Lion of Jordan (78 page)

Once the American proposal was dismissed Hussein turned his attention to the Arab League summit that he had taken the lead in organizing. The summit opened in Amman on 8 November 1987 and lasted three days. It was a high point of Arab unity and cooperation, and one of the king's finest hours. Hussein was the only Arab leader on good terms with all the rival blocs, and he took great pleasure in playing the part of peacemaker. His two main achievements were in mobilizing general Arab support behind Iraq in the war against Iran and behind Jordan's leadership in the Middle East peace process. His earlier effort to reconcile Asad with Saddam Hussein, though not entirely successful, contributed to harmony at the summit. The two arch enemies did not become allies but nor did they allow their differences to disrupt the display of Arab unity. Another long-term effort that bore fruit at the summit was to bring Egypt back into the Arab fold. Libya, Syria and the PLO were opposed to the readmission of Egypt into the Arab League, but Hussein's proposal to do so was adopted, leaving it to each member state to decide whether to re-establish diplomatic relations with Egypt. The collective Arab boycott of Egypt was lifted. Hussein exploited his dominant position in the councils of the Arab mighty to weaken and marginalize the PLO. He deliberately snubbed Arafat by not going to the airport to meet him, a pronounced omission, as he usually went to meet all heads of state. Instead, he sent Zaid Rifa'i, Arafat's nemesis.
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In his opening speech Hussein made only a passing reference to the PLO and again called for an international conference on the basis of UN resolutions 242 and 338, which the PLO had not yet accepted.
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The summit greatly enhanced Hussein's prestige and legitimacy in the Arab world. He himself described it as one of the best and brightest moments in his life.
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The spark that ignited the Palestinian uprising, or
intifada
, was the seemingly intentional killing, on 9 December 1987, of four residents of Jabaliyah, the largest of the eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, by an Israeli track driver. The accident set off disturbances both in the Jabaliyah camp and in the rest of Gaza that rapidly spread to the West Bank. Within days the occupied territories were engulfed in a wave of street demonstrations and commercial strikes on an unprecedented scale. Equally unprecedented was the extent of mass participation in these disturbances: tens of thousands of ordinary civilians, including women and children. Demonstrators burned tyres, threw stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli cars, brandished iron bars and waved the Palestinian flag. The standard of revolt against Israeli rule had been raised. The security forces used the full panoply of crowd-control measures to quell the disturbances – cudgels, night sticks, tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and live ammunition – but they only gathered momentum.

The eruption of the intifada was completely spontaneous. There was no preparation or planning by the local Palestinian elite or the PLO, but the PLO was quick to jump on the bandwagon of popular discontent against Israeli rule and to play a leading role alongside a newly formed body, the Unified National Command (UNC). But, equally, it was not without real underlying causes. In origin it was not a nationalist revolt. It had its roots in poverty, in the miserable living conditions of the refugee camps, in hatred of the occupation and, above all, in the humiliation that the Palestinians had had to endure over the previous twenty years. The aims of the intifada were not stated at the outset; they emerged in the course of the struggle and developed into a statement of major political import. The ultimate aim was self-determination and the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state. In this respect the intifada may be seen as the Palestinian war of independence.

Events in the occupied territories received intense media coverage. The world was assailed by disturbing pictures of Israeli troops firing on stone-throwing demonstrators, or beating with cudgels those they caught, among them women and children. Israel's image suffered serious damage as a result of this media coverage. The Israelis complained the reporting was biased and that it focused deliberately on scenes of brutality in what was a normal effort to restore order. But no amount of pleading could obscure the message that constantly came across in pictures in the newspapers and on the television screens: a powerful army was being unleashed against a civilian population that was fighting for basic human rights, especially the right to political self-determination. The biblical image of David and Goliath now seemed to be reversed, with Israel looking like an overbearing Goliath and the Palestinians with the stones as a vulnerable David.

