Lion of Jordan (66 page)

The government that Rabin presented to the Knesset on 3 June was weak and divided. Allon became minister of defence and Peres foreign minister. The trio had different priorities: Rabin favoured negotiations with Egypt; Allon had a pro-Hashemite orientation; and Peres preferred an agreement with the Palestinian leaders on the West Bank. Peres acknowledged that Hussein was willing to conduct negotiations with Israel for a permanent peace settlement, ‘But he is a weak candidate for
peace – because of the weakness of his position… His first problem is that of status and authority. A king is not a president or a prime minister. His authority does not spring from popular elections or from an appointment, backed by force, but from a title inherited from his father. Monarchs today are few and rare, and they are fast disappearing from the world's landscape. Even a courageous king is not a representative leader, as is the rule in most modern countries, but is born to the title, as in olden times, and most of his thoughts and energies are inevitably concerned with how to preserve it.'
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Allon was not interested in political legitimacy but in an arrangement that would enable Israel to keep substantial portions of the West Bank without responsibility for its Palestinian population. He knew that Hussein was unwilling to compromise on Arab land, but he believed that sooner or later he would be compelled to accept Israel's terms because he had no alternative if he wished to survive. Allon was also an ardent supporter of the settlement movement in the occupied territories. For him, as for the Zionist leaders in the pre-independence period, settlement established a claim to the land and put paid to the option of negotiations and compromise. In line with this old Zionist logic, the Rabin government continued to expand the settlement project of its predecessors. This project was illegal and, in political terms, a disastrous mistake. Yet, like its predecessors, the Rabin government proceeded on the premise that peace was dispensable while territory was essential.

Rabin and Peres could hardly cooperate in seeking peace with the Arabs because they were at war with one another. As prime minister Rabin suffered from the additional handicap of presiding over a coalition that had the narrowest of parliamentary majorities: 61 supporters in the 120-member Knesset. The National Religious Party (NRP), which had ten seats in the Knesset, declined to join the coalition. In the hope of attracting the NRP, Rabin had at the outset committed his government to hold an election before concluding a peace agreement that involved the surrender of any territory on the West Bank. In September 1974 the NRP joined the coalition, which broadened the parliamentary base of the government but at the same time it seriously curtailed Rabin's freedom of action in relation to Jordan and the Palestinians. His party was committed to territorial compromise over the West Bank; the NRP was committed to keeping the whole of the West Bank within Greater Israel.

The PLO was gaining international legitimacy but Rabin's position
remained firm and inflexible: Israel would never recognize or enter into any negotiations with the PLO and it would not agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state. If personal conviction precluded Rabin from offering anything to the PLO, domestic political constraints precluded him from offering anything of substance to Hussein. Rabin's American friends urged him to talk to the pro-Western monarch. Two weeks after Rabin was sworn in, Richard Nixon (who was soon to lose the presidency because of the Watergate scandal) came to Israel on a state visit. Nixon urged that the military disengagement agreements with Egypt and Syria be followed up with a similar agreement with Jordan.
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Rabin, however, had tied his own hands by pledging to submit any withdrawal on the West Bank to the verdict of the Israeli electorate, and he was unwilling to risk another election. Consequently, he had nothing to offer Hussein, and the negotiations between them came to nothing. Some of Rabin's advisers favoured ‘Egypt first', while others favoured ‘Syria first', but none favoured ‘Jordan first'.
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Hussein could not make any headway because there was no Israeli partner for peace. The gulf between the two sides could not be bridged and the stalemate persisted.

