Lion of Jordan (61 page)

The Israeli plan was of course completely unacceptable to Hussein, but his interest in continuing to meet with the Israeli leaders was unaffected by their intransigence. He continued to believe that secret contact with the Israelis was important: first, it was essential to limit the extent of clashes that took place along the ceasefire line; second, he needed to check regularly for any sign of a less inflexible attitude on Israel's part towards a settlement.
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At the start of the meeting on 21 March, Meir complained that Hussein had not given her advance warning of the United Arab Kingdom plan. Hussein apologized and said that his intention was to implement the plan after reaching a peace agreement with Israel. Meir was not mollified and complained further that in his speech Hussein spoke of liberating all the occupied territories – ‘Maybe you mean Tel Aviv as well?' she inquired sarcastically. Since Hussein was not ready for significant territorial changes, she suggested seeking temporary arrangements. Hussein asked her to allow him access to the people of the West Bank in order to build up support for the federal plan. Meir replied that this was a complex matter that carried the risk of raising false hopes of a territorial settlement among the Palestinians.

She then posed two questions of her own: could His Majesty sign a separate peace agreement with Israel; and could the peace agreement be based on substantial border modifications? To the first question Hussein gave an affirmative reply, provided the peace agreement could be fitted into an appropriate framework. He spoke of a peace that would put an end to all the wars. Regarding the second question, Hussein saw no possibility of significant border changes. The whole of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, had to be part of the federation under his crown. He realized that since 1967 Israel had built Jewish neighbourhoods in Jerusalem and dispossessed many Arabs, but the eastern part of the city had to remain under Arab rule. To reinforce his words, and to address the Israeli concern with security, Hussein presented a working paper in which Jordan agreed to the demilitarization of the entire West Bank after its transfer, along with the Gaza Strip, to Jordanian rule. Jerusalem would serve as the capital of the two nations and did not have to be redivided.

Hussein argued that Jordan and Israel had a common interest in preventing the Syrians and the Iraqis from gaining political dominance over the Palestinians. Meir suggested that Jordan should not be part of an eastern front against Israel in the event of war; that Syrian and Iraqi
forces should not be stationed on Jordanian territory; and that Jordan and Israel should prepare joint contingency plans to meet changes in the regional status quo. Hussein did not respond to these specific suggestions but asked again to be allowed to develop his links with the inhabitants of the West Bank. Meir made no promises but offered to send an authorized representative to discuss the matter. This would be Moshe Dayan, who as minister of defence was responsible for security in all the occupied territories.
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On 29 June 1972 Dayan accompanied Meir to a meeting in Wadi Araba with Hussein and Zaid Rifa'i. Dayan urged Hussein to seek a settlement with Meir because of her strong position at home and her flexibility, but he warned that even she could not settle without significant border changes. In the absence of a settlement, the danger of war increased. The question was whether Jordan would join Egypt if Egypt went to war against Israel. Hussein rejected this approach and repeated his earlier request for access to the Palestinians of the West Bank. ‘I hoped you would come up with new ideas, as the prime minister promised,' he said. Dayan, however, continued to make his pitch for an agreement with Meir: ‘Leave aside the Palestinian issue for twenty years. It is in your interest to reach an arrangement with Golda. Her line would be more convenient for you than my line.' The most that Hussein was prepared to consider was changes to the 1949 armistice agreement that separated villages from their land. Dayan's next move was to offer Hussein a defence pact. The idea was to formalize Israel's policy of preserving the territorial integrity of Jordan in return for a Jordanian commitment not to join any Arab war coalition against Israel, as it did in 1967. ‘Israel', said Dayan, ‘is prepared to rush to Jordan's aid, possibly in cooperation with the United States, if pressure on Jordan increases as a result of its refusal to join in the war. We are even prepared for a defence pact.'

