Lion of Jordan
Page 56
20
Peace Partnership with the PLO
Eighteen months after the collapse of the Reagan Plan, Hussein reckoned that the time was ripe for another attempt at a peaceful resolution of the Arab–Israeli dispute. In the past Jordan had usually responded to the plans of others. This time Hussein adopted a more proactive policy and launched an initiative of his own. One scholar has described it as ‘the only real example of a Jordanian peace initiative in modern times’.1 Its key element was the invitation to the PLO to forge a common strategy in the quest for a peaceful settlement. Competition with the PLO did not come to an end, but a serious effort got under way to moderate its policies and to turn it into a junior partner in the peace process. Hussein’s strategic objective remained the same: the recovery of the occupied territories through negotiations on the basis of UN resolutions 242 and 338. What changed was the part he assigned to the PLO within this framework.
What was behind this shift from competition to co-option of the PLO? First and foremost was the Arab consensus as defined by Arab League summit resolutions. The Rabat summit in 1974 had endorsed the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Hussein therefore could not enter into official negotiations with Israel without their approval. The Fez summit in 1982 had endorsed the idea of negotiations with Israel but only within the framework of an international conference. Hussein therefore could not embark on separate negotiations with Israel without the Arab world turning against him, perhaps fatally. To overcome these problems he proposed an international conference with the participation of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and of all the parties to the conflict, including the PLO. An international conference, he hoped, would enable him to remain within the limits of the inter-Arab consensus while providing a cover for direct talks with the Israelis.
Another factor in Hussein’s calculations was the internal situation in Israel. The Likud government pursued its expansionist agenda on the West Bank without any inhibitions. It also applied pressure on the indigenous population to move from the West Bank to the East Bank, and its more extreme members talked openly about turning Jordan into an alternative homeland for the Palestinians. The inconclusive outcome of the July 1984 elections resulted in a national unity government with Labour and Likud, and a curious rotation agreement: for the first two years in the life of the government, Shimon Peres was to serve as prime minister and Itzhak Shamir as foreign minister; after two years they were to change places. Itzhak Rabin was to remain minister of defence throughout the life of the government. Labour dominance in the first two years provided a window of opportunity for Jordan. Peres, by his own account, had preferred Jordan over the Palestinians as the partner in negotiations over the West Bank – the Jordanian option – more consistently than any other figure within the Israeli political establishment.2 Virtually from his first day in office, he began to work through private channels to renew the dialogue with Jordan.
The response from Amman was guarded but encouraging. Hussein seemed willing to explore ways of starting negotiations without assurances regarding the final outcome, something that he had always demanded in the past. Now he was prepared to consider commencing negotiations without preconditions. The reason for the change was that in the new scenario the PLO would negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians, so the risks involved in making concessions would be shared between the king and the PLO. Arafat was prepared to take some risks because he needed Hussein’s help to break out of his isolation in Tunis and re-establish his organization as a player in regional politics.
Hussein came to Arafat’s rescue when other Arab countries, including Algeria and South Yemen, declined to host the meeting of the Palestine National Council (PNC). Because the Palestinians had no homeland, their parliament-in-exile could meet only in the capitals of friendly Arab states. On 27 September 1984 Hussein received Arafat, accompanied by other members of the PLO leadership, in the Nadwa Palace. Hussein readily agreed to the request of his guests to convene the PNC in Amman despite pressure from Syria and other Arab countries. Syria massed troops on Jordan’s border and threatened to invade. Hussein’s courage in resisting pressure from Syria was greatly appreciated by Arafat and helped to open a new page in Jordanian–Palestinian relations. Some of Arafat’s colleagues, however, could not put behind them the bitter memories of the past or trust the Jordanian monarch to act in the interest of the Palestinians. They were being asked to recognize Israel as the price of admission into an international conference without any certainty that Israel would agree to negotiate with them or, ultimately, to withdraw from the occupied territories. Though there were always some extremists in the PLO who rejected whatever was on the table, many others also now feared that they might play their best card – which they could do only once – and end up with nothing to show for it.
