On the eve of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, the Palestinian public faces worsening lawlessness, rampant corruption, and the chaos of competing gangs and terror organizations. Average unemployment rates in the West Bank stand at close to 25% and have reached over 50% in the Gaza Strip, a state of affairs that Palestinians do not see changing in the foreseeable future.

According to Israeli intelligence sources, disengagement is also likely to kick start a massive wave of terror against Israel from the West Bank by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyr’s Brigade to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that terror, not reform or negotiations, paves the Palestinian road to victory against Israel.

At the same time, some senior Palestinian Authority ministers and others in the West Bank intellectual elite have raised doubts to us as to whether bilateral negotiations with Israel could ever result in a politically and economically viable Palestinian state following the failure of Oslo and the subsequent armed intifada. They are now open to entertaining the notion of a deeper Palestinian-Jordanian re-engagement without prejudging whether the relationship would be federal or confederal in nature.

Jordan, for its part, is not interested in re-annexing the West Bank reflecting the former “Jordanian option” that was on the table until the failure of the London Conference idea in 1987. However, there is still a widespread fear in Jordan that ongoing violence and economic stagnation in the West Bank, combined with Israel’s construction of the West Bank security barrier, could trigger a massive Palestinian migration eastward. This has forced Amman to consider playing a greater role in helping to resolve the Palestinian issue.

In this regard, Jordanian King Abdullah’s March 2005 proposal to the Arab League calling for normalization of relations with Israel before the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict represents a re-energizing of Amman’s peacemaking role, as well as an about-face in Jordan’s acquiescent posture toward the Palestinian issue during the Oslo peace process of 1993–2000. For the first time in Arab diplomatic history, the Jordanians drafted a peace proposal that omits past Arab preconditions to peace with Israel, such as the demand that Israel return to the 1949 Armistice lines and repatriate Palestinian refugees to Israel.

Notably, Abdullah’s proposal called for a settlement with Israel based on “the principle of land for peace and the 1991 Madrid peace conference.” Madrid, in contrast to the subsequent Oslo process with the PLO, featured a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation and specifically did not call for Israel to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians as a precondition to initiating reconciliation with the Arab world.

Jordan’s ambassador to Israel, Dr. Ma’ruf al-Bakhit, reinforced King Abdullah’s peace strategy in a March 2005 interview, saying the initiative “talks of comprehensive peace — not Israeli-Palestinian peace. … He emphasized that it is not the Palestinians that hold the key for the security of Israel — it is the Arab world.” Al-Bakhit added, “The paradigm of a two-state solution [Palestine and Israel] does not bring about stability. We can go for that but from there the confrontation will continue.”

No less notable was King Abdullah’s recent approval of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s request to send the Jordanian-based Badr Brigade, which is part of the Palestine Liberation Army under the command of the Jordanian military, to help restore order in parts of the crime-ridden West Bank. While Israel has thus far opposed the move for various security and political reasons, Abdullah’s offer is still on the table in Amman and Ramallah and represents the most significant indication of Jordanian interest in re-engaging in the West Bank since former King Hussein formally severed legal and administrative links there in July 1988.

An important political development in Jordan that has not been lost on West Bankers has also been King Abdullah’s current “Jordan First” (al-Urdun Awalan) political and economic reform program, including a proposal to decentralize Amman’s political control and rezone the kingdom into northern, central, and southern governates. Abdullah’s emphasis of the need to “expand the base of public participation” in the political, economic, social, and administrative development of Jordan that has a 65% Palestinian majority can also be understood as a reference to the beginning of a Jordanian federal system.

There are powerful personalities in the Hashemite Palace and among Jordanian elites who are militating against any close federal arrangements with the West Bank. They argue that Jordan is in the throes of a post-ideological revolution that is defined by high technology, Internet, and Westernization, and they want to avoid the ongoing Palestinian historical narrative of the 1948 Nakba (disaster) that is still a defining element in the identity of West Bank and Gaza Palestinians.

However, Jordan never intended to abandon its connection with the West Bank entirely following its legal and administrative disengagement from the West Bank in July 1988. King Hussein explained at the time that he cut links with the West Bank in response to “the wishes of the PLO, West Bankers, and the Arab states.” Nonetheless, he also sought to ensure that Jordan’s interests as the guardian of Jerusalem’s Muslim holy shrines would be maintained in any peace agreement and added that Jordan remained committed to “Arab unity in the future.” In fact, since 1988, Jordan has continued to issue new passports and renew old ones for West Bankers, only without the previous rights to citizenship.

On a political level, the idea of a re-engagement with Jordan is not foreign to Palestinian leaders. The Palestinian National Council approved a resolution proposing a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation in 1984. In February 11, 1985, Yasser Arafat and King Hussein reached an oral agreement on a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation. However, it remained unsigned.

Historically, it has always been easier to travel from east to west across the Jordan River than from the southern to the northern parts of the East Bank. Thus, there are close family ties between West Bank towns such as Nablus and Hebron and East Bank towns such as Salt and Karak. In fact, the political roots of the links between the East and West Banks actually predate Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Jordan was formally part of Britain’s Mandate over Palestine until March 1946, when it gained its independence.

Following an expected Israeli pullout from Gaza in just under two weeks, and with Israel continuing to administer strategically vital parts of the West Bank, will Palestinians in the remaining parts of this disputed territory seek to place themselves under Palestinian Gaza? And should Hamas become the leading political force in Gaza in the future, wouldn’t the Palestinians of the West Bank, and Jordan as well, have a joint interest in preventing a Hamas takeover in the West Bank too? Could Jordan not provide a needed counterweight to those Palestinian politicians from the Arafat era who, because they are tainted with corruption, are unable to offer an alternative political leadership to the Islamist movements?

The possibilities of a more active Jordanian-Palestinian re-engagement then should be reconsidered by American policy-makers, for whom a viable and contiguous Palestinian state is a stated policy goal; one which might only become possible if America’s Jordanian allies can more actively help to establish the necessary security and economic infrastructure that has been so lacking in the development efforts of the Palestinian Authority alone. Those interested in both a viable Israel, Palestinian state, and a stable region agree that financial and political responsibility for launching, directing, and supporting such a process must come from Washington.

Mr. Diker is a senior policy analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and heads its Defensible Borders Initiative. He also serves as Knesset correspondent and analyst for the Israel Broadcasting Authority’s “English News.” Mr. Inbari is a veteran Palestinian affairs correspondent who formerly reported for Israel Radio and Al Hamishmar newspaper, and currently reports for several foreign press outlets. He is the author of a number of books on the Palestinians including “The Palestinians: Between Terror and Statehood.” The full article “Are There Signs of a Jordanian Palestinian Reengagement?” can be found at www.jcpa.org.