Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS. - When the tsunami hit South Asia in late December, political leaders in the Arab Middle East responded tepidly, with few public statements of sympathy and only meager promises of financial assistance. But soon, critical voices in the Arab media, along with negative foreign commentary, led to a marked turnaround. Leaders rushed to increase their relief assistance.

The remarkable role of the media in shaping the Arab response to the tsunami has gone almost completely unnoticed in the Western media.

On Jan. 5, the editor of the Palestinian-owned, London-based Al Quds al Arabi - probably the most anti-American of the leading Arab newspapers - described the response of Arab rulers and the wider public alike as "humiliating" and deeply frustrating. Other Arab newspapers such as the Saudi-owned, London-based Al Hayat began publishing article after article lambasting Arab rulers for their absurdly small - and far too tardy - response. Satellite TV stations such as Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Dubai-based Al Arabiya covered the humanitarian disaster heavily, with Al Jazeera beginning its own heavily publicized drive to collect donations, featuring daily advertisements from figures such as the popular Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

Even more remarkable than this outburst of public criticism is that, stung by these criticisms, shamed before their own people, Arab leaders changed their tune. Saudi Arabia, which initially offered only token sums of relief, launched a high-profile telethon to which senior members of the royal family ostentatiously contributed large sums; at last count, more than $82 million had been raised. Other Arab states increased their relief contributions, as well.

The Arab media's success in forcing Arab leaders to change their response to the tsunami is quietly revolutionary. Arab leaders haven't generally been accustomed to paying attention to public opinion, nor to the media, which they generally can control, repress, or shut down. Satellite TV stations such as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya can not be so easily controlled - nor ignored. That humanitarian relief for the victims of the tsunami - rather than more predictable issues such as Israel or Iraq - has become a focus of the Arab media's outrage, and that Arab leaders responded, offers a genuine new road for Arab politics.

It is not only the Arab regimes that have come in for scorn. Several Arab columnists pointedly asked what kind of relief Osama bin Laden has had to offer to the Muslims he claims to represent. Others criticized more mainstream Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood for their efforts. And not a few have criticized the Arab public itself for failing to mobilize in support of the victims of the tsunami in the way that they did for Palestinians or Iraqis.

The Arab response to the tsunami has become a moment for Arab self-criticism and soul-searching, as an impressive roster of Arab journalists and political personalities have demanded a public accounting for the tepid Arab response. The Western media, unfortunately, have focused on reports of the hateful and absurd remarks of a small number of fringe figures involved in this global disaster, or on whether Arabs have been sufficiently appreciative of American relief efforts. Not everything is about the West.

The real story is one inside to the Arab world - of the emergence of an Arab media willing to engage in self-criticism and capable of forcing Arab leaders to act positively in response to a humanitarian disaster.

A small thing, perhaps, but one that contains kernels of hope for the Arab future.

Could the plan of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to "disengage" from the Gaza Strip "include a Jordanian presence" in the West Bank? So Sharon told his cabinet on June 1, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. Since then, rumors about such a role for Jordan, farfetched as they seem, have spread like wildfire through Israeli and Arab political circles.

Seeking to assuage fears that Hamas would dominate the Palestinian territories from which Israeli forces withdraw, Israel and the United States have approached Egypt about providing security assistance in Gaza. On June 17, Egyptian President Husni Mubarak met with CIA Director George Tenet, presumably to discuss the details. Reports that a Jordanian security team toured the West Bank in mid-June, without notifying Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, have fueled speculation that Jordan may be amenable to an arrangement similar to Egypt's. The prospect of Jordan's return to territory it occupied from 1948 to 1967 has been taken seriously enough that, on June 14, Jordanian spokeswoman Asma Khader found it necessary to repeat her government's long-standing opposition to the idea. Two days later, King Abdallah II is said to have told George W. Bush of his worry that the Israeli premier might be attempting to revive the "Jordan option."

A renewed Jordanian foothold in the West Bank is highly unlikely. Nearly four years of intensified Israeli occupation policies have devastated the Palestinian economy and radicalized the population, certainly reducing any interest Jordanian officials might have had in taking a poisoned chalice from Israel's hands. The territory nominally on offer, of course, would be much smaller in area than what Jordan formerly controlled, since the Israeli government is determined to hold on (with US approval) to most of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and all of the settlements ringing East Jerusalem. Since ascending the throne in 1999, Abdallah has strongly emphasized economic development over regional politics, and his recent calls for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East would seem to leave him little time or energy for managing a risky West Bank venture. A Jordanian return to the West Bank would draw fierce Arab and Palestinian criticism, making Abdallah -- already viewed with suspicion for his close ties to Washington -- a lightning rod for the growing anger of the Arab public. The Bush administration, increasingly perceived as a failure, would probably be unwilling or unable to supply the financial or political compensation that might make such a dangerous gambit worthwhile for the young monarch.

