US president Donald Trump deserved all credit for the ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon. Apparently, the president’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, prior to Trump assuming the presidency visited Tel Aviv. On being told that Benjamin Netanyahu would only meet him after the Sabbath (an excuse to give the IDF pursue its war aims in Gaza), Witkoff put foot down firmly saying,’ Sabbath or no Sabbath. Netanyahu had to see him now. The Israeli PM yielded. The ceasefire came into effect soon after. Now president Trump has mooted the option of Gazans being ‘relocated’ to Jordan and Egypt. This, for all practical purposes, is a nonstarter.

First, it harks back to a proposal mooted by King Hussein of Jordan in 1972. This proposal- met with both exasperation and resistance by Palestinians and the broader Arab world- suggested that Jordan and parts of Palestine be merged. While it never saw the ‘proverbial light of the day’, but it appears to be raised in a new avatar. Why, the question is, is the ‘Jordanian option’ a nonstarter? Primarily, it subsumes the historical and legitimate aspirations into a quasi-federation that ‘cleanses’ their ethno-religious matrix and collapses it into a federation. Second, the post-colonial Arab state- in general terms- is an artificial construct with straddling borders that........

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