News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) Jordan "would prefer to be at war with Israel rather than accept" a merger with the Jordan Valley, a Jordanian official told French news agency AFP. With little progress made between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, all manner of scenarios are flourishing, including a revival of proposals for a truncated Judea and Samaria to merge with Jordan, while Israel retains the main blocs of Jewish communities that it has established in the area. "Jordan does not want to be linked to 30 or 50 percent of a territory which it owned from 1950 to 1967. To get half or less of the West Bank with all the Palestinian population would be suicide," the unnamed official explained. "The only acceptable scenario for us is the merger of Jordan" with all of Judea and Samaria, he added.

Jordan killed 3,000 people and wounded 10,000 others in 1970 when Black September terrorists tried to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy.