Guterres & UN bury Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution & peace

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had the gall to address the Opening of the General Debate of the Seventy-ninth Session of the General Assembly on 24 September and declare:

“The international community must mobilize for an immediate ceasefire, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, and the beginning of an irreversible process towards a two-State solution.

For those who go on undermining that goal with more settlements, more land grabs, more incitement -- I ask:

What is the alternative?”

The alternative is the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (HKOPS) – first brought to the attention of Guterres’s personal spokesperson Stephane Dujarric by myself in an email dated 30 June 2022 and in subsequent emails sent to Dujarric on:

·       7 further occasions prior to Gaza’s invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023 and

·       24 further occasions since then.

Not one of those emails was acknowledged by Guterres or Dujarric and not one comment was received from Guterres to my articles attached to those emails - despite my assurance his comments would be printed verbatim in subsequent articles written by me.

On 4 August 2022 I invited both Guterres and Dujarric to respond to my article published on 1 August 2022 and headlined “UN will rue burying debate on Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine”: 

“The United Nations Security Council has lost any authority to broker an end to the Jewish-Arab conflict – after its 26th July Quarterly Open Debate: “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question” proceeded for 5 hours without any speaker making reference to a new solution emanating from Saudi Arabia to resolve the 100 years-old conflict.

That Saudi solution – the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank into one separate territorial entity to be called “The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine”– had been published on 8 June in Al Arabiya News.

The article was written by Ali Shihabi – a confidante of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – Saudi Arabia’s next King and driving force behind NEOM – a $500 billion megacity of the future to be erected in Saudi Arabia on an expanse of land the size of Israel.

The Security Council’s silence in commenting on this Saudi solution ever since its publication has been arrogant and breathtaking. This solution offers an alternative to the solution unsuccessfully pressed by the UN for the last 29 years: The creation of a new Arab State between Israel and Jordan.

The Security Council had an obligation to notify UN member States of the emergence of this new solution since its last Quarterly Debate and encourage the members to consider its pros and cons as a replacement for the UN plan that was clearly dead in the water.

The Security Council and its vast bureaucracy could certainly not claim ignorance of this Saudi proposal.

I myself had written to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres representative Stephane Dujarric on 30 June enclosing a copy of the Al Arabiya article – inviting the Secretary-General to comment on the solution for inclusion in an article I was writing.

No reply was received – so my article was published on 4 July...

Guterres’s continuing failure to acknowledge the existence of HKOPS as a possible solution to end a conflict still unresolved after more than 100 years - has seen this conflict escalate since 7 October 2023 well beyond the boundaries of former Palestine.

Calling for an “irreversible process” to create a new state between Israel and Jordan - after being overwhelmingly rejected 68 to 9 by Israel’s Knesset on 18 July - is a waste of time.

Implementing HKOPS still remains the best way forward for the UN.