The Jordan Option, as articulated by me and Mudar Zahran, the secretary-general of the Jordan Opposition Coalition, anticipates that King Abdullah will abdicate, willingly or otherwise, and that Mudar Zahran will take over Jordan as its leader.
Dr. Zahran is very open as to what his intentions are once in power:
— He wants to cooperate with Israel rather than confront Israel.
— Jordan will uphold its own Citizenship Act of 1952 which grants everyone who has lived in Palestine while under the Hashemite rule, and their descendants, an automatic citizenship.
— Jordan will allow all Palestinians living elsewhere to emigrate to Jordan.
— Jordan will replace UNRWA as the provider of services to all Palestinian refugees of which 2 million live west of the Jordan River.
— Jordan will invite the said two million refugees to emigrate to Jordan to receive the said services which include social security, healthcare and education.
—The Peace Treaty between Jordan and Israel will be reaffirmed as will the Jordan River be reaffirmed as the international boundary.
— The Palestinian textbooks will be rewritten by a joint task force to reflect in the main the Jewish narrative with appropriate nods to the Arab perspective. These new textbooks will be studied by all Palestinians in Jordan or Israel.
This new reality will affect Israel in the following way:
— The Palestinians living west of the River will no longer be stateless. They will be Jordanian citizens living in Israel as foreign residents.
— Thus, Israel will be able to extend its sovereignty over the entire area without the need to grant citizenship to the Palestinians living west of the River. The reason this is so is because when you annex land or claim sovereignty over land, there is no law which obligates you to grant citizenship to citizens of foreign countries who may live there.
— These Jordanian/Palestinians will be entitled to live in Area A and B as delineated by the Oslo Accord, as foreign residents with full autonomy just as they do now.
— Over the next few years Jordan will replace the Palestinian Authority as the administrator of these areas and the Palestinian Authority will wither away.
— All Palestinians will be incentivized to emigrate to Jordan with funds provided by Israel, the Gulf states and the U.S. as announced in the Bahrain Workshop.
— The Oslo Accord will be subsumed in the Jordan-Israel peace treaty.
— Gaza will be designated as another Area A. Hamas will be outlawed and Jordan will administer it.
The Jordan Option, when implemented, will prove to be the biggest game changer since the Six Day War.
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Ted Belman is the founder and publisher of Israpundit.org. Read Belman's Reports — More Here.