President Shimon Peres on Wednesday criticized a rightist lawmaker's suggestion that Jordan should serve as the Palestinian state.
National Union MK Aryeh Eldad's proposal that Jordan take responsibility for the Palestinians' welfare is a "baseless hallucination," the president told Israel Radio.
Peres said Eldad had flagrantly intervened in Jordan's internal affairs and that his suggestion was a provocation that was made merely for the sake of arousing a commotion.
The president added that the Palestinian problem is to be solved "with the Palestinians on Palestinian land and not at the expense of any other party," according to Israel Radio.
Eldad brought the proposal for a preliminary vote in the Knesset plenum, where it passed with the support of 53 members, including Labor Party ministers Ehud Barak, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, and Yitzhak Herzog. The bill will now go before the Knesset's foreign affairs and defense committee.
Labor MK Amir Perez told Israel Radio on Wednesday that the Labor ministers' support for bringing Eldad's bill to committee was "scandalous" and injurious to Israel's national interest. Herzog replied that the support was a technical matter, and that the bill will most likely be killed in committee.
The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday distanced itself from Eldad's proposal, which was brought to the table on Tuesday at a Knesset conference organized by Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely on alternatives to the two-state solution.
Eldad told lawmakers during a Knesset plenum last week that Palestinians must be given Jordanian citizenship, claiming that Jordan is essentially the Palestinian state.
The idea is a nonstarter with Israel's Arab neighbor and conflicts with U.S. President Barack Obama's support for a Palestinian state.
Jordan lodged a strongly-worded protest with Israel on Tuesday over the proposal.
Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh summoned the Israeli ambassador in Amman, Yaakov Rosen, and handed him a protest that "categorically rejects the ongoing discussion at the Israeli Knesset on a proposal by one of its members entitled 'two states for two peoples on the two banks of River Jordan'," a statement carried by the official Petra news agency said.
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