Yara Bataineh is an editorial associate at DAWN’s Democracy in Exile. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Jordan and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of San Diego. Her work has included refugee-focused initiatives and civic education programs in Jordan.
Central to Israel's approach toward Palestinians is a long-standing demographic concern, with Palestinian population growth framed as a threat to the state's Jewish identity. Since the genocide on Gaza, this concern has again arisen as an explicit political argument shaping debates over how and where Palestinians should exist politically. As most of Israel's leadership rejects Palestinian self-determination, some politicians and commentators have revived older ideas that externalize the Palestinian question altogether, looking beyond Palestine's borders for a solution.
Among them is the so-called "Jordan option," which substitutes Jordan for a Palestinian state as the locus of Palestinian national rights — exposing the demographic logic that shapes Israeli policy thinking — with consequences for both Palestine and Jordan. Israeli leaders articulated this concept as early as the late 1970s and 1980s. In a 1989 Time interview, Ariel Sharon said, "Jordan is Palestine. The capital of Palestine is Amman," arguing that Jordanians were Palestinian even before British colonial rule installed the Hashemite monarchy. That same year, Sharon claimed that "the Palestinian problem started to be solved by having a Palestinian state in Jordan." Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir similarly rejected a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, framing Trans-Jordan as the historical homeland of Palestinian Arabs. Scholars later cited this belief as foundational to the Jordan option.
This logic resurfaced in the early 2000s through the "Elon Peace Plan" — advanced by former Minister of Tourism Binyamin Elon — which rejected Palestinian statehood outright, called for Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank and Gaza and proposed that Palestinians become citizens of Jordan. Refugee camps were to be dismantled, with international aid redirected to support their absorption. While such proposals failed to gain official endorsement, their underlying premise has persisted.
Since 2023, Israeli concerns over demographics and governance have renewed attention on the idea that Jordan could serve as the Palestinian state.
- Yara Bataineh
In 2011, analysts reported that Israeli government and security officials quietly discussed a strategy to link Palestinian political status with Jordan, citing former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, Knesset member and far-right Religious Zionism Party member Arieh Eldad and then‑Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin. That same year, Eldad forced a discussion in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, centralizing Jordan as the Palestinian national homeland — an argument commonly summarized as "Jordan is Palestine."
Eldad also organized and publicized a petition delivered to the Jordanian Embassy in Tel Aviv calling on King Abdullah II to recognize Jordan as the Palestinian national homeland, urging his supporters abroad to sign similar petitions while framing the move as an alternative to the two-state solution. Taken together, these episodes illustrate that the Jordan option is not simply a fallback plan invoked in moments of crisis, but a long-standing primary approach within significant segments of Israeli politics, activated whenever the prospect of an independent Palestinian state is rejected or deemed politically unviable.
After the Hamas attacks of October 2023 and Israel's subsequent genocide of Gaza, Israeli demographic anxiety intensified, with senior officials openly calling for Palestinian removal. At a far-right rally, Environmental Protection Minister Idit Silman said Gaza must be "emptied of Gazans." Likud lawmaker Nissim Vaturi urged the removal of all Arabs from the Strip, later using dehumanizing language calling for violence against Palestinian men and the erasure of Jenin. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir backed what he described as "encouraging emigration" while opposing humanitarian aid — a clear form of coercion. Lawmakers from Likud, Shas, Religious Zionism and Jewish Power signed a letter demanding siege tactics and the "complete cleansing" of northern Gaza.
Israeli public opinion reflects these views. A Haaretz poll published in mid-2025 found that about 82% of Jewish Israeli respondents supported the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. In the same survey, 56% supported the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Since 2023, Israeli concerns over demographics and governance have renewed attention on the idea that Jordan could serve as the Palestinian state. In November 2025, Energy Minister Eli Cohen said a country with a Palestinian majority already existed in Jordan, declaring that no Palestinian state would be established. Israeli media echoed that argument across the ideological spectrum, including in a July 2025 Time of Israel opinion piece and a December 2025 Channel 14 op-ed, titled "The Palestinian state already exists, it's across the Jordan River."
As Israel pushes Palestinians off their land and denies the possibility of collective self-rule, the question of where they exist politically is no longer abstract but answered through force.
- Yara Bataineh
Similar logic appears in proposals treating Jordan as an alternative to Palestinian self-governance. Former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested Egypt control Gaza, Jordan take charge of Area A and part of Area B in the West Bank — including densely populated Palestinian cities — while Israel would apply sovereignty over the rest of Area B and all of Area C. Though not official policy, these ideas reflect a recurring current in Israeli political discourse.
The idea extends beyond Israel. In late 2023, Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders declared that "Jordan is Palestine," drawing condemnation from Arab governments. Related arguments appear across Western policy circles, including discussions of Palestinian-Jordanian confederation or non-sovereign arrangements promoted by analysts affiliated with leading institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations. Largely limited to academic and policy debate, these ideas gained wider political visibility when U.S. President Donald Trump suggested relocating Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries — including Jordan — during February 2025 postwar deliberations with Abdullah in the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, Israel has utilized military operations, home demolitions and settlement expansion to displace thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank. Human Rights Watch recently reported that Israel forcefully displaced about 32,000 Palestinians from the Jenin, Nur Shams and Tulkarem refugee camps in early 2025, barring their return. Alongside refugee camp raids, demolitions in Area C and East Jerusalem have left hundreds homeless. In parallel, increased settler violence and illegal settlement expansion have further pressured Palestinian communities, undermining their ability to stay on their land. Israeli authorities cite planning and security reasons for demolitions when the true aim is to consolidate Israeli control, weakening the prospects for a Palestinian state.
What is unfolding in the West Bank today is not a series of isolated security measures but a cumulative process of displacement carrying profound political implications. Israel's emptying of refugee camps, demolition of homes, fragmentation of territory and normalization of settler violence erodes the material basis for Palestinian existence and political continuity west of the Jordan River. As Israel pushes Palestinians off their land and denies the possibility of collective self-rule, the question of where they exist politically is no longer abstract but answered through force.
Jordan remains the most accessible destination for Palestinians seeking refuge or economic stability given its geographic proximity, family ties and historical links. Official data indicate that a large share of first‑degree relatives of Palestinians live in Jordan. Jordan also hosts one of the largest Palestinian populations outside the Occupied Palestinian Territory, creating conditions under which the "Jordan is Palestine" idea shifts from rhetoric toward a de facto outcome.
Yet as it displaces Palestinians from the West Bank, Israel consolidates control over land and borders, implicitly casting Jordan as the destination of last resort — the space where demographic pressure is redirected and Palestinian national claims are expected to be absorbed and managed. Formal deportation orders are not required to achieve this effect; the cumulative denial of safety, livelihood and permanence produces the same result over time.
For Jordan, the implications are existential. Externalizing the Palestinian question threatens to destabilize a country already grappling with economic strain, political fragility and a legacy of successive refugee waves. For Palestinians, it represents the negation of self-determination through demographic engineering. For the region, it signals a shift from conflict resolution to conflict exportation.
The Jordan option's revival against the backdrop of accelerating forced displacement in the West Bank reveals its function not as a peace proposal but as a strategy to remove the Palestinian question from Palestine itself. Treating Jordan as Palestine does not resolve the conflict; it relocates it.
The consequences of that relocation are no longer hypothetical. They are unfolding in real time.
The views and positions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DAWN.
