Lion of Jordan

by Avi Shlaim

  The second meeting was held on 19 October. An Arab summit conference was scheduled to take place in Rabat at the end of the month and in the Arab world support was rapidly growing for replacing Jordan with the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians. Hussein was now more anxious than ever for a disengagement agreement to shore up his position and to extend his influence on the West Bank. Without an agreement he was in danger of being supplanted by the PLO at the upcoming Arab summit. But Rabin, having just brought the NRP into the government, was unwilling to cede the Jericho enclave, let alone vertical disengagement, because he feared the collapse of his fragile coalition. He was terrified of going forward with Hussein because any territorial concession entailed either the departure of the NRP or new elections. Rabin could have soldiered on without the NRP but he was too passive and pusillanimous to take any risks. It was a classic example of the impact of domestic politics on foreign policy. What it meant in practical terms was that Rabin once again had nothing concrete to offer. Rabin sought to reassure Hussein that his government would have no truck with the PLO. ‘As far as the Palestinian problem in the West Bank is concerned,’ said Rabin, ‘Israel has one and only one partner: Jordan.’ Peres’s ideas of a condominium over the West Bank and Gaza were also predicated on Jordan as Israel’s partner in dealing with the Palestinian problem.20 But secret assurances of Israel’s fidelity to the traditional alliance with the Hashemite rulers of Jordan were no substitute for a public disengagement agreement along the lines of the Egyptian and Syrian models. Hussein left the meeting with nothing.

  Itzhak Rabin estimated that the chances of a second agreement with Egypt were better than the chances of an agreement with Hussein on the West Bank. Rabin also made it clear to the Americans that Egypt was his first priority. He urged them to leave the Palestinian problem to one side and to focus on Sadat’s Egypt. Kissinger’s conduct was rather more convoluted and his statements were contradicted by his actions. He too was fixated on a second disengagement agreement between Israel and Egypt, and, in the slightly longer term, on removing Egypt altogether from the circle of the confrontation states surrounding Israel. Kissinger wanted Jordan to attend the Rabat summit. During his last visit to Amman before the summit, his former student, Zaid Rifa’i, told him that there was a serious risk that a resolution would be passed at Rabat to deprive Jordan of the right to negotiate over the West Bank and to appoint the PLO to that role. Kissinger assured Rifa’i that the US was using its influence in Arab capitals, and that Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia would all reject the pressure from the radical Arab states to promote the PLO at the expense of Jordan. Jordan’s position was secure, Kissinger concluded, and there was nothing to worry about. Mreiwad Tall, the private secretary, strongly advised Hussein not to go to Rabat so as not to be bound by any anti-Jordanian decisions that might be taken there. Kissinger’s assurances played a part in persuading Hussein to reject this advice and to go. Shortly before the summit, the Moroccan authorities uncovered a Fatah plot to assassinate Hussein on arrival at Rabat. But this did not deter Hussein from attending the Arab League summit.21

  The Arab heads of state and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the PLO, convened in Rabat on 26 October. The dispute between Jordan and the PLO dominated the discussions. Hussein opened the discussions with a long speech that emphasized his country’s historic responsibility for the fate of the West Bank. He identified two distinct phases in the struggle that lay ahead: liberating the occupied territory and settlement of the Palestinian problem. He urged his colleagues to support Jordan in its efforts to recover the West Bank and promised to give its inhabitants an opportunity to determine their own future once Israel withdrew. Towards the end of the speech came the warning: if the Arab states allocated to the PLO sole responsibility for both phases of the Palestinian problem, they would have to bear the consequences, including withdrawal of the civil administration from the West Bank and ending the payment of salaries of civil servants, judges and teachers by the central government. Yasser Arafat argued in his speech for an exclusive role for the PLO both in the negotiations to recover the West Bank and in determining its future. The vote went in favour of the PLO. Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia all joined the radical states in voting against Jordan. The final resolutions of the summit designated the PLO as ‘the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people’ and affirmed the right of the Palestinian people to set up an independent national authority, led by the PLO, on any part of Palestine that was liberated. In the meantime, Jordan was asked not to sever its links with the West Bank. Hussein had always felt very strongly about Jordan’s responsibilities towards its citizens under occupation, and he decided, despite his threats, not to desert them. He had no choice but to go along with the summit resolution on Palestinian representation but he did not want the Palestinians under occupation to pay the price. He therefore announced that Jordan would continue its administration of the West Bank and would continue to assist and support its inhabitants until liberation. The Arab leaders gave him a standing ovation.22

