The Option That Never Was: Israel’s Quest for a Settlement with Jordan over the West Bank

The “Jordanian Option” refers to the Israeli Labor governments’ quest for a peace settlement with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan ostensibly based on territorial compromise over the occupied West Bank. Numerous secret meetings held by Israeli officials with King Hussein along the first two decades after the June 1967 war, however, revealed unequivocally that such an option was utterly impracticable from the Jordanian monarch’s viewpoint. This chapter explains the Labor Party’s adherence to the “Jordanian option” and the Hashemite king’s willingness to continue his secret meetings with the Israeli leaders despite their awareness that an agreement between them over the West Bank was not a realistic option.