The Forgotten Two-State Solution
With a ceasefire holding between Israel and Iran, and talks of expanding the Abraham Accords looming, a UN conference cosponsored by France and Saudi Arabia calling for a two-state “solution” between Israel and the Palestinians has been rescheduled for July 28-29.
Last week President Emmanuel Macron proclaimed that recognition of a Palestinian state is “the only hope for peace.”
Before Macron and the UN can interrupt these critical negotiations, we need to ask an unpopular yet essential question: How many states do Palestinians actually need?
If we revisit the historical record, we’ll find that a Palestinian Arab state already exists. It’s called Jordan.
While some may now consider this a fringe talking point, it was once taken seriously in Israeli politics. In a 1973 interview on Face the Nation, Prime Minister Golda Meir stated: “Jordan is a natural place for Palestinians… Jordan, Palestine, it doesn’t make a bit of difference.” As international rhetoric shifted from the “Arab-Israeli conflict” to the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” this truth was buried under decades of diplomatic amnesia and political distortion.
The region historically known as “Palestine” was already divided in the 1920s, long before Israel’s independence or the wars that followed. Under the 1920 San Remo Conference, the British Mandate for Palestine was established explicitly to create a Jewish national home. It included not only modern Israel but also the land east of the Jordan River, which is today the Kingdom of Jordan. In 1921, then-Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill unilaterally separated nearly 80% of the Mandate to form Transjordan, intended as an Arab state. The remaining territory, west of the Jordan River, was preserved by the Mandate system for the future Jewish homeland.
That was the two-state solution. One state for Arabs. One state for Jews.
In 1922, the League of Nations codified the arrangement. While the international community didn’t frame it as resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict, the structure satisfied the geopolitical demands of the time: Arab governance east of the Jordan River and Jewish national aspirations to the west.
Jordan didn’t emerge as just another Arab country—it became home to a majority-Palestinian population. King Hussein often stated, “Jordan is Palestine, and Palestine is Jordan.” The distinction between “Jordanians” and “Palestinians” has always been fluid. Until Israel gained control of the so-called West Bank in 1967, many people now referred to as Palestinians held Jordanian passports, served in the Jordanian military, and identified as Jordanian. Jordanian and Palestinian populations also share a nearly identical ethnic background and Levantine dialect. The Jordan Rift Valley itself forms a natural geographic border between the Judean hills and the Arabian desert, reinforcing this two-state arrangement.
Despite the historic Jewish presence, no Jews live in Jordan today. Jewish communities that once existed east of the Jordan River were swiftly dissolved and abandoned after the 1922 Churchill White Paper restricted future Jewish settlement there. In marked contrast, Arabs live as full citizens in Israel. They vote, serve in the Knesset, and participate in all facets of Israeli society. Yet the Jewish state, comprising a fraction of the land originally designated for Jewish settlement, is the one continually asked to concede more.
Why is this history so often ignored?
The answer, in part, is the expediency of self-interest. In 1937 in response to the Arab Revolt, the British Peel Commission proposed another partition of the Mandate to appease Arab unrest and protect British access to oil. Over time, pressure mounted to create yet another Arab state—this time in the heart of the Holy Land.
After Israel’s war of independence in 1948, Jordan illegally annexed and renamed Judea and Samaria as the West Bank, while Egypt seized Gaza. Although the PLO was initially formed in 1964, the widespread adoption of a distinct Palestinian identity—as the foundation for a new state—began to crystallize only after Israel reclaimed those territories in the 1967 defensive war. Since then, Palestinian nationalism has frequently served less as a cultural aspiration and more as a political weapon aimed at undoing Jewish sovereignty altogether.
King Hussein, for his part, began to distance himself from the “Jordan is Palestine” narrative after the PLO attempted to overthrow his regime in 1970.
Presently, calls for a second Palestinian state, this time west of the Jordan River, have intensified in response to the October 7 terrorist attacks and the ongoing war to return Israeli hostages and to finally defeat Hamas. This conflict is the direct result of a de facto Palestinian state in Gaza, created when Israel withdrew in 2005 and Palestinians elected Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group.
The Arabs who rejected the 1947 UN Partition Plan did so not because they weren’t offered a state—but because the Jews were.
That impulse has never gone away. Military efforts to destroy Israel have failed. Now, diplomatic initiatives seek to achieve through pressure what war could not. Iran and its proxies launch missiles and rockets while UN committees draft resolutions. The international community, eager to appease Islamist regimes, or at least unwilling to confront them, is choosing to reward terrorists and punish their victims.
This isn’t simply a dispute over borders—it’s a question of sovereignty: Will the world accept a Jewish state at all? Islamists, radicalized Palestinian populations, and morally confused politicians continue to reject that idea on every level. The formation of Jordan alongside Israel did not culminate in peace—it led to decades of violent conflict. Why would creating yet another Palestinian state, this time in Judea and Samaria, yield anything different?
Jordan is effectively a Palestinian state, whether its Hashemite monarchy admits it or not.
If the international community genuinely supports Palestinian self-determination, it should address that demand to Jordan—not seek to dismantle the only Jewish state on earth.
