Lion of Jordan (80 page)

It was the intifada that really caused our decision on disengagement from the West Bank. It was again our lack of ability to get any agreement with our Palestinian brethren. I wish to God they had been frank enough about what they wanted and they would have got it a long time before. But we were torn apart trying to get all the pieces of the jigsaw together to help them. However, suspicions
and doubts got in the way. But beyond that, we recognized there was a definite trend that had started before the Rabat resolution of 1974 and continued all the way through. They could give, they could take, and they could do whatever they liked. They could probably give more than we could but they decided that they wanted to have their say regarding their future and I simply tried to help them by that decision.
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This account exaggerates the element of altruism in the decision. The controlling consideration behind the decision was Hussein's own dynastic interest. Hussein's speech to the nation ignored the second and played up the first. Disengagement was described as ‘a series of measures to enhance the Palestinian national orientation and highlight the Palestinian identity; our goal is to benefit the Palestinian cause and the Arab Palestinian people.' Jordan respected, said Hussein, the wish of the PLO to secede and establish an independent state. The institutional links with Jordan were said to be an obstacle along the Palestinian road to independence, so these links were going to be severed. The new measures, however, would apply only to the occupied territories and not to Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin. Palestinians outside Jordan's borders were promised that Jordan would continue to support their struggle: ‘No one outside Palestine has had or will ever have a connection with Palestine or with its cause that is stronger than the connection of Jordan or of my family with it.' The Great Arab Revolt was mentioned only in passing, but the message was clear: the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would remain the proud bearer of the standard of Arab unity and would continue to play a major regional role.
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Hussein's speech spoke only of severing Jordan's legal and administrative links with the West Bank; it did not renounce irrevocably the Hashemite claim to this territory. The 1950 Act of Union between the two banks was not repealed. The constitution was not amended. Parliament passed no legislation affecting Jordanian sovereignty over the West Bank. The move was meaningless under international law. These omissions fed Palestinian suspicions that disengagement was just a tactical move and that the Hashemite claim was only held in abeyance rather than abandoned. About the Hashemite trusteeship of the holy places in Jerusalem there was no ambiguity: it was to continue. As a Hashemite and as a descendant of the Prophet, Hussein was anxious to protect the Islamic religious and cultural legacy in the Old City.
Disengagement did not apply to the 3,000 employees of the Ministry of Religious Endowments and Religious Affairs who worked in Jerusalem. Hussein viewed Jerusalem as a personal responsibility and as a political necessity, since there was no guarantee that the Israelis would allow the Palestinians sovereignty over the disputed sites.
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Hussein did not consult the PLO before making his dramatic announcement, and he did nothing to smooth the transition to PLO rule. In the words of Taher Kanaan, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin and a former head of the Ministry of Occupied Territories Affairs, ‘The decision to disengage was not a favour to the PLO; it was a provocation to show that the PLO could not do it. The decision did not mean giving up Jordan's role in the West Bank. It was intended to demonstrate that the PLO was inadequate and Jordan was indispensable.'
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Taher al-Masri, the foreign minister, did not know the content of the king's speech until he heard it on television that evening. He was particularly worried that there might be a backlash against the Palestinian population of the East Bank. That evening he went to dinner at Prince Hassan's house, and he was seething with anger. He said to Prince Hassan, ‘This is a black day in your record as Hashemites!'
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Jordan's disengagement from the West Bank came as a disappointment to George Shultz because his initiative depended crucially on cooperation with Hussein. In a press conference on 7 August the king said that never again would Jordan assume the role of negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians. This statement was probably not meant to be as final as it sounded. But it was taken by the American secretary of state to mark the end of his initiative. A few weeks after the king had announced his decision, he asked the State Department to pass a message to Shimon Peres: the decision to remove Jordan from the peace process was taken in the hope that it would cause the PLO to ‘see the light and come to terms with reality'.
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This private message, however, could do no more than soften the blow that the king's latest move was bound to inflict on his partner in the abortive London Agreement. The effect of the public message was to strengthen the position of the PLO and to undermine the Labour Party's so-called Jordanian option. The king himself had never liked the term ‘the Jordanian option', for it implied an agreement between Israel and Jordan over the heads of the Palestinians. In his speech and his press conference he therefore cleared the air. He said, in effect, that if a
Jordanian option for settling the Palestinian problem had ever existed, it was now definitely dead.