  Despite the round of applause at the end, Hussein regarded the Rabat summit as a major political and diplomatic defeat. He felt let down by Israel, abandoned by the Arab moderates and double-crossed by the American secretary of state. A month after Rabat, Kissinger stopped in Amman on his tour of the Middle East. Rifa’i reminded him of his assurances that America’s Arab allies would back Jordan at the summit. Kissinger’s only reply was: ‘We overestimated our manipulative capabilities.’ Rifa’i, however, concluded that the Rabat decision was the direct result of Kissinger’s machinations. It was clear all along that Israel would refuse to negotiate with the PLO. Kissinger secretly wanted the PLO to replace Jordan as the spokesman for the Palestinian people to ensure that there would be no negotiations over the West Bank. Kissinger undermined Jordan’s position not to help the PLO but to help Israel and Egypt move forward towards another bilateral deal over Sinai.23 Rifa’i assessed the Rabat summit succinctly: ‘The only way for Kissinger to rid himself of Jordanian demands was to knock us out, once and for all. Kissinger plotted against the Arab nation. And Sadat took part in the plot. The rest of the Arabs fell into the trap.’24 Hussein shared his prime minister’s suspicions about the collusion between Kissinger and Sadat on the road to Rabat. But the additional point he chose to stress was that the Arab rulers had their own reason for voting for the Rabat decision: they were tired of the Palestinian problem and by crowning the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people they hoped to divest themselves of further responsibility for it. ‘The Palestinians wanted their way and their say. The Arabs wanted it, the Muslims wanted it, and the whole world wanted it.’25

  Hussein did not feel he could go alone against the current, and in the end he actually voted for the Rabat resolutions. But formal adoption of the resolutions was not the same as genuine acceptance. The claim to represent the Palestinians was a vital part of Hussein’s Hashemite heritage. At Rabat this role was taken away from him and given to the PLO, his deadly rival. The message that the Rabat summit sent to Hussein was that he no longer had any say in the affairs of the occupied territories and that he could no longer speak on behalf of the Palestinians in international fora. To an ambitious monarch this was a depressing message. He saw it as ‘a betrayal of the Hashemite custody of the Palestinian cause’.26 As Foreign Minister Dr Kamel Abu Jaber confessed, ‘Hussein did not like it and never accepted the Rabat summit resolution. He thought of the PLO as a tool to reach a political settlement, not as a substitute to Jordan. This was obvious from his movements between 1974 and 1988. We continued to try to get around the Rabat formula and to persuade the Palestinians, the Arab world and the international community that Jordan is the place to talk about the Palestinians – that it is the door to be knocked on. Eventually, Hussein reluctantly accepted the necessity to disengage.’27

  Rabat was thus a watershed in Hussein’s troubled relationship with the Palestinians: he could no longer claim that they were und
er his crown. But Rabat represented an opportunity as well as a setback. It opened the door to a ‘Jordan-first’ policy, to concentrating on the political and economic development of the East Bank. Some of his advisers from the East Bank elite, led by Mreiwad Tall, urged him to adopt such a policy, to cut his losses on the West Bank and to leave the representation of the Palestinians to the PLO in accordance with the Arab consensus. Crown Prince Hassan sided with this group of advisers, arguing that Jordan should cut its ties with the West Bank and that for all practical purposes the ‘unity of the two banks’ idea should be revoked.28 At this stage, however, Hussein was not ready for an official break with the West Bank. Following the Rabat summit, parliament was dissolved and a new government, headed once again by Rifa’i, was appointed by royal decree. West Bank representation in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies was reduced, and national elections were postponed until March 1975. The citizenship rights of Palestinians on the East Bank were curtailed, giving rise to tensions. Eventually the king defused the crisis by assuring the Palestinians that they would have the right to choose their citizenship at the appropriate time.

