Lion of Jordan

by Avi Shlaim

  The Oslo Accord had implications not only for Jordan’s relations with Israel but also for its progress towards democracy. This process got under way with the election of November 1989, in which the Muslim Brotherhood did well. Another election was scheduled for 8 November 1993. Arafat’s deal, however, meant that some Palestinians could end up voting for two legislatures, one in Amman and one in Jericho. Under the initial shock of the Oslo surprise, Hussein gave a clear signal of his intention to postpone the election. The assurances given to him by Rabin at a meeting in Aqaba lay behind the subsequent decision to go ahead as planned. The general election held on 8 November was the first multi-party election since 1956. A change in the electoral law, replacing the old bloc-voting system with a one-person, one-vote formula, was calculated to limit the strength of the Islamic opposition.47 The amendment had the desired effect: a strengthening of the conservative, tribal and independent blocs and a resounding rebuff to the Islamic Action Front, whose principal platform was opposition to the peace talks with Israel. IAF representation in the eighty-member lower house declined from 34 to 21 seats. A large majority in the new house were moderate-to-conservative independents generally supportive of the regime and of its pursuit of the peace process. The king subsequently appointed the forty-member Senate from the ranks of his own supporters on 18 November. This gave him a pliant parliament for proceeding with the task of Arab–Israeli peacemaking, which remained at the top of his agenda. It also gave rise to speculation that the signing of a Jordanian–Israeli peace accord was imminent.

  25

  Peace Treaty

  The signature of a peace treaty with Israel represented, in Hussein’s own words, the ‘crowning achievement’ of his political career. It was also the culmination of almost half a century of Hashemite efforts to secure their kingdom and to carve for themselves an enduring regional role through the settlement of the Arab–Israeli conflict. In this respect, Hussein was the true heir to his revered grandfather, Abdullah bin Hussein. Abdullah I initialled in 1950 a peace treaty with Israel, but an overall settlement was beyond his reach and the following year he was assassinated by a Palestinian nationalist. Hussein followed in his grandfather’s footsteps because he shared his conception of the vital interests of their dynasty and their country. The most important of these was to protect the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan against external threats. In the aftermath of the Oslo Accord this interest narrowed down to the protection of the East Bank against threats from whatever quarter, whether Israeli, Palestinian or Syrian.

  A peace treaty with Israel was needed in order to fend off the challenge of Palestinian militants and Israeli extremists who wanted to convert Jordan into an alternative homeland for the Palestinians. By concluding a peace treaty with Israel Hussein hoped to achieve other aims as well, such as securing the status of the Hashemite dynasty as the guardian of the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, an economic link with the West Bank, a resolution of the refugee problem and American economic aid. But defence of the realm was the paramount consideration. The treaty was intended to renew and institutionalize the strategic understanding with Israel, so that Jordan would not be hurt when Israel and the Palestinians proceeded to a final settlement.

  Like his grandfather, Hussein relied heavily on personal diplomacy in working for an understanding with his neighbour across the river. The trust between him and Itzhak Rabin was crucial to progress on the road to peace. But there was one other Israeli official who played an important role because he fitted in with the king’s peculiar brand of personal diplomacy and that was Efraim Halevy, the deputy head of the Mossad. Halevy, who had been born in Britain and had earlier headed the Foreign Liaisons Division of the Mossad, formed an unusually close working relationship with the king, which over time developed into a personal friendship. Hussein trusted Halevy, and he often sought his advice on sensitive internal issues that did not concern Israel directly. Halevy’s principal task was to serve as a back channel between the prime minister and the king, and to step in whenever the negotiations reached an impasse. Halevy made countless secret visits to the king and his brother, the pattern of which was remarkably uniform. Halevy would arrive for a meeting with Prince Hassan around eleven in the morning, and they would spend two and a half hours together. At 1.30 Hassan would go to brief his elder brother, and the two would return half an hour later. Lunch would last a couple of hours and the conversation would continue for another couple of hours in the garden. Hussein needed time to think and to explore issues from different angles. He did not like the Israeli habit of getting straight down to specifics, and Halevy easily accommodated to the king’s pace and method of doing business.1

