by Avi Shlaim
Hussein ignored the specific terms and merely suggested that they meet under the auspices of Gunnar Jarring, the UN mediator, as well as privately. He also wanted to consult with Cairo before proceeding with separate negotiations. Rifa’i was more militant and seemed worried that Hussein had not reacted to the substance of Eban’s presentation. ‘All your ideas, including the third,’ Rifa’i told Eban, ‘are for Arab surrender, not for agreement.’ Jordan’s starting point would be the 4 June territorial situation with minor changes and on a reciprocal basis. There had to be Arab, and not merely Muslim, status in parts of Jerusalem. Israel’s security would lie in a full peace settlement, not in topography. Hussein’s final words were that a further effort should be made to get enough Egyptian consent to enable open negotiations to take place.2
Two days later Herzog took the initiative in arranging a follow-up meeting with Rifa’i. Herzog was evidently very impressed with Rifa’i, describing him in his report to the cabinet as a shrewd and even brilliant man who knew his subject inside out. At the second meeting Rifa’i stressed that Cairo’s approval was vital for them because their hands were tied by the Khartoum decisions – no recognition, no negotiation and no peace with Israel. They could not go to New York for talks with Israeli representatives under Jarring’s auspices unless the Egyptians went along with them. When the king visited Nasser in Cairo on 6–7 April, the Egyptian president had expressed scepticism about meeting with the Jews but agreed to reconsider if the Jordanians insisted. Nasser wanted Egypt to be present at the first meeting with Dr Jarring but he did not rule out independent Jordanian negotiations subsequently. Rifa’i talked at length about Nasser. During the king’s last visit to Cairo, Nasser told him that he did not want young Egyptians to continue to sacrifice their lives. He was willing to end the state of war if Israel withdrew from all the occupied territories. But he would never agree to meet with the Israelis face to face. Israel and the West had defeated him militarily and economically; if he met with them, he would be defeated politically too. Should Israel continue to refuse to withdraw, he estimated that he would be ready to take military action at the end of 1969 or the beginning of 1970.3
On the following day, 6 May, the two men met again. Rifa’i reported that he had received a message from Cairo in which Nasser said the following: ‘Don’t trust the Jews. First, they will not carry out the Security Council resolution. Second, they will not give up Jerusalem. Third, they will not give up Gaza. Fourth, they will not withdraw to the borders of 4 June 1967. This whole business is an illusion and a danger. But, if you insist, I, Nasser, will order my permanent representative at the UN to meet with Jarring, not with the Israelis, and we’ll see. I’ll give you this chance.’ Rifa’i emphasized Nasser’s moral debt to Jordan: he had involved them in the war and thus he could not stop them from proceeding to peace talks. In practical terms this meant two stages. In the first the Jordanian and Egyptian representatives would meet with Jarring. In the second the Egyptians would withdraw and the Jordanians would move forward to substantive talks. On his return home Herzog gave a detailed report to the cabinet on the three meetings and on the procedure proposed by Jordan for moving to a settlement. In the subsequent discussion a multitude of opinions were expressed. The most telling remark came from the mouth of the prime minister. Levi Eshkol repeated what he had told his colleagues many times before: ‘I fear the day when we have to sit face to face and conduct negotiations.’4
Herzog was allocated the task, which he executed with considerable skill and ingenuity, of maintaining the contact with the king and his adviser but without making any concrete proposals and without entering into negotiations. At his meeting, in London with Rifa’i on 19 and 20 June, arrangements were made for a trip by Hussein to the Gulf of Aqaba on 8 August.5 The meeting was to take place on a ship 500 metres south of Coral Island.6 But on 4 August the Israeli Air Force twice bombed the Fatah camps near Salt, on the East Bank, inflicting heavy civilian casualties and hitting four ambulances. Two days later a cable arrived from Dr Herbert, who was on holiday in Crete, to say that the consultation was cancelled owing to the hostilities. During a visit to London two weeks later, Hussein saw his doctor and discussed having another meeting there. At first Hussein said that he would see Herzog only if Herzog had something new to say, but he later changed his mind. Rifa’i told Herzog at a meeting on 22 August that the king wanted to see him on the 24th at 6 p.m. at the doctor’s home. That evening, close to midnight, Herzog and Rifa’i met again for a summing-up talk. Herzog read his notes on the position stated by the king and received Rifa’i’s comments. The doctor was present throughout all these meetings.
