From: "Middle East Report Online" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: No Jordan Option
Date: Mon, 21 Jun 2004 16:38:40 -0400
No Jordan Option
Marc Lynch
June 21, 2004
(Marc Lynch teaches political science at Williams College. He is author of
"State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan's
Identity," Columbia University Press [1999].)
Could the plan of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to "disengage" from
the Gaza Strip "include a Jordanian presence" in the West Bank? So Sharon
told his cabinet on June 1, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz. Since
then, rumors about such a role for Jordan, farfetched as they seem, have
spread like wildfire through Israeli and Arab political circles. Seeking to
assuage fears that Hamas would dominate the Palestinian territories from
which Israeli forces withdraw, Israel and the United States have approached
Egypt about providing security assistance in Gaza. On June 17, Egyptian
President Husni Mubarak met with CIA Director George Tenet, presumably to
discuss the details. Reports that a Jordanian security team toured the West
Bank in mid-June, without notifying Palestinian President Yasser Arafat,
have fueled speculation that Jordan may be amenable to an arrangement
similar to Egypt's. The prospect of Jordan's return to territory it occupied
from 1948 to 1967 has been taken seriously enough that, on June 14,
Jordanian spokeswoman Asma Khader found it necessary to repeat her
government's long-standing opposition to the idea. Two days later, King
Abdallah II is said to have told George W. Bush of his worry that the
Israeli premier might be attempting to revive the "Jordan option."
A renewed Jordanian foothold in the West Bank is highly unlikely. Nearly
four years of intensified Israeli occupation policies have devastated the
Palestinian economy and radicalized the population, certainly reducing any
interest Jordanian officials might have had in taking a poisoned chalice
from Israel's hands. The territory nominally on offer, of course, would be
much smaller in area than what Jordan formerly controlled, since the Israeli
government is determined to hold on (with US approval) to most of the Jewish
settlements in the West Bank and all of the settlements ringing East
Jerusalem. Since ascending the throne in 1999, Abdallah has strongly
emphasized economic development over regional politics, and his recent calls
for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East would seem to leave him little time
or energy for managing a risky West Bank venture. A Jordanian return to the
West Bank would draw fierce Arab and Palestinian criticism, making
Abdallah -- already viewed with suspicion for his close ties to
Washington -- a lightning rod for the growing anger of the Arab public. The
Bush administration, increasingly perceived as a failure, would probably be
unwilling or unable to supply the financial or political compensation that
might make such a dangerous gambit worthwhile for the young monarch.
Another, less appreciated reason why the king could not contemplate sending
troops back over the river is the major transformation that took place in
Jordanian identity politics over the course of the 1990s. People of
Palestinian origin -- many of them descendants of refugees who fled to
Jordan in 1948 -- make up well over half the Jordanian citizenry,
outnumbering those with origins on the East Bank of the river Jordan. For
the past decade, the Hashemite regime has sought to fashion a national
consensus identity that includes the Palestinian-origin citizens while not
encroaching upon the prerogatives of the ethnic Transjordanians who compose
its main power base. Amid this tenuous balance of forces and identities,
talk of the Jordan option is political dynamite. For the current generation
of Jordanian nationalists, it is axiomatic that any role in the West Bank
would be the first step down the slippery slope of a silent Palestinian
takeover of real power within the kingdom.
HUSSEIN'S MANEUVERS
The so-called Jordan option has a long and tortuous history. In 1948, the
first King Abdallah took advantage of the Arab-Israeli war to lay claim to
the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. He annexed these territories to his
kingdom (then known as Transjordan) and granted their residents full
citizenship. In the mid-1960s, the Palestine Liberation Organization, with
its claim to represent all Palestinians, emerged to threaten Jordan as much
as it did Israel. When Jordan lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem to
Israel in 1967, it found itself locked in a bitter struggle with the PLO
over the right to sovereignty in those lands -- a struggle which culminated
in the bloody and unforgotten "Black September" war of 1970. Jordan
reluctantly acceded to the consensus of the 1974 Arab Summit in Rabat that
declared the PLO to be the "sole legitimate representative of the
Palestinian people," but the Jordanian state remained largely convinced of
the legitimacy of its own rule over the lost territories and their
inhabitants. King Hussein maneuvered to keep the Jordan option alive as a
matter of both principle and self-interest.
