Op-ed: Acknowledging the only viable option left for the Palestinian people is the return of 96% of the West Bank to Jordan is now, since every Palestinian leader has proven himself averse to actively running an independent state or founding a sovereign Palestinian country when time after time, opportunity was dismissed.

By Sever Plocker

With the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank coming up, the time has come to return to the idea which guided the opponents of annexation in the 60s and 70s—the Jordan Option, or the Jordanian-Palestinian option.

Who am I to decide whether or not the Palestinians have defining cultural and nationalistic characteristics to differentiate it from the rest of the Arab world? The nationalism expressed by these popular Palestinian nationalist groups is unclear even to the best of researchers. What is clear, however, is that based on the actual behavior of the Palestinians, the Palestinians actually don’t really want a country.

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If they really wanted one, they could have had one by now. Israel could not have effectively blocked deep and genuine aspirations for national sovereignty for a half century. Israel isn’t an empire. 

Palestinian aversion to setting a defined government was best seen with Yasser Arafat and his colleagues in the PLO, who were drawn to the idea of national liberation after absorbing the theory in Soviet universities. And with the dissolution of the USSR, the search for an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank was passed over to the global West, which adopted the cause without any reservations and which didn’t delve into what the Palestinians truly wanted. 

Israel, for its part, foolishly blocked the development of foundations for a Palestinian state instead of encouraging them and made it difficult for the Palestinians to build a sustainable economy. 

However, while the vast majority of Israeli politics has come to terms with the fact that the solution needs to be “two states for two peoples,” the Palestinians have disassociated themselves from the idea unequivocally. 

End the occupation? Yes, absolutely. But what will come afterwards, and what will be established in its place? We will wait and see. 

The impeachment of Salam Fayad, who was the most stable and effective prime minister the Palestinian Authority ever had, stemmed from his being such a staunch supporter of an independent Palestinian state and due to his prudent actions to achieve this by attempting to create a viable economy, all of which went against the wishes of those at the top. 

The strengthening of radical religious movements has completely destroyed any chance of a political solution to the Palestinian issue. Take, for example, the regular excuses of the PA to not even accept provisional borders as was supposed to happen under the framework of the “roadmap for peace.” 

This evasion isn’t accidental and isn’t related to resisting one power or another. It’s tied to the understanding that the idea of an independent Palestinian state isn’t the magic answer for the majority of the Palestinian people. It’s likely that this idea was never widely accepted and is largely anachronistic. 

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