Our Last Chance The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Danger

It is almost unprecedented for a king to write his memoirs, directly addressing the sensitive and delicate issues facing him in the Middle East. This is what His Majesty King Abdullah II Ibn Al Hussein decided to do, recognizing the urgent need to move in the right direction toward political, social, and economic reform. He is convinced that the window of opportunity for achieving Arab-Israeli peace is rapidly narrowing, almost completely closed.
For more than a decade, he has been at the helm of government in Jordan, a country at the center of all discussions surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iraq, Iran, and future relations between the United States and the Islamic world. King Abdullah II plays a pivotal role in all these issues, but his upbringing and education were completely devoid of anything that might indicate that this role, as head of state, was what he was waiting for. In this book, King Abdullah II addresses his reform vision, which began when he assumed his constitutional responsibilities as King of Jordan. This vision stems from the conviction that comprehensive reform is an imperative imposed by the interests of his people and his country. While he notes that the modernization and developmental reform process has faltered and slowed due to the resistance of forces clinging to the status quo, out of concern for their own interests or fear of change, he outlines the steps Jordan has taken to advance a programmatic modernization reform process that neutralizes forces that refuse to consider the demands of the times and the conditions for overcoming its challenges, toward a future that guarantees security and stability and empowers its citizens with the tools for success and achievement. King Abdullah II emphasizes that the Middle East will not enjoy security and stability unless the Palestinian people obtain their right to freedom and an independent state within the framework of a comprehensive regional solution. However, the opportunity to achieve peace is narrowing in the face of Israeli intransigence, which places the region on the path to further wars and conflicts that will be more disastrous than all the wars that preceded it. Israel must choose between remaining an isolated fortress in a region ravaged by conflict, and peace that guarantees security and stability for all the countries of the Middle East.