The intifada had far-reaching consequences for Jordan. It had begun as a revolt against Israeli rule, but it turned into a demonstration of support for the PLO and very quickly assumed an anti-Jordanian dimension. Although Jordan's security was not immediately affected, there was a clear danger that the intifada would spread, with the nationalist sparks lit on the West Bank inflaming the Palestinians on the East Bank and threatening internal stability. Jordan's influence in the occupied territories had been steadily declining over the previous two decades, and this sudden upsurge of Palestinian nationalism was a further setback. It tilted the balance in the ongoing power struggle between the monarchy and the PLO in favour of the latter. After the Lebanon War the PLO had lost ground to Hussein; the intifada had the opposite effect. Hussein's claim that the PLO leadership had been imposed by a decision of the Arab League on an unwilling population could no longer be sustained. Indeed, leaflets stated very clearly that the Palestinians saw the PLO as their only representative and that Hussein had no mandate to speak on their behalf. Another consequence of the trouble on the West Bank was to increase support on the Israeli right for the dangerous idea of converting Jordan into an alternative homeland for the Palestinian people. Thus, as a result of the intifada and its ramifications in Israel, Jordan had to reconsider both its position on the West Bank and its role in the Middle East peace process.

The uprising also brought about a re-evalution of US policy towards the Arab–Israeli conflict, culminating by the end of 1988 in recognition of the PLO as a legitimate party in peace negotiations. There was a marked shift at all levels of American public opinion away from its traditional support for Israel and towards sympathy for the Palestinians. For the first time since the war in Lebanon, it even prompted some of the leaders of American Jewry to raise questions about the wisdom of Israel's policies and the morality of its methods. In government circles there was concern that close American association with Israel could have negative repercussions for American interests throughout the Middle East and the Gulf.
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The Hussein–Peres plan for an international conference had floundered mainly because of Likud opposition but partly because of American passivity. With the intifada gathering momentum, George Shultz became personally involved again. The result was the first major US effort to solve the Arab–Israeli conflict since the Reagan Plan of 1982.

Shultz put forward publicly, on 4 March 1988, a package that came to be known as the Shultz Initiative. The package followed in the path of the Camp David Accords in calling for Palestinian self-rule but with an accelerated timetable. There was also an important new element: an ‘interlock', or built-in connection, between the talks on the transitional period of self-rule and the talks on final status. This was intended to give assurances to the Palestinians against Israeli foot-dragging. Events were expected to move forward at a rapid pace. First, the secretary-general of the UN would convene all the parties to the Arab–Israeli conflict and the five permanent members of the Security Council to an international conference. This conference had no power to impose solutions on the participants or to veto any agreements reached by them. Second, negotiations between an Israeli and a Jordanian–Palestinian delegation were to start on 1 May and end by 1 November. Third, the transition period was to start three months later and last three years. Fourth, negotiations on final status were to begin before the start of the transition period and be completed within a year. In other words, negotiations on final status were to start regardless of the outcome of the first phase of negotiations.

