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Notes -
Not really. Or at least, there are ulterior motives/incentives at the least.
For the Egyptians, it was likely to avoid having to take responsibility for the Palestinians in Gaza, and to keep an irritant in Israel's side that they could stoke or cool as a matter of leverage. Israel offered / tried to return Gaza to Egypt with the rest of the Sinai, and Egypt refused. If it was simply about recognizing a state of Palestine, they could have accepted and transferred authority to a SoP figure, but that would have entailed responsibility on economic/political/diplomatic fronts.
For the Jordanians, the renunciation of claims on the West Bank was a consequence of the aftermath of Black September, and as a way for the Monarchy to disempower the legislature. Most remember Black September as a civil war- and it was- but fewer remember that the Jordanian parliament was dominated by Palestinian interests because it was seating Palestinians based on the territorial claims of uncontrolled West Bank. By renouncing the claims, the Jordanian Monarchy was able to cut the Palestinian faction of the Parliament down to size and no longer the political threat it was.
Isn't it rather more important that they have recognized the State of Palestine than whatever their exact motivations were?
No?
The original question is who the territory belonged to. The answer, in most legal contexts, is no one, because there isn't a formal Palestinian state. It would have belonged to Egypt and Jordan if they'd taken it back. That they didn't want it back doesn't mean their recognition of Palestine at different times for different reasons didn't create a de jure Palestinian state. It may be de facto Palestinian territory, and will likely be de jure Palestinian territory in any future negotiated system, but until there is an actual Palestinian state, it's in many respects just stateless territory. The difference between it and other de facto states is simply that no one really claims it, not that the people who actually live in de facto states are also real states too.
You thought it a silly comparison probably, but the Antarctica treaty isn't the worse comparison. Another are the spaces in the middle of the great oceans. While it is indeed extremely uncommon on land, if no recognized state exists in an area, it belongs to no state.
Obviously the circumstances of the Palestinian territories that trying to treat it as empty terrain would be considerably different, but the constraints on that are much more a matter of politics and humanitarian law than sovereign territory law.
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