Lion of Jordan

by Avi Shlaim

  This was held in London on 27 September 1968. Hussein was accompanied by his tough and trusted adviser Zaid Rifa’i. Abba Eban was accompanied by Allon and Herzog. Eban opened the meeting by describing it as a historic occasion. He said they had been instructed to discuss the possibility of a permanent peace but hinted that if the king rejected the principles presented to him, they would have to find tracks to a settlement with the Palestinians without reference to Jordan. Allon described the meeting with Hussein as the happiest moment of his life. He spoke of the dangers of Soviet–Arab cooperation for the Jordanian regime and suggested that an agreement with Israel would serve to guarantee the regime against external intervention and domestic instability. Eban explained that the aim was to move from a state of war to a contractual peace embodied in a treaty, and then posed a series of questions. Was the king capable of controlling Fatah? Could he sign a peace agreement without Nasser’s consent? Eban and Allon indicated that the cabinet had not yet reached a decision on the future of the West Bank, but, if the king was interested in their ideas, they would go back and seek its authority to negotiate.

  The king responded by saying, ‘My feelings are genuine. I hope we will not lose the chance for peace. In order for it to be a lasting peace, it must be an honourable peace. If not honourable, it will not last. We want permanent and lasting peace. We recognize you are strong and could use your forces for a period of time. If this were to happen, some will lose, some will win. But, to be frank, if force is to be the only solution for the problem, the peace of the region and, indeed, world peace will be in danger. You may win many victories, but you cannot afford to lose one single battle. If a just permanent lasting peace will come about, we will all win. I wish in what is left of my life to contribute towards this. At long last, I have been pleased to hear the position of the Israel Government.’20

  Eban then outlined six principles that underlay the Israeli approach to a settlement with Jordan. Allon said he could not support any agreement that did not involve significant territorial changes and defensible borders. Israel was not after fertile land or additional population but security, and without security there could be no concessions. Hussein replied that in the Arab world too there were different currents of opinion. His problem was how to explain the solution to his people. He thought that the Security Council could be the framework for a comprehensive settlement in the region. To his way of thinking, security was not a territorial question but a function of the feelings of the people. It was a question of trust between nations. Allon disagreed and argued that in modern warfare territory was still vital. Topography was more important than goodwill. To promote mutual security, he also suggested a meeting between their respective chiefs of staff.

  As far as the Security Council resolution was concerned, Eban said that there was no disagreement and that Israel’s principles were in line with it. At this point Rifa’i intervened to point out that the Security Council resolution proscribed the acquisition of territory by force. Eban replied that the resolution spoke of withdrawal from ‘territories’, not from ‘the territories’. Rifa’i retorted that Eban’s ideas added nothing to what he had said at their meeting in May.21 In his autobiography Eban wrote, ‘The first reaction of Jordan was one of interest. But when the conception behind our policy found expression in a map attributed to Minster of Labour Yigal Allon, the Jordanian attitude became adamant. It was clear that King Hussein would rather leave Israel under international criticism in possession of all the West Bank than take on himself the responsibility of ceding 33 per cent of it to us.’22 This was a rather odd way of summing up the meeting. The position taken by the king was a principled one. He agreed to a contractual peace treaty with minor border modifications. He was utterly opposed to Israel’s retention of a third of the West Bank. Eban could hardly have been surprised by the king’s stand. It was he, not the king, who was posturing and playing games. In a handwritten note on Claridges writing paper, Eban wrote to Eshkol, ‘For the time being we should focus on the tactical objective of ensuring the continuation of the talks.’ Eban added that he was going to make sure that the Americans knew that Israel had substantive contact with Hussein’s government; that he was offered an honourable way out of his predicament; and that pressure should be put on him to display a more realistic attitude and not to miss his chance.23 The Israeli proposal was derogatory and incompatible with the king’s concept of a just and honourable peace. Sixteen months had elapsed since the guns fell silent, and this was the first concrete proposal to come from the Israeli side for a settlement. It was unsatisfactory and problematic. But, worst of all, even if the king accepted it, there was no way of telling whether Israel’s land-hungry cabinet would give their sanction.