Altogether the three meetings took up four to five hours, with Herzog’s report taking up twenty-four pages of precise, polished, Mandarin-like prose. Hussein said that Israeli attacks, like the ones on Karameh and Salt, solved nothing and only made Fatah stronger. Did the Israelis think that through the use of force they could gain acceptance by the Arabs? It was his impression that there were three voices in the government: those who sought a separate settlement with the Palestinians; those who were working for peace with the kingdom of Jordan; and the extremists who would try to ensure that the road to peace was always blocked at decisive moments. On the Arab side there was growing despair because of the lack of progress, and time was running out. Hinting that he himself might be overthrown, Hussein exclaimed, ‘Make up your minds. Will it be easier for you to yield to the extremists when they are in power than to yield now?’ Rifa’i talked about Nasser’s predicament. On the one hand he faced a danger from within because of inaction, and on the other the danger of further defeat if he acted against Israel. If he was forced to do so, Nasser would choose to act and to go under as an Arab patriot in the eyes of history. He feared above all else his removal from within, which would destroy his image for ever. After Karameh, with tears in his eyes, Nasser had expressed his gratitude to Hussein for the success of the Arab Legion in preventing Israeli forces from taking the hills. Nasser said that had the Israelis succeeded, he would have had no alternative but to intervene and that would have meant suicide.
The only practical outcome of the wide-ranging discussions in June and August was a decision to hold a further high-level meeting in London towards the end of September.7 Despite the lack of concrete results these meetings with Hussein were hugely significant for Israel. In his self-congratulatory second volume of memoirs, Abba Eban noted both the significance of the meetings and the unique qualities of the man with whom they met:
The very existence of those talks gave Israelis a feeling that Arab–Israeli conflicts are not inherently irreconcilable. Here was an Arab statesman, descended from the prophet Muhammad, who held a record for longevity in leadership of an Arab country, expressing his belief, however reluctant, that Israel was an immutable part of the Middle East. Hussein never failed to enunciate a passionately Arab national pride, but he respected the allegiances of his Israeli interlocutors. Meetings with him, and a study of his Arabic rhetoric, which was classically perfect in diction and in range of expression, were for me an antidote to Dayan’s bleak theory that struggle had been eternally ‘decreed’ as the law of Arab–Israeli relations…
The impression that I deduced from contacts with King Hussein was that he would give Israeli interlocutors maximum courtesy and minimal commitment. Our encounters took place in the home of a British friend of the king, not far from the Israeli embassy residence in North West London, or in a motor launch swaying from side to side in Red Sea waters off the Jordanian–Israeli coast, or on a coral island near Eilat. It was conventional for us to believe that our London encounters, at least, were concealed from the British authorities by skillful maneuvring, but one day Prime Minister Wilson said to me: ‘There are rumors that you saw King Hussein today. Absurd, isn’t it?’ Wilson then winked at me with prodigious emphasis in a gesture of conspiratorial reassurance…
Hussein was consistently rigorous in the formulation of his role. He believes that
Israel and the Arabs have no option except eventual coexistence. He has sometimes envisaged the possibility of an individual peace initiative by Jordan, but only if he can succeed in a total restoration of Arab rule in all the occupied territories. He has never been ready to be a pioneer both in the ideology of peace and in the explosive principle of territorial bargaining. His slogan has always been that Israel can have either peace or territory, but not both. This is not far from being a universal international consensus, and King Hussein was the first Arab leader to make it so.8
Herzog, the real initiator of the link with the descendant of the prophet, was no longer certain of its value. One of the first things that Herzog said to Hussein on 22 August was that, in his opinion, their meetings had not been a waste of time. But nor were they going anywhere. One therefore has to ask the question: why did Hussein continue with the contact, even when it became abundantly clear that the Israelis were simply stringing him along? The answer is twofold: fear and hope. The fear was that the extremists in Israel would gain the upper hand and try to topple him or that they might try to capture more land on the East Bank of his kingdom, such as the hills round Karameh. He knew that the Arabs had no military option; he sensed that the Israelis had no desire for peace and speculated that their posture on terrorism owed something to this underlying attitude. He concluded that Israel wished to hold on to the land it occupied for religious and cultural reasons, and needed certain additional territories to consolidate its position. Combating terrorism provided the excuse for further expansion.9 Hussein was worried by rumours of an imminent Israeli attempt to seize territory on the East Bank in northern Jordan from which some fedayeen operated. He therefore asked Ambassador Harrison Symmes for a statement from the highest authority in the US government