ABSTRACT
The Jordanian option is an Israeli term, describing an Israeli political strategy: Israel, having failed to find an acceptable Palestinian negotiating partner, willing and able to settle the Palestinian dimension of Israel's conflict with the Arabs. In the mid-1980s the king believed that some of the most difficult obstacles to Jordan's Israeli option could be overcome, and embarked on the last major attempt to regain control of the West Bank, before the Intifada changed the rules of the game. The first impact of the Intifada definitely killed the old version of Jordan's Israeli option -an Israeli-Jordanian deal, at the expense of the Palestinian national movement, which would re-establish direct Jordanian control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since it marked the abandonment of Israel's Jordanian option, it also made Jordan's Israeli option as a strategic guideline for the Hashemite Palestinian policy inoperative, with all the domestic implications for the Hashemite regime on the East Bank home front.