  Although the king rejected the Allon Plan without any hesitation, the Israeli ministers proposed another meeting within the next fortnight to give him a chance to reconsider his position. The king did not need a fortnight. A day later Rifa’i called Herzog and arranged to meet with him the following day. Rifa’i gave Herzog a document listing his master’s six principles, in reply to Eban’s six principles. The fifth paragraph dealt with secure borders. It gave the king’s unambiguous answer to the Allon Plan: ‘The plan itself is wholly unacceptable since it infringes Jordanian sovereignty. The only way is to exchange territory on the basis of reciprocity.’ The document served to demonstrate just how wide the gulf between the Israeli and Jordanian positions was. The meeting thus dealt a blow to the idea of a separate Israeli–Jordanian settlement ahead of any of the other Arab countries.

  Although the king had rejected the Israeli terms for a settlement, the secret meetings with him continued until the conclusion of the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan in October 1994. It was only after this had been signed that the king agreed to speak on the record about his covert meetings with Israeli leaders over the previous three decades. When discussing the Allon Plan he did not mince his words:

  This was totally rejected. And in point of fact in the subsequent period of negotiations and discussions and so on, I was offered the return of something like 90 plus per cent of the territory, 98 per cent even, excluding Jerusalem, but I couldn’t accept. As far as I am concerned it was either every single inch that I was responsible for, or nothing. This was against the background of what happened in 1948 when the whole West Bank was saved, including the Old City of Jerusalem. Yet my grandfather eventually paid with his life for his attempts to make peace. If it were to be my responsibility, I had to return everything, not personally to me, but to be placed under international auspices for the people to determine what their future ought to be. We were perfectly happy with that. But I could not compromise. And so this repeated itself time and time and time again throughout the many years until 1990.24

  The Israelis saw every advantage in continuing the secret contacts despite the uncharacteristically categorical royal rejection of their proposal for a territorial settlement. One purpose that the secret channel served was to deal with current security and, more specifically, to put pressure on the king to do more to curb fedayeen attacks from Jordan’s territory against Israel. Chief of Staff Chaim Bar-Lev was sent to London for a meeting with his opposite number, Amer Khammash. Bar-Lev was given strict instructions by the cabinet to confine himself to current security and not to stray into political issues. He travelled in disguise, wearing a black wig and spectacles that completely changed his appearance and startled Dr Herbert. (Mrs Herbert, on the other hand, liked the wig so much that Herzog promised to bring her one on his next visit to London.) The meeting took place on 16 October in the Herberts’ home, with Herzog and Rifa’i in attendance. For two hours the generals discussed the situation along the border and ways and means of limiting fedayeen raids and Israeli retaliation against Jordanian targets. They compared notes about their favourite Cuban cigars and the meeting was conducted in a haze of smoke.

  Two days later a second meeting took place, with the king, on his own initiative, joining the four original partic
ipants. At this meeting too General Bar-Lev stuck to his brief and outlined again his views on border security. The king, like his chief of staff before him, said that they were doing their best to prevent incidents but that they could not stop them altogether in the absence of a settlement. A settlement would enable them to take additional measures against the fedayeen. Bar-Lev stated that in his opinion the West Bank was a vital area for Israel’s security and that the natural border, from the security point of view, was the Jordan River. Even if a settlement was reached with Jordan, there would still be danger from Iraq, Syria and Egypt. That was an additional reason for basing Israel’s security on the West Bank and the Jordan River.