of its attitude to the independence and territorial integrity of Jordan.10 The Americans discounted the rumours and reaffirmed their commitment to Jordan’s integrity, but they did not succeed in dispelling Hussein’s fears. By continuing his contact with the Israelis he tried to forestall further Israeli encroachment on his land. Hussein also kept alive the hope that America would eventually fulfil its promise to him and start putting pressure on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank. Despite the frequent frustrations caused by America’s partiality towards Israel, he kept trying. He was virtually the only member of the Jordanian political elite who had not completely given up on America by this time. Similarly, with Israel, Hussein had no cards to play and nothing concrete to offer except peace; yet he was always hopeful that he would eventually succeed in persuading the Israelis to make peace with Jordan on the basis of the 1967 borders.11 In the meantime, as Winston Churchill liked to say, jaw-jaw was better than war-war.
The Americans were kept informed of the state of play in the bilateral talks by Itzhak Rabin, the former chief of staff who was now ambassador to Washington. Rabin had undergone a remarkable conversion from the Palestinian option to the so-called Jordanian option. After the June War, Rabin advised Eshkol that, from the security point of view, the only possible solution on the West Bank was the creation of a mini Palestinian state. Towards the end of the year, however, the scales tilted in favour of an agreement with Jordan. Rabin was converted to the Jordanian option and tried to advance it as ambassador to Washington. In his second term as prime minister in the early 1990s he made it into the cornerstone of his foreign policy.12 Rabin was treated in Washington with the utmost respect because he was a renowned soldier who had scored a decisive victory over the Arabs, in sharp contrast to the poor performance of America’s generals in Vietnam. During a discussion of other matters on 4 June 1968 with senior American officials, Rabin alluded to the question of Jordan–Israel peace talks. He said that Nasser had given Hussein the green light to go further than Egypt. Nasser had also said, however, that Hussein could make no agreement affecting Jerusalem without the approval of the Arab world, since Jerusalem belonged not only to Jordan but to all Arabs. Israel had good information about the thinking of Hussein and his entourage, but it was committed to not discussing this matter in detail and Rabin was therefore limited in what he could say. He could tell the Americans, however, that Hussein was ready for a peace treaty through secret, direct negotiations under the cover of the Jarring Mission. There was an argument in Israel as to whether Hussein could be relied upon. Government policy, however, was to maintain the Jarring Mission while trying to make progress secretly with Hussein. The Jarring cover was necessary in view of the basic differences between Hussein and Nasser. Israel knew what kind of settlement Hussein wanted and there was hope for a settlement with Jordan. There was no more talk of overthrowing Hussein. All key members of the Israeli cabinet apparently agreed that ‘everything will be adjusted to this policy.’13
A further glimpse into Hussein’s thinking was gained by McGeorge Bundy, special consultant to the president, during a visit to the Middle East. Bundy thought that Hussein had regained some of the confidence he lacked during the summer of 1967 when he seemed ‘very shaky’. Hussein stressed the importance of progress towards a just solution by the end of the year and the necessity of having something tangible before he could directly confront the fedayeen. Bundy, who had just come from Israel, urged Hussein not to wait for others to solve his problem for him but to tackle it directly with someone like Moshe Dayan, the minister of defence. Bundy also conveyed Dayan’s warning that if fedayeen forays into Israel continued, Israel might be forced to strike at Jordan again, causing further population displacement. Hussein frequently used the word ‘just’ in much the same manner as the Israelis used the word ‘peace’. A settlement in which all the parties had confidence was the only solution, said Hussein. He obviously considered that what Israel had offered the Arabs so far was ‘thin soup’. Hussein repeated to Bundy his frequently used description of Israel as possessing three faces: the extremist one, which sought the downfall of Jordan and Israeli occupation of the West Bank; the seemingly reasonable one, which wanted a Palestinian entity; and the moderate one. Hussein said that it was the face of moderation that he was trying to find.14
Hussein’s own moderation helped to win him friends and admirers in Israel. One of them was Golda Meir, who had had a face-to-face meeting with Hussein in Paris in 1965 when she served as foreign minister under Levi Eshkol. In August 1968 Theodor Sorensen, a former senior aide to President Kennedy, visited the Middle East. Through Sorensen, Meir sent a message to Hussein that said, ‘I hope that Your Majesty knows that Israel is your best friend in the Middle East.’ When the king received the message, he smiled and said, ‘Some people think that I am Israel’s best friend in the Middle East.’15 The little exchange revealed a degree of goodwill at both the political and personal levels that was without parallel in Arab–Israeli relations. Israel and Jordan were not the best of friends, but they could be described as the best of enemies.
