Jordan will never be ‘alternative homeland’ for Palestinians — King Abdullah

NEW YORK – Jordan will never become an alternative location for a Palestinian state, the country’s King Abdullah told the United Nations General Assembly, during a speech devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Extremists “are taking our region to the brink of an all-out war,” King Abdullah said. “That includes those who continue to propagate the idea of Jordan as an alternative homeland” for the Palestinians, he stressed.

“Let me be very, very clear,” he said. “That will never happen. We will never accept the forced displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime,” he added.

King Abdullah accused Israel of deliberately targeting the entire Palestinian people in a speech in which he never called out Hamas for its October 7 attack on Israel and presented the Jewish state as the sole aggressor in the conflict.

He referenced the mass displacement of Palestinians from their homes in Gaza and the Palestinian fatality count of over 40,000 dead in Gaza as a result of the war. Israel has said that 17,000 fatalities in Gaza are of combatants.“Is it any wonder that many are questioning, how can this war not be perceived as deliberately targeting the Palestinians?” he said.

“The level of civilian suffering cannot be written off as unavoidable collateral. I grew up a soldier in a region that is all too familiar with conflict, but there is nothing familiar about this war and the violence unleashed since October 7,” King Abdullah stated.

Calling on the UN to protect Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza

“In the absence of global accountability, repeated horrors are normalized, threatening to create a future where anything is permitted, anywhere in the world,” the monarch said.

“Is that what we want?” he asked as he called on the United Nations to create a means to protect Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem.

“Now is the time to ensure the protection of the Palestinian people. It is the moral duty of this international community to establish a protection mechanism for them across the occupied Palestinian territory,” he stated.King Abdullah also accused Israel of deliberately targeting UN sites in Gaza, portraying it as a nation at war with the global institution.

“The UN is under attack, literally and figuratively. For nearly a year, the sky-blue flag flying over UN shelters and schools in Gaza has been powerless to protect innocent civilians from Israeli military bombardment,” he said, without referencing the Hamas use of those sites.

“The rulings of the UN’s International Court of Justice are defied, its opinions disregarded. So it’s no surprise that both inside and outside, this whole trust in the UN’s cornerstone principles and ideals is crumbling.

“The harsh reality many see is that some nations are above international law, that global justice does bend to the will of power, and that human rights are selective, a privilege to be granted or denied at will,” he stated.

King Abdullah blamed Israel for the absence of a peace deal, even though his own country has had a peace treaty with the Jewish state since 1994.

“For years, the Arab world has extended a hand to Israel through the Arab Peace Initiative, offering full recognition and normalization [with Israel] in exchange for peace,” King Abdullah said. He referenced the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative that included a demand for Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines with minor land swaps.

“Consecutive Israeli governments, emboldened by years of impunity, have rejected peace and chosen confrontation instead,” King Abdullah said.

Palestinians have endured more than 57 years of “occupation” and “oppression” while Israel has crossed one red line after the other, he stated.

“Now Israel’s decades-long impunity is becoming its own worst enemy, and the consequences are everywhere,” he said, as he called on the UN to unite around the implementation of a two-state resolution to the conflict.