The seventeenth PNC convened in Amman on 22 November 1984. Hussein’s opening speech was transmitted by Jordanian television and radio to the inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It was intended to strengthen the moderate elements within the PLO and to generate grassroot support for the diplomatic option. Hussein called for an international conference at which all the parties to the conflict would be represented, including the PLO. On the other hand, he insisted that UN Resolution 242 had to be the ‘non-negotiable’ framework for a peace conference. Hussein knew that 242 had been rejected by the PLO because it spoke of the Palestinian problem simply in terms of refugees, not in terms of national self-determination. So he presented the Palestinian people with a choice:
If you find this option convincing… we are prepared to go with you along this path and present the world with a joint initiative for which we will marshal support. If, on the other hand, you believe that the PLO is capable of going it alone, then we say to you ‘Godspeed: You have our support.’ In the final analysis, the decision is yours. Whatever it is, we will respect it because it emanates from your esteemed Council, which is the representative of the Palestinian people.3
In January 1985 Hussein received the reply that the Executive Council of the PLO had chosen to work with him on his proposal for joint political action. A series of meetings followed and were concluded by the signing, on 11 February 1986, of a Jordanian–Palestinian accord. By signing the Amman Accord, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the PLO agreed to move together towards a peaceful settlement of the Middle East conflict. The settlement was to be based on the following principles: total Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories; the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people within the framework of a confederation with Jordan; and resolution of the problem of the Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN resolutions. Neither Israel nor 242 were explicitly mentioned in the text. Nevertheless, the accord represented a real triumph for Jordanian diplomacy. It was the first time in the history of the conflict that the PLO leaders agreed to a peaceful resolution of the dispute with the State of Israel.
Jordan’s foreign minister at the time was Taher al-Masri, a member of a prominent Palestinian family from the city of Nablus on the West Bank. The thinking behind the Jordan–PLO agreement, according to Masri, was as follows: ‘Jordan and the Palestinians are the two major parties concerned with the Palestinian question. If we could build together a solid understanding, then we could go to the outer circle – certain Arab states that support our view – and develop with them a similar understanding based on our bilateral accord. Basically, we would be able to go to an Arab summit and get the approval of other Arab states. In other words, Jordan and the PLO should be the nucleus of an agreement on the Palestinian question and wider Arab support could be built around this nucleus. This was King Hussein’s philosophy.’4
The Amman Accord breathed new life into the moribund peace process. It became a focal point of discussions both regionally and internationally. It also provided grounds for hope to the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But Arab support for the accord fell a long way short of what its signa
tories had expected. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia was on a visit to Washington at that time. On the day that the accord was signed, Hussein called him to convey the good news. They agreed that King Fahd would talk to President Reagan about the accord and urge the Americans to support it. The Jordanians learned later that Fahd did not even mention the accord during his meeting with Reagan. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was in favour of the accord. Although diplomatic relations between Jordan and Egypt had been broken when Egypt signed a separate peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and was expelled from the Arab League, they were restored in September 1984. Given Egypt’s continuing isolation, however, Mubarak’s support was of limited value. Syria’s reaction was predictably hostile. The Syrian claim that the Palestine cause was too important to be left to the Palestinians implied that the PLO had no right to act independently. In reality the Syrians wanted to keep the Palestinian card in their own hands.