Peres supported the Shultz Initiative and said so publicly. So did President Mubarak of Egypt. The Palestinian response added up to a chorus repeating the old refrain that the one and only address for any
proposals was the PLO in Tunis. And the PLO leaders in Tunis had no intention of letting the ‘insiders' steal the show by meeting with the American secretary of state. But the fiercest opposition to the Shultz Initiative came from Israel's prime minister. Shamir again blasted the idea of an international conference and rejected the interlock concept as contrary to the Camp David Accords. He said he was ready to negotiate peace with Hussein, and with any Palestinians he might bring along with him, but that he was not ready to relinquish any territory for peace.
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One story has it that when Shamir received a letter outlining the American proposals, he said, ‘I reject the whole initiative, I only accept two words in it, and the two words are the signature – George Shultz – and nothing else!'
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The story may be apocryphal, but Shultz and his aides had a feeling that America's policy in the Middle East had fallen hostage to Israel's intransigence or inability to make decisions.
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Hussein approached the Shultz Initiative with an open mind. He agreed to the general principle, giving rise to hope in the State Department that he could be persuaded to subscribe to the plan.
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The response of the other Jordanian decision-makers to the new initiative was also tepid. They saw it as a thinly disguised version of the principles set out in the Camp David Accords. Although the initiative did not meet their requirements, they were unwilling to reject it out of hand. They welcomed the Reagan administration's re-engagement in the diplomatic process but felt that its thinking lagged behind events. The Americans recognized that the situation in the territories had been fundamentally altered by the intifada, but they failed to understand the implications. Consequently, the Shultz Initiative continued to promote the Jordanian role in negotiations and to exclude the PLO. Jordanian thinking, however, had changed by this time in two respects. First, they began to stress that any settlement to the conflict with Israel should fulfil the Palestinian right to self-determination. Second, they emphasized the need for PLO participation in an international conference and made it clear that Jordan could not serve as an alternative interlocutor.
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When Shultz visited Amman in late February, the senior officials he met told him that they liked his ideas but that this was basically a PLO matter. Shultz met Hussein, on 1 March, at his house on 7 Palace Green in London and went over his initiative in detail. Hussein raised two issues: the PLO had to play a central role; and direct negotiations had to take place within the setting of an international conference that could weigh in on
issues of substance. Hussein would not say yes and would not say no, but only ‘Keep working.' Shultz could not take any encouragement from the King's comments.
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Ultimately, he did not understand the changes on the ground that circumscribed Hussein's freedom of action. Indeed, Shultz's inadequate grasp of the local forces at play was one of the factors that contributed to the failure of his initiative.

From the outset the Unified National Command of the uprising declared its support for the PLO. It also attacked the concept of unity between the two banks and accused the Jordanian regime of collaborating with the Israeli government in perpetuating the occupation. From time to time, the UNC issued communiqués with guidance and instructions to its followers. On 11 March 1988 it issued its tenth communiqué, calling on the people to ‘intensify the mass pressure against the occupation army and the settlers and against collaborators and personnel of the Jordanian regime'. It also called on the West Bank representatives in the Jordanian parliament to resign their seats and ‘align with the people. Otherwise, there will be no room for them on our land.' The king described the communiqué as ‘a horrible sign of ingratitude' and concluded that his strategy of substituting a partnership with the Palestinians in the occupied territories for one with the PLO had fallen apart. All his efforts to work with the Palestinians towards a peaceful settlement with Israel had come to nothing and only one thing remained – the nightmare of Jordan becoming an alternative homeland for the Palestinians. The Jordanian nationalists had been critical of his attempts. They argued that Jordan would be a safer place without the West Bank and without the Palestinians. Every defeat that Hussein suffered in his quest for a partnership with the Palestinians was a source of satisfaction for them. Now they seemed to have a point. After reading the tenth communiqué, Hussein himself began to consider seriously disengaging from the West Bank.
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Late in the afternoon on 11 March, Hussein went into the royal court looking grim-faced and angry, and he let off steam about the communiqué to his political adviser, Adnan Abu-Odeh. Abu-Odeh was a Palestinian from Nablus who first came to the attention of the king as a junior officer in the Intelligence Service. For someone so used to command, the king was an exceptionally good listener, and he always encouraged Abu-Odeh to speak his mind. On this occasion, Abu-Odeh argued that the tenth communiqué should not be viewed simply as an
act of ingratitude on the part of the West Bankers but as a sign of political maturity. For the first time since 1967 they had risen up to resist the occupation and to assert their independence and dignity. The king did not reject or challenge this analysis but encouraged his adviser to continue. Earlier on in his career, Abu-Odeh had worked as a schoolteacher in Kuwait, and he proceeded in a Socratic mode, by posing questions. Abu-Odeh recalled the conversation that followed: