Israelis Have More Reason Than Palestinians to Mourn Jordan’s King Hussein

By Rachelle Marshall

Prince Abdullah’s succession to the Jordanian throne, and the possible defeat of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel’s May 17 elections, could mean that both Jordan and Israel will have new leaders when peace negotiations resume. So far there is no evidence that the changes in leadership will affect the outcome of the negotiations or offer renewed hope of a just peace.

Dignitaries from all over the world eulogized King Hussein at his funeral last February for his heroic efforts as a conciliator, but in fact the late monarch had little influence on the peace process. Last January Abdullah Kan’an, secretary-general of the Jordan Royal Committee on Jerusalem, released a statement presumably authorized by the king that urged Israel “to end once and for all exploiting occupied land” and asserted that “Peace requires the return of the Golan Heights to Syria, the pullback from Lebanon, and the recognition of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.” The fact that the Israeli government has rejected every one of these demands did not prevent Netanyahu and other high Israeli officials from publicly mourning Hussein’s death.

Their warm feeling for the late king, even while treating his views on peace as irrelevant, was understandable. Hussein had been a close confidant of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and, along with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Palestine’s Yasser Arafat, was one of only three Arab leaders to sign a formal peace agreement with Israel. Jordan under Hussein presented no military threat to Israel but served as a strategic buffer between Israel and Iraq. Neither the United States nor Israel showed any concern that he had not allowed free elections in Jordan until 1990.

Palestinians had reason to be more restrained in their mourning. Hussein’s grandfather, King Abdullah I, captured the West Bank in the 1948 war and it remained under Jordan’s rule until 1967, when it was occupied by Israel. Critics charge that Abdullah colluded with Israel to divide up Palestine, but others point out that in 1948 he had saved the West Bank from almost certain seizure by Israel. The Palestinians’ view of Hussein is also tempered by the fact that in 1970–71, when the PLO in Jordan was threatening to attack Israel, his army drove PLO forces out of the country with such ruthlessness that Palestinians refer to the episode as “Black September.” The status of Palestinians in Jordan today is still ambiguous. They make up 65 percent of the population but many still regard the West Bank as their homeland.

The most serious effect of King Hussein’s death could be on Jordan’s domestic stability. His long rule and personal popularity enabled him to keep protests in check despite a failing economy. Jordan is mostly desert, a land carved out of Syria after World War I to serve as a buffer for British-ruled Palestine. Consequently it has few natural resources and must rely on trade to keep afloat.

The loss of trade with Iraq because of U.N. sanctions has cost the Jordanians billions of dollars, and King Hussein’s neutrality during the Gulf war prompted Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to cut off aid and expel thousands of Jordanian workers who had been sending their wages home. After the war some 300,000 refugees from Iraq and Kuwait poured into Jordan, increasing the unemployment rate to nearly 20 percent.

The 1994 peace treaty with Israel brought no noticeable economic benefits but alienated other trading partners in the region, leaving Jordan worse off than before. As a gesture of support for King Abdullah II, President Clinton immediately promised to send $300 million in aid to Jordan next year, a sum equal to 5 percent of the annual U.S. handout to Israel, a country with a per capita income 10 times greater than Jordan’s. Since Abdullah desperately needs foreign aid he must maintain good relations with the United States and Israel while dealing with popular anger in Jordan at Israel’s refusal to implement the peace agreements and Washington’s failure to pressure the Israelis.

The new king’s chief asset in coping with these conflicting needs is his popularity with the military, where he holds the rank of major-general. Like his father, he can count on the army to put down protests that get out of hand. Thanks to Clinton the army will have the wherewithal to do so. When Hussein named Abdullah as his successor, Clinton ordered the immediate shipment of $25 million worth of military equipment to Jordan, with more promised.

Abdullah has close relationships with top military officials in Washington and in Israel, especially with former Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai. The closeness between Abdullah and Mordechai, who may be Israel’s next prime minister, may prove worrisome to the Palestinians, since the new king also promised a group of American Jewish leaders that during his reign Jordan’s relationship with Israel would “get stronger.” One of his first official acts reportedly was to resume full-scale intelligence cooperation with Israel, which Hussein cancelled in 1997 after Mossad tried to assassinate a Hamas political leader in Amman.

In Israel’s fast-changing election campaign, polls show that former Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai handily beats Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in a two-way race. But although Mordechai is certain to be less rancorous than Netanyahu, there is no evidence he will be more flexible in dealing with the Palestinians. As an Orthodox Jew from Iraq, Mordechai is appealing for votes from Sephardic (Middle Eastern) and other religious Jews who have until now solidly supported Netanyahu.

Mordechai’s candidacy so far seems chiefly based on his personal dislike of Netanyahu rather than on strong policy differences. In fact, the chief aim of his new Center party is “getting rid of Bibi,” according to Roni Milo, former mayor of Tel Aviv and one of the party’s founders. Other leading members are former army chief of staff Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who dropped out of the race in favor of Mordechai, and former finance minister Dan Meridor. Meridor and Milo, like Mordechai, are former Likud members, a fact that has caused some observers to predict the new party will become a Likud clone. Mordechai reinforced this notion when he declared that he will “continue the path of the late Menachem Begin, a path of respect and peace.” Begin was prime minister in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon in an effort to destroy the PLO and in the process killed more than 30,000 civilians.

