BICOM

To mark the 15th anniversary of the signing of the historic Washington Declaration on 25 July, BICOM is publishing the following Focus piece by guest author Professor Asher Susser, Senior Research Fellow of the Moshe Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University.

 

BICOM Focus: Jordan and Israel –

a précis on 15 years of peace

By Professor Asher Susser

Key points

 

• Jordan and Israel have had a unique relationship that predates the independence of the two states.

 

• The Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty does not include any bilateral security arrangements. There are no demilitarised zones, no early warning stations nor international peacekeeping forces that are all essential components of the treaty with Egypt and would be of any future treaty with Syria, for example.

 

• Both Jordanians and Israelis were disappointed by the outcome of the treaty, which did not meet with their political or economic expectations.

 

• The Israeli-Palestinian track morphed into Jordan’s nightmare scenario. The failure of the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000 and the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada soon thereafter led to the worst round of bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians ever since 1948, creating great anxiety in Jordan.

 

• It would serve the interests of all concerned if greater involvement on the part of external Arab players, under the legitimising auspices of the Arab Peace Initiative, could help to coax the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations forward at this time of internal Palestinian disorder.

 

 

Introduction

 

The Washington Declaration signed by King Hussein of Jordan and prime minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel on 25 July 1994, in their first ever public meeting, put an end to the state of belligerency between the two countries. The declaration paved the way for the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty signed a few months later on 26 October that same year, and its 15^th anniversary is a fitting moment for a retrospective analysis of the Jordanian-Israeli relationship in the era of peace.

 

Jordan and Israel: a unique relationship

 

 The signing of the Washington Declaration and the peace treaty were cause for popular elation, if not to say euphoria in Israel at the time. Jordan was always seen by Israelis as a relatively moderate Arab state, King Hussein was admired for his grit and courage, and Israelis tended to believe that peace with Jordan would be genuine and warm, unlike the ‘cold peace’ with Egypt and the tenuous accord with the Palestinians. Israelis flocked in their tens of thousands to tour Jordan, from Um Qays in the north to Petra in the south. Jordan was an Arab country where Israelis felt safe. After all, Jordan and Israel have had a unique relationship that predates the independence of the two states.

The British Mandate in Palestine gave birth to the State of Israel, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Palestinian national movement, still in the throes of a somewhat hesitant and questionable process of state formation. From the very earliest days of the Mandate, the Hashemites and the Zionists recognised their common interest in containing Palestinian nationalism which, they assessed, threatened them both. Israel therefore acquiesced in Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank after the 1948 war, and though Jordan and Israel went to war with each other twice (in 1948 and again in 1967) the two countries more often than not were on the same side of the various Middle Eastern divides. They were both consistently pro-American in the Cold War; fearful and suspicious of radical pan-Arabism in the heyday of Abd al-Nasser and ‘Nasserism’; and apprehen! sive about the revival of militant Palestinian nationalism, which eventually imposed itself on both countries in the aftermath of the Arab defeat in 1967.

 

An extraordinary peace treaty

 

Once described by an Israeli historian as ‘the best of enemies,’[1] Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty that was very different in its content from the peace treaty Israel signed with Egypt and from any treaty that might one day be achieved between Israel and its other Arab neighbours. The Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty does not include any bilateral security arrangements. There are no demilitarised zones, no early warning stations nor international peacekeeping forces that are all essential components of the treaty with Egypt and would be of any future treaty with Syria, for example. The treaty did make some oblique references to security issues. These, however, related to third parties.

Thus, Jordan and Israel agreed not to allow ‘the entry, stationing and operating on their territory, or through it, of military forces, personnel or materiel of a third party, in circumstances which may adversely prejudice the security of the other Party.’ This commitment was intended to address the Israeli strategic need to preserve Jordan as a buffer to the east, preventing Iraqi or any other hostile deployment on Israel’s eastern frontier.  The parties also undertook not to permit the ‘involuntary movements of persons in such a way as to adversely prejudice the security of either Party,’ primarily intended to assuage Jordanian apprehensions of a Palestinian migration eastwards in the event of a major Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. But the level of trust and common interest between the two states and especially between the two leaders, Rabin and Hussein, was such that other security measures were deemed superfluous.