Prior to the breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" at Oslo
in 1993, Israel and the US were fearful of the PLO and so backed the more
pliable Hussein's claim to be the appropriate interlocutor for the
Palestinians of the West Bank. Ariel Sharon and the right wing of Israel's
Likud Party, however, had a very different conception of the Jordan option.
By their lights, there was no need to create a state for the Palestinians in
the West Bank and Gaza because a Palestinian state already existed in
Jordan. In opposition to the US and Israeli governments, Sharon saw the
Hashemite monarchy as an obstacle rather than an ally, and advocated the
overthrow of Hussein and the creation of a Palestinian state on the East
Bank. The Jordanian regime watched with great trepidation as the Likud
governments of the 1980s rapidly established settlements on the West Bank
(creating what Sharon called "facts on the ground") and encouraged a quiet
exodus of Palestinians across the Allenby Bridge into Jordan. Many
Jordanians feared that Israel would solve its Palestinian problem at
Jordan's expense.
"SEVERING OF TIES"
When the first Palestinian intifada broke out in late 1987, the Jordanian
regime was struggling economically and increasingly repressive politically.
In 1988, Hussein shocked almost everyone by declaring a "severing of ties"
with the West Bank. Perhaps even to his own surprise, his move turned out to
be considerably more than just another tactic for gaining temporary
advantage. In September 1989, massive unrest throughout the kingdom spurred
the regime to initiate a process of liberalization that included competitive
parliamentary elections as well as a dramatic opening to press freedom and
political activity. From the ensuing public debates over
Jordanian-Palestinian relations emerged a new consensus enshrined in the
National Charter of 1991: Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine. A
careful and firm distinction between the Jordanian East Bank and a
Palestinian West Bank came to be seen as the key to Jordan's survival as an
independent entity, as well as a way to resolve the mutual
Jordanian-Palestinian suspicions that had festered since 1948. In
conjunction with the Nablus-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey
Research, the University of Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies carried
out a series of workshops and opinion surveys in the mid-1990s that
confirmed the great sensitivities on both sides and made vividly clear that
the time for a Jordanian return to the West Bank had passed.
Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel was widely taken as ratifying this
distinct Jordanian national identity. One of the decisive arguments in the
treaty's favor in Jordan was that it would finally dispel the Sharon vision
that "Jordan is Palestine." (For his part, Sharon abstained from the vote on
the treaty in the Israeli Knesset.) The new identity consensus in Jordan had
sweeping implications for the kingdom's politics. Hussein's regime
maintained an inclusivist national identity discourse emphasizing tolerance
and coexistence. The country's Palestinian citizens refrained from overt
political activity challenging the regime in exchange for the state's
support for the PLO in its dealings with Israel. Islamist political
movements, though they draw heavily on Palestinian citizens for members,
boosted their popularity with ethnic Transjordanians by avoiding explicit
invocation of a Palestinian identity.
"JORDAN FIRST"
Most emboldened by the "severing of ties" with the West Bank were a group of
outspoken Jordanian nationalists -- many of them pillars of the Hashemite
regime -- for whom Jordan could only "be Jordan" if dominated by ethnic
Transjordanians. For these figures, including the popular columnist Fahd
al-Fanik and the powerful politician Abd al-Hadi al-Majali, as well as more
radical intellectuals such as Nahid Hattar, any signs of Palestinian
political activity in the kingdom were ipso facto threats to Jordan's
identity. Today, the new Jordanian nationalists aggressively police public
life for such signs, often inflaming ethnic controversies to score political
points. On questions as disparate as whether Hamas should have political
offices in Amman and economic development plans, these conservative
nationalists -- known in Jordan for their "regionalism" (iqlimiyya) --
intimidate the opposition by assigning it a Palestinian face. Even more than
the Israeli right, the nationalists have kept alive the idea of the
"alternative homeland" as a trump card in all political arguments.
In October 2002, Abdallah II launched a campaign to mobilize the country
under the slogan "Jordan First," unambiguously taking the new identity
consensus as a starting point. Economic development, modernization and
incremental political reform would take precedence over the "external"
concerns, such as Palestine, that had run through his father's reign. This
campaign has brought ambiguous results for Jordanians of Palestinian origin.
