Will Secret Talks Lead to Mideast Breakthrough?

JERUSALEM, Israel, May 3, 2007 — -- Desperate for a Mideast breakthrough, Palestinian, Jordanian and Israeli academics and officials have begun secret talks on forging a confederation between Jordan and a future Palestine, ABC News has learned.

According to the plan, Jordan would assume future security responsibility over the West Bank and perhaps Gaza alongside the Palestinians -- possibly facilitating the declaration of Palestinian independence before President Bush leaves office.

The three sides reason that Israel is more likely to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state with a Jordanian guarantee that a future Palestine will not rise up against it. Jordan and Israel have shared close military and intelligence ties since the two states signed a peace accord in 1994.

A leading figure affiliated with Israel's opposition party, Likud, told ABC News, "The old paradigm of negotiations failed and new ones are necessary." Speaking on the condition of anonymity he added, "This [the confederation option] creates a whole new paradigm with which to operate."

With the ruling Kadima party disgraced following a damning government inquiry into its conduct during the war in Lebanon last summer, a poll released Wednesday in the Israeli paper Maariv showed Likud and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu would sweep the next elections.

The knowledge that Jordanian troops and officials would prevent anarchy or armament in a future Palestine affords Israeli negotiators more flexibility in dealing with the thorny issues of refugees, the division of Jerusalem and territorial concession.

The Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli delegates -- primarily academics and top Palestinian officials from the Fatah party -- have met in Jordan, Israel and several European capitals over the past two months, delegates told ABC News.

The talks started quietly following Jordan's King Abdullah's address to the U.S. Congress on March 7. That speech focused on galvanizing Congress into immediate action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Abdullah said peace between Israel and the Palestinians, not the war in Iraq, is the region's core issue.