Another, less appreciated reason why the king could not contemplate sending troops back over the river is the major transformation that took place in Jordanian identity politics over the course of the 1990s. People of Palestinian origin -- many of them descendants of refugees who fled to Jordan in 1948 -- make up well over half the Jordanian citizenry, outnumbering those with origins on the East Bank of the river Jordan. For the past decade, the Hashemite regime has sought to fashion a national consensus identity that includes the Palestinian-origin citizens while not encroaching upon the prerogatives of the ethnic Transjordanians who compose its main power base. Amid this tenuous balance of forces and identities, talk of the Jordan option is political dynamite. For the current generation of Jordanian nationalists, it is axiomatic that any role in the West Bank would be the first step down the slippery slope of a silent Palestinian takeover of real power within the kingdom.

The so-called Jordan option has a long and tortuous history. In 1948, the first King Abdallah took advantage of the Arab-Israeli war to lay claim to the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. He annexed these territories to his kingdom (then known as Transjordan) and granted their residents full citizenship. In the mid-1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization, with its claim to represent all Palestinians, emerged to threaten Jordan as much as it did Israel. When Jordan lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel in 1967, it found itself locked in a bitter struggle with the PLO over the right to sovereignty in those lands -- a struggle which culminated in the bloody and unforgotten "Black September" war of 1970. Jordan reluctantly acceded to the consensus of the 1974 Arab Summit in Rabat that declared the PLO to be the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people," but the Jordanian state remained largely convinced of the legitimacy of its own rule over the lost territories and their inhabitants. King Hussein maneuvered to keep the Jordan option alive as a matter of both principle and self-interest.

Prior to the breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" at Oslo in 1993, Israel and the US were fearful of the PLO and so backed the more pliable Hussein's claim to be the appropriate interlocutor for the Palestinians of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon and the right wing of Israel's Likud Party, however, had a very different conception of the Jordan option. By their lights, there was no need to create a state for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza because a Palestinian state already existed in Jordan. In opposition to the US and Israeli governments, Sharon saw the Hashemite monarchy as an obstacle rather than an ally, and advocated the overthrow of Hussein and the creation of a Palestinian state on the East Bank.

The Jordanian regime watched with great trepidation as the Likud governments of the 1980s rapidly established settlements on the West Bank (creating what Sharon called "facts on the ground") and encouraged a quiet exodus of Palestinians across the Allenby Bridge into Jordan. Many Jordanians feared that Israel would solve its Palestinian problem at Jordan's expense.

When the first Palestinian intifada broke out in late 1987, the Jordanian regime was struggling economically and increasingly repressive politically. In 1988, Hussein shocked almost everyone by declaring a "severing of ties" with the West Bank. Perhaps even to his own surprise, his move turned out to be considerably more than just another tactic for gaining temporary advantage. In September 1989, massive unrest throughout the kingdom spurred the regime to initiate a process of liberalization that included competitive parliamentary elections as well as a dramatic opening to press freedom and political activity. From the ensuing public debates over Jordanian-Palestinian relations emerged a new consensus enshrined in the National Charter of 1991: Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine. A careful and firm distinction between the Jordanian East Bank and a Palestinian West Bank came to be seen as the key to Jordan's survival as an independent entity, as well as a way to resolve the mutual Jordanian-Palestinian suspicions that had festered since 1948. In conjunction with the Nablus-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, the University of Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies carried out a series of workshops and opinion surveys in the mid-1990s that confirmed the great sensitivities on both sides and made vividly clear that the time for a Jordanian return to the West Bank had passed.

Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel was widely taken as ratifying this distinct Jordanian national identity. One of the decisive arguments in the treaty's favor in Jordan was that it would finally dispel the Sharon vision that "Jordan is Palestine." (For his part, Sharon abstained from the vote on the treaty in the Israeli Knesset.) The new identity consensus in Jordan had sweeping implications for the kingdom's politics. Hussein's regime maintained an inclusivist national identity discourse emphasizing tolerance and coexistence. The country's Palestinian citizens refrained from overt political activity challenging the regime in exchange for the state's support for the PLO in its dealings with Israel.