  Hussein eventually heeded the advice he was given after Rabat – but only in July 1988, when he severed Jordan’s legal and administrative links with the West Bank. He could have opted for constitutional separation in 1974. One reason for not doing so has already been noted – his sense of moral obligation as a Hashemite towards the people of the West Bank. But there was a second and related reason, namely, his dynastic interests and, more specifically, his belief that the Hashemites were destined to play a major role in the affairs of the Middle East. He was obsessed with projecting Jordan as a key player in regional and international politics. This sense of mission impelled him to continue to invest most of his time and energy not on internal development and consolidation but on diplomatic efforts to recover the West Bank of the kingdom that his grandfather had bequeathed to him.

  The Rabat decision weakened further Hussein’s already very weak hand in dealing with the Israelis. After Rabat the secret meetings resumed because both sides saw some value in staying in contact, but the regional context had changed and the sense of urgency had gone. Nevertheless, Hussein always liked to avoid complete isolation. In addition, contact with the Israelis enabled him to bypass the Rabat resolutions and to maintain his links with his supporters on the West Bank. In Israel the morale of military intelligence was at its nadir because of the débâcle of the October War. Mossad, on the other hand, emerged largely unscathed. Rabin rewarded Mossad by assigning to it responsibility for coordinating his clandestine contacts with Hussein – the most sensitive aspect in Israel’s foreign relations. One of the results was a top-secret intelligence exchange between the Mossad and the Mukhabarat.29 The Mossad had passed messages to Hussein in the past and alerted him to plots against his life, but the relationship was now institutionalized for the first time.

  Hussein’s next meeting with the Israelis did not take place until 28 May 1975. Hussein spoke more in sorrow than in anger about their attitude on the eve of the Rabat summit. He believed that, had they reached a disengagement agreement with him, the Rabat defeat could have been avoided. The Israelis tried to shift the conversation from the past to the future by raising the possibility of territorial compromise. ‘We are out of the picture,’ Hussein replied angrily. ‘Please talk to the PLO and then we’ll see.’ By this time Israel had started negotiating a second disengagement agreement with Egypt. Hussein feared that such an agreement would further weaken Jordan’s position in the Middle East, but there was little he could do except to cast doubt on Sadat’s reliability. Like the previous two meetings, this one ended without any agreement being reached. Yet during the meeting Hussein indicated that there was some point in continuing the dialogue.30

  Jordan had been relegated to the margins of the diplomacy surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict. Kissinger resumed his shuttle between Cairo and Tel Aviv, and, on 1 September 1975, the two countries signed an interim agreement, popularly known as Sinai II. It was a free-standing agreement that did not include any commitment by Israel to enter into negotiations over the Golan Heights or the West Bank. Sinai II was well received in Israel but not in Jordan. Adnan Abu-Odeh explained: ‘We were very unhappy because we were not included in the disengagement agreements that were reached between Egypt and Israel. Jordan’s exclusion was also received with fear and worry in Amman. It was taken as a first indicator that Jordan would gradually be excluded from a solution to the Palestine question. Exclusion meant a great deal to us at the time: above all, it meant that Jordan would become gradually irrelevant. Irrelevance to Jordan means that getting rid of the Hashemites would become more possible. In other words, that the Palestinian question could be solved at Jordan’s expense.’31

  Sinai II had the unintended effect of improving the relations between Jordan and Syria. Asad shared Hussein’s mistrust of Sadat, of Kissinger and of Kissinger’s step-by-step diplomacy, which seemed to be directed at dividing the Arab world, avoiding the core issues of the Arab–Israeli conflict and frustrating the search for a comprehensive settlement. The Syrians tried to compensate for Sadat’s ‘defection’ by forming a banana-shaped front round Israel and by consolidating their influence in Lebanon.