Hussein and Rifa'i did not wish to pursue the suggestion of a secret agreement. They preferred to concentrate on practical matters such as the building of a security fence along the border in the south to prevent infiltration and terrorist attacks. Although Hussein did not take up Dayan's specific offer, he sought to preserve the option of Israeli aid in a crisis without a written pledge on either side. He also knew that the extremists in Israel had wanted to topple the monarchy in September 1970, and he was anxious to persuade Israel's leaders that one day he
might be able to overcome Arab constraints and make a peace settlement with them. But both he and Rifa'i made it clear to Dayan that neither IDF bases nor civilian settlements could remain on the West Bank once a peace agreement was reached. In response to Dayan's question about their ideas for a permanent settlement, Rifa'i replied that it must be based on the 4 June 1967 border. The only concession that Rifa'i would consider was not to station Jordan's army on the West Bank following the Israeli withdrawal.
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A third meeting between the two sides occurred at the same place on 19 November 1972. The suggestion of a defence pact was not raised again. Hussein and Rifa'i made a specific request for a corridor between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Meir suggested leaving the territorial question for negotiations at a later stage and pressed for a clear commitment that the Jordanian Army would not cross the Jordan River. The terms she proposed for a settlement were that the unpopulated part of the West Bank would remain in Israeli hands and the Jewish settlements would stay. ‘I believe that I have a majority in the Knesset and in the government in favour of this principle,' she said. ‘Gahal [the right-wing opposition party] and the religious parties will be opposed but I have a majority.' Hussein rejected the proposal out of hand. ‘I understand that you are offering me the Allon Plan,' he said, ‘maybe more limited in scope, but it is out of the question.' Meir stressed that she just wanted to keep unpopulated areas and estimated that there were only about 25,000 Arab inhabitants on the western side of the Jordan Valley. Hussein held to his position and explained to Meir that significant border changes would arouse the opposition of the Arab world. He reminded her that after he announced his federal plan Sadat severed diplomatic relations with Jordan.
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The picture that emerged from the three meetings between Hussein and the Israeli leaders was bleak. Hussein had tried every approach in an effort to stimulate motion, but he reached a dead end. The positions of the two sides as presented at the talks were simply irreconcilable. Hussein's position was clear and consistent, whereas the Israeli position was vague and evasive. One of the problems was that there was no official Israeli position at all: Meir's offer, paltry as it was, had not been endorsed by her government. Even if Hussein had been foolhardy enough to accept it, there was no guarantee that the divided government would sanction it. The fact that Meir made this offer at all reflected
her preference for land over peace as well as her indifference to Arab sensitivities. Israeli supremacy reinforced her natural intransigence. The truth of the matter was that Israel was in a position of unassailable power and did not therefore have to yield ground; and, because of this power, the only opinions the Israelis had to consider were internal ones. Time and again since the beginning of the secret meetings, Hussein told his Israeli interlocutors that he was ready for a peaceful settlement with them provided he could defend it in front of the Arab world. In Arab eyes land was sacred and inseparable from national honour. If Hussein had agreed to Meir's terms he would have been instantly denounced by the entire Arab world as a traitor and as a collaborator with the enemy. Her offer was therefore a complete non-starter, just as all previous versions of the Allon Plan had been. Dayan, to his credit, at least recognized the futility of making an offer for a peace settlement that had no chance of being accepted. He therefore offered Hussein a defence pact in return for a pledge not to join an Arab war coalition against Israel. But this approach was no more successful because Hussein could not run the risk of becoming a pariah by relying on Israel for protection against his Arab neighbours. So in his relations with Israel, Hussein reached a stalemate.

Jordan's isolation in the Arab world increased its dependence on Anglo-American aid. British aid was small compared to that of America, and this contributed to the spreading of a sense of disillusion in Jordan with its ‘oldest friend.' There was a belief that the British were losing interest in the Hashemite struggle for survival and that they were content to allow American influence to supplant British influence in the region. The question for the hard-headed policy-makers in Whitehall was whether the stability and survival of Hashemite Jordan mattered to Britain, given that Jordan had no oil or major potential as an export market, and that the Americans were already pouring a lot of money into the country. Glen Balfour-Paul, the new British ambassador, effectively answered these doubts. He argued to the Foreign Office that the Middle East would be a worse place without Hussein's Jordan and that the Jordanians looked to Britain, indeed their ‘oldest friend', to help with the development of their state and the stability of their regime. If Britain allowed Hussein to become too dependent on the Americans, his standing could suffer. It was in the interest of regional stability to strengthen the Hashemite regime and to diminish the risk of its replacement by a
radical Arab demagogue. Balfour-Paul therefore suggested increasing British economic aid and arms sales to Jordan. Even if the Americans wished Jordan to be regarded as
chasse guardée
, he did not see why Britain should relinquish all hunting rights. He reminded his superiors that this was a military regime at least to the extent that military considerations played as much a part as any other in policy-making. Consequently, Britain's standing in Jordan depended very considerably on its readiness to help over the problems of the armed forces.
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These arguments carried the day and resulted in a more supportive British policy towards the regime in Jordan.

