BEIRUT- Jordan said on Tuesday the only path to a comprehensive and lasting Middle East peace was the establishment of an independent Palestinian state based on land captured by Israel in a 1967 war, and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
“Jordan supports every genuine effort aimed at achieving just and comprehensive peace that people will accept,” Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in a statement issued after U.S. President Donald Trump announced his administration’s proposed peace plan.
Safadi called for serious and direct negotiations that solve all final status issues, including protecting Jordan’s interests, and warned against the “dangerous consequences of unilateral Israeli measures … that aim to impose new realities on the ground.”
After Israel’s creation in 1948 Jordan absorbed more Palestinians than any other country, with some estimates that they now account for more than half the population. Palestinians hold full citizenship, but are marginalized and seen as a political threat by some people of Jordanian descent.
Any changes to the international consensus on a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and Palestinian refugees’ right of return to what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories, long buttressed by U.S. policy, would therefore reverberate harder in Jordan than anywhere else.
(Content and photos syndicated via Reuters)