Hosting Vice President Mike Pence on his four-day Mideastern swing, Jordan’s ever-diplomatic King Abdullah expressed hope that the U.S. could mend fences with Palestinians. U.S.-Palestinian relations headed south when 71-year-old President Donald Trump recognized Dec. 6, 2017 Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. While obvious to most, since Israel’s parliament, the Knessett, has met in Jerusalem since 1949, Jerusalem is not accepted in the Arab world as Israel’s capital. For the last 500 years until 1922, Jerusalem was under the Ottoman Turks until the empire collapse at the end of WW I in 1918. Great Britain took over the territory from Istanbul in 1922, controlling it until it turned the territory over to Jewish settlers in 1948. Since Israel declared its independence May 14, 1948, the Arab world hasn’t accepted its sovereignty, even after the United Nations certified Israel as sovereign state May 11, 1949. Arab attempts since 1948 to topple Israel have all failed.
When five Arab states, including Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], went to war with Israel in 1967, they lost Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights. Since the end of the Six Day War June 10, 1967, the U.N. and Arab states did not recognize Israeli spoils as sovereign territory. King Abdullah’s family lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both areas annexed by Israel following the Six Day War. Abdullah told Pence about the sanctity of Jerusalem to Arabs, despite under Israeli control for more than 50 years. “Jerusalem is key to Muslims and Christians as it is to Jews,” said Abdullah. “It is key to peace in the region. And key to enabling Muslims to effectively fight some of the root cause of radicalization,” blaming the rise of radical Islam on the Israeli-Palestinians conflict.
Radical Islamists like al-Qaeda’s late Osama bin Laden or, more recently, the Islamic Stateo of Iraq and Syria’s [ISIS] Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, not to mention Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, like to blame rampant terrorism on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bin Laden liked to excuse Sept. 11 as punishment for the U.S. supporting Israel but al-Qaeda had its real eyes on toppling the Saudi monarchy. Al-Baghadi, too, liked to hijack the Arab-Israeli conflict to excuse his attacks on Shiite Islam, seizing some 30% of Iraq and Syria in 2014 to build its new caliphate. King Abdullah knows that radical Islam goes way beyond the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, seeking to topple moderate Islamic regimes like Jordan if possible. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad knows that all the terror groups seeking to topple Damascus since 2011 had nothing to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Trump’s Dec. 6, 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was designed to get the Ramallah-based PLO to take the peace process seriously. Trump hasn’t been able to get the PLO back to the bargaining table, largely because the PLO doesn’t speak for Hamas and more radicalized Palestinians groups. During the Saudi-funded Arab Spring in 2011, Hamas joined other radical Sunni groups to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Al-Assad evicted Hamas leader-in-exile Khalid Meshaal from his safe haven in Damascus. Since seizing the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel needs the territory to buffer radical Islamic groups. Generations of Arab-inspired U.N. resolutions since 1967 demanded that Israel return the territory in exchange for peace. When Israel returned the Sinai and Gaza to Egypt, it didn’t bring peace, only more radicalization and terrorism.
Pence told King Abdullah the U.S. position on Mideast peace, namely, that all demands were on the table, if and when Palestinians return to peace talks. Palestinians rejected past peace talks because they didn’t get Israel to agree to return to the pre-1967 borders. But, truth be told, for Hamas and the PLO, they want Israel out of the British Mandate of Palestine, its current borders. Calling Pence “dangerous and messianic,” Arab members of Israel’s Knesset planned to boycott his speech to the Knesset. “The Unites States of America remains committed, if the parties agree, to a two-state solution. We are committed to restarting the peace process and Jordan does now and has always played a central role as custodian of the city’s holy sites,” said Pence. Pence has been shunned by the Ramallah-based PLO because Trump recognized the obvious: Israel’s control of Jerusalem.
King Abdullah expressed hope that the peace process could get back on track. “We hope that the U.S. will reach out and find the right way to move forward in these challenging circumstances,” said Abdullah, knowing that Palestinians must come to their senses about the U.S. serving its unique role as peace broker. In recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Trump never said that he’d wouldn’t consider any-and-all Palestinian demands, including East Jerusalem as a future capital. PLO’s 82-year-old Chairman Mahmoud, while not speaking for Hamas in Gaza, overreacted to Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Instead of gong back to the peace table, Abbas rejected the U.S. as a future peace broker. Abbas knows that without the U.S., a two-state solution isn’t possible. Only with U.S. leverage can Palestinians hope to get an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