Although Rabin was not ready for a deal on the West Bank, he valued the contact with Hussein. During the three years of his premiership Rabin, accompanied by Allon and Peres, had half a dozen meetings with the king, who was always accompanied by Zaid Rifa'i. All the meetings took place on Israeli soil, one in Tel Aviv, the rest in Wadi Araba, in the air-conditioned caravan that kept changing its location for security reasons. They would begin with a survey of the regional and global situations, and, since both Rabin and Hussein spoke slowly, this would take a relatively long time. On the Israeli side each meeting was carefully prepared in advance by officials who also produced a detailed record of the discussions. Israel had four main aims in these discussions: to explore the possibilities of a deal with Jordan; to solve minor problems that affected both countries; to promote economic cooperation; and to coordinate policy towards the West Bank and the Palestinian guerrilla organizations. Jordan put forward two proposals in these discussions: an interim agreement involving partial Israeli withdrawal along the Jordan River; and a full peace agreement in return for complete Israeli withdrawal.
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The first meeting took place on 28 August 1974. Allon introduced Rabin and Peres to Hussein. The king repeated the proposal he had
already made to Meir for a military disengagement involving a withdrawal of about eight kilometres on both sides of the Jordan River. Rabin rejected the proposal out of hand and added that he could not even consider it as an option for the future. Peres then put forward a proposal of his own – another instance of an individual minister floating a proposal to relieve the cabinet of collective responsibility. Peres sought to solve the Palestinian problem by means of an Israeli–Jordanian condominium. He proposed the creation of three political entities: Israel, Jordan and a Palestinian entity that would be administered by them jointly. The Palestinian entity, comprising the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, would be wholly demilitarized and fall under no single sovereignty. The three entities would form a single economic unit, open to the free movement of goods, of persons and of ideas. Peres conceded that his plan might seem fantastic but argued that ‘fantasy is the only way to solve this situation.' The king remarked impatiently that he wanted to talk about the present and that meant a military disengagement agreement. Allon stepped in to save the meeting from failure. He suggested that the town of Jericho and the area surrounding it be turned over to Jordan to set up a civil administration and to serve as a bridgehead to the West Bank. This was simply a new version of the Allon Plan. The king rejected the proposal and restated his demand for an Israeli withdrawal along the entire front, as in the case of Sinai and the Golan Heights. The meeting ended, unsurprisingly, without any agreement being reached.
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The second meeting was held on 19 October. An Arab summit conference was scheduled to take place in Rabat at the end of the month and in the Arab world support was rapidly growing for replacing Jordan with the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians. Hussein was now more anxious than ever for a disengagement agreement to shore up his position and to extend his influence on the West Bank. Without an agreement he was in danger of being supplanted by the PLO at the upcoming Arab summit. But Rabin, having just brought the NRP into the government, was unwilling to cede the Jericho enclave, let alone vertical disengagement, because he feared the collapse of his fragile coalition. He was terrified of going forward with Hussein because any territorial concession entailed either the departure of the NRP or new elections. Rabin could have soldiered on without the NRP but he was too passive and pusillanimous to take any risks. It was a classic example
of the impact of domestic politics on foreign policy. What it meant in practical terms was that Rabin once again had nothing concrete to offer. Rabin sought to reassure Hussein that his government would have no truck with the PLO. ‘As far as the Palestinian problem in the West Bank is concerned,' said Rabin, ‘Israel has one and only one partner: Jordan.' Peres's ideas of a condominium over the West Bank and Gaza were also predicated on Jordan as Israel's partner in dealing with the Palestinian problem.
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But secret assurances of Israel's fidelity to the traditional alliance with the Hashemite rulers of Jordan were no substitute for a public disengagement agreement along the lines of the Egyptian and Syrian models. Hussein left the meeting with nothing.

