The writer is an associate professor of political science at the  American University in Cairo.

   A Palestinian state of the West Bank and Gaza is no longer on the cards,  irrespective of the make-up of the coming Israeli government. Israel  instead has created the strategic conditions, including a near Israeli  public consensus, for the expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank.  This is what the wall and the planned retention of Jerusalem, the Jordan  Valley and large settlement blocks foretell. Israel will likely let  eviction happen by haemorrhage, rather than engineer a 1948-style ethnic  cleansing. It may not feel impelled to act soon, waiting for the fall of  the Hashemite monarchy, which Israel seems to anticipate and which could  only be hastened by the continuous exit of Palestinians from the West Bank  to Jordan. Ariel Sharon’s wish for a Palestine state in Jordan thus would  be fulfilled. Gaza could dissolve imperceptibly into populous Egypt. Such a  momentous "checkmate", however, is not destiny for the Palestinians. The  leadership needs to think beyond the mental checkpoints around Ramallah and  devise a new political vision and a commensurate strategy of action.

   This vision, I submit, must rest on turning the current demographic  fragmentation of the Palestinians into an asset, by redefining their  geopolitical space to encompass a state in Greater Palestine, the territory  that was Palestine before Winston Churchill in 1922 split it by fiat into  Palestine and Transjordan. Today there are approximately eight million  Palestinians in that area: 1.2 millions in Israel, 1.15 millions in Gaza,  two millions in the West Bank and 3.2 millions in Jordan. In 30 years or  so, they will double to 16 million strong. If the last century of strife  has taught us anything, it is that they will fight fiercely for a state in  which they are equal citizens. At a time when the advocacy of democracy has  become a political mantra in the region, it is historically retrograde that  the people who constitute the majority in Greater Palestine remain subject  to dispossession by Israel and sub-citizens in Jordan.

   Demography matters. In countries where aggrieved nationalities are  concentrated in one area, we observe a centrifugal pressure towards  secession or at least a demand for autonomy. The splitting of  Czechoslovakia and Cyprus exemplify this conclusion. Quebec in Canada, the  Basque region in Spain, and Kurdistan in Iraq and Turkey are further  illustrations. Where ethnicities are more evenly spread and intermingled,  only democratic accommodation can begin to tackle social tensions; South  Africa stands out. Yet, in a third situation where the same nationality  exists in two separate states, re-unification may be sought. Witness the  two Germanys, North and South Koreas, Mainland China and Taiwan. In Greater  Palestine "the demographic effect" is mixed. The diffusion of the  Palestinian communities throughout the territory is a unifying factor,  although their prolonged isolation from each other cedes the formation of  distinct identities. The Jewish and East Jordanian concentration west and  east of the Jordan River, in contrast, pulls in the opposite direction —  separation.

   By now it should be evident that establishing a third, Palestinian  state, in addition to Israel and Jordan, faces insurmountable hurdles.  Apart from the Bantustanisation of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel adamantly  rejects the Palestinian right of return. This means that even if a  Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza were established, there would  be a large number of Palestinians left in Jordan. Although the Hashemite  monarchy offered the Palestinians citizenship, acquiring in the bargain the  West Bank and helping to obliterate "Palestine" from the map, it has failed  to make them equal partners. East Jordanians, in turn, continue to fear a  Palestinian takeover. The recent scare in Jordan caused by the news leak  that two top Israeli military commanders predicted the demise of the  Hashemite regime is indicative of the ethnically induced volatility of  Jordanian politics.

   In addition to the Palestinians in Jordan, there would be the  Palestinians who are Israeli citizens but unable to overcome their  third-class citizenship status in a state that insists on being a "Jewish  state". In Greater Palestine we have not only the Palestinian predicament,  but Jewish and East Jordanians dilemmas as well, for the presence of a  Palestinian majority confronts both Jordan and Israel, and will ever more  so, with a central question of how to co-exist with this majority. Both  states have been apprehensive that a viable Palestinian state only would  embolden the Palestinians under their tutelage to press them for  fundamental political concessions. That apprehension explains why they have  never genuinely contemplated permitting the emergence of such a state.

   Seeing that a Palestinian state is untenable in the tattered West Bank  geography, and that what was emerging was a South Africa-like apartheid  system, some have begun to revive the old idea of a bi-national,  Israeli-Palestinian state. But a tri-ethnic state in Greater Palestine is  no different in its requisites from that of a bi-national state and, it can  be argued, presents superior opportunities. Such an expanded state would be  large enough for everybody; no one has to be squeezed out. It allows people  to move into places where their heart or their pocket feels at home. The  question of return of the Palestinian refugees in Jordan becomes a matter  of normal movement within a country. With a decrease in competition for  space, the Palestinian refugees in Syria and Lebanon would be given the  option of finding home in the proposed state. The Palestinian right of  return for the major refugee clustres thus can be resolved as regards  residence, identity and political status, rendering other aspects, such as  compensation, easier to tackle.

   The only other way the refugees’ right of return could possibly be met  is to implement the 1947 UN partition plan. This plan, in fact, is the sole  international legal document that defines borders for Israeli and  Palestinian states; the land that Israel has come to control by military  conquest. Israel needs to choose between demographic advantage and state  size; to insist on having both is to invite strife. In a state within 1947  borders Jews would be a majority, but Israel is not satisfied with the area  it controlled on the eve of the 1967 War. A tri- ethnic state in Greater  Palestine would enable Jews to live in Eretz Israel (Land of Israel), as  Israelis call Greater Palestine. Jews for millennia lived amongst Arabs and  Muslims and thrived economically and culturally in their midst. Yes, they  experienced episodes of misfortune, which often struck the Arabs themselves  too. The creation of Israel disrupted a largely admirable, long-shared  cultural history. Anti-Semitism is a European-spawned demon that caught in  its claws first the Jews and then the Palestinians. The fog of present  hostilities prevents envisioning a tolerant, inclusive political order;  however, it is not, or at least we must believe it is not, impossible.  Israel bears a special responsibility for bringing it about; the choices it  makes will largely determine the course of the conflict.

   With my sincere admiration for Jordan’s historical heritage, I should  think that it is loftier for East Jordanians to belong to a state that  encompasses Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth. The Hashemites began their  career on a high rhetorical note of pan-Arabism, which has diminished into  the parochial and divisive, "Jordan first". They and Zionism divided up  Greater Palestine and undertook to suppress Palestinian nationalism. In the  process, a deep Palestinian-East Jordanian cleavage evolved that kept the  two peoples suspicious of each other. Yet, considering the cultural  affinities between them, in the long run they could forge a common  identity, although the example of Iraq must be borne in mind. The  Palestinians must reassure the East Jordanians that they won’t simply  reverse roles. They ought to recall how their hyper-nationalist displays  after the 1967 War frightened East Jordanians, and how the government  harnessed that fear in 1970 to end the Palestinian military and political  presence in Jordan.

   The vision of a single state in Greater Palestine could only come to  fruition through Palestinian mass mobilisation. The Palestine Liberation  Organisation (PLO) needs to reconstitute itself as a non-corrupt Palestine  Reunification Organisation (PRO). The PLO, even though it had earned the  support of the majority of Palestinians, was never able to harness  Palestinian energies. It became absorbed in local battles where the  leadership happened to be headquartered. The latest manifestation of this  tendency is the ascent of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the decline of  the PLO, and the concomitant inattention to Palestinians outside  Israeli-controlled territory. Whether this development was engendered by  the maladroit behaviour of leaders or by deliberate policy to downgrade the  "right of return", the net outcome has been the weakening of the position  of those under occupation as well of those in exile.

   The PA thus finds itself at the mercy of politically driven foreign aid,  which can be withheld when the authority does not comply with the political  diktat of donors. In Jordan, the Palestinians, among other things, were  blocked from publicly demonstrating their support for the recent Intifada.  The time has come to rectify this structural failure. Two West Bank  intellectuals, Ali Jarbawi and George Giacaman, have advocated one option  that deserves serious debate. On their suggestion, the PA, whose main  function of negotiating the creation of a Palestinian state has been  superseded, ought to be disbanded while the PLO is reconstituted. The West  Bank and Gaza could be led once more by informal institutions, as was the  case before the Oslo accords.

   "Armed struggle", however, would have to be re-evaluated since the aim  is not to separate, but put together. A strategy of non-violence, according  to Palestinian and international activists, is more likely to convince the  current adversaries of the sincerity of Palestinian intentions, to garner  global allies, and to keep the Palestinians themselves engaged. What I want  to underline is that President Mahmoud Abbas, with his international  credibility and forthrightness, could be an ideal shepherd for a creative,  peaceful resistance. But he still clings to the belief or hope that  diplomacy and reason could bring about a Palestinian state and the right of  return, without first mustering the strength necessary for negotiating such  a political feat. The rationalist "engineer of Oslo" would render his  people a lasting service, if he drew a different conclusion. The  Palestinians have before them great counsellors: Nelson Mandela and the  African National Congress.

   This proposal of a single state in Greater Palestine hardly arises out  of some wide-eyed optimism. It is easy to stack up objections regarding  practicality, or shrug shoulders at its apparent utopia. But if it’s  impractical, why hasn’t something more practical materialised? And if it’s  a utopia, mustn’t it be weighed against the dystopia of interminable  conflict?