Jordan-Israel Agreement: A Giant Step Toward Peace?

By Paul Findley

Headlines proclaim the meeting July 25 between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein of Jordan, under the auspices of President Bill Clinton, as a giant step toward a comprehensive peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. A step it is. Whether it is a giant step remains to be seen.

Face-to-face discussions between the Jordanian monarch and Israeli leaders have been happening in semi-secret for years, usually in London.

This one is different.

It is a major media event, heavy with the trappings of state and inevitable comparisons with the Camp David meetings under President Jimmy Carter that produced the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Sinai.

The talks are a by-product of the handshake ceremony last Sept. 13 between Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. That meeting and subsequent arrangements between the two chief antagonists in the Arab-Israel dispute made face-to-face talks between Rabin and Hussein seem not only normal but almost anticlimactic.

The differences between Israel and Jordan are relatively minor. Jordanian territory—unlike that of Syria and Lebanon—is free of Israeli domination, except for small parcels of land, all of which have been spared Jewish settlements.

Jordan suffers none of the indignities experienced for years by Lebanon and Syria. Israeli forces maintain total control of the so-called security zone across southern Lebanon and use it as the base for sporadic and heavy military assaults against Lebanese territory to the north. Syria's Golan Heights, officially annexed by the Israeli parliament, are populated by Jewish settlements and Israeli guns.

Jordan no longer has primary responsibility as the guardian of Palestinian interests in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since the Rabat Conference in 1974 the Palestine Liberation Organization, not Jordan, has been accepted by the Arab League as the legal representative of Palestinian interests in both places. Still, Jordan is home to a large population of Palestinians—comprising more than half of its inhabitants—and, like other Arab states, Hussein accepts the obligation to take Palestinian concerns into account as foreign policy decisions are made.

These factors led Jordan to offend its primary financial benefactors—the United States and Saudi Arabia—by maintaining neutrality during the Gulf war. This decision proved to be costly to Hussein in terms of financial aid, trade, and military supplies and spare parts. Jordan's forces are largely equipped with U.S.-supplied weapons and gear. That means that the readiness of Jordan's military forces is heavily dependent on good relations with the United States. Under pressure, Hussein cut Jordan's trade with Iraq, its most important trading partner, to a trickle, a decision costly to the struggling Jordanian economy.

The agreement with Israel, modest though its political terms may be, will likely lift a heavy financial load from the Jordanian government. The U.S. government is expected to write off Jordan's $700 million debt and provide aid in upgrading its military forces.

These are bonuses, compliments of the U.S. taxpayer, for cooperating with Israel, similar to although not on the scale of rewards that Egypt and Israel received from the United States for the Camp David and Sinai accords. The Egyptian bonuses, counting loans and grants together, now reach nearly $3 billion a year. As an additional bonus for its participation in the Desert Storm operation, President Bush wiped away Egypt's multi-billion-dollar debt.

The U.S. government donates at least $3 billion a year to Israel, usually much more. This gift began at the $2 billion annual level, but quickly increased by 50 percent. The annual largess to both Israel and Egypt seems to be never-ending for U.S. taxpayers. Additional costs are not yet clear, but if past is prologue, the cost of the Jordanian-Israeli rapprochement will be high.

Given new U.S. military assistance to Jordan, Rabin, a wily negotiator, will have an excuse to present a long, new "want list" to Clinton. At a minimum, Rabin will argue that the upgrading of Jordanian defenses must be counter-balanced by more Israeli weapons at United States expense, of course, on a multi-year basis.

Aside from the expected increase in U.S. aid, the deal will be a major step forward for Rabin. It will cause universal rejoicing among Israel's diverse political parties, easing pressure especially from Rabin's right-wing political opponents who are outraged at his agreement to authorize limited self-government to Palestinians in Jericho and the Gaza Strip. This acclaim at home and abroad will give Rabin greater freedom, at least temporarily, to continue his policy of closure of the occupied territories, a measure that causes great economic, social and religious hardship to Palestinians.

The political benefits are also substantial to Clinton who, with good reason, is viewed as a foreign policy failure by most Americans. Acting as the host to the first publicized face-to-face discussions between two long-standing Middle East adversaries gives him the appearance, if not the substance, of a foreign-policy triumph and should boost his sagging position in opinion polls. At the same time, the talks will please the pro-Israel lobby, one of Clinton's most important constituencies, and reinvigorate the euphoria that began with the handshake Clinton engineered last September between Rabin and Arafat.

Is the Jordan-Israel agreement worth the cost to the United States? If it advances peace with justice, the answer is yes, but that is a big "if."

Despite high-decibel praise, the document did little beyond acknowledging formally that the state of belligerency between the two states had ended, a reality that had been universally recognized for years.

Former Congressman Paul Findley is chairman of the Council for the National Interest, a membership organization in Washington, DC.