Politics & Power Quote by King Abdullah II

“Let us have ambitions” is a deliberate rebuke to the smallness that peace-process language so often slips into: “confidence-building,” “managing the conflict,” “reducing tensions.” King Abdullah II reframes the room’s job description. He’s not asking leaders to arbitrate the daily crisis; he’s daring them to want something bigger than survival-level diplomacy.

The address is pitched upward and outward: “Mr. President, prime ministers” signals a forum where power can be performed as well as exercised. Abdullah uses that stage to tie moral urgency (“violence and occupation”) to a concrete political destination (“two states, Palestine and Israel”). The pairing matters. Naming “occupation” alongside “violence” subtly rejects the common rhetorical move of treating security as Israel’s issue and rights as Palestinians’ issue. He insists they are entwined, and that any honest path to security passes through ending domination.

The subtext is also Jordan-specific. As custodian of holy sites in Jerusalem, a country with a large Palestinian population, and a neighbor that absorbs the shockwaves of every escalation, Jordan has a vested interest in preventing permanent conflict from becoming the region’s default setting. “Ambitions” is a diplomatic way of saying: stop treating the status quo as inevitable, and stop outsourcing political courage to future administrations.

Finally, “side by side” does quiet work. It’s a spatial metaphor that smuggles in mutual recognition, borders, sovereignty, and parity - a vision of coexistence that’s not sentimental, but structural. Peace and security are presented not as competing claims, but as a shared architecture that only becomes possible when both states are allowed to exist as states.