Itzhak Rabin estimated that the chances of a second agreement with Egypt were better than the chances of an agreement with Hussein on the West Bank. Rabin also made it clear to the Americans that Egypt was his first priority. He urged them to leave the Palestinian problem to one side and to focus on Sadat's Egypt. Kissinger's conduct was rather more convoluted and his statements were contradicted by his actions. He too was fixated on a second disengagement agreement between Israel and Egypt, and, in the slightly longer term, on removing Egypt altogether from the circle of the confrontation states surrounding Israel. Kissinger wanted Jordan to attend the Rabat summit. During his last visit to Amman before the summit, his former student, Zaid Rifa'i, told him that there was a serious risk that a resolution would be passed at Rabat to deprive Jordan of the right to negotiate over the West Bank and to appoint the PLO to that role. Kissinger assured Rifa'i that the US was using its influence in Arab capitals, and that Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia would all reject the pressure from the radical Arab states to promote the PLO at the expense of Jordan. Jordan's position was secure, Kissinger concluded, and there was nothing to worry about. Mreiwad Tall, the private secretary, strongly advised Hussein not to go to Rabat so as not to be bound by any anti-Jordanian decisions that might be taken there. Kissinger's assurances played a part in persuading Hussein to reject this advice and to go. Shortly before the summit, the Moroccan authorities uncovered a Fatah plot to assassinate Hussein on arrival at Rabat. But this did not deter Hussein from attending the Arab League summit.
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The Arab heads of state and Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the PLO, convened in Rabat on 26 October. The dispute between Jordan and the
PLO dominated the discussions. Hussein opened the discussions with a long speech that emphasized his country's historic responsibility for the fate of the West Bank. He identified two distinct phases in the struggle that lay ahead: liberating the occupied territory and settlement of the Palestinian problem. He urged his colleagues to support Jordan in its efforts to recover the West Bank and promised to give its inhabitants an opportunity to determine their own future once Israel withdrew. Towards the end of the speech came the warning: if the Arab states allocated to the PLO sole responsibility for both phases of the Palestinian problem, they would have to bear the consequences, including withdrawal of the civil administration from the West Bank and ending the payment of salaries of civil servants, judges and teachers by the central government. Yasser Arafat argued in his speech for an exclusive role for the PLO both in the negotiations to recover the West Bank and in determining its future. The vote went in favour of the PLO. Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia all joined the radical states in voting against Jordan. The final resolutions of the summit designated the PLO as ‘the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people' and affirmed the right of the Palestinian people to set up an independent national authority, led by the PLO, on any part of Palestine that was liberated. In the meantime, Jordan was asked not to sever its links with the West Bank. Hussein had always felt very strongly about Jordan's responsibilities towards its citizens under occupation, and he decided, despite his threats, not to desert them. He had no choice but to go along with the summit resolution on Palestinian representation but he did not want the Palestinians under occupation to pay the price. He therefore announced that Jordan would continue its administration of the West Bank and would continue to assist and support its inhabitants until liberation. The Arab leaders gave him a standing ovation.
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Despite the round of applause at the end, Hussein regarded the Rabat summit as a major political and diplomatic defeat. He felt let down by Israel, abandoned by the Arab moderates and double-crossed by the American secretary of state. A month after Rabat, Kissinger stopped in Amman on his tour of the Middle East. Rifa'i reminded him of his assurances that America's Arab allies would back Jordan at the summit. Kissinger's only reply was: ‘We overestimated our manipulative capabilities.' Rifa'i, however, concluded that the Rabat decision was the direct result of Kissinger's machinations. It was clear all along that Israel would
refuse to negotiate with the PLO. Kissinger secretly wanted the PLO to replace Jordan as the spokesman for the Palestinian people to ensure that there would be no negotiations over the West Bank. Kissinger undermined Jordan's position not to help the PLO but to help Israel and Egypt move forward towards another bilateral deal over Sinai.
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Rifa'i assessed the Rabat summit succinctly: ‘The only way for Kissinger to rid himself of Jordanian demands was to knock us out, once and for all. Kissinger plotted against the Arab nation. And Sadat took part in the plot. The rest of the Arabs fell into the trap.'
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Hussein shared his prime minister's suspicions about the collusion between Kissinger and Sadat on the road to Rabat. But the additional point he chose to stress was that the Arab rulers had their own reason for voting for the Rabat decision: they were tired of the Palestinian problem and by crowning the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people they hoped to divest themselves of further responsibility for it. ‘The Palestinians wanted their way and their say. The Arabs wanted it, the Muslims wanted it, and the whole world wanted it.'
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