Islamist political movements, though they draw heavily on Palestinian citizens for members, boosted their popularity with ethnic Transjordanians by avoiding explicit invocation of a Palestinian identity.

Most emboldened by the "severing of ties" with the West Bank were a group of outspoken Jordanian nationalists -- many of them pillars of the Hashemite regime -- for whom Jordan could only "be Jordan" if dominated by ethnic Transjordanians. For these figures, including the popular columnist Fahd al-Fanik and the powerful politician Abd al-Hadi al-Majali, as well as more radical intellectuals such as Nahid Hattar, any signs of Palestinian political activity in the kingdom were ipso facto threats to Jordan's identity. Today, the new Jordanian nationalists aggressively police public life for such signs, often inflaming ethnic controversies to score political points. On questions as disparate as whether Hamas should have political offices in Amman and economic development plans, these conservative nationalists -- known in Jordan for their "regionalism" (iqlimiyya) -- intimidate the opposition by assigning it a Palestinian face. Even more than the Israeli right, the nationalists have kept alive the idea of the "alternative homeland" as a trump card in all political arguments.

In October 2002, Abdallah II launched a campaign to mobilize the country under the slogan "Jordan First," unambiguously taking the new identity consensus as a starting point. Economic development, modernization and incremental political reform would take precedence over the "external" concerns, such as Palestine, that had run through his father's reign. This campaign has brought ambiguous results for Jordanians of Palestinian origin. On the one hand, the Palestinian origins of the king's beautiful and widely admired wife Rania (who was recently appointed a colonel in the Jordanian armed forces) offer a source of pride and hope for greater integration into the political and economic order. On the other hand, the election law that was painstakingly engineered prior to the June 2003 elections produced a parliament containing only 18 members of Palestinian origin out of a total of 108. Despite the new consensus, Jordanian-Palestinian relations remain a raw wound.

Ariel Sharon and the "alternative homeland" hover like a specter over these delicate internal politics. Even relatively low-level Jordanian involvement in West Bank security arrangements will likely trigger ugly disputes over national identity in the kingdom.

Such a distraction might not be altogether unwelcome for the regime. Behind the confident and progressive facade offered at the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea and the G-8 summit in Georgia, Jordan remains an economically and politically troubled country. The gerrymandered parliamentary elections of June 2003 generated little excitement, and the uninspiring body that was elected has done little to improve public perceptions. Prime Minister Faisal al-Fayez and his government of technocrats evoke comparably little enthusiasm. Few of the restrictive "temporary laws" passed by executive fiat after Abdallah dissolved the legislature in 2001 have been rescinded, and many have actually been ratified by the new pro-government parliament. Despite generous economic assistance from the US, including a free trade agreement, and a rigorously implemented International Monetary Fund structural adjustment program, the Jordanian economy remains stagnant, with poverty on the rise and the gap between rich and poor continuing to expand. In the spring of 2004, the arrest of opposition journalist Fahd Rimawi (later released after a barrage of negative publicity) and the conviction of feminist politician Toujan Faisal for "defaming" the prime minister symbolized the continuing authoritarian sensibilities of the regime. Few Jordanians today share the common American view of the kingdom as an oasis of democratization and pro-American sentiment.

The collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the tightening spiral of misery in Palestine have cast doubt upon the stability of the Jordanian-Israeli relationship. At a March 2004 meeting in the Negev desert, Abdallah reportedly warned Sharon that Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank threatens the survival of Jordan as a state and urged the Israeli premier not to encourage talk of the Jordan option. Indeed, in 2003 Jordanian criticism of the multiple walls and fences led a number of prominent Israeli officials to describe Jordan as "an enemy."

The Jordanian public -- and not only citizens of Palestinian origin -- identify deeply with the Palestinians across the river and hostility to Israel remains at a fever pitch. Despite government efforts to clamp down on "anti-normalization" activism, professional associations and other organs of civil society continue to agitate against "normal" relations with Israel. In mid-June, the Jordanian parliament found itself unable to pass legislation concerning a National Human Rights Center due to an intense controversy over a clause forbidding the center to deal with "the Jewish entity." Jordanian horror at the images of Palestinian suffering broadcast in the pan-Arab media has deepened fury with Israel, the US and, most alarmingly for the regime, with Arab leaders who do nothing to stop the closures and invasions. The Jordanian public is angry, mobilized and frustrated with its government. In such a climate, the reaction of the Jordanian public to the rumors of a Jordanian role in the West Bank has been predictably unanimous in opposition. Opposition parties have warned against participating in a "conspiracy against the Palestinian people." Critics of a return to the West Bank use the regime's own words against the idea, while government spokesmen have rushed to repeat the standard line that Jordan would play only a role supportive of the Palestinian Authority.