  After its expulsion from Jordan in 1970–71 the PLO began to build a state within a state in Lebanon. A civil war broke out in April 1975 between the leftist–PLO coalition on the one hand and the various Christian militias on the other. Syria and Israel were the main external actors in the Lebanese conflict, and there was a danger that they would be dragged in by their respective allies. Hussein played a part in arranging the tacit understanding between Asad and the Israelis. The king advised the Maronite Christians that if they wanted to survive in the Middle East, they should turn to Israel for protection. He also offered to serve as a messenger for Asad, who knew about his channels to the Israeli leaders. Asad wanted Israeli acquiescence in the presence of Syrian troops up to a certain point in Lebanon. One night in April 1976 Gideon Rafael, Israel’s ambassador in London, was asked to meet Hussein urgently at the house of a mutual friend. The king was deeply concerned about the mounting tension in the Levant. It was in their mutual interest, he argued, to contain the present fighting in Lebanon. The message he conveyed from Asad to Rabin was that Syria’s intervention in Lebanon was designed to protect the Christians and that there was no intention of harming Israel’s interests there. Asad promised to keep his forces away from the Israeli border and asked the Israelis not to intervene. A few hours later Rafael was on his way to Israel. Rabin appreciated the message. A special meeting of the cabinet was convened: it was decided to accept the Syrian explanation and to refrain from direct intervention in Lebanon. Rafael flew back to London to convey the reassuring message to the king, who promptly dispatched it to Damascus.32

  Thus the dialogue among the principals across the battle lines continued, but the emphasis shifted from the discussion of a political settlement to dealing with day-to-day problems. Among the subjects that came up were the combating of terrorist activities by the radical Palestinian factions, ecology, water, aviation, shipping in the Gulf of Aqaba and border demarcation.33 There were minor complaints by the king about Israeli planes flying over his palace and Israeli boats booming around his house in Aqaba, and appropriate action followed. Crown Prince Hassan, who was in charge of the Jordanian development plan, had two long meetings with Allon. They discussed projects for building hydroelectric stations, for more effective management of water resources, for free passage between Eilat and Aqaba, and even for giving Jordan access to the Mediterranean through Gaza. Allon was most impressed by Hassan’s expertise in economics and development. He also seized the opportunity to find out whether there was any basis to the rumours that Hassan was opposed to Jordan’s return to the West Bank. Hassan burst out laughing and said that rumour had already reached his ears. The truth of the matter was that he did not wish to give up the West Bank not because he was in
love with its inhabitants but because he did not want his political rivals to have it.34

  Politically, the deadlock continued. The PLO was unable to represent the Palestinians in negotiations over the future of the West Bank because Israel and the United States refused to deal with it. As a result of the Rabat resolution the Palestinians were thus left in limbo. The advent of a Democratic administration in January 1976 under Jimmy Carter carried hopes of a change in the American position. Carter put the emphasis on human rights in foreign policy and came out publicly in support of a homeland for the Palestinians. He was thus the first US president to champion the right of the Palestinians to national self-determination, and he used the terms PLO and Palestinians interchangeably. Jordan and Israel feared that this formula might lead to the emergence of a Palestinian state as a wedge between them. So there were grounds for exploring again various views about territorial or functional compromises, such as Peres’s scheme of a condominium over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

  A meeting was arranged between Hussein and the triumvirate led by Rabin towards the end of March 1977. This time Hussein and Rifa’i were driven to the Mossad-operated guest-house just north of Tel Aviv. The talks, however, proved futile as neither side was ready to yield, especially on the question of Jerusalem.35 On the issues that really mattered, according to Hussein, ‘Rabin was very rigid, very polite, very cordial but rigid and impossible to alter.’ During Rabin’s second term as prime minister, in 1992–5, he recalled their last meeting to Hussein, saying, ‘You were very stubborn.’ Hussein replied, ‘Yes, I was because I could not give an inch of Palestinian territory or an iota of Palestinian rights.’ Hussein remembered that Rabin had said: ‘Well, there is nothing that can be done. Wait for ten years, maybe things will change on the ground.’ Hussein had replied, ‘Well, too bad.’36