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In a nation-wide address on 31 July 1988, King Hussain of Jordan announced that he was severing all Jordan's administrative and legal ties with the Israeli-occupied West Bank of the River Jordan.
We respect the wish of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, to secede from us in an independent Palestinian state… The independent Palestinian state will be established on the occupied land after its liberation… Liberating the occupied Palestinian land could be enhanced by dismantling the legal and administrative links.
Thus, King Hussain initiated a new turning point in the strategy of the Middle East peace process with a new banner and a new slogan – the Arab–Israeli conflict became the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and the so-called Jordanian option became the Palestinian option to be steered by the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) or his appointees face to face with an increasingly intransigent Israel on a highly charged diplomatic field. Having branded the PLO as a terrorist organization, and having imprisoned and deported thousands of local Palestinian activists, Israel has justified the promotion of its own idea that it has no one of any political weight in or outside the occupied territories to talk to. And, by denying all freedom of political expression among the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza, it has made sure that the PLO has the monopoly in expressing the political will of the Palestinians.
On the face of it, relinquishing administrative and legal responsibility for the West Bank was a grand gesture to the Palestinians.
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