  In the last months of 1993 and the early months of 1994 Israel was preoccupied with the implementation of the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-government and with negotiations on the Syrian track. Hussein was concerned that Jordan would be left behind. His concern seemed justified by the refusal of the Palestinians to take into account Jordan’s interests in their negotiations with Israel. On 4 May 1994 Israel and the PLO reached an agreement on extending self-rule from Gaza and Jericho to the rest of the West Bank. This agreement threatened Jordanian access to the markets of the West Bank and the status of the dinar there. By posing a threat to the Jordanian economy, the agreement provided an impetus to the slow-moving talks between Jordan and Israel. On 19 May, Hussein had a meeting in his house in London with Itzhak Rabin. The other participants were Prince Hassan, Elyakim Rubinstein and Efraim Halevy. Hussein asked Rabin whether he was ready to move forward on the Jordanian track, and he received a positive answer. At this meeting Hussein heard for the first time that Israel would be prepared to grant Jordan a privileged position in looking after the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem in any future peace settlement. This was the turning point in the talks. Hussein agreed to start drafting a peace treaty; that detailed negotiations would move from Washington to the region; and then, in principle, a public meeting with Rabin could take place in the White House. Rabin, in return, promised to recommend to the American president and Congress the cancellation of Jordan’s debt to the United States.2 Hussein himself presented the decision to go public as a joint decision that arose naturally from the progress in the talks:

  The fact that we did not announce peace contacts publicly all through the past was due to a mutual agreement. At first we were so far apart that there would have been no benefit in announcing the meetings. These meetings enabled us to get to know each other. They enabled us to examine our positions every now and then to see if there was any chance of progress. They certainly changed the atmosphere, but it was a mutual agreement from the word go that we keep them quiet until we had something of substance so that when we reached the right moment all this would not be lost.3

  In June, Hussein went to Washington to coordinate the peace moves with the Clinton administration and to present his case for the renewal of the American economic and military aid that had been cut off during the Gulf crisis. In Congress and in public opinion there was still resentment towards the king and the kingdom from the Gulf War. At Hussein’s request Halevy was dispatched to Washington to help behind the scenes. Israel’s ambassador to Washington at that time, Professor Itamar Rabinovich, was a friend and a tennis partner of Prime Minister Rabin, and he too was active behind the scenes in lobbying on behalf of the Jordanian cause.4 If Hussein expected his courageous step in authorizing direct talks with Israel to be rewarded, he was in for a shock. The American officials he met told him that to get any aid he would have to make a more visible move towards peace with Israel. Going back home with an empty bag could have serious consequences, especially in relation to the army, which had been starved of supplies for a number of years. In his distress, Hussein turned to his Israeli friends. Rabin himself authorized Halevy and Rabinovich to go to the rescue. At a meeting with Dennis Ross, the peace process coordinator, Halevy strongly argued the Jordanian case, including the request for a squadron of F-16 fighter aircraft to upgrade t
heir air force. Ross turned to Halevy and said, ‘Tell me, Efraim, who are you representing here? Israel or Jordan?’ Without hesitation Halevy blurted out, ‘Both!’5

  Halevy advised Hussein to prepare a letter detailing Jordan’s specific requests prior to his meeting with the president. The meeting took place in the White House on 22 June. Clinton conducted the meeting without any notes but having thoroughly studied Jordan’s submission. His mastery of his brief persuaded Hussein and his aides that Clinton was certainly looking for ways to respond. After going over what he could and could not do, Clinton turned to Jordan’s crippling debt burden. Jordan’s debt to America amounted to $700 million. Clinton said he knew that this was the most important of all of Jordan’s economic requests. But the political reality was that Congress would reject debt forgiveness unless he had a powerful argument to use on Jordan’s behalf: ‘A public meeting with Rabin would give me that argument.’ Clinton offered to host such a meeting and asked the king to think about it. In political terms the main outcome of this visit was the president’s personal engagement. This was very reassuring for Hussein because he placed so much store by personal relations. The king told his aides that he had not had such a meeting with any president since Dwight Eisenhower. Halevy reported that the king had been ‘amazed’ by the president and was ‘thrilled’ by his visit to Washington. On 4 July, Hussein sent a message suggesting a trilateral meeting at ministerial level by the Dead Sea preceded by a meeting of the Jordanian and Israeli negotiators. The Americans understood that the sequence was the king’s way of conditioning his public, and the Israelis accepted it with alacrity.6 The sequel was described by the king:

