In their pastoral homeland, flourishing with thousand-year-old ancient olive groves, the people of Palestine, who typically passed their homes down through generations, have grown their food, raised their children, buried their dead, married, and prayed solemnly since antiquity.
This idyllic, yet hard, life of theirs, challenged by all that typically challenges human life, was terribly ripped away from them, usually at gunpoint, when their native lands were subdivided to make separate nations to accomodate the World War II war-weary Jews. Victims of Hitler's genocidal holocaust, they sought a return to their own ancient homeland to heal from centuries of prejudice and discrimination in Europe.
Like today's Palestinians, they had once been oppressed, subjugated until they were exterminated by Roman persecution at Masada circa AD 70. Those Jews who survived Rome's fleecing fled east into less hostile lands. They became, once again in their history, strangers in strange lands.
During the 1940s, political decisions made by a powerful multi-national leadership who would never be personally impacted by their dividing up of families, tribes and homelands like cards in a poker game, stirred up a hornet's nest in the whole Arab world.
The people of this ancient land did not go quietly into this new boundary design of their sacred homelands when the British Empire sliced up the Arabian penninsula after World War II.
It wasn't just that the "most agonizing aspect in the history of the Middle East (for the Palestinians) is the establishment of the Jewish State Israel in Palestine," according to Sahih Iman, but it came with a sense of betrayal by Jordan's King Abdullah I who "played a key role along with British and Jews in its formation." The king supported the Peel Commission (1937) which proposed Palestine be split for the Jewish state Israel. When that happened, Palestine was subdivided between Israel and Jordan. Since, that separation, there has been continual unrest among the Palestinians in the West Bank, the region of land sandwiched between Israel and Jordan.
It seems, given the current waring between Palestinians and Israelis, the region might do with another redesign.
First point: Nationalize the West Bank and Gaza and any other strong Palestinian lands or change Jordan's borders to include the Palestinian lands.
Second point: Currently the population of Jordan, which is approximately 6.5 million and includes 1 million Iraqi refugees and 2 million Palestinians, staggers under an unemployment rate close to 22 percent, plunging the country into terrible poverty. About 40 percent of the poplulation lives in poverty earning about $300 - 400 per month. Recent uprisings in Amman reflect a collective frustration from decades of an increasingly intolerable situation - politically, economically and culturally. King Abdullah II, who's net asset value is not known publically but is estimated to be among the world's highest at close to (if not exceeding) $18 billion, would be wise to lighten the load the people are bearing.
When the recent gas prices tripled, the king did nothing to soften that blow to his already struggling people. He would be wise to realize that a collective population, oppressed by poverty, will rise up against such a heavy burden. If he fails to respond sensitively to this escalating mood among his people, he could face a dire situation.
Perhaps he would consider sending out treasury checks from his immense wealth to his people. If he is worth $18 billion, why not issue treasury checks to his suffering 6 million people to stimulate the economy, relieve tensions and prove that his heart is with his people.
It seems a redesign of Israel's national boundaries to allow for an independent Palestinian nation or include the Palestinian lands in Jordan in combination with King Abdullah-II's outreaching financial support could help his suffering people. These two actions might be a wise, compassionate and reasonable response to a potentially explosive situation. This might offer an alternate outcome than any of the other countries in the Middle East have experienced thus far in their transitions into freedom and justice.
In 1946 - 48, Abdullah-I participated in the partition of Palestine. Before Arab Israeli conflict, the British had essentially withdrawn their troops. The situation pushed the leaders of the neighboring Arab states to intervene, but their preparation was not finalized, and they could not assemble sufficient forces to turn the tide of the war.
The majority of Palestinian Arab hopes lay with the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan's King Abdullah I, but he had no intention of creating a Palestinian Arab-run state, since he wanted to annex as much of the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine as he could.
He was in contact with the Jewish authorities as with the Arab League. He met with the Jewish Agency (future Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was among the delegates to these meetings) that came to a mutually agreed partition plan independently of the United Nations in November 1947.
Result:
A part of Palestine was occupied by Israel and the remaining part was occupied by Jordon when Israel was formally created by the United Nations in 1948. Today, 60 years later, the entire region is bristling violently while Jordan absorbs a rapidly growing population of refugees from the West Bank and Syria.
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