The Americans encouraged Israel to develop this special relationship into a separate peace settlement with Hussein. Pleasing President Johnson was one of the reasons that Eshkol cited in cabinet to overcome resistance to talks with Hussein. Eshkol himself was still adamant that he would not himself meet Hussein but he was happy for Eban to represent the government in the talks. Eshkol valued Eban more as a spokesman than as a policy-maker. He called Eban ‘the clever fool’ because he had the gift of the gab but not much common sense. Eban belonged to the school of thought that favoured a settlement with Hussein. But since few, if any, of his cabinet colleagues were prepared to go as far as he was, he began to emphasize the tactical value of the talks: the back channel to Hussein could be used to deflect American and UN pressures on Israel to implement Resolution 242. Eban stressed that continuing the contact was important because ‘so long as the great powers believe that we have independent contacts – it would constrain Jarring and America.’16
To counterbalance the moderate Eban, Herzog suggested to Eshkol that Yigal Allon, the deputy-prime minister and minister for labour, should represent the government alongside the foreign minister. Allo
n was a former general, a hawk and an arch-expansionist. During the year he had spent at St Antony’s College, Oxford, in 1957, he improved his English and acquired some surface polish, but underneath he remained a ruthless land-grabber. Sending Allon to the meeting with Hussein was a terrible mistake if the aim was to reach a settlement; but if, on the other hand, the preferred destination of the talks was deadlock he was the ideal candidate. Allon was personally and politically hostile to Hussein. When the cabinet discussed Jordan on 7 April, following an approach from President Johnson, Allon said, ‘After all, we don’t owe Hussein anything. He violated his commitment to the United States on the eve of the Six-Day War by moving tanks to the West Bank. I would not take the initiative to topple Hussein, but nor would I recoil from active defence measures which are necessary for Israel.’ To the astonishment of his colleagues Allon added, ‘I would not rule out the possibility that if a Palestinian government emerged in Jordan, it would dare to negotiate with us more than Hussein’s government.’17
Two weeks after the end of the June War, Allon had submitted to the cabinet the famous plan that would bear his name. It called for incorporating into Israel the following areas: a strip of land 10–15 kilometres wide along the Jordan River; most of the Judaean Desert round the Dead Sea; and a substantial area round Greater Jerusalem, including the Latrun salient (see map on p.291). The plan was designed to include as few Arabs as possible in the area claimed for Israel, and it envisaged building permanent settlements and army bases in these areas. Finally, it called for opening negotiations with local leaders on turning the remaining parts of the West Bank into an autonomous region that would be linked to Israel. In no sense could it be described as a peace plan: it was a unilateral Israeli device to annex large chunks of the West Bank in total disregard for Arab rights. The Palestinian state would have been surrounded by Israel on all sides. There was never a chance that any Arab leader would accept it. When nationalistic Jewish settlers heard about the plan, they were surprised and hurt. Allon justified it by saying, ‘Jews have to be smart. No Arab will ever accept this plan.’18 Having given up hope of reaching agreement with the West Bank leaders, Allon proposed to hand over the parts of the West Bank that Israel did not need to Jordan. Allon did not change the map of July 1967 but instead of offering to share the West Bank with the Palestinians, he offered to share it with King Hussein.19 No decision was taken on the Allon Plan, but its author was authorized to discuss it in general terms with Hussein at their meeting.