For the first time since 1988, when the late King Hussein of Jordan officially ceded Jordanian claims to the West Bank, Palestinians and Jordanians are engaging in serious discussion about their mutual interest for stability in the West Bank.

With an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank possible, influential Palestinians and Jordanians are debating new models for much closer security, economic, and political cooperation between the West Bank and Jordan. Will West Bank Palestinians seek to ally themselves with an Islamist Gaza mired in lawlessness, or will they stake their security and economic fortunes to the Hashemite Kingdom? Does such a linkage represent the Palestinians’ best chance to achieve a viable state?

These and other questions will be the subject of an AEI panel discussion. Abdul Salam al-Majali, Jordanian senator and former prime minister; Sai’d Kan’an, director of the Center for Palestine Research in Nablus; Rami Nasrallah, head of the International Peace Cooperation Center in Jerusalem; and eminent historian Bernard Lewis will discuss the merits of a West Bank–Jordan alliance and its implications for the creation of a viable Palestinian state. AEI resident scholar Michael Rubin will moderate.