The King and Us

The man who likes to drop into our office to pick our brains on the Middle East was back again the other day. It's time we introduced him. His name is Humphrey.

Q What can you tell me about King Hussein?

A He's the King of Jordan.

Q Very funny. You know what I mean—where's he coming from? And please don't tell me he comes from Amman.

A Okay. King Hussein is a man who deserves a lot more consideration from the U.S. than he has been getting for the past few years, and

Q Why? Hasn't he always been against the peace process?

A Jeepers, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to stand this

Q Eh? What are you mumbling for?

A I said that I guess there are a few things you still have to learn, my friend. One of them is to beware of buzzwords. By "the peace process" I assume you mean Camp David

Q Of course.

A Why "of course?" The Camp David formula, it is true, is one which aims at peace. But it didn't come down from heaven, and should not be sanctified as being the only way peace can be achieved. In fact, the whole world has been able to see that it has serious shortcomings. The return of Sinai to Egypt was certainly a great plus, but did the Camp David formula stop the Israelis from annexing Golan, or building new settlements on the West Bank, or invading Lebanon? It did not. In fact, there are those who argue that by taking Egypt out of the Middle East's military equation Camp David made it possible—or at any rate, much easier—for Begin to go ahead.

Q What does all this have to do with King Hussein?

A King Hussein did not support the Camp David agreements in large part because he believed that they allowed Begin to go ahead and do the very things I've just mentioned

Q Allowed, did you say?

A Whoa. I didn't mean that he thought the Egyptian and American leaders at Camp David wanted this to happen. But they were perhaps overly optimistic about Mr. Begin's motives, and about their own abilities to keep him in line. King Hussein was not. When it turned out that the signing of an Egypt-Israel peace treaty was not to be linked to progress on the Palestine issue, the King guessed that Mr. Begin would see this as a golden opportunity to neutralize Egypt with a separate peace treaty and do what he wanted in the other Arab territories. The King turned out to be right. Many U.S. officials had pooh-poohed his doubts over the agreements and some had even been talking as though the King were somehow against the idea of peace. It might have been better if they'd just listened to his advice.

Q Yeah, but if the King was for peace, then why did he turn down so many chances he had to make peace even before Camp David?

A I knew I was going to hate this

Q What?

A I said where did you get that idea? Ever since the West Bank and Gaza were captured by Israel in 1967, King Hussein has been saying that Jordan is ready to recognize and sign a peace treaty with Israel—backed up by international security guarantees and peace-keeping forces, if necessary—if Israel would only withdraw from the territories it occupied during the 1967 war. The way he put it at the time—and he still says it today—is that "Israel can have peace or it can have territory, but it cannot have both." It was an idea that didn't seem unreasonable to a lot of people. You know about United Nations Resolution 242, of course?

Q Er, uh, sure.

A Well, King Hussein played a role in drawing up that resolution, which forms the basis of U.S. policy today. Do you remember the Rogers Plan?

Q Er

A That was a U.S. peace plan, put forward by Secretary of State William Rogers as long ago as 1969, which called on Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders with only "insubstantial" alterations of those borders. This was a U.S. plan, and King Hussein was in favor of it.

Q Why didn't it bring peace, then?

A I think you must be pulling my leg, Humphrey. It didn't bring peace because Israel wanted more than "insubstantial" alterations of the border. It wanted big chunks of the West Bank on the grounds that this was necessary for Israel's security. In other words, it wanted peace and territory.

Q Okay, but where was Hussein later, when Kissinger—even I remember that!—was helping Egypt get back some land along the Suez Canal

A Where was he? He was cooperating with Kissinger to arrange the deal for Egypt—and for that matter also for Syria, which got a strip of the Golan Heights back during Kissinger's shuttles. Unfortunately for Hussein, though, he couldn't manage to get any of his own land back. In 1974 he proposed having an additional disengagement agreement to separate Jordanian and Israeli forces along the Jordan River, but Israel refused. And there was no pressure from the U.S. to get Israel to disengage, as there had been in the case of Egypt and Syria.

Q Didn't Hussein jump all over Sadat just because he decided to go to Jerusalem? This was certainly not very friendly to the U.S.

A Sorry, Humph, you've got that all wrong. Up until the moment of Sadat's visit, Jordan was a warm supporterof the U.S.'s policy to have a conference at Geneva that would seek a comprehensive settlement. When Sadat suddenly went to Jerusalem, the U.S. dropped this policy on the spot and began supporting Sadat's new initiative. And King Hussein, despite this unexpected and confusing U.S. zigzag, went gamely along with it. He not only did not voice objections to Sadat's visit, as so many other Arab countries did, but gave strong support to the peace terms which Sadat presented to the Israeli parliament. It was only after Camp David, when Sadat had backed down, in Hussein's view, from the strong stand he had taken in front of the Israeli parliament, that he decided that both Sadat and the U.S. had got on the wrong track. Anyhow, what's so bad about that? Why is it that a friendly country with goals for the area similar to those of the U.S. has to agree with every modality of U.S. policy for reaching those goals—especially when the modalities keep changing all the time—in order to be treated as an ally? Israel doesn't even share the U.S. goals for the area, but somehow is still considered a close ally by our government.

Q Hmmm. Still, I don't see why you say Jordan is not being treated like an ally. We still give them generous supplies of arms and—

A Bosh. For Jordan, getting arms these past few years has been like pulling teeth. Even before Camp David, Jordan had to wait two years to get the go-ahead to buy a supply of Hawk anti-missile batteries, and in order to get them had to agree to have them embedded in concrete. The idea was that if they were immobile they could supposedly not threaten Israel. But of course that meant they could not defend against Israel either—nor very effectively against anyone else, for that matter. Since Camp David, things have gotten worse. Jordan will be getting some tanks next year, which it purchased two years ago—but practically every other Middle East country already has tanks of comparable quality or better. U.S. military sales credits to Jordan have dropped to less than half of what they were before Camp David, and economic assistance has practically disappeared. Israel gets more than 50 times as much! And there's no sign that aid to Israel will be reduced.

Q That is kind of peculiar—I mean, when you think that the Israelis have turned the Reagan peace plan down flat. I guess King Hussein has given it the okay, has he?

A Yep. He said it was a "very constructive and very positive move," and that he is going to play "a very, very active part" in trying to achieve its goals.

Q So are they finally going to begin treating the King better?

A Your guess is as good as mine.

Q Boy, coming from you, that's a real compliment. I better quit while I'm ahead. See-ya.