  Herzog discussed with the king the most recent developments in the Jarring Mission. He complained that, despite the king’s promise to give them more time, they had come under renewed pressure from Dr Jarring to declare that they accepted UN Resolution 242 and to state their terms for a settlement with Jordan. The king expressed surprise that Israel was still not ready to turn to the implementation of 242. He was prepared to delay the talks in New York under the auspices of Dr Jarring until another secret bilateral meeting had taken place. But if they failed to reach agreement, both sides should convey their substantive positions to Dr Jarring and the UN would judge. 242, he emphasized, was the only framework for moving forward. Herzog remarked that 242 was open to different interpretations. Israel was prepared to make peace but the Allon Plan was the minimum it aspired to. The Jordanians retorted angrily that they thought it was the maximum. Herzog replied that the cabinet had not approved the Allon Plan, and that even Eban and Allon saw it as the minimum and hoped for more. Bar-Lev remarked that the presence of the army along the entire Jordan Valley was vital to Israel’s security. The king said he understood the Israeli point of view, but that he had to sell any agreement that was reached to the Arab world and he could do so only if the agreement was a just one. Nevertheless, the door was not closed. The king added that some of the great powers supported his position and that he was coordinating his moves with Nasser.

  Herzog thought that the secret talks would allow Israel to stave off a crisis at the UN for about two months, but he sensed that the tactic of playing for time was about to be exhausted. He surmised that Nasser had agreed Hussein should engage in direct talks in New York, provided Israel agreed to proceed to the implementation of Resolution 242. Herzog guessed that Hussein’s plan was to use the secret talks to influence Israel to display more flexibility and at the same time mobilize the support of the Great Powers for his position.25 This was indeed Hussein’s intention. He gave the American ambassador in Amman, in the strictest confidence, information about his bilateral negotiations with the Israelis without revealing the channel being used. He appealed to America to make one more effort to convince the Israelis to say something sufficiently constructive to enable negotiations through Jarring to go forward. Hussein explained that the Jarring channel was the basic one and the other channel would be used mainly to clear up differences that might arise in it. But before anything could happen it was essential for the Israelis to come out clearly on the point of the implementation of the UN resolution. Hussein’s dilemma was an acute one: he desperately needed a satisfactory Israeli statement to be able to sell the idea of negotiations to his own people and the rest of the Arab world. But if he could not go forward with negotiations through Jarring, the bankruptcy of his previous policy of seeking a negotiated peace would be exposed and the pressures on him to adopt a more extreme course would mount. He also badly needed the negotiations to justify the measures he was taking against fedayeen groups operating from Jordan. Everything now depended on the Israelis.26

  The Israelis, however, continued to stall, not least because of internal divisions within the cabinet. The next high-level meeting took place on 19 November 1968 aboard an Israeli ship in the Bay of Aqaba near Eilat. The Jordanian side was represented by Hussein, Rifa’i and Sharif Nasser bin Jamil; the Israeli side by Eban, Allon and Herzog. The Jordanian team came to the meeting by boat from Hussein’s villa in Aqaba, conveniently located right on the border. This was the first meeting to be held in the region, and the Israelis took advantage of their position as hosts to secretly record the discussions: a copy of the transcript, which was preserved in Herzog’s papers, runs to fifty-two pages. From this it is clear that, although Eban and Allon spoke at great length, they had absolutely nothing new to say. They went on and on about the Allon Plan, which the Jordanians had already dismissed as ‘totally unacceptable’ and which in any case the Israeli cabinet had still not ratified. Allon elaborated again on the strategic reasons that impelled Israel to insist on a military presence along the Jordan River, while Eban dwelt on Israel’s magnanimity in offering to place most of the West Bank territory and nearly all its population under Jordanian sovereignty. But these arguments convinced no one on the other side. They completely ignored Jordan’s security needs and the civilian Jewish settlements on the West Bank that served no security purpose. The Israeli officials used security to justify what was in essence a Zionist colonial project beyond the 1967 line.

  Hussein felt that the Israelis were going round and round in circles, while his objective was a permanent, durable and just peace. Everything, he said, hinged on acceptance of the UN resolution. The one new idea that he introduced into the discussion was the possibility of yielding territory on the West Bank in return for Jordanian control over the Gaza Strip and access to the sea. This, he said, had the merit of placing all the Palestinians under one umbrella. The Israeli representatives had no authority to take his suggestion any further. They admitted frankly that a common border between Jordan and Egypt would not be in their interests. They also knew that the cabinet intended to annex the Gaza Strip and that it had a secret plan to ‘encourage’ the emigration of the Palestinian refugees from this crowded area.27 Hussein’s idea did not fit in with these expansionist plans.

