by Avi Shlaim
Hussein wanted to refurbish his credentials as an Arab nationalist by extending support to a neighbouring Arab state but also to ensure that this did not entail an Israeli attack on his country. In other words, he wanted to have his cake and eat it. In the first instance Hussein approached the British prime minister Edward Heath for help. Late on 11 October, Heath called Kissinger about the ever-mounting pressure on Hussein to do something on behalf of his Arab brethren. Hussein was thinking of moving an armoured brigade into Syria, as much out of harm’s way as he could manage. He wanted Israel’s acquiescence or at least an assurance that Israel would not use it as a pretext for an attack on Jordan. In his memoirs Kissinger remarked, ‘Only in the Middle East is it conceivable that a belligerent would ask an adversary’s approval for engaging in an act of war against it.’ Israel predictably refused to agree formally to the reinforcement of its enemies but made no threat of retaliation or of expanding the war. Israel’s mild message crossed with one from Hussein telling Kissinger that the 48-hour delay was up and that Jordan had to take the least provocative move, which was to send a brigade to Syria. Jordan’s purpose was to counterbalance ‘Iraqi–Soviet designs’ and to contain the conflict within the smallest possible area. Kissinger replied urging Hussein to continue his efforts to circumscribe the area and scale of the fighting.25
On 13 October, Jordan’s 40th Armoured Brigade was ordered to move to the Golan front. By a curious historical irony, it was the same brigade that in September 1970 had been sent to resist the Syrian invasion. Now it was sent to help the Syrians, but the reception it received was less than cordial. Prince Talal bin Muhammad, Hussein’s nephew, described the encounter between the Arab comrades-in-arms: ‘There was no coordination between the Syrians, the Iraqis and us. The different armies were not talking to each other. We were not met at the border, there was no liaison officer, and nobody showed us where the frontline was. We had to make our own way up to the frontline. We groped our way blind to the Golan Heights. It was complete chaos. The Saudis sent a brigade. They went up a hill one night and they decided to go to sleep, only to wake up the next morning surrounded by Israeli soldiers. They did not know what they were doing. As in 1967, they showed up after the fighting was over. Their artillery did not even have ammunition. It was a typical Arab shambles.’26
While the 40th Armoured Brigade moved to the Golan front, the bridges across the Jordan remained open to traffic in both directions, indicating that there was no war between Jordan and Israel. In his memoirs Dayan noted that ‘The Jordanians never threatened to open war and when they sent a unit of theirs to help the Syrian Army in the Yom Kippur War – this did not come to us as a surprise.’27 Dayan knew that Hussein sent a brigade to the Golan in order to avoid a direct confrontation with Israel. Dayan was worried, however, that if Syria looked like gaining the upper hand, Jordan might be tempted to open a third front. He therefore ordered the Israeli chief of staff to intensify the attacks on Syria with a view to deterring Jordan. Army headquarters received intelligence that the Jordanian brigade was ready to go on the offensive. On 16 October the Israeli cabinet authorized the army to hit any Jordanian unit that got involved directly in fighting but without extending operations into Jordanian territory. That day a short and sharp encounter took place on the Golan Heights in which the Jordanian unit lost twenty-two tanks to Israeli fire and six to Iraqi fire: the Iraqis mistook the Jordanian Centurions for Israeli tanks. The fighting did not spread, but the Jordanians continued to reinforce their expeditionary force with armour, artillery and infantry. By the time the ceasefire came into force on 22 October, Jordan had almost a division on the northern front.28
It was obvious from the start that something had gone wrong on the Arab side on the northern front. The Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian attacks were uncoordinated, with Israel only too well prepared to take advantage of the confusion. Major-General Chaim Herzog, later the president of Israel, observed: ‘Inter-Arab coordination proved to be very faulty on the battlefield. Every morning between 10.00 and 11.00 hours, a counter-attack was mounted against the southern flank of the Israeli enclave by the Iraqis and Jordanians, supported by the Syrian and Iraqi air forces. Rarely did they succeed in coordinating and establishing a common language: on two occasions the Jordanians attacked while the Iraqis failed to join in; frequently Iraqi artillery support fell on the advancing or withdrawing Jordanians; and, on a number of occasions, Syrian aircraft attacked and shot down Iraqi aircraft. In general, the Iraqi forces moved slowly and cautiously, and were led without any imagination or flair.’29
