Before Jordan Lectures Israel…

King Abdullah of Jordan should show considerably more humility—and considerably more historical honesty—when lecturing Israel from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly.

His latest anti-Israel rhetoric largely erases the Jewish people’s ancient connection to the Land of Israel, including Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. Whatever one’s position on today’s borders or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, thousands of years of Jewish history in these places cannot simply be written out of the story because it is politically inconvenient.

Jordan should also remember its own history before accusing Israel of illegitimate control.

Jordan seized eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1948 war and subsequently annexed the territory—a move recognized internationally by very few states. Jordan controlled these areas until 1967. During those nineteen years, no independent Palestinian state was established there.

That history matters.

King Abdullah’s rhetoric must also be understood against Jordan’s domestic realities. A substantial portion of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin, although precise percentages are disputed and reliable official figures are difficult to establish. The monarchy therefore operates under significant internal political pressure whenever Israel and the Palestinian issue are discussed.

That may help explain the rhetoric. It does not make the historical omissions any more acceptable.

And it leads to the question that the international community almost never wants to discuss: Jordan is Palestine.

That is the political argument King Abdullah would prefer the world never seriously examine. Jordan occupies the territory east of the Jordan River that once formed part of the broader British Mandate framework, while Palestinians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin have played an enormous role in the kingdom’s demographic and political history.

Those facts do not erase the separate Jordanian national identity that exists today, nor do they by themselves settle Palestinian claims west of the Jordan River. But they make it entirely legitimate to ask why the international conversation treats creation of another Arab Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria as the only imaginable solution while Jordan’s history and demographic reality are treated as irrelevant.

King Abdullah should stop erasing Jewish history, ignoring Jordan’s own occupation and annexation of territory after 1948, and pretending that the complicated history of Palestine begins with Israel in 1967.

If Jordan wants to lecture Israel about history, it should first confront its own—and confront the argument it would rather avoid: Jordan is Palestine.