From Israel's standpoint, the king's speech marked the collapse of a very popular idea. It meant that Jordan was no longer prepared to negotiate on the Palestinian problem with Israel; the only issue it would discuss was the question of its own borders. The Israelis were stunned by the speech and initially interpreted it as no more than a tactical move by the king to get the Palestinians to say that they still wanted him to represent them. But when the king asked his supporters on the West Bank not to sponsor petitions urging him to relent, the Israelis were forced to recognize that disengagement was a strategic move, not a tactical one. Even Likud leaders had reason to regret this move because they realized that the forecasts of all the prophets of doom had come true: Israel now found herself all alone in the arena with the PLO.
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What Israeli leaders of both major parties failed to grasp was the contribution that their intransigence had made to Hussein's frustration, from which sprang the decision to leave the field to the PLO.

Another consequence of the intifada was the birth of Hamas. The name is an Arabic word meaning ‘zeal', and also an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas was founded in Gaza in 1988 by Shaikh Ahmed Yassin, a paralysed religious teacher, as a wing of the long-established Muslim Brothers in Palestine. To obtain a permit from the Israeli authorities, the movement was obliged to pledge that its fight for Palestinian rights would be conducted within the limits of the law and without the use of arms. Ironically, the Israeli authorities at first encouraged Hamas in the hope of weakening the secular nationalism of the PLO. But the Palestinian uprising had a radicalizing effect on Hamas, and its members began to step outside the bounds of the law. The Israelis repeatedly cracked down on the organization, but the roots it put down sprouted again, giving rise to more violence each time. In 1989 the Israelis arrested Shaikh Ahmed Yassin and kept him in prison until 1997. Hamas, however, continued to shift from the use of stones to the use of firearms. In 1994 it began, through its military wing, to launch suicide bombers inside Israel. The suicide attacks were mounted by individual members of Hamas who carried explosives on their body and detonated them in crowded places such as buses and markets. Israel's tactic of ‘divide and rule' had backfired disastrously.

While radicalizing Hamas, the intifada had a moderating effect on the
secular Palestinians. On the one hand, the intifada raised the morale and boosted the pride and self-confidence of the Palestinian community. On the other, it did not bring an end to Israeli occupation, and living conditions deteriorated in the course of the struggle. Local leaders realized that a Palestinian peace initiative was essential. They were worried that the intifada would come to an end without yielding any concrete political gains. Consequently, they started to put pressure on the PLO chiefs in Tunis to meet the conditions that would enable them to enter into negotiations with Israel. Over the years the PLO mainstream had moved towards more moderate positions, but it avoided saying this in any clear-cut fashion, for fear of alienating the militant factions of the organization. The local leaders now threw all their weight behind the moderate mainstream. They urged the PLO chiefs in Tunis to recognize Israel, to accept a two-state solution, to declare a Palestinian state and to establish a government-in-exile.

Hussein could claim a share of the credit for compelling the PLO to shoulder its responsibilities and to adopt a more moderate position. Under pressure from above and below, the PLO rose to the challenge. Disengagement helped to force it, in the words of Hussein's message to Peres, to ‘see the light and come to terms with reality'. A revolution in Palestinian political thinking took place, and the man who presided over it was none other than Hussein's old sparring partner, Arafat. The success of the intifada challenged Arafat and his followers to moderate their political programme. It gave prominence and credibility to the internal leadership. The external leadership in Tunis risked being left behind. They were forced to move. At the meeting of the Palestine National Congress (PNC) in Algiers in mid November 1988, Arafat won a majority for the historic decision to recognize Israel's legitimacy, to accept all the relevant UN resolutions going back to 29 November 1947 and to adopt the principle of a two-state solution. The claim to the whole of Palestine, enshrined in the Palestinian National Charter, was finally laid to rest and a declaration of independence was issued for a mini-state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. The resolutions of the PNC were well received in Jordan. The PLO, Hussein noted, was ‘shouldering its responsibilities' and had demonstrated its willingness to join in an ‘historic reconciliation between Arabs and Israelis'. Jordan immediately recognized the independent Palestinian State, and, in early January 1989, the PLO office in Amman
became the embassy of Palestine.
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A month after the PNC meeting, at a press conference in Geneva, Arafat renounced all forms of terrorism. These changes made possible the initiation of a dialogue between the US government and the PLO, but Israel's rejection of the PLO remained absolute and unconditional.

