More than a few eyebrows were raised when it was reported recently that President Donald Trump said if no deal is reached between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, Israel will soon have a prime minister named “Mohammed.”
Trump might have been joking, or he might not have said it at all; the White House has not confirmed the claim. But either way, the alleged remark sheds light on an important but neglected issue concerning Israel’s future.
The source for the allegation was Israel’s Channel 10 News, citing unnamed French diplomats who claimed to have been briefed on the contents of a conversation between King Abdullah II of Jordan and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on August 2.
Supposedly, Abdullah told Trump that if Israel does not agree to the creation of a Palestinian state, the Palestinians will become a majority in Israel and “the result will be that Israel will lose its Jewish character.” Trump supposedly replied, “[If so, then] the prime minister of Israel in a few years will be called Mohammed.”
In fact, that will never happen because the Palestinian Arabs are not Israeli citizens. No Israeli government would ever grant them citizenship, because it is obvious that they are hostile to Israel and would use the ballot box to bring about the demise of the Jewish state.
The irony, however, is that King Abdullah will not make them Jordanian citizens, either—and for the same reason: the Palestinians would seek to bring about Jordan’s downfall, too.
The roots of the Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian situation reach back nearly a hundred years. In 1920, the League of Nations granted Great Britain the mandate for Palestine—that is, the right to rule the country until it was ready for self-rule. The following year, the British sliced off the eastern 78 percent of the country, named it “Transjordan,” and barred Jews from settling there. In 1946, it became an independent state, called the “Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan.” And three years later, it shortened its name to “Jordan.”
Jordan’s ruling Hashemite family is not native to that region; it originated in Saudi Arabia. Jordan’s residents—Palestinians who call themselves “Jordanians”—were never happy about being ruled by the Hashemites. In 1949, a Palestinian terrorist murdered King Abdullah I (grandfather of the current king), and in 1970, Palestinian terrorists tried to overthrow his son, King Hussein (father of the current ruler). Hussein responded by expelling thousands of Palestinians to Lebanon.
In 1987, the Palestinians in Judea-Samaria-Gaza launched the wave of anti-Israel violence known as the First Intifada. A few months later, King Hussein, fearing that the Palestinians might target him next, stripped Palestinian residents of Judea-Samaria of their Jordanian citizenship. His son, King Abdullah II, has refused to make them citizens again.
Thus, Abdullah’s claim to President Trump about Palestinians becoming part of Israel was both false and hypocritical. The Palestinians won’t be allowed to become citizens of Israel and vote for a “Prime Minister Mohammed”—and they won’t be allowed to become Jordanian citizens and vote for a Palestinian prime minister, because Abdullah won’t let them.
Rather, they will continue to live under the rule of the Palestinian Authority and will continue to vote in the PA’s elections. No amount of scare-tactic propaganda can change the fact that no president, prime minister, or king would ever willingly allow a hostile population to vote his country out of existence.
Dr. Medoff has taught at Ohio State University, SUNY-Purchase, and elsewhere. He is the author or editor of 19 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust; his latest is Too Little, and Almost Too Late: The War Refugee Board and America’s Response to the Holocaust.
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