An episode that is particularly revealing of the intricate nature of Jordanian–Israeli relations during the October War involved the Israelis’ unwillingness to kill Hussein. One day the IAF received orders to bomb a Jordanian unit because it blocked the path of advance of the Israeli Army towards Damascus. By coincidence, one of the officers at the front was Ze’ev Bar-Lavie, the head of the ‘Jordan desk’ in the IDF Military Intelligence branch. Looking across the enemy lines through binoculars, he picked up a few clues of unusual activity that suggested to him that the king was visiting his troops at the front. Bar-Lavie, who had a particular fondness for the king, hurriedly consulted with the intelligence chief and with the chief of staff, and they decided not to bomb the gathering. It was a decision that may well have spared Hussein’s life. At a much later meeting with Zvi Zamir, Hussein confirmed that he had been at the front and thanked him for sparing his life.30
So in the October War, as in the First Arab–Israeli War of 1948, Israel and Jordan were ‘the best of enemies’. Whereas the relations between the Israelis and Hussein were characterized by respect and mutual restraint, inter-Arab relations were marked by profound mistrust and bitter rivalry. One of the little known aspects of the October War is the secret channel that Sadat had with Kissinger. It was through this channel that Sadat requested, on 20 October, a ceasefire without consulting or informing Asad, thereby beginning the break-up of the Egyptian–Syrian alliance. Nor did Sadat bother to inform Hussein of his unilateral decision to terminate hostilities. On the contrary, just as he was preparing to bring the war to an end, Sadat made an effort to get Jordan involved. He did this by renewing the request to Hussein to allow the fedayeen to cross from Jordan to carry out sabotage operations in southern Israel. Hussein stalled, sensing that the project made no military sense, and suspecting that Sadat’s real motive was to drag Jordan into the war.31 The plan for a Security Council ceasefire to be followed by negotiations between the parties on a fundamental settlement was revealed to Hussein by the American secretary of state. On 18 October, Kissinger wrote, ‘In such a settlement, Your Majesty, it is inconceivable that the interests of Jordan… would not be fully protected… Your views will, I can assure you, be given the full weight they deserve.’32 These assurances were transparently insincere and worthless.
After the guns fell silent on the Sinai and Golan fronts, the turn of the diplomats came on 26 October 1973. The most important figure in the international diplomacy surrounding the Arab–Israeli conflict in the aftermath of war was Henry Kissinger, and the key to understanding this diplomacy is the collusion between Kissinger and Sadat. Sadat knew that Asad would not agree to make peace with Israel unless Israel withdrew from all the occupied Arab territories. Sadat also knew that the West Bank was the core of the Arab–Israeli conflict and that Israel would never agree to complete withdrawal from it. This left the possibility of a separate Israeli–Egyptian deal over Sinai. Kissinger was more than happy to proceed along these lines. He was the chief proponent on the American side of the strategic partnership with Israel. Now Egypt, the largest and most powerful of the Arab states, was offering itself as a second major ally alongside Israel. One did not have to be a Harvard professor of international relations to grasp the potential for excluding the Soviet Union from the Middle East and for building up pax Americana on the twin pillars of the two strongest countries in the region. This is what Kissinger proceeded to try to achieve. In t
he pipe-smoking Egyptian leader, Kissinger found a congenial companion for playing the game of nations. Sentiments, morality and justice did not count, only state interests. Jordan, a friendly but feeble Arab state, was assigned a very minor role in this grand design. Its role was to enable Kissinger and Sadat to dress up what was essentially a bilateral Egyptian–Israeli deal as a first step towards comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
17
The Road to Rabat
On 22 October 1973 the UN Security Council passed Resolution 338, calling on the parties to cease hostilities and to begin direct negotiations for a settlement of the conflict on the basis of Resolution 242. Israel, Egypt and Jordan promptly accepted but Syria did so only after a short delay to register its resentment at not being consulted. Hussein was not only willing but anxious to engage in direct negotiations with Israel to restore Jordan’s sovereignty over the West Bank, but he was let down by both Israel and the United States.1 With the ceasefire in place, Kissinger embarked on his first trip to the Middle East to prepare the ground for an international conference. He arrived in Amman on 8 November at the end of his tour of the capitals of the region. Hussein received him with his customary courtesy, and stated his position clearly: Jordan was the Arab country most involved in the conflict in terms of both territory and population; it was its duty to recover the West Bank with minor changes on a reciprocal basis; and it could not give up its responsibility for the Muslim and Christian parts of Jerusalem. In his memoirs Kissinger wrote, ‘It was one of our sorrows that our best Arab friend was at the periphery of this phase of the peace process.’2 But Kissinger’s actions suggest that he was in fact two-faced, colluding with Egypt and Israel to keep Jordan marginalized.