Following Hussein's voluntary abdication as the key Arab player in the diplomacy surrounding the Arab–Israeli conflict, he pursued more vigorously Jordan's second role as a promoter of Arab unity and a defender of Western interests in the Arab Gulf. Hussein always sought an Arab order that could guarantee the survival of his dynasty. Between 1988 and 1990 the main thrust of his foreign policy shifted towards the Arab world. This was manifested in efforts to improve bilateral relations with all the Arab states, in the promotion of inter-Arab dialogue and in the establishment of the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC) – a regional alliance that brought together Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and North Yemen.
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The eight-year old Iran–Iraq War was ended by a UN-negotiated ceasefire in July 1988. Despite the ceasefire, Iran and Iraq were unable to overcome their antagonism. The difference was that after the guns fell silent Iran turned to domestic reconstruction, whereas Saddam Hussein continued to spend a substantial portion of Iraq's oil revenues on building up his country's military capabilities, both conventional and unconventional. As a consequence, Iraq continued to rely on Jordan for services and logistical support, and the friendship between the two leaders continued to flourish. Saddam became increasingly aggressive and threatening, and occasionally reduced his friend to the role of an apologist. The worst example of Saddam's bluster was his threat, on 2 April 1990, ‘to burn half of Israel'. Hussein did not dissociate himself from this statement, and his own relations with Israel became strained as a result. ‘If Saddam was an unguided missile in 1989 and 1990,' writes Philip Robins, ‘King Hussein failed to provide him with a guidance system.'
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This is true but it was not for lack of trying. After the Iran–Iraq War ended, the king repeatedly advised Saddam to become a more positive element in the region, to improve his country's image in the West, to make a speech at the UN, to travel, to visit at least the countries of the five permanent members of the Security Council. But the advice was not heeded.
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The Arab Cooperation Council was an extension of the Iraqi–Jordanian alliance. The idea behind it was to harness Iraqi resources
and Jordanian know-how and to move towards economic integration. The time also seemed right for forming a moderate, pro-Western Arab coalition to take the Middle East into a new phase. On 16 February 1989, the rulers of Iraq, Jordan, Egypt and North Yemen met in Baghdad to launch the new regional grouping. Back in 1981 the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) had set an example of collective Arab defence, with Saudi Arabia taking the lead in its formation, following the outbreak of the Iran–Iraq War (Hussein reportedly made a bid for associate membership but his request was ignored
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). North Yemen was brought into the new grouping because it was practically the only Gulf country that was not a member of the GCC. Egypt was included at Saddam's insistence, while Syria was not invited because Saddam preferred not to have it as a founding member. The charter of the ACC left the door open for other Arab states to join, and Hussein hoped that Syria might do so at a later date.

The ACC was not a well-thought-out project and did not live up to the expectations of any of its founding members. The main problems seem to have been Saudi suspicions and Egyptian intrigues. The Saudis were concerned about the ACC from the beginning, believing, mistakenly, that it was directed against the GCC in general and against themselves in particular. President Mubarak had close links with the Saudis, who were the main source of foreign aid for his impoverished country. The Saudis expressed their concern about the ACC to Mubarak, and the inclusion of North Yemen was at the top of their concerns. North Yemen had been problematic for the Saudis, especially regarding the border question, ever since the days of Imam Ahmad. The Saudis were on bad terms with Abdullah al-Sallal, a Free Officer who had overthrown Imam Ahmad in a military coup in 1962 and established a republic. The Saudis thought that Yemen's inclusion in the ACC was intended to encircle their country and this frightened them. The suspicion was unfounded: Yemen was included because it was an important Arab country. Mubarak, however, blamed the inclusion of Yemen on Hussein. Hussein always had good relations with Ali Abdullah Salih, who had become president of North Yemen in 1978, but he had no interest in seeing the Saudis and Yemenis at war or on the brink of war. The Jordanians believed that Mubarak was playing on these Saudi sensitivities for his own ends – so that he would get more aid and Jordan would get nothing. Reports reached Amman that Mubarak insinuated
that Hussein and President Salih were plotting against the Saudis.
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With this degree of mistrust at the heart of the ACC, it is hardly surprising that it was not a success. It was also short-lived. Less than two years after its birth the ACC was wrecked by Egypt's participation in the US-led coalition to eject Iraq from Kuwait.