At about this time Prince Hassan, Hussein's heir designate, was becoming increasingly involved in the affairs of state and taking over the supervision of more and more government business, particularly in the fields of economics and development. Hassan was unusual among the younger generation of Hashemite princes in not going to a military academy. He was the intellectual in the family. At Harrow, Hassan had a notably more distinguished academic career than his elder brother; and he went on to Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a degree in Oriental Languages, including Hebrew. Very soon after his return home, Hassan went into the family business. Jordan's constitution does not assign any specific responsibilities to the crown prince; it was entirely at Hussein's discretion to decide what duties to assign to his younger brother. From the beginning, the two developed a very good working relationship. In personality and style they were very different, yet they worked harmoniously. Hussein was intuitive, unsystematic and somewhat superficial; Hassan was serious, painstaking and methodical. Hussein relied on the personal touch to solve problems; he was impatient with paperwork, and he was pretty useless at keeping records. Hassan had an infinitely better understanding of the importance of research and record-keeping in the conduct of government business. Hussein was only too happy to delegate to his brother responsibility for overseeing complex projects that required sustained attention, such as the Five-Year plans. Within a short time, Hassan became Hussein's main adviser. Because the crown prince was without specific powers, tensions sometimes arose between Hassan and the government. But Hussein had full trust in Hassan's judgement, and he could discuss issues with him in complete confidence. For this reason Hussein could also entrust Hassan with sensitive briefs like preparing the plan for the United
Arab Kingdom and holding a secret meeting with the Israeli minister of agriculture, Chaim Givati.

In his valedictory dispatch from Amman, John Phillips noted that his period of service had seen the Hashemite regime emerge from the shadows into the sunlight. He found the dynastic rulers of Jordan rather more admirable in triumph than his predecessor had found them in the defeat of 1967. ‘King Hussein has some considerable qualifications for his job including physical courage, resilience, a disarming readiness to admit that he had made a nonsense of something… a good deal of personal charm and the capacity to inspire loyalty; also a large slice of luck. Prince Hassan is intelligent and very hard-working but his abrasiveness combined with his suspicious nature has made and may continue to make enemies of some who wish his country well.' Hassan's untrusting nature, on the other hand, also enabled him to see through and expose the motives of some of those who used their membership of the king's inner circle for their own disreputable ends. Phillips therefore hoped that in future they would see less of ‘the slick exploiting the thick'.
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Glen Balfour-Paul gave an eloquent account of his first impressions of the king and his brother. Their three-fold policy objectives were said to be a modus vivendi with the Israelis, reconciliation with the Palestinians and the development of the economy. Despite the façade of parliament and a ministerial system, he observed, it was in the person of the king, and increasingly in that of the crown prince, that authority was concentrated: ‘Hussein and Hassan, vicar and curate of this truncated Arab parish who have been ex-communicated by the Bishops of Confrontation but who continue to serve the Mass (or the masses) after their own dissident doctrine.' The first thing that struck the new ambassador was how harmoniously the two brothers complemented each other, the division of labour between the pair suiting their respective turns of mind. The king concerned himself with external affairs and public relations, the crown prince with internal affairs, planning and the economy. ‘The middle brother Mohammed, having inherited from his hapless father not only his gentle charm but also his less marketable qualities, has been put out to grass, though his functions as the Head of the Tribal Council are not purely honorary.' As a man to talk to, Balfour-Paul thought that the crown prince outclassed the king: ‘At twenty-six his powers of intellectual concentration… are formidable,
his jokes sophisticated, his English distinctly more fluent than mine.'
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