Hussein was clearly concerned that his interests in the Palestinian question would be neglected in the American-dominated peace process. Kissinger told him that the best way for these to be protected would be for Jordan to become a founding member of the Geneva Peace Conference: this would make it a spokesman for the Palestinians. Hussein agreed to attend the conference, hoping that it would lead to a comprehensive settlement of the conflict on the basis of UN resolutions 242 and 338 – now the cornerstones of Jordanian foreign policy. Kissinger’s purpose, however, was limited to preserving the ceasefire, separating the combatants, and enabling Israel and Egypt to proceed to a bilateral settlement. He knew that Jordanian participation would necessitate negotiations over the West Bank and, sooner or later, Jerusalem -subjects he wished to avoid.
The conference opened in Geneva on 21 December formally under the auspices of the UN and with the United States and the Soviet Union as co-sponsors. Kurt Waldheim, the UN secretary-general, chaired the opening session but the choreography was arranged by the hyperactive American secretary of state to suit his own agenda. Israel, Egypt and Jordan accepted the invitation but President Asad of Syria declined because the conference did not have the clear objective of bringing about Israeli withdrawal from all the occupied Arab territories, and Israel vetoed PLO participation. Jordan was represented by Prime Minister Zaid Rifa’i. This was the most peculiar conference Rifa’i had ever attended, with no terms of reference, no rules of procedure and no agenda.
In his opening speech Rifa’i insisted on the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from all the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. Stressing that Syria’s absence from the conference did not prejudice its right to demand Israel’s withdrawal from the Golan Heights, Rifa’i declared, ‘The question of withdrawal, boundaries, Palestinian rights, refugees, obligations of peace and the status of Jerusalem are all common concerns and collective responsibilities. My delegation therefore is not prepared to conclude any partial settlement with Israel on matters that are of joint interest with our Arab brothers.’ Egypt’s foreign minister, Ismail Fahmy, refused to coordinate with Rifa’i before the conference started and failed to exchange even a word with him while it took place. In his opening speech Fahmy referred to the West Bank as Palestinian territory, thus implicitly denying Jordan’s right to represent the Palestinians. Abba Eban stressed in his speech that Israel would not return to the 1967 lines and that Jerusalem was its eternal, united capital. Kissinger proposed the formation of a joint Egyptian-Israeli military working group to discuss the disengagement of forces. Rifa’i objected and said that the purpose of the conference was to implement Security Council resolutions and to arrive at a comprehensive settlement. Kissinger replied that comprehensive peace could not be attained immediately but only result from a series of steps. This gave Rifa’i the opportunity to propose the formation of a Jordanian–Israeli working group to discuss disengagement on their two fronts. Eban objected to this, arguing that their forces were not actually engaged and that the withdrawal of Israeli forces from any part of the West Bank could be discussed only within the framework of an overall settlement and a peace treaty. Rifa’i’s protests that Jordan was being penalized for not participating in the war were in vain.