  I returned home and gathered parliament and told them that we had decided to meet. I also made a statement in the United States that I was not against a public meeting with Rabin. That’s the way people do business; there is no other way. And we prepared the document that turned out to be the Washington Declaration. At first I wanted the first meeting to be held in Wadi Araba. But when we told the Americans, President Clinton invited us to the White House, and both of us felt that the Americans had been our partners in trying to get somewhere for so long, particularly President Clinton. So we accepted. And we went with the paper agreed to its last detail and we gave it to the president’s office at the last possible moment in the evening so it could not get into the newspapers until it was ratified by us the next morning.7

  In his speech to parliament on 9 July, Hussein stated that it was time for Jordan to pursue its own peace agenda and that a public meeting with the Israeli leadership would be an important step towards that end. Three days later he sent a letter to Clinton proposing a public meeting with Rabin on the border between Jordan and Israel followed three or four days later by a meeting in Washington. Hussein wanted the first meeting to be in the region, not at the White House, as if it were some media replay of Arafat’s meeting with Rabin. ‘Follow your instincts,’ Queen Noor told him. ‘Don’t let anyone hijack this critical historic moment for their own short-term political benefit.’ But the Americans were dangling all sorts of financial incentives, including the forgiveness of Jordan’s $700 million debt. In the end, Hussein felt he had no choice. ‘This is the only time I’ve ever compromised for profit to the country,’ he said. The next day he was informed that Clinton was about to break the secrecy of the negotiations and announce the upcoming meeting in Washington. Only after the news announcement did the king and queen learn that the official trip included a banquet, a White House ceremony, and an invitation to both Hussein and Rabin to address a joint session of the United States Congress. This elaborate plan gave Hussein just the opportunity he was looking for to take his vision of peace directly to the American decision-makers.8

  From this point on events moved at a rapid pace. On 18 July the heads of the Jordanian and Israeli delegations appeared together in Wadi Araba to announce the commencement of peace negotiations between the two countries. The meeting took place in a tent pitched on the border, seventeen miles north of Aqaba. ‘The tent is temporary, but the peace will be permanent,’ said Rubinstein in his opening speech. Two days later, Majali, Peres and Christopher held a public meeting at the Dead Sea Spa Hotel in Jordan. They discussed plans for a Red–Dead Sea canal, joining their electricity grids, and turning the barren Wadi Araba Desert into a ‘Valley of Peace’ with thriving farming, industrial and tourist centres. ‘The flight’, said Peres, ‘took only fifteen minutes but it crossed the gulf of forty-six years of hatred and war.’ The meeting was of great symbolic significance and helped to prepare the Jordanian public for the much more dramatic meeting between their king and the Israeli prime minister in the White House.

  Negotiations and drafting of what became known as the Washington Declaration were conducted directly between Hussein and Rabin through a back channel with the help of their most trusted aides, Ali Shukri and Efraim Halevy. Hussein insisted on absolute secrecy and on excluding the two foreign ministries and the State Department. Negotiations went on literally until the last minute and, as planned, the text of the declaration was not disclosed to the Americans until the evening before the ceremony. The much publicized ceremony took place on the White House lawn on 25 July 1994. Clinton read the text, and his two guests signed it. The Washington Declaration terminated the state of belligerency between Jordan and Israel, and committed the two countries to seek a just, lasting and comprehensive peace based on UN resolutions 242 and 338. Israel formally undertook to respect the special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem and to give priority to this role in the negotiations with the Palestinians on final status. This was a serious blow to Arafat, who regarded control of the holy places as a Palestinian prerogative and claimed Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. Finally, various bilateral measures were announced, such as the establishment of direct telephone links, joint electricity grids, new border crossings, free access to third-country tourists, and cooperation between the two police forces in combating crime and drug smuggling.

