Today's news reports have several former and current Israeli diplomats, the dovish Shlomo Ben-Ami among them, claiming that a two-state solution may involve Jordan, implying that an independent Palestine may never emerge and that, instead, a West Bank state in "confederation" with Jordan may be the solution to the area's most persistent problem. Here's why this is a terrible idea, from an historical and pragmatic standpoint.
Many Israel/Palestine diaries note that the states that have been the cruelest to the Palestinian people include not only Israel, but more importantly Lebanon and Jordan. In the latter case, there is the so-called Black September of 1970, which culminated the following summer in the expulsion of the PLO from Jordan and massacres of Palestinian refugees by troops loyal to King Hussein.
In fact, Jordan (or Transjordan) had been a key player in preventing the emergence of a Palestinian state. Hussein's grandfather, Abdullah, had been an opponent of Palestinian statehood, going as far as annexing the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a move that likely led to his assassination by a Palestinian nationalist. Hussein made a better attempt at accommodating the Palestinians within his borders, agreeing to allow the PLO to operate from inside Jordan's borders but trying to keep them from operating without oversight. But at the same time, Hussein, through the international agreements to which he assented vis-à-vis Israel, had no intention of allowing a Palestinian state to emerge on either bank of the Jordan River. Instead, Hussein offered the prime ministry of Jordan to Yasir Arafat, who refused it but also made it clear that his own territorial claims went beyond the 1922 borders of Palestine.
On one hand, Arafat had a significant point, i.e., that the Palestinian state might have been established where Jordan currently sat. In 1922, the Emirate of Transjordan was created on over 70% of the British Mandate of Palestine, with Abdullah as emir (later king). This was done largely to appease Abdullah's family, who were not natives of the area, but rather had been the sharifs of Mecca. After T.E. Lawrence had exploited Arab support to defeat the Turks in World War I, the British were left having essentially promised control of the Hejaz to two families: that of Abdullah and that of Abdul Aziz, i.e., the House of Saud. Ultimately, the House of Saud won out, and as a sort of consolation, Abdullah and his brother Faisal were given, by the British, rule over Transjordan and Iraq, respectively. Never mind that these men weren't from the area and that, in the case of (Trans)Jordan, the population would soon have a majority that was Palestinian. Of course, this is the same argument made by Kahanists and other less radical rejectionists of the two-state solution, but it is based in fact.
On the other hand, there are facts on the ground, as we are frequently told. One of these facts is the State of Israel. And another is the Kingdom of Jordan, which, for better or worse, is not going to go out without a fight, as indicated by Hussein's actions against the PLO in 1970 and 1971. While the suggestion currently on the table does not suggest that Jordan should "cease to exist," it ties Palestinian "autonomy" to the Jordanians, and even though the current Abdullah (II) leading Jordan has a Palestinian wife, it is not outside the realm of possibility that a leader of Jordan, facing possible guerrilla action in the face of such a "two-state solution" as one that would saddle Jordan with the Palestinian issue in perpetuity, would concentrate the Palestinians of Jordan into the West Bank as a means of "controlling" them.
In short, this is a recipe for disaster and should not be entertained by anyone seeking a lasting peace in the region. Not only will the Palestinians flatly reject such treatment — and rightly so — but so likely are the Jordanians to reject having their nation become overwhelmingly Palestinian in its demography and, thus, have the whole legitimacy of its monarchy drawn again into question. The Palestinians have been left, though the machinations of all their neighbors, a mere rump Palestine on which to build a state, but this is the last and most important fact on the ground. The final status of Israel-Palestinian peace must follow this fact.