While I can sympathize with the distaste for Fearless Leader, I would be less than honest if I did make clear that Jordanians are not very good at suggesting what America should do now that the invasion of Iraq has already occurred. One popular suggestion is to immediately withdraw American troops and “let the Arabs handle it.” While this idea might thrill the parents of soldiers serving in the area, it is not very encouraging. The Arabs cannot even figure out how to get 20,000 Syrian troops out of Lebanon, so how can they hope to run Iraq? Arab unity is always assumed even though it never exists. The Kurds also might not appreciate the assumption that Iraq is an “Arab” problem.

Unfortunately, most thoughts regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are equally muddled despite the intimate acquaintance of all Jordanians with the issue. Indeed, some 60% of Jordanians are Palestinians, so I regularly met people whose origins were in Palestine. The good is that after 56 years of fighting, most Jordanians and Palestinians understand and accept that Israel and the Jews are here to stay. However, most cannot articulate a logical strategy about how to achieve peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state beyond decrying Israel’s actions and American support for Israel. And the arguments they do make are not very consistent except in their battering of Israel.

In Jordan, people express outrage at the closure of the Israeli economy to Palestinian laborers. Yet, the existence of international borders between a future Palestine and Israel might have exactly the same effect. As I detailed in a previous post, crossing the border between Israel and Jordan is currently far from a speedy process. As a separate state, Israel would have the right to bar foreigners from working in the country.

Jordanians routinely invoke the idea that military means is always wrong as a means of settling conflict in attacking both America’s invasion of Iraq and Israel’s actions in the Occupied Territories. However, neither the Arab states bordering Israel nor the PLO have exactly taken a Gandhian approach in their dealings with the Jewish State. I suspect that a Palestinian state would have been created years ago if they had. Even American Jewry would become highly critical of Israel if it responded with force to a nonviolent movement for Palestinian statehood. One heartening note is that many Arabs view the suicide bombings as morally wrong. Some also realize that they have been utterly unsuccessful in advancing the Palestinian cause.

Jordanians and Palestinians constantly demand that Israel evacuate the West Bank and Gaza. At the same time, they condemn Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to leave Gaza and several small isolated West Bank settlements. Palestinians contend that Sharon intends to impose borders on a future Palestinian state without negotiations. On this point, they may be right though most Israelis I met of whatever political persuasion seemed to understand that no final resolution to the conflict can possibly be achieved without the consent of both parties.

Moreover, this demand for negotiations rings hollow since there is not really anyone with whom to negotiate. Yasser Arafat clearly lacks the authority to negotiate a peace as even many Palestinians now see him as too corrupt and inept to stay in power. Since Arafat has been unwilling to present a peace plan of his own, even at peace conferences such as the Camp David summit convened by President Clinton, I do not really see the point of talking with him anyway. One hopes that a Palestinian leadership able to make a deal and then to carry it out will eventually emerge but it doesn’t exist now.

The idea that all Palestinians living outside of Palestine should have the right to migrate back to Israel serves as major block to successful talks as this would turn Israel into an Arab majority state. Even many Palestinians and Jordanians who accept the presence of Israel fail to realize that this will always be a deal breaker for Israel. One crack of hope is that Palestinians seem more attached to the principle of having a right to return to Israel than actually returning.

One of the most moving conversations that I had regarding the conflict was with a woman who lives in Jordan but whose father came from Jaffa. She said that what her late father really wanted was an acknowledgement that he was expelled from his home and an apology. Part of achieving any settlement is going to entail both sides acknowledging and accepting key portions of the history and the suffering of either side. I don’t think that this sort of apology is too much to ask.

Israel might also accept the return of token numbers of Palestinians to Israel in order to address this issue. The world could assist by providing compensation to Palestinian refugees. However, the bulk of Palestinians will have to return to the Palestinian state or remain settled where they are to achieve a peace settlement. No country or people would commit suicide in order to achieve “peace.”

The incoherence of pro-Palestinian arguments even by relatively sophisticated observers in Jordan gets both tiring and depressing after awhile. It gets tiring because people endlessly repeat the same canards. It is depressing because peace will never be achieved if the Palestinian side continues to rely on this sort of illogic. Moreover, this sort of bad rhetoric is far from necessary to justify a Palestinian state.

It took nearly 50 years for the bulk of people on both sides of the conflict to grasp that the other side wasn’t going anywhere and has a legitimate right to a state in Israel/Palestine. (And I haven't even touched on barriers to peace on the Israeli side here.) At this rate, it is going to take an even longer time to sort out how to make this actually happen.