Rifa’i began to suspect that the real purpose of the conference was to provide diplomatic cover for a separate Egyptian–Israeli accord. This suspicion was confirmed in 1988 by Peter Rodman, an American official who had accompanied Kissinger to the conference. Rodman said that Geneva had a limited end: a disengagement agreement between Israel and Egypt. He also intimated that a secret agreement had been made between America, Israel and Egypt before the conference convened. Even before this admission of Kissinger’s and Sadat’s duplicity, Hussein had concluded, on the basis of the actual outcome of the conference, that it was no more than an elaborate charade to provide legitimacy and to pave the way for a separate deal between Egypt and Israel.3 Geneva was not a proper international conference but a con. The inaugural session of this peculiar gathering turned out to be its last. Jordan was left holding an empty bag.
Following the adjournment of the Geneva conference, Kissinger embarked on what became known as his ‘shuttle diplomacy’. The first fruit of this was the military disengagement agreement between Israel and Egypt, which was signed on 18 January 1974. Kissinger’s next target was a military disengagement between Israel and Syria but in the meantime he needed to stop in Jordan ‘to demonstrate that King Hussein, that moderate ruler and old friend, would not suffer for his refusal to pressure us’. Hussein invited Kissinger to visit him in Aqaba, Jordan’s holiday resort on the Red Sea. Still a passionate pilot, Hussein would occasionally fly out to greet visitors to whom he wished to pay special respect. ‘On this occasion,’ wrote Kissinger, ‘it pleased His Majesty to come out in a helicopter and perform aerobatics in the narrow space between the right wing of SAM 86970 [Boeing plane] and the Saudi mountains. Had there been a Jordanian official aboard our plane, he could have easily got us to sign any document as the price of getting his monarch to return to earth.’ On Saturday afternoon, 19 January, they met in Hussein’s bungalow by the sea, less than a hundred yards from the barbed-wire fence that denoted the frontier with Israel. Hussein, his brother Crown Prince Hassan, Prime Minister Zaid Rifa’i and Chief of Staff General Zaid bin Shaker received the Americans as friends. The Jordanians were warm in their praise of the disengagement agreement. Hussein described it as a tremendous achievement.
Kissinger sensed that this achievement also filled his Jordanian hosts with foreboding. They recognized that Syria had to be next, but they wanted to be sure that their turn would come soon after. In the meantime, they wanted some working-level discussions on an initial Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, emulating the procedures in the Egyptian case. ‘Jordan’s nightmare was that its Arab brethren would deprive it of the right to recover the territory it had lost to Israel in 1967. Jordan, in fact, had two nightmares about the West Bank: either indefinite Israeli occupation or a PLO state whose first target would be the Hashemite Kingdom.’ Kissinger claims that he was sympathetic and that he shared Hussein’s strategic assessment. ‘Either it [Israel] can deal with Arafat or it can deal with Your Majesty. If I were an Israeli Prime Minister… I would rush into negoti
ations with Your Majesty because that is the best guarantee against Arafat.’ But stating the alternatives did not advance matters, because Israel wanted neither.
So the discussions in Aqaba were a replay of what had occurred on Kissinger’s previous visit in November. On that occasion he had presented to Israeli leaders Rifa’i’s suggestion of a very modest ‘disengagement’, involving principally withdrawal from the city of Jericho with its exclusively Arab population and its location close to the Jordan River. Jericho would have symbolized Hussein’s claim to the West Bank and established him as Israel’s interlocutor in West Bank negotiations. The suggestion had been rejected as inconsistent with the Allon Plan, which claimed the Jordan Valley as Israel’s security border. Kissinger suggested that since Yigal Allon was in the room, there was nothing to keep the author from modifying his plan. This was treated as a joke. But when Kissinger asked whether some disengagement scheme based on the Allon Plan could be put forward, he hit an obstacle: the Allon Plan could not be the basis of disengagement on the Jordanian front because the Labour Party’s coalition partner, the National Religious Party, was absolutely opposed to giving up any territory on the West Bank. ‘Thus Israel would reject a proposal inconsistent with the Allon plan but would refuse to negotiate the Allon plan because it could not get the full cabinet behind.’4 Kissinger’s analysis of the Israeli position is accurate enough. What he does not say is that he himself, for his own reasons, wanted to avoid negotiations on the West Bank. In countless private conversations Kissinger in fact encouraged Israeli intransigence by telling Allon: ‘If I were you, I wouldn’t settle for less than the Allon Plan.’5