So did the Soviets. They saw the accord in cold-war terms, as serving American interests by trying to remove the PLO from the Soviet sphere of influence. They were particularly annoyed because Jordan proposed a joint delegation with the PLO to the international conference. Jordan, they felt, had delivered the PLO to the Americans. Masri flew to Moscow to explain and defend Jordan’s position. His request for a meeting with Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko was first turned down and then granted grudgingly. At their meeting Gromyko was very harsh and accusing. He said that Jordan had taken away their best card, the Palestinian card, by agreeing to a joint delegation. Masri denied the charge. He stressed that Jordan envisaged an international conference under the auspices of the UN with the US and the Soviet Union as joint sponsors and that PLO participation would serve Soviet, not US, interests. Gromyko was not convinced, and the official Soviet position did not change.5
The Reagan administration’s attitude towards the Jordan–PLO accord was lukewarm. It was reluctant to get involved in Middle East diplomacy so soon after the failure of its own initiative, which had also called for a Palestinian homeland in association with Jordan. A cold-war mindset instinctively inclined it to seek to exclude the Soviet Union from Middle East diplomacy. Secretary of State George Shultz was close to the Israeli position. He had no confidence in Arab leaders and considered that an international conference would achieve nothing beyond providing a platform for vilifying the American and Israeli governments. He saw direct negotiations between the Arabs and Israel as the only path to peace and regarded the idea of an international gathering as an attempt to circumvent such a path. He needed to be convinced that the PLO would remain in the shadows. Shultz did not place high value on Jordan as an ally or on its ruler as a friend. After one fruitless meeting at the White House, Shultz remarked to Reagan, ‘Sometimes the king acts like a spoiled child.’ ‘George, he’s a king,’ the president sighed.6
In his memoirs George Shultz describes King Hussein as ‘a tightrope walker’. ‘His decision to walk was itself courageous,’ Shultz concedes, ‘but he took each step with the utmost caution – and at times, when the wire swayed, he would dart back to the platform for safety and survival.’7 But Hussein was cautious for good reason, and Shultz was out of his depth in the complex world of Middle East diplomacy. He wanted Hussein to ditch the PLO and cut a deal with Israel, so he was not particularly supportive of the king’s efforts to bring the PLO on board. On 11 May, Shultz visited Hussein in the holiday resort of Aqaba on the Red Sea and evidently liked what he saw: ‘King Hussein’s palace on the Gulf of Aqaba is a collection of beautifully appointed low-lying structures linked by flower-lined walks, lawns, and gardens. Every detail is exquisite.’8 But there was no real basis for Shultz’s impression that they were on the verge of a breakthrough. Later in the month Hussein paid a visit to Washington, and once again the results were disappointing. Hussein went armed with the text of a press statement that Arafat had approved in advance. The statement said that Jordan and the PLO were ready to negotiate ‘a peaceful settlement on the basis of the pertinent UN resolutions, including 242, and 338’. Hussein read out this statement in the Rose Garden of the White House after his meeting with Reagan.9
The significance of this statement seems to have been lost on Shultz, who kept pressing Hussein to issue a statement of non-belligerency that would please the Israelis. He was disappointed that the best Hussein could do, in a question and answer session, was to express ‘a genuine desire for negotiations, proceeding in a non-belligerent manner’. ‘This’, writes Shultz, ‘was not enough for Congress, not enough for Peres, not enough for me.’10 Congress punished Jordan by linking American arms sales to Jordan, which was a bilateral issue, to the peace effort, which was a multilateral issue. Against Shultz’s advice, the administration informed Congress of its intention to sell Jordan $1.5 to 1.9 billion in arms. Congress vetoed any arms transfers until Jordan and Israel began ‘direct and meaningful peace negotiations’.11 This was a slap in the face to Hussein, who, as he told Shultz, wanted to engage in direct negotiations with Israel. The ban served no American interest, unless appeasing the Israel lobby is defined as an American interest. Congress is sometimes described as ‘Israeli-occupied territory’, and in this instance the jibe was not unmerited.