The Jordanian-Israeli treaty therefore gave rise to expectations that the two countries would create an example of ‘warm peace’ between Israel and an Arab state. That, however, was not to be, in what was the first of many profound disappointments that both sides would have to endure. King Hussein, even though at the zenith of his reign, was incapable of coercing his unwilling populace to actively engage with Israel and Israelis.

 

Normalisation and its malcontents

For most Jordanians, many of whom were of Palestinian origin, there was a huge difference between acquiescing in Israel’s existence, as a realistic assessment of the balance of power, and the acceptance of Israel as a legitimate member of the Middle Eastern family of nations. For the Israelis, such acceptance was the very essence of ‘normalisation,’ and a key component of peace and their long-term security. Even with Jordan they were forced to realise that such an embrace by the neighbourhood was way beyond reach. This was a harsh lesson for the Israelis, who were coerced into coming to terms with the recognition that peace rested first and foremost on Israeli power rather than on the goodwill of their neighbours, a most unsettling thought for the future.

The Jordanians, for their part, were disappointed with what was commonly referred to as the ‘peace dividend.’ Both Israeli and Jordanian leaders gave the impression that the peace between the two countries would be the gateway to rapid prosperity that would extricate Jordan from its economic woes. That was never a realistic proposition, and though the Jordanian economy has definitely improved, in considerable measure thanks to the peace with Israel, the economic wellbeing of the Jordanian man in the street has not been markedly affected.

 

Jordan’s geopolitical expectations

Perhaps even more importantly for the long haul was the fact that Jordan’s geopolitical expectations were not fulfilled, either. In part, this might have had to do with the fact that the two great architects of the peace treaty, Rabin and Hussein, departed from the scene soon thereafter and were replaced by leaders who never created quite the same kind of personal chemistry and strategic rapport that had existed between the two elder statesmen. For the Jordanians, the peace treaty, above all else, was to provide the Kingdom with long-term security and stability. It was signed after the Oslo Accords, based on the assumption that Israel and the Palestinians were on track to solving their historical dispute and that a Palestinian state was in the making. Hussein believed that the treaty with Israel and the strategic rapport with Rabin would provide Jordan with a platform of input and influence over the shaping of the Israeli-Palestinian settlement in a manner that would ensure that Jordan’s vital interests would be protected.

These expectations, however, did not materialise. On the contrary, the Israeli-Palestinian track morphed into Jordan’s nightmare scenario. The failure of the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000 and the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada soon thereafter led to the worst round of bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians ever since 1948. For the Jordanians, who initially believed that the peace treaty had put such problems behind them, this was cause for great trepidation and fear that the violence on the West Bank might spill over onto the East Bank in the form of large-scale Palestinian flight or forced migration that could have a most serious destabilising effect on the Kingdom.

In the Jordanian mind, there resurfaced once again the old apprehension that some in Israel may wish to forcefully transform Jordan into the future state of Palestine in accordance with the ‘alternative homeland’ (al-watan al-badil) conspiracy theory. This was a notion that was widely believed in the Kingdom, both in the elite and in the popular imagination, and occasional talk in this vein by some on the Israeli far right only exacerbated tensions further.

As things seemed to be unravelling to the west, to the east the United States occupied Iraq in 2003, overthrew the Baath regime and thrust that country into a state of perennial chaos. In overthrowing the Baath, the historical balance of power in the Arab East between Sunnis and Shi’is was altered for the first time in many centuries in favour of the Shi’is, as Iraq was transformed into the first Shi’ite-dominated Arab state. Jordan was inundated with over half a million Iraqi refugees, who placed an enormous burden on the country’s already over-extended infrastructure and services.

Iran’s regional stature was also in the ascendant, as its influence in Shi’ite Iraq increased as the key Sunni Arab states plunged further into their prolonged decline. Iran moved rapidly from the periphery of the region into the Arab core as the former gatekeeper of the Arab East, Saddam’s Iraq, was crushed. It was these ominous developments that drove King Abdullah II to speak at the end of 2004 of the ‘crescent’ of Shi’ite Iranian influence stretching from Tehran, through the Fertile Crescent to Beirut. In these new circumstances, Jordan found itself at the very heart of regional turmoil, with a disintegrating Iraq to the east and a chaotic Palestine to the west, quite the opposite of their post-peace treaty evaluations.