Mordechai says he is willing to negotiate a territorial compromise with Syria on the Golan Heights and a possible withdrawal from Lebanon but he has been silent on the future of the West Bank and Jerusalem. His vagueness on these issues has not prevented Labor candidate Ehud Barak from boasting that the new party’s platform hardly differs from Labor’s. “You would have to look for the differences with a microscope,” he said.

Barak is promising to keep under Israeli sovereignty the extensive settlements north and south of Jerusalem, which would leave Bethlehem and Nablus as well as Palestinian villages surrounded by Israeli territory and unable to expand. His only disagreement with Mordechai is that he favors drafting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the army, which Mordechai opposes.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat is urging Israeli Palestinians to vote this May, knowing they won’t vote for Netanyahu. The 600,000 Arabs in Israel constitute 15 percent of the electorate and could make a difference. The problem, according to Knesset member Abdel Malek Dahamshe, is overwhelming apathy. Since none of the candidates is offering the Palestinians in Israel or the occupied territories any substantial concessions, many feel there’s no reason to vote.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance writer living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.

SIDEBAR 1

As U.N. Condemns Increased Pace of Israeli Settlement Building, U.S. Congress Remains Silent

Israel is building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem at an unprecedented rate, for fear there will be a freeze on settlement expansion if Labor comes to power. The population of the 10 largest West Bank settlements grew by 6 percent in the first nine months of 1998, three times the past rate. There are now 200,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, with another 180,000 in occupied East Jerusalem. On Feb. 10 the U.N. General Assembly again voted to condemn the settlements as a violation of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, and called for an international conference to discuss the issue in Geneva this coming July.

The United States and Israel cast the only two votes against the resolution. Only a week earlier Clinton had warned Arafat not to declare a Palestinian state on May 4. According to a White House spokesman, Clinton told him that “unilateral steps are not helpful to the peace process.” The Senate has also passed a resolution opposing the declaration of a Palestinian state, saying it would be “dramatically destabilizing” and “a violation of Oslo.”

In accordance with the usual double standard, neither Congress nor Clinton has called on Israel to halt settlement construction, even though the rapid expansion of Jewish housing in the occupied territories is a “unilateral step” of such major proportions that it could soon make any viable form of Palestinian independence impossible. —R.M.

SIDEBAR 2

With Death of Peace Process, Both Israelis and Palestinians Look for New Solutions

More than 300 prominent Israeli liberals signed two newspaper ads in early February asserting the Palestinians’ right to an independent state in all of the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But even Labor party members who accept a Palestinian state insist that it be confined to the enclaves Israel agrees to withdraw from. Consequently, at least one distinguished Palestinian, Edward Said, is now suggesting that instead of attempting to create a state on the “dreadful and noncontiguous ‘homelands’” allotted to them, Palestinians should press for a shared land in all of historic Palestine. The aim would be to create a democracy in which all citizens enjoyed equal political, religious, and social rights. Said pointed out in a New York Times Magazine article last January that the Oslo agreements have left Israel in control of 90 percent of the West Bank, 40 percent of Gaza, all of the water, and all of the entrances and exits to the occupied territories. “So tiny is the land area of historical Palestine,” he argues, “so closely intertwined are Israelis and Palestinians despite their inequality and antipathy, that clear separation won’t, can’t really, work.”

Said reminded readers that since ancient times Palestine has been the home of numerous ethnic groups and religious sects, so there is no reason why today it should be divided on the basis of ethnic identity. He might have added that the concept of nationality defined by ethnicity and religion was used to justify the horrors unleashed by the Nazis and is fueling the turmoil today in former Yugoslavia.

Chances are that not many Palestinians or Israelis will immediately line up behind Said’s proposal, but at the very least it should provoke discussion on how both peoples can best secure for themselves the kind of democratic society that neither enjoys today. Palestinians in Palestinian-controlled territory are still subject to censorship, arbitrary arrests and torture by Arafat’s security forces acting as surrogates for Israel. Within the Jewish state, Israeli Palestinians remain third-class citizens whose land may be seized at any time by the army and whose schools and municipalities get much less government funding than those run by Jews. The rights of secular Israelis are also being threatened as a growing number of ultra-Orthodox Jews both in and out of government insist that the Torah take precedence over statutory law and judicial rulings.

A lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians requires an Israeli leader who recognizes that, whether in two states or one, both peoples are entitled to share as equal partners the land they both inhabit. Said is urging that regardless of who is prime minister of Israel or king of Jordan, the Palestinians must first assure that the rights of every citizen are protected in the areas they now control. In the end, a Palestinian state that fails to adopt the basic principles of democracy will only be a truncated appendage of Israel. —R.M.