Lion of Jordan (94 page)

Hussein understood better than any other Arab leader the root causes of the Arab–Israeli conflict and the psychological barriers to its resolution. From this understanding sprang his determination to have a warm peace, and in this respect his model was unique. It was the only one that addressed the deep yearning of Israel's citizens to be accepted by their neighbours. It was precisely because the treaty with Jordan catered for this basic need that it enjoyed the support of all sectors of Israeli society and all major political parties. Jordan's peace with Israel was based on a strategic decision to foster a new atmosphere in
the region, a climate conducive to cooperation and coexistence. Peace was expected to bring benefits not only to Jordan but to the entire Middle East, creating the conditions for stability, prosperity and interdependence.
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The main problem with this noble vision of peace was that it inspired only a minority of Hussein's citizens. From the outset, there was considerable opposition to the peace process, especially from the Islamic Action Front and anti-establishment circles. In May 1994 eight Islamist and left-wing parties established the Popular Arab-Jordanian Committee for Resisting Submission and Normalization. The leaders of this mass movement accused the government of ignoring the will of the people and of rushing ahead with a policy of ‘apostasy and defeatism' to sign a separate peace with Israel.
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In the lower house, on 6 November 1994, 55 deputies voted to ratify the treaty, 23 voted against, and 2 abstained. Former prime minister Taher al-Masri, an establishment figure of Palestinian origins, was one of the two who abstained. Even after the treaty was ratified, the opposition continued to fight it tooth and nail, and some mainstream politicians, such as Ahmad Obeidat, joined the ranks of the anti-normalizers. Thus, from the beginning, Hussein was only too aware of the extent of the opposition to his peace policy. He firmly believed, however, that once the material benefits of peace began to trickle down to the people, they would come round to his way of thinking. In particular, he hoped that peace would alleviate two of the country's greatest social problems: poverty and unemployment. Everything thus hinged on the treaty delivering the much vaunted ‘peace dividend'.

In the first year after the signature of the treaty, progress was achieved on a number of fronts. A series of bilateral agreements was signed for cooperation in tourism, energy, health, the environment, law enforcement and agriculture. A trade agreement was also concluded, but Jordanian manufacturers found it difficult to sell their products across the border because of the power of existing business interests. Jordanian businessmen were at a disadvantage because Israel's Gross National Product was ten times that of Jordan's. Israeli businessmen wanted all the benefits for themselves and without having to wait. This attitude did not allow the Jordanians to feel that they could achieve their aspirations in terms of economic development and growth through the peace process.
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The economic benefits of the peace for Jordan remained marginal.
There was some increase in tourism, trade and investment, but the overall impact on the economy was insubstantial.

A particularly sore point was Israeli protectionism in relation to the markets of the West Bank and Gaza. A basic idea of the peace process was to create a free-trade zone that encompassed Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. In practice, Israel made it very difficult for Jordanian goods and services to get into the West Bank.
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Resistance to normal relations with Israel ran much deeper than Hussein expected, and the new reality for which he yearned failed to materialize. The king had hoped to turn the peace with Israel into the people's peace, but it was widely perceived in Jordan as the king's peace. On the Israeli side, the peace with Jordan remained immensely popular, as did the king himself. It was often said, only half in jest, that if Hussein wanted to be the king of the Jews, he would be elected by popular acclaim. Both Rabin and Peres recognized the importance of delivering the economic dividends of peace. But the bureaucrats under them moved slowly and cautiously, and the promise presented by the treaty for ushering a new era of peace and prosperity remained largely unfulfilled.

Even when trade agreements were concluded, their implementation gave rise to a host of minor problems and to some friction between the two sides. Relations between the two countries came to depend to an unhealthy degree on two individuals, Hussein and Rabin. As a result, Hussein viewed relations between the two countries through the prism of this unique personal connection and tended to ignore other aspects of the relationship. He paid little attention to Peres or the different parties in Israel. For Rabin, similarly, the relationship with Hussein took precedence over everything else. So when parliament was critical of Israel's conduct or when the Jordanian government protested against Israeli actions, Rabin likewise did not pay much attention. He believed that he could solve any problem by talking directly to the king.
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In effect, the two leaders became trouble-shooters in the peace process.

Marwan Muasher, Jordan's first ambassador to Israel, illustrated this general pattern with a concrete example. In April 1995 Rabin approved the expropriation of fifty-two hectares of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem for the building of a new Jewish neighbourhood. This move sparked a major uproar in Jordan and a threat by parliament to rescind the peace agreement. Muasher went to see Peres and several other officials. All of them told him that Rabin's mind was made up and that he would not
reverse his decision. The king then sent a letter to the prime minister with Marwan Kasim, the chief of the royal court, urging him to stop. The letter stressed the sensitivity and the seriousness of the issue and the threat it posed to Jordanian–Israeli relations. The next morning, after reading the king's letter, Rabin reversed his decision.
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In 1995 Hussein completed his strategic move away from Iraq and into the American–Israeli orbit. In the 1980s he had cultivated the alliance with Iraq as an answer to the threat from an expansionist Israel. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 destroyed that alliance. In the years after the Gulf War Hussein became increasingly outspoken in his criticism of