Meanwhile, speculation about a new Jordan option comes as a gift from heaven to the conservative nationalists who have dominated recent Jordanian governments. They have spearheaded the criticism of a security role in the West Bank, rehearsing their frequently aired mantra that such a return would mean "national suicide" for Jordan. Over the last month, the nationalists stirred up a firestorm over the appointment of Palestinian-origin journalist Omar al-Kullab as a media advisor to Interior Minister Samir al-Habashneh, who had already been under fire for his efforts to improve conditions for Palestinians crossing the bridge into Jordan. Stories about the harassment of a Jordanian media delegation at the hands of Palestinian security officials in the West Bank provided more grist for the mill, as did the reports (denied by the Jordanian government) of the Jordanian security delegation's tour of the West Bank.

As Nahid Hattar warned ominously, "any Jordanian role in the West Bank, whether security or practical, is impossible because it is not possible politically."

For Israeli columnist Ehud Yaari, all of this pales against Jordan's absolute dependence on the US, combined with potential economic rewards associated with refugee compensation and economic assistance. But neither argument is convincing. The US recognizes the fragility of Jordan's political system, and can hardly be eager to see its favorite model of Arab reform collapse into ethnic strife. Major economic compensation for Palestinian refugees and reconstruction seems a pipe dream, and would be more than balanced by the massive expense involved with salvaging even a rudimentary economic life for the besieged Palestinians of the West Bank.

King Abdallah has placed the highest priority on maintaining close relations with the US, and has been rewarded with frequent meetings with George W. Bush, as well as aid dollars and the free trade pact.

Abdallah has been one of the most outspoken Arab leaders in backing US calls for political and economic reform in the region, as at the G-8 summit in early June. Jordanian intelligence has cooperated closely with the US in the struggle against Islamist extremists, cooperation that grew even closer after allegations of an al-Qaeda plot to use chemical weapons against American and Jordanian targets in Amman. Jordan played a quiet but active supporting role during the Iraq war and continues to train recruits for the Iraqi police force (though it has thus far refused to send troops to join the US-led multinational force).

Yet Jordan's dependence on the US has not been easy on the kingdom. The US occupation of Iraq has been extremely unpopular, with many Jordanians equating it with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Moreover, for his pains, Abdallah has repeatedly found the ground pulled from beneath his feet by the Bush administration. Bush's fervent support for Ariel Sharon has been the most devastating. The April 14, 2004 press conference at which Bush handed Sharon a letter expressing support for the "disengagement" plan humiliated the Jordanian king to the point that he postponed his own trip to Washington. Bush's statement during the press conference that the right of return for Palestinian refugees was "not sacred" set off tremors within Jordan. The identity consensus underlying the new Jordan depends on maintaining the fiction that Palestinians might someday have the choice to return to their homes in what is now Israel -- even if few would actually exercise this right. These policy shifts can only have soured the attitudes measured by the March 2004 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, which found that only 12 percent of Jordanians supported the US "war on terror," only 5 percent had a favorable view of the US and only 3 percent had favorable views of Bush.

Rumors of the Jordan option persist. On June 19, Husni Mubarak's top political adviser Usama al-Baz told the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat: "Egypt does not object to a Jordanian security role...we welcome a Jordanian role." Such statements feed suspicions that Jordan's forceful renunciation of the rumors is for public consumption only. Clearly, though, the Jordan option has resurfaced because of its utility for Sharon's plan for unilateral disengagement from select parts of the Occupied Territories, not because of Jordanian ambitions or Palestinian interests. The idea has no more potential to ease conflict now than in the past.

Few Palestinians would accept a Jordanian return, and the major armed groups have offered no support. As reported in the June 18 Financial Times, a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an offshoot of the mainline Fatah organization, told the visiting Jordanian security delegation that his group would reject an Arab military presence aimed at stamping out the uprising. The Jordanian public is almost universally opposed to any West Bank presence, seeing little to gain and much to lose. While new ideas are certainly needed to break the deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians, the Jordan option remains an elusive fantasy that can only obscure real and difficult choices.

Marc Lynch teaches political science at Williams College.