In 2025, Palestine was the focus of the royal speech, with His Majesty repeatedly using the phrase 'How long' to address the world; how long will the conflict continue, how long will international condemnations remain without tangible decisions, and how long will Palestinians pay the price for the absence of a political solution. His Majesty's speech carried an urgent call to end a long-standing humanitarian tragedy, with a clear focus on Gaza and its killing, destruction, and starvation, as well as the West Bank, settlement, and Jerusalem, culminating in a renewed emphasis on the two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative.
In 2026, the royal question about the same issue changed, as the focus was no longer solely on the ongoing conflict and the suffering of the Palestinian people, but also on the reasons for the international community's inaction despite its knowledge of the truth and possession of the necessary tools to deal with it. Here, the royal speech moved from the absence of international action to questioning the reasons for this inaction, leading to the more radical idea that inaction, in the presence of options, becomes an option in itself.
This evolution is clearly evident in the handling of international law. In 2025, the focus was on Israeli violations, the illegality of occupation and settlement, and the call to respect international law, while in 2026, the royal speech questioned the value of this law in the face of continued disregard and non-enforcement, and called for the use of tools that the international community had previously resorted to in other crises, such as sanctions, asset freezes, bans, and diplomatic isolation.
This difference extends to the royal perspective on what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. While Gaza occupied a prominent place in the royal speech in 2025, His Majesty's 2026 speech more clearly linked what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, refusing to treat them as separate stories, but rather presenting them as two sides of a single strategy; through destruction in Gaza and the de facto annexation of land in the West Bank, leading in both cases to making the establishment of a viable Palestinian state impossible.
Another difference is evident in the handling of the religious dimension of the conflict. In 2025, His Majesty warned that hostile rhetoric targeting the Al-Aqsa Mosque could ignite a religious war beyond the region's borders. In 2026, he directly confronted attempts to portray the conflict as a war of religions, affirming that it is not a conflict between Islam on the one hand and Judaism and Christianity on the other, but rather about the rights of Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, and their equality in rights with others.
Jordan's presence in the royal speech in 2026 was also broader, moving from highlighting its role in protecting holy sites and providing humanitarian aid in 2025, to explicitly affirming that any threat to its northern borders or water security is a threat to Jordanian national security, alongside protecting the Christian presence, defending the true image of Islam, and continuing to support Palestinian steadfastness, UNRWA, and the Hashemite custodianship of Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.
In conclusion, the comparison between 2025 and 2026 reveals a clear change in the language of the royal message, from warning of the continuation of the crisis to confronting the reasons for its continuation. This development warns of the transformation of violations, in the absence of accountability, into a permanent reality, and of the loss of international law's effectiveness due to selective application. Thus, the royal message this year went beyond the Palestinian issue to the future of an international system whose credibility depends on respecting the principles and rules upon which it was established.
* Professor of Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law, Jordan University
