way of this "fresh start." A three state solution? Yeah right. The Palestinians who are negotiating for 22 percent of what is left of Palestine really don't care if Gaza is shorn away. And, the really don't care about the 1.4 million people who live there.

All of this discussion is a bit bizarre and dangerous.

[Pete]

hell, while we are at it why not join al-Anbar with Jordan? the business and political allies of abdullah are so deeply tied to "the Sunni insurgents" they are half way there anyway.

[Peter Principle]

"Is it me or is the current discussion of the Gaza/West Bank situation totally moronic, particularly among some of the folks who used to work this issue?"

Drowning men. Straws. Etc.

[anon]

Abu Tabakh: "And, by the way no one in the WB voted for Hamas."

When are you talking about? A year and a half ago, Hamas won in some areas of the West Bank, including a landslide in Nablus.