  All three leaders made eloquent speeches on the White House lawn, but Hussein’s speech was the most moving. Without a note in hand he spoke at some length about peace as the realization of a dream. He spoke with particular insight about the mental adjustments that were needed to attain real peace. ‘I have felt over the recent past that many of us in our part of the world, both in Israel and in Jordan, had to begin the inevitable readjustments, psychologically, after so many years of denial of our right to live normally together, to build and to move ahead. And, as I have said before, unfortunately, the abnormal became normal, which is indeed a tragic state of affairs.’ Hussein’s clear and unqualified statement that the state of war had come to an end was greeted with a spontaneous round of applause and featured prominently in the media reports of the ceremony.

  After the ceremony the principals adjourned to the cabinet room. As this was supposed to be only the second meeting between Rabin and Hussein, Clinton was mildly surprised to see how well acquainted they seemed. ‘Tell me, how long have you known one another?’ he asked. ‘Twenty-one years, Mr President,’ Rabin replied. Hussein corrected him with a benign smile: it was ‘only’ twenty years. On a more serious note, Hussein emphasized the need for the Jordanian people to enjoy the material fruits of peace. Clinton explained to Rabin that only Congress had the power to write off Jordan’s debt, and he asked for his help in persuading Congress to do so. ‘Yes, Mr President,’ replied Rabin slowly. ‘We will do our best.’ To the Jordanians present this brief exchange provided a remarkable demonstration of the political clout wielded by Israel and its friends on Capitol Hill. In the evening a banquet was laid on in honour of the two visiting dignitaries and their delegations. Clinton lavished praise on Hussein for his courage and commitment, comparing him to King Abdullah, his grandfather. No comparison could have been more flattering to Hussein, and Clinton knew this. Rabin added his own words of praise for Hussein but he was more prosaic and more forward-
looking. Hussein was visibly moved.9

  The following day, 26 July, Hussein and Rabin addressed a joint session of Congress. Both speeches were well received. In his speech, Hussein outlined his vision for a bold peace. He spoke of his great grandfather, who had led the Arab Revolt, and of King Abdullah, who was martyred at the doors of the Al-Aqsa Mosque: ‘He was a man of peace who gave his life for an ideal. I have pledged my life to fulfilling his dream.’ Hussein came across as a man who understood the fears of his neighbours and only wished to live in peace with them. Towards the end of his speech Hussein touched on America’s role in facilitating and supporting the move of the two countries from a state of war to a state of peace. He was greeted with a standing ovation. None of Jordan’s Arab neighbours accepted his claim to leadership, while the Oslo Accord threatened the security of his kingdom. Now, in Itzhak Rabin, he had found a true friend and an ally who understood his anxieties better than any Arab ruler and was willing to help him. According to Taher al-Masri, Hussein felt a deep debt of gratitude to Rabin for pleading his case in Washington and for procuring for him the much coveted invitation to address the two houses of Congress. This personal attachment to the strong Israeli leader, in Masri’s opinion, is the key to understanding Hussein’s decisions and actions from this point onwards.10

  Some of Hussein’s senior advisers had reservations about the speed with which he was moving towards a formal peace treaty with Israel. Masri, now the speaker of the lower house, warned Hussein that his rush to normalization was counter-productive. For decades the Jordanian people had been conditioned to think of Israel as the enemy, and the abrupt reversal of attitudes that Hussein was proposing was simply not realistic. The transition had to be gradual or it might provoke a backlash. Masri also objected to the Jerusalem clause in the Washington Declaration, the text of which he did not see until only a few hours before it was announced. He felt that it was a mistake to ask Israel to acknowledge Jordan’s special status in Jerusalem because Israel was an occupying power with no legal standing in this matter.11 Adnan Abu-Odeh, now Jordan’s permanent representative to the UN, believed that Hussein had to proceed to a peace treaty with Israel, but he too objected to the Jerusalem article in the Washington Declaration because it implied that Israel was the legal owner of Jerusalem. He also believed that it would give rise to problems between Jordanian and Palestinian officials because it gave priority to the former in administering the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. Hussein was not pleased to hear these criticisms.12