Jordanian-Palestinian
activist Mudar Zahran is
not a man who minces his words. In fact, his outspokenness against the
Jordanian regime has made him a persona-non-grata in his own country,
forcing him to seek asylum in the U.K.
by Ari Soffer,
Source: IsraelNationalNews.com |
Zahran did not
pull any punches, speaking at a conference entitled "Two States for Two
People, on Two Sides of the Jordan River." Deriding the Jordanian
ruling elite as "English-speaking autocrats," he called on
all parties to consider a radically different track to the current peace initiatives
based off of a "Two State Solution" which would see a Palestinian
Authority-run state in Judea and Samaria.
The conference was held at Jerusalem's Menachem
Begin Heritage Center, and organized by Professors for a Strong Israel,
with the goal of fostering debate over alternatives to
the "Two State Solution" which is currently on the table.
Zahran was the
sole Palestinian Arab representative, but claimed to represent the
"secular Palestinian majority" in Jordan, where between 60-80%
identify as Palestinian, and which he believes hold the key to ending
his people's conflict with Israel.
Arab, Israeli rights not mutually exclusive
He posited
that the establishment of a Palestinian state in what is today
Jordan would essentially solve the Arab-Israeli conflict in a way that was
both practical and "historically just" for both peoples, and
further claimed that such an eventuality was "inevitable," given
what he saw as the instability of the ruling Hashemite regime.
On the one hand, Zahran
said that he understood why many Israelis oppose the establishment of a Palestinian
state in Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), noting the region's
strategic and historical importance to the Jewish State. Jews have lived in the
area for more than 3,500 years, and its position in the center of the country, stretching
to within 8 miles of the coast and overlooking Israel's main population centers,
mean that its surrender to the PA would render Israel extremely vulnerable
to attack.
Zahran said
Israelis were rightly concerned that, even if the PA was being genuine about
peace talks, it was highly possible that an Israeli withdrawal would be
followed by a takeover by the Islamist Hamas movement, which is openly committed
to the destruction of the Jewish state. Hamas ousted the PA in Gaza following
Israel's 2005 withdrawal from the territory, and promptly intensified a
campaign of terror against Israeli civilians, including the raining of
thousands of rockets and mortar shells on Israeli communities in the south of
the country. A Hamas-run Judea and Samaria would put most of the rest of Israel's
population - including greater Tel Aviv and Jerusalem - at similar risk, posing
an existential threat to the State of Israel.
He noted that the aging PA chairman Mahmoud
Abbas did not have any obvious replacements, and claimed that once he was no
longer at the helm the PA would quickly lose its control over the vast array of
competing Arab tribes in Judea and Samaria.
On the other hand, he insisted
that "we [Palestinians] will never give up a single inch of our
rights as human beings," and that a solution had to be found that would satisfy
the demands of millions of Palestinian Arabs for statehood. However, unlike
most Israeli and Arab leaders, he does not see the two imperatives as mutually-exclusive.
Zahran pointed
to a number of international treaties, including the Faisal-Weitzmann agreement and the San Remo Declaration, which
sought to establish a Jewish state west of the Jordan River, and an Arab one to
the east (in addition to almost two dozen other independent Arab states).
"We [Arabs] got 77% [of the land
originally allocated for a Jewish state], you barely got 22%" he said,
referring to the San Remo Declaration, which saw more than three quarters of
the land allocated for a Jewish state by the Balfour Declaration separated as
an Arab state.
"This is one of the very few
occasions we outsmarted the Jews," he quipped, but went on to lament
the fact that instead of handing control to the local Arabs in
"Transjordan," the British installed the Hashemite royal
family, which hailed from the Hejaz, in what is today Saudi Arabia.
Re-opening
the debate
A lack of democracy and the rule of the Hashemite minority over the Palestinian
majority rendered it "illegitimate," Zahran
claimed, and reiterated his view that the Kingdom would soon succumb to the
"Arab Spring." He accused the king of spending more than 50% of
the country's GDP on the military, and enriching himself and his
family at the expense of the rest of the population.
Once the king falls, he said, it is
only natural that the Palestinian majority would vote in a Palestinian
government, creating a de-facto Palestinian State. The only remaining
question is whether that state would be secular or an Islamist "Hamas-stine," he claimed, urging western leaders to support
the secular Palestinian opposition movement to avoid the latter.
The empowerment of the majority in Jordan would put the interests of
the people before that of a ruling elite, granting both freedom and a
better quality of life to all its citizens.