On the one hand, the Palestinian origins of the king's beautiful and widely
admired wife Rania (who was recently appointed a colonel in the Jordanian
armed forces) offer a source of pride and hope for greater integration into
the political and economic order. On the other hand, the election law that
was painstakingly engineered prior to the June 2003 elections produced a
parliament containing only 18 members of Palestinian origin out of a total
of 108. Despite the new consensus, Jordanian-Palestinian relations remain a
raw wound. Ariel Sharon and the "alternative homeland" hover like a specter
over these delicate internal politics. Even relatively low-level Jordanian
involvement in West Bank security arrangements will likely trigger ugly
disputes over national identity in the kingdom.
OLD FEARS, NEW TIMES
Such a distraction might not be altogether unwelcome for the regime. Behind
the confident and progressive facade offered at the World Economic Forum at
the Dead Sea and the G-8 summit in Georgia, Jordan remains an economically
and politically troubled country. The gerrymandered parliamentary elections
of June 2003 generated little excitement, and the uninspiring body that was
elected has done little to improve public perceptions. Prime Minister Faisal
al-Fayez and his government of technocrats evoke comparably little
enthusiasm. Few of the restrictive "temporary laws" passed by executive fiat
after Abdallah dissolved the legislature in 2001 have been rescinded, and
many have actually been ratified by the new pro-government parliament.
Despite generous economic assistance from the US, including a free trade
agreement, and a rigorously implemented International Monetary Fund
structural adjustment program, the Jordanian economy remains stagnant, with
poverty on the rise and the gap between rich and poor continuing to expand.
In the spring of 2004, the arrest of opposition journalist Fahd Rimawi
(later released after a barrage of negative publicity) and the conviction of
feminist politician Toujan Faisal for "defaming" the prime minister
symbolized the continuing authoritarian sensibilities of the regime. Few
Jordanians today share the common American view of the kingdom as an oasis
of democratization and pro-American sentiment.
The collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the tightening
spiral of misery in Palestine have cast doubt upon the stability of the
Jordanian-Israeli relationship. At a March 2004 meeting in the Negev desert,
Abdallah reportedly warned Sharon that Israel's separation barrier in the
West Bank threatens the survival of Jordan as a state and urged the Israeli
premier not to encourage talk of the Jordan option. Indeed, in 2003
Jordanian criticism of the multiple walls and fences led a number of
prominent Israeli officials to describe Jordan as "an enemy." The Jordanian
public -- and not only citizens of Palestinian origin -- identify deeply
with the Palestinians across the river and hostility to Israel remains at a
fever pitch. Despite government efforts to clamp down on
"anti-normalization" activism, professional associations and other organs of
civil society continue to agitate against "normal" relations with Israel. In
mid-June, the Jordanian parliament found itself unable to pass legislation
concerning a National Human Rights Center due to an intense controversy over
a clause forbidding the center to deal with "the Jewish entity." Jordanian
horror at the images of Palestinian suffering broadcast in the pan-Arab
media has deepened fury with Israel, the US and, most alarmingly for the
regime, with Arab leaders who do nothing to stop the closures and invasions.
The Jordanian public is angry, mobilized and frustrated with its government.
In such a climate, the reaction of the Jordanian public to the rumors of a
Jordanian role in the West Bank has been predictably unanimous in
opposition. Opposition parties have warned against participating in a
"conspiracy against the Palestinian people." Critics of a return to the West
Bank use the regime's own words against the idea, while government spokesmen
have rushed to repeat the standard line that Jordan would play only a role
supportive of the Palestinian Authority.
Meanwhile, speculation about a new Jordan option comes as a gift from heaven
to the conservative nationalists who have dominated recent Jordanian
governments. They have spearheaded the criticism of a security role in the
West Bank, rehearsing their frequently aired mantra that such a return would
mean "national suicide" for Jordan. Over the last month, the nationalists
stirred up a firestorm over the appointment of Palestinian-origin journalist
Omar al-Kullab as a media advisor to Interior Minister Samir al-Habashneh,
who had already been under fire for his efforts to improve conditions for
Palestinians crossing the bridge into Jordan. Stories about the harassment
of a Jordanian media delegation at the hands of Palestinian security
officials in the West Bank provided more grist for the mill, as did the
reports (denied by the Jordanian government) of the Jordanian security
delegation's tour of the West Bank. As Nahid Hattar warned ominously, "any
Jordanian role in the West Bank, whether security or practical, is
impossible because it is not possible politically."
