Israelis should think carefully about whether they want such a concentrated Palestinian power on their eastern border, General Mansour Abu Rashid, chairman of the Amman Center for Peace and Development, said in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Abu Rashid’s comments at the Truman Institute came in response to a statement by Dr. Assaf David, who declared that there is an increasing Israeli movement to the political right which sees Jordan as an alternative homeland to the Palestinians. Dr. David has engaged in dialogue on several levels with the Jordanians.

Abu Rashid, the former head of Jordanian intelligence, was a participant in a symposium co-hosted by the Truman Center for the Advancement of Peace and the Israeli Council on Foreign Relations to honor the memory of Dave Kimche, who had been a central figure in the Mossad, director-general of the Foreign Ministry, a member of the board of trustees at the Truman Center, the founding president of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, and a dedicated peace activist.

Abu Rashid, who enjoyed a 20-year friendship with Kimche, with whom he collaborated on various peace projects, said that 81,000 people have already crossed from Syria to Jordan, where they were being treated as visitors, not as refugees. Jordan already has to cope with 400,000 Palestinians who came from Kuwait, 700,000 Iraqis, Sudanese, and people who came from other parts of the region. It simply can not take in Palestinians from Syria.

“Jordan is fearful of expecting Palestinian refugees from Syria. They have neither the resources nor the infrastructure to accommodate them,” said Abu Rashid.