Friday, September 28, 2007

'Jordan offered Arafat top gov't post'

Jordan's King Hussein offered former PLO leader Yassir Arafat a senior position in the Jordanian government in 1974, London's Daily Telegraph reported overnight Thursday. According to newly-released documents, Hussein was afraid of losing control of his country following the capture of the West Bank - home to masses of Palestinian refugees - in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In an effort to forestall such a rift, the king offered to make Arafat his deputy prime minister. However, the proposal was evidently not accepted.
Arafat aimed to create an independent Palestinian state and strongly advocated the Right of Return for the refugees in Jordan.
Hussein later ceded all of the West Bank in 1988, a move meant to ensure that any Palestinian state would be set up on land occupied by Israel and not by Jordan.

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