The Reemergence of One-Statism

So much, for the moment, for possible one-state solutions. Let us turn to two-state solutions. One two-state solution, harking back to the Jewish Agency–Transjordanian agreement of 1946 – 1947, would see a two-state partition of Palestine between the Jews and the Kingdom of Jordan, based on a Jewish-Israeli state in western Palestine and a Jordan–West Bank state—a “Greater Jordan”—ruled from Amman to its east.11 Thus the partition—as also envisaged in the Israeli Allon Plan of the late 1960s—would see a two-state solution based on an IsraeliJordanian division of the country, with no Palestinian Arab state and with most Palestinian Arabs living in the Jordanianincorporated part of Palestine.

But, for the time being, such a two-state scenario, given the thrust and potency of Palestinian Arab nationalism, is highly unlikely, even though some Palestinian thinkers speak vaguely about a Palestinian-Jordanian federation or confederation to be established some years after a partition that sees a separate Palestine Arab state being established alongside Israel.

Most thinking, since 1937, about a two-state solution has revolved around the idea of a partition of the Land of Israel or historic Palestine between its two indigenous peoples, the Jews and the Palestine Arabs. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948 –1949, and more emphatically since the late 1980s, thinking about partition has focused on the possibility of coexistence between a Jewish state, Israel, as territorially defined in the 1949 IsraeliArab armistice agreements, and a Palestinian-Arab state to arise