For Israeli columnist Ehud Yaari, all of this pales against Jordan's
absolute dependence on the US, combined with potential economic rewards
associated with refugee compensation and economic assistance. But neither
argument is convincing. The US recognizes the fragility of Jordan's
political system, and can hardly be eager to see its favorite model of Arab
reform collapse into ethnic strife. Major economic compensation for
Palestinian refugees and reconstruction seems a pipe dream, and would be
more than balanced by the massive expense involved with salvaging even a
rudimentary economic life for the besieged Palestinians of the West Bank.
DIFFICULT DEPENDENCE
King Abdallah has placed the highest priority on maintaining close relations
with the US, and has been rewarded with frequent meetings with George W.
Bush, as well as aid dollars and the free trade pact. Abdallah has been one
of the most outspoken Arab leaders in backing US calls for political and
economic reform in the region, as at the G-8 summit in early June. Jordanian
intelligence has cooperated closely with the US in the struggle against
Islamist extremists, cooperation that grew even closer after allegations of
an al-Qaeda plot to use chemical weapons against American and Jordanian
targets in Amman. Jordan played a quiet but active supporting role during
the Iraq war and continues to train recruits for the Iraqi police force
(though it has thus far refused to send troops to join the US-led
multinational force).
Yet Jordan's dependence on the US has not been easy on the kingdom. The US
occupation of Iraq has been extremely unpopular, with many Jordanians
equating it with the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Moreover, for his
pains, Abdallah has repeatedly found the ground pulled from beneath his feet
by the Bush administration. Bush's fervent support for Ariel Sharon has been
the most devastating. The April 14, 2004 press conference at which Bush
handed Sharon a letter expressing support for the "disengagement" plan
humiliated the Jordanian king to the point that he postponed his own trip to
Washington. Bush's statement during the press conference that the right of
return for Palestinian refugees was "not sacred" set off tremors within
Jordan. The identity consensus underlying the new Jordan depends on
maintaining the fiction that Palestinians might someday have the choice to
return to their homes in what is now Israel -- even if few would actually
exercise this right. These policy shifts can only have soured the attitudes
measured by the March 2004 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, which found that
only 12 percent of Jordanians supported the US "war on terror," only 5
percent had a favorable view of the US and only 3 percent had favorable
views of Bush.
Rumors of the Jordan option persist. On June 19, Husni Mubarak's top
political adviser Usama al-Baz told the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat: "Egypt does
not object to a Jordanian security role...we welcome a Jordanian role." Such
statements feed suspicions that Jordan's forceful renunciation of the rumors
is for public consumption only. Clearly, though, the Jordan option has
resurfaced because of its utility for Sharon's plan for unilateral
disengagement from select parts of the Occupied Territories, not because of
Jordanian ambitions or Palestinian interests. The idea has no more potential
to ease conflict now than in the past. Few Palestinians would accept a
Jordanian return, and the major armed groups have offered no support. As
reported in the June 18 Financial Times, a leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs'
Brigades, an offshoot of the mainline Fatah organization, told the visiting
Jordanian security delegation that his group would reject an Arab military
presence aimed at stamping out the uprising. The Jordanian public is almost
universally opposed to any West Bank presence, seeing little to gain and
much to lose. While new ideas are certainly needed to break the deadlock
between Israel and the Palestinians, the Jordan option remains an elusive
fantasy that can only obscure real and difficult choices.
-----
For background on King Abdallah's focus on economic reform, see Pete W.
Moore, "The Newest Jordan: Free Trade, Peace and an Ace in the Hole," Middle
East Report Online, June 26, 2003.
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero062603.html
For background on the "temporary laws" and political repression in the
kingdom, see Jillian Schwedler, "Don't Blink: Jordan's Democratic Opening
and Closing," Middle East Report Online, July 3, 2002.
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero070302.html
Middle East Report Online is a free service of the Middle East Research
and Information Project (MERIP).
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