  Rifa’i was outspoken and even vehement in his rebuttal of the Israeli arguments. The Israeli government, he said, was starting with the wrong premise. If it was interested in property and territory, it could not be interested in peace as far as Jordan was concerned. As the king had explained, no agreement could be reached if it entailed the annexation of Jordanian territory. With the terms on offer, it was impossible for the king to make peace, simply impossible. The only basis for peace was adjustment of the existing armistice lines on a reciprocal basis. Jordan had accepted Resolution 242 and Israel’s right to live in peace and security within recognized boundaries. But in return, Israel had to accept unconditionally the principle of withdrawal. The Israelis thought that security would breed peace. Rifa’i assured them that it was the other way round, that peace would breed security. Allon retorted that for him security came first. Nothing was achieved at this meeting except for a decision to hold another meeting in Europe the following month.28

  It is difficult to judge whether king Hussein was more disappointed with Israel or with America. He certainly felt that America owed it to itself, to its Arab friends and to the Israeli moderates to use its influence to bring about a peaceful settlement. America’s failure to play an active role in Middle Eastern peacemaking, he pointed out, only encouraged the extremists in Israel.29 Hussein missed no opportunity to impress these points upon any American official who visited his country. To Governor William Scranton, Nixon’s special envoy to the Middle East, he handed a paper in December 1968 that summarized his conclusions: that Jordanian contacts with Israel, both direct and indirect, had failed to produce progress towards a peaceful settlement. For whatever reasons, Israel was not truly serious about negotiating a settlement with Jordan; it was determined to annex significant portions of the West Bank to improve its security; and it was also unable or unwilling to leave East Jerusalem. Neither he nor any other Arab leader could accept the terms proposed by Israel. There was nothing more he could do to achieve a settlement. Only massive outside pressure might induce Israel to agree to reasonable terms that t
he Arabs could accept. And the only country capable of exerting that degree of pressure was the United States.30 Hussein realized, however, that such a dramatic change in the American approach was unlikely in the dying days of the Johnson administration. He could only hope that the incoming Republican administration headed by Richard Nixon would be more even-handed between Israel and the Arabs, and play a more assertive role in Middle Eastern peacemaking.

  Ambassador Harrison Symmes’s reading of the situation was that the Jordanians, with strong support from Egypt and the other Arabs, would put a challenge to the new administration and that this, coupled with the political impasse, called for a policy review. The Israeli government’s inability to develop a consensus not only made it unlikely that Jarring could succeed but was also a major stumbling block in the path of a breakthrough in the purely Jordanian–Israeli context. More and more, Israeli spokesmen were defining security in terms of the acquisition of territory. The Israelis ‘seemed unable to grasp that the Allon Plan and its variations are not only unacceptable to Jordan but that it also represents the kind of arrangement that would perpetuate hostility’. What Symmes called the Israeli ‘clarification process’ with Jordan had up to that point been ‘singularly unrealistic, unspecific, and unproductive’. Symmes had been baffled all along by what the Israelis were telling the Americans. But Hussein’s comments to Governor Scranton forced him to conclude that, in addition to pulling the wool over their eyes, the Israelis had definitely moved too slowly and failed to come to grips with reality as far as Jordan was concerned. Symmes reminded his superiors that the explicit assurances they had given Hussein – to support the return of the West Bank with minor border rectifications and a meaningful role in the future of Jerusalem – could not be squared with the Israeli demands to surrender substantial parts of his kingdom, including East Jerusalem. Hussein saw these assurances as his final fallback position. Symmes recommended that they continue to make this clear to the Israelis. Finally, Symmes pointed out that in stressing that ‘the parties to the conflict must be the parties to the peace’, America was in danger of forgetting that it was itself a very interested party, with high stakes of its own. The past year had demonstrated that if America left peacemaking to the Israelis and the Arabs, there would be no forward movement.31