Of Sorrow and Loss - Prince El Hassan Bin Talal

Jordan Times, February 9, 2009 (via Common Ground News Service) - As the world watches the anguish in Gaza continue, I am moved to reflect on the 10th anniversary of the death of my beloved brother, King Hussein, and my family’s historic involvement in all stages of the tragedy of Palestine.

For the Hashemite family, history is not a series of unconnected events, but a chain of responsibility handed to us by our forebears. The indissoluble interaction of events on both sides of the River Jordan demands positive pressure to resolve what has become a 60-year tragedy for the Palestinian people.

Today the Palestinian people exist in a state of limbo. They enjoy neither statehood nor the status of a protected community. Instead of the reciprocity of two states enjoying equal sovereignty as originally envisaged by the United Nations partition plan, one of these states – Israel – predicates the establishment of the other – Palestine – on its own security, and claims the right to determine whom among the Palestinians it accepts as a valid interlocutor and partner.

This asymmetrical position has unfortunately come to define the approach of those powers, great and small, which have substituted themselves for the United Nations as the ultimate source of legitimacy.

By dividing the Palestinians into two categories, “moderates” and “extremists”, they have effectively endorsed Israel’s position, thus denying the Palestinian people’s right to choose their representatives....

Prince El Hassan bin Talal, brother of the late King Hussein of Jordan, is chairman of several organisations in fields which include diplomacy, interfaith studies, human resources, and science and technology.