The Hebrew Manifesto: Israel, Palestine, and the Jordan Union.

[georgephillip]

Shortly after the 1956 Suez War, a new group in Israel including Uri Avnery and Nathan Yalin-Mor to up the old idea of a federation including a Jewish state of Israel, the State of Palestine along 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a federation between Israel, Palestine, and Jordan to be called "the Jordan Union."

"In the 1970s, Abba Eban floated the idea of a Benelux-type solution, a name derived from the federation-like arrangement between Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg.

"To my surprise, when I first met with Yasser Arafat during the siege of Beirut in 1982, he used the very same term: 'A federation between Israel, Palestine and Jordan, and perhaps Lebanon too – why not?'

"He repeated the same idea, in the same words, at our last meeting, just before his mysterious death."

A Federation? Why Not? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

Why not?

 

[georgephillip]

"IN THE spring of 1949, immediately after the signing of the original armistice agreements between the new State of Israel and the Arab countries which had intervened in the war, a group was formed in Israel to advocate the setting up of a Palestinian state next to Israel, and the signing of a covenant between the two nations.

"At the time, that idea was considered heretical, since the very existence of a Palestinian people was strenuously denied in Israel.

"The group consisted of a Muslim Arab, a Druze Arab and me.

"After some time, when our attempts to form a new party failed to get off the ground, the group dispersed. (Curiously enough, all three of us later became members of the Knesset.)

"We were of one mind concerning a salient point: the borders between the two states must be open for the free movement of people and goods.

"We did not use the word 'federation', but something like that was on our minds."

A Federation? Why Not? » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

 

[georgephillip]

Uri Avnery has lived and bled in Israel longer than the Jewish state has been in existence.
He was a teen-age member of the Irgun and nearly lost his life during Israel's War of Independence in 1948; he was the first Jew to interview Yassir Arafat during the Siege of Beirut in July of 1982. Fifteen years before that, he suggested Israel and the Palestinians unite to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan and create new a federation consisting of Israel and the Palestinian Jordanian state.

Fifty-six years have come and gone since Avnery proposed that federation, and there has been too much Semitic blood shed in Palestine for such a federation to gain traction today absent a UNSC peacekeeping force in Palestine composed exclusively of US, Russian, and Chinese troops. Let the British and the French pay the costs for keeping the peace in Palestine since it was their Sykes-Picot agreement which created much of the mess in the first place.

About those cage fights...if the US and China outsource part of their manpower requirements to their respective Korean proxies, how about a globally televised tournament consisting of the best empty handed fighters in each military with the winner of a US v Russia quarter-final competing against the winner of N. Korea v S. Korea in the semis and the heroic IDF waiting for the main event?

Maybe Hamas would like to participate, as well?