Courage Of the Hashemites

King Abdullah of Jordan is by all accounts, like his father King Hussein, a competent ruler and a likeable man. Like his father, too, he has been frequently admired, both in Israel and the world, for his constructive attitude toward an Israel-Palestinian peace settlement.

And again like his father, Mr. Abdullah has been, of all Arab heads of state, the friendliest toward Israel and the most willing to meet with Israeli diplomats and to talk to the people of Israel. He has indeed spoken to them twice this month, once in an interview in the Hebrew daily Ha'aretz, and once in an interview on Israel's television's Channel 2 — in both of which he warned that unless Israel makes major concessions to the Palestinians, a last window of opportunity may shut forever. "If we don't solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict [now]," the king said to Channel 2, "we may never solve the Israeli-Arab conflict [at all]."

Windows of opportunity have allegedly been shutting, one after another, for so long in the Israel-Palestinian conflict that anyone taking the rhetoric about them seriously can only be amazed that there are any left. It's nice to know that King Abdullah thinks that some still are. And yet it's time his admirers started telling him that if he simply goes on talking about a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict without showing some readiness to be part of the solution, he is contributing nothing at all to a solution.

For years now, the world, and Mr. Abdullah with it, has been living with a self-willed illusion — that the fairest and most logical way to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict is to create another Arab state, one called "Palestine," which will live peacefully alongside Israel.

The more impossible the establishment of a state of this sort seems to become — the more, that is, it appears to be ruled out by a combination of Israeli settlements, Palestinian anarchy, and the growing strength of Islamic extremism in Palestinian society — the more the windows are thought to slam shut on peace's prospects.

In reality, however, a separate Palestinian state would not solve any conflicts at all, neither for the Palestinians, nor for Israel, nor for the Middle East. Such a state would be tiny, divided into two noncontiguous areas, poor in water and natural resources, unable to absorb even a fraction of the millions of Palestinian Arabs abroad, and located on barely 20% of the area of British-Mandate Palestine that the Palestinians claim as their own — and it could not possibly satisfy Palestinian aspirations. It would simply spur the Palestinians to make irredentist claims on Israel that would push the horizons of peace further away than ever.

Nor do the Palestinians need such a state, because they already have a state of their own. This state is King Abdullah's Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which was originally that part of British-Mandate Palestine located east of the Jordan River, and in which Palestinians comprise well over half the population and an even larger percentage of the economic, educational, and cultural elites.

Jordan is 15 times larger than the West Bank plus the Gaza Strip and four times larger than Israel, and with the addition of Gaza and most of the West Bank, from which Israel would withdraw, it would stretch from the Mediterranean to Iraq and be a potentially wealthy and dynamic country that could gradually absorb a large number of the descendants of Palestinian refugees. It could also bring stability and economic prosperity to a Palestinian society west of the Jordan River that now lives in a state of impoverishment and chaos.

It is worth recalling that for two decades after it lost the West Bank to Israel in the 1967 war, Jordan continued to view the area as belonging to it and demanded its return. It was only in 1988, when King Hussein despaired of the prospects of getting the West Bank back, that he formally waived Jordan's claim to it. What is to prevent Hussein's son, with the encouragement of America and Europe, from renewing this claim?

It will be said, of course, that Jordan does not want the West Bank and Gaza — or at least that Jordan's ruling Hashemite caste, which fears losing power to the country's Palestinian population, does not want them and their millions of Palestinian inhabitants. And by the same token, it can be said that the West Bankers and the Gazans do not want Jordan: They seek, after all, a country run by themselves, not by a monarchy with Bedouin roots.

But in the long run, the advantages in getting together would be great for both sides. For Jordan it would mean, besides the end of the Palestinians' conflict with Israel, a port on the Mediterranean and control of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. The Palestinians, for their part, could look forward to an eventual democratization of Jordan's politics that would allow them to play the role they feel they are entitled to. King Abdullah must know that his country cannot continue to rest on a narrow political base forever.

It would indeed be a bold step for King Abdullah to come forward now and re-propose the "Jordanian solution" to the Palestinian problem that his father renounced in 1988. Initial reactions in the Palestinian and Arab worlds would no doubt be critical. But initial reactions have a way of yielding to second thoughts when a plan is a good one.

King Abdullah has spoken a great deal about the need for Israel to show courage in taking necessary risks vis-à-vis the Palestinians. He needs to show some courage himself. The windows of opportunity for an Israel-Palestinian settlement are still open — but however often one looks through them, it's always Jordan that one sees in the distance.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.