In the decade since his ascent to the throne after his father’s death in February 1999, King Abdullah II has developed a vision of Jordan as an integrated Kingdom whose long-term stability and economic prosperity would be secured in a society in which the country’s citizens of both Jordanian and Palestinian origin partake as equals. Transforming this vision into reality required a more sustained and systematic integration of Palestinians into the Kingdom’s ruling political elite. This was not a welcome change in the best of circumstances in the eyes of the entrenched original Jordanian East Banker elite, on whose unflinching loyalty the monarchy rested. In a situation of chronic regional chaos, such hypersensitive domestic reform became impossible to even seriously consider. Major policy initiatives of the King were thus being stymied by ongoing regional crises which were way beyond Jordan’s control and completely unexpected in the heady days of the Oslo process and the signing of the Jordanian-Israeli treaty.

 

Jordan and the Palestinian track

As for the presently inert Israeli-Palestinian track, all the critical outstanding issues – borders, Jerusalem, refugees, security arrangements and water – had direct implications for Jordan. After all, Jordan hosted more Palestinian refugees (from the 1948 and 1967 wars) than any other country and as many or even more than the Palestinian Authority. It has a long border with Israel and the future state of Palestine, and Jordan had special interests recognised in its treaty with Israel in the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem (though for Abdullah II, Jerusalem was less of an issue, both in terms of personal memory and involvement and in terms of his sense of Hashemite dynastic ambition, than it had been for his father). And last but not least, whatever arrangements Israel would have with Palestine on security matters or on water usage and distribution would most probably have implications for Jordan, as well.

The Jordanians did not aspire to actually be at the negotiation table, but they did expect to be consulted and to be actively engaged in coordinating positions with both the Israelis and the Palestinians. The unsolved problem for the Jordanians that remained over time, however, was how to devise the diplomatic mechanism that would provide for their involvement to a degree that would safeguard their interests without making them responsible for the outcome of the negotiations themselves. The last thing the Jordanians wanted or needed was to have to bear the historical responsibility, or the blame, for the unavoidable concessions that would have to be a part of any Palestinian negotiation with Israel.

The Jordanians thus face an acute dilemma. They have a vested interest in a stable Israeli-Palestinian settlement, but such a settlement does not appear to be in the offing, especially when the Palestinians seem to be in such awful disarray, with Mahmoud Abbas steadily losing ground since the Hamas victory in the 2006 elections and their takeover of Gaza in the summer of 2007. More than 20 years ago, Jordan finally acceded to the PLO as the ‘sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.’ But in the meantime, the PLO has lost its monopoly over Palestinian politics, which it is unlikely to regain soon, if ever. At present, the Palestinians have no ‘sole’ legitimate representative, but the Jordanians, like their Egyptian counterparts, have no intention of substituting for the Palestinians.

It would, however, serve the interests of all concerned, Jordanians included, if greater involvement on the part of external Arab players could help to coax the negotiations forward at this time of internal Palestinian disorder. The much vaunted Arab Peace Initiative, irrespective of some its problematic formulations (especially on the refugee question, for example) could provide a legitimising umbrella for more extensive Arab (Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi) involvement, that might be able to offer the deeply divided Palestinians a measure of coherence and wider governmental and popular backing to extricate the Israeli-Palestinian track from its moribund status. The present predicament, prolonging a situation that serves no one, is threatening to erode the practicality of the two-state solution altogether. Such an outcome could spell disaster for all concerned, Jordan included.

Jordan therefore seeks to assure the creation of a viable independent Palestinian state in stable peace with Israel, so that it be clear to all and sundry that Jordan is Jordan, Palestine is Palestine and Israel is Israel. Such a new order would probably not preclude the possibility of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation at some time in the future. Indeed, there is much historical, geographic, topographic and demographic logic in the formation of such a confederation. But this is the business and the choice of the Jordanian and Palestinian peoples, and Israelis and others would be well advised to leave it entirely to them and to avoid the temptation of trying the impossible, that is, to engineer other people’s societies for them.

Greater and lesser powers have tried to do so in many places from Cuba to Palestine, from Iraq to Afghanistan and in many other countries in between. Invariably they have met with dismal failure. On this as on other matters, it is time for hope to give way to experience. 

 

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To read BICOM’s Q&A on the Washington Declaration, please click here.

To read UK press articles published at the time, please click here.

 

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[1] Uri Bar-Joseph, The Best of Enemies; Israel and Transjordan in the War of 1948 (London: Frank Cass, 1987).