1967–1970 Jordan joined the
1967 Six-Day War alongside
Egypt and
Syria, and lost control of the West Bank to Israel. Following the war, Israeli leaders, particularly from the
Labor Party, considered returning a significant portion of the West Bank to Jordan as a potential solution to the conflict. King
Hussein of Jordan supported this approach, and viewed the return of the West Bank as a matter of 'life and death.' He secured a mandate from the
Arab League during the
Khartoum Summit to pursue its recovery, believing that failure to do so within one or two years could threaten his position due to rising Israeli influence and the growing detachment of the territory from Jordan. To secure West Bank loyalty, Jordan provided salaries to numerous employees and financial support to key figures, as well as funded various institutions, including municipalities, which received about 25% of their budgets from Amman. At the time, radical factions within the
Ba'th parties and the
Arab National Movement advocated for transferring power to Jordan's Palestinian majority. They called for establishing a democratic system and replacing
Bedouin dominance in the Jordanian military. and
Abba Eban presented King Hussein with the Jordanian version of the
Allon Plan, which proposed returning parts of the West Bank to Jordan. Disagreements over the plan eventually led to a stalemate in the negotiations. In 1967, Israeli leaders debated two primary options for addressing the future of the West Bank: the Palestinian option and the Jordanian option. The Palestinian option entailed establishing a Palestinian entity linked to Israel through economic and defense agreements, as proposed in the
Allon Plan by
Yigal Allon. This plan suggested
annexing the Jordan Valley and parts of the West Bank to Israel while creating an autonomous Arab region in the remaining areas. However, opposition from Prime Minister
Levi Eshkol and other ministers prevented the plan from being adopted. Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister
Moshe Dayan sought input from West Bank leaders and maintained support for both options. However, negotiations with Palestinian leaders were hindered by their adherence to the broader Arab position established at the Khartoum Summit, which rejected negotiations with Israel. By mid-1968, as progress on the Palestinian option appeared unlikely, Israeli leaders increasingly favored the Jordanian option, which was endorsed by key figures such as
Abba Eban following his first meeting with Hussein in May 1968. Early in the same year, Yigal Allon adapted the Allon Plan to propose that Jordan receive full control of the West Bank, rather than establishing Palestinian autonomy. This revised plan was informally presented by Eban and Allon to Hussein in another meeting in September 1968. However, disagreements on critical issues, including the status of Jerusalem and interpretations of
UNSCR 242, led the negotiations to a stalemate.
1970–1980 In 1970, the
PFLP hijacked four jetliners in Jordan, igniting them and triggering the "
Black September", a Jordanian crackdown on
Palestinian fedayeen militants. This period saw a significant shift in Israeli-Jordanian relations, particularly after Jordan's expulsion of Palestinian fedayeen in July 1971. During this period, Israel became a crucial ally for the stability of Jordan, with bilateral relations strengthening through secret talks that resumed in October 1970. Following the "Black September", King Hussein expressed gratitude for Israeli support during the crisis and explored possibilities for further cooperation. However, when Yigal Allon proposed establishing a framework on the West Bank, which aligned with his earlier Allon Plan, Hussein's response was cautious. Ultimately, Meir's cabinet rejected Allon's proposal, and Hussein instead introduced his
Federation Plan in March 1972. The plan called for establishing a "United Arab Kingdom" with two federal provinces—one in Transjordan and the other in the West Bank—while military and foreign affairs would be managed by a central government in
Amman. Hussein aimed to attract Palestinians away from the PLO by demonstrating that a federation with Jordan was the most promising path to ending the occupation of the West Bank. This proposal, however, faced opposition from Palestinians who were either opposed to Hussein's rule or had reservations about it. Even after "Black September", most West Bank leaders, except Ḥamdi Kan'an, the Mayor of Nablus, preferred to maintain connections with Jordan. In September 1972, when the
Arab League discussed severing the connection between the West Bank and Jordan, West Bank mayors strongly opposed the idea, arguing that maintaining the connection was essential for political, economic, and humanitarian reasons. Between March 1972 and September 1973, Israeli Prime Minister
Golda Meir held six secret meetings with King Hussein of Jordan to discuss potential peace agreements and political arrangements. Hussein consistently stressed that any peace agreement would need to include the full integration of the West Bank, including
East Jerusalem, into a Jordanian federation and expressed willingness to demilitarize the area once it was under Jordanian rule. Hussein resisted proposals that deviated from this vision, including a defense pact with Israel, and the implementation of the Allon Plan, which suggested territorial adjustments. Egyptian President
Anwar Sadat and U.S. Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger both advocated for the confederation during the final months of
Gerald Ford's presidency, with Kissinger predicting that Israel would have difficulty meeting the
Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) expectations. Subsequently, in 1977, U.S. President
Jimmy Carter proposed the confederation concept to Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin. Peres believed Jordan's stability and effective governance would provide a solid foundation for any agreement, in contrast to the economic and administrative challenges he anticipated for an independent Palestinian state. Ben Ami notes that while King Abdullah has expressed frustration with discussions about a confederation, he has consistently left the possibility open for such an arrangement once a Palestinian state is established, a sequences that reflects the consensus among the idea's supporters in Jordan. Some in Jordan have hinted their support of the idea.
Prince Hassan bin Talal, Hussein's brother, suggested that the West Bank was historically part of Jordan and hinting at potential re-unification, although his remarks are not officially endorsed by the Jordanian government and remain controversial. Jordanian opposition to the confederation option resulted in few Israeli leaders advocating it openly. However, support for it occasionally surfaces. In the late 2000s,
Giora Eiland, who served as Israel's national security adviser under Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, authored several articles advocating for a revival of "the Jordanian confederation option of years past." In 2018,
Ayelet Shaked, then justice minister from the right-wing
Jewish Home party, supported a vision of merging areas A and B of the West Bank and Gaza with Jordan as part of a confederation, while annexing
Area C of the West Bank to Israel. (blue) to Israel. In 2022, American political scientist
Alon Ben-Meir argued that current realities, such as the intermingling of populations and the status of Jerusalem, render a traditional two-state solution increasingly unfeasible. He stated that "independent Israeli and Palestinian states ... can peacefully coexist and be sustained" only through a confederation with Jordan, "which has an intrinsic national interest in the resolution of all conflicting issues." In 2022, Saudi analyst Ali Shihabi published an article in
Al Arabiya, in which he argued that the only realistic solution to the Palestinian issue is the expansion of Jordan to include territories from the West Bank and Gaza, forming "The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine." Shihabi suggested that Palestinians should formally relinquish their claims to full control over Jerusalem, recognizing that dislodging Israel from the city is unrealistic, and instead focus on building a stable, economically viable state. In his view, Palestinians in Arab countries like Lebanon could gain citizenship in the expanded Hashemite Kingdom while retaining full residency rights in Lebanon, akin to EU citizens.
Public opinion A 2018 poll conducted by the
Ramallah-based
Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research revealed that around two-thirds of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza oppose the idea. Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist and pollster, attributed this opposition to distrust in the U.S. negotiating team and a belief that the proposal might undermine the goal of establishing a Palestinian state. Israeli journalist
Shmuel Rosner writes that Israelis also generally reject this option because it would involve ceding historically and religiously significant territory to Jordan, which many find unacceptable. Nevertheless, they view the alternatives as even less viable: maintaining a military occupation of the West Bank is not sustainable, a
one-state solution is unacceptable to Israeli Jews, and the
two-state solution seems increasingly unattainable given the repeated failures to achieve it. == "Jordan is Palestine": Palestinians to Jordan, West Bank to Israel ==