Israel was the original side that had proposed to the Americans the idea of a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation, to be established between the West Bank and Jordan, excluding Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, revealed Israeli sources. According to a report published in the Israeli daily Haaretz, the recent US proposal that was presented to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was originally an Israeli idea. Abbas announced that he would agree to a confederation with Jordan if Israel was part of it. “I was asked whether I believed in federalism with Jordan,” Abbas said. “My answer was yes; I want to establish a tripartite confederation with Jordan and Israel. I asked if the Israelis agreed with this proposal.” Abbas wanted to embarrass the Americans and the Israelis, as he knew that he was ready to discuss this issue only after the establishment of a Palestinian state. Nabil Abu Rudeina, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, said the idea of a confederation had been on the agenda of the Palestinian leadership since 1984, but stressed that the two-state solution was a prerequisite for any future agreement with Jordan. This Palestinian approach contradicts the Israeli proposal that the West Bank (without Jerusalem) be under Jordanian security control, which will protect the Jordanian-Palestinian border with Israel, while Israel declares the annexation of East Jerusalem and the Israeli settlements. As for the Gaza Strip, it will not be be part of the confederation agreement, but its security will be linked to Egypt. Jordanian government spokeswoman Joumana Ghneimat said the kingdom’s annexation of the West Bank was not open for discussion. “Discussing the issue of a confederation with the West Bank is out of the question,” she said, stressing her country’s stance on the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. According to Haaretz, Jordan fears that a confederacy would be an implementation of the “alternative homeland” on its territory and that it would be transformed into a “border guard for Israel”. The confederation, as envisioned by Abbas, will force Israel to strike new economic agreements, to coordinate foreign policies with Jordan and the Palestinian state and to deal with them as partners of equal status. As for the Israeli perception, the confederacy would be an agreement between the West Bank as a “canton” (an autonomous region) and most of its relations with Jordan would be economic, while the Jordanian king would determine the foreign and security policies. The idea of a confederacy is not new. It was first proposed in the early 1980s, during negotiations between then Jordanian monarch, Hussein bin Talal, and late Palestinian Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat. The plan was based on the idea of federalism proposed by King Hussein in 1972 to link the West Bank with the East Bank and establish economic and security cooperation between them, while recognizing the specificity of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, including the establishment of self-governance. But these years-long negotiations failed and the Jordanian monarch ended the matter by severing the links between the West Bank and Jordan at the administrative and judicial levels.