Reflecting on his recent interview with Jordanian King Abdullah II, The Atlantic national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg described the monarch as “decidedly unimpressed” with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. The King spoke candidly with Goldberg on a range of issues, but expressed particular frustration that Morsi fixates on Israel – rather than on Palestinian dysfunction – as the central problem in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process:

If the king is wary of Erdogan, he is decidedly unimpressed with Morsi… The two men were discussing the role of Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. “There is no depth there,” Abdullah told me. “I was trying to explain to him how to deal with Hamas, how to get the peace process moving, and he was like, ‘The Israelis will not move.’ I said, ‘Listen, whether the Israelis move or don’t move, it’s how we get Fatah and Hamas”—the two rival Palestinian factions—“together.” When Morsi remained fixated on the Israelis (“He’s like, ‘The Israelis, the Israelis’?”), Abdullah said, he tried to reiterate the importance of sorting out “the mess” on the Palestinian side. “There’s no depth to the guy,” he repeated.

The Palestinian “mess” involves endemic corruption and stalled efforts to reconcile the rival Palestinian Fatah and Hamas factions. Last fall the Palestinians sought and secured a U.N. declaration of nonmember statehood in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but the two territories remain divided between Fatah and Hamas governments respectively. Taking Palestinian pretensions toward statehood seriously would, under that reading, require acknowledging that the Palestinian state is almost by definition already a failed state.

Amman has criticized Goldberg over the interview, though Goldberg has noted that the King pointedly did not contest the accuracy of the quotes.

Amman has been straining to manage the political and economic instability generated by the Syrian conflict, which has driven hundreds of thousands of refugees into Jordan. The crisis comes in amid efforts by Abdullah to slowly and pragmatically manage the Arab Spring tensions that have collapsed governments across the region. He has, among other things, worked quietly to marginalize the domestic branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abdullah is seen as an ally of the West, and – in the interview with Goldberg – described his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “very strong,” adding their “discussions have really improved.”

[Photo: World Economic Forum / Wiki Commons]