To prepare the ground for direct public negotiations, Hussein resumed his covert contacts with Israeli leaders. He met Shimon Peres in London on 19 July 1985, their first face-to-face meeting in nearly ten years. The meeting took place in the king’s house in Palace Green, Kensington, which was conveniently located in the diplomatic enclave a few doors away from the Israeli Embassy. It was a large, three-storey house, surrounded by private lawns and a high wall. The meeting was very friendly and fruitful. The discussion revolved round various possibilities for the future. Peres told Hussein that the preferred option for him was the Jordanian one and that he was ready to help him mobilize support among the inhabitants of the West Bank.12 The king and the prime minister agreed to move forward in stages. In the first stage a joint Jordanian–Palestinian delegation would meet with Richard Murphy, the US assistant secretary of state for Near East and East Asia affairs; in the second stage the PLO would meet the American conditions for a dialogue; and in the third stage the peace negotiations would begin. There was one point, however, on which they were unable to agree. The king wanted the joint delegation to include some supporters of the PLO. This was unacceptable to the prime minister.13
However, Peres later decided he was sufficiently interested in the king’s scenario to ask the Americans to give it a try. As Shultz reveals in his memoirs, on 5 August, Simha Dinitz, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, came to his home with some startling news. He had been sent by Peres, without the knowledge of the cabinet, to report on his meeting with Hussein. But in addition to reporting on the progress made at that meeting, Dinitz informed Shultz of something that Peres had apparently not told the king: if some PLO supporters were included in the delegation to the preliminary talks with Richard Murphy, Israel would have to live with it – after stating its objections publicly. Shultz received a rather different message from Itzhak Shamir, the hawkish foreign minister, through Washington attorney Len Garment. Garment said that Shamir did not want Richard Murphy to meet any Palestinians and questioned their judgement in even considering such a meeting, which he felt would break both the letter and spirit of their 1975 commitment not to meet with PLO members, tear apart the Israeli government and jeopardize US–Israeli relations. It was only one more example of the government of national unity speaking with two voices. Shultz consulted Reagan, who ruled that there should be no ambiguity about their refusal to deal with anyone even vaguely connected with the PLO.14
Israel’s position regarding the PLO was much closer to that of the United States than to that of Jordan. Jordan argued the PLO was relatively weak and could therefore be pressed to make concessions. Israel replied, much like America, that if the PLO was weak it should be excluded altogether from the diplomatic process. This divergence was a major reason for the failure to get peace talks
off the ground. As one student of Israeli–Jordanian relations has observed: ‘For Peres and the Labour Party, the higher the profile of the PLO in any negotiations, the harder to create a political majority for the process in Israel. For Hussein and the Hashemites, the higher the profile of the PLO the fewer the risks in any negotiations, both in the regional and in the Jordanian domestic framework. Hussein felt he could not proceed without the PLO; Peres could not proceed with it.’15
Arafat helped Hussein by providing a list of names of seven moderate Palestinians for inclusion in the unified Jordanian–Palestinian delegation. None of the seven were prominent members of the PLO. Hussein passed on the list in confidence to the Americans and asked them to select four out of the seven. The Americans went back on their promise and leaked the names to the Israelis, whereupon the secret list became public knowledge. This enabled right-wing Israelis and their even more right-wing supporters in Washington to wage a vigorous campaign on Capitol Hill and in the media against the holding of talks with anyone connected with the PLO. Shultz had authorized Murphy to go to Amman to hold talks with the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. For a short while it looked as if the Reagan administration was about to break with the tradition of allowing the Israel lobby to dictate American policy in the Middle East. Murphy impressed on his boss that no peace process worthy of the name could be started unless they honoured their commitment to Hussein. But Shultz buckled under the pressure of the lobby and ordered Murphy to cancel his trip to Amman. To the Arabs it seemed that American policy was to erect a series of obstacles to peace and that as soon as one obstacle was removed by Arab effort, another was put in its place. Hussein and Arafat were not alone in their despair. Shimon Peres was said to be very angry in private. He told his close friends that Shultz was ‘a very stupid man’ who had ‘blown it’. What Shultz should have done, in Peres’s view, was to ignore the protests, to go ahead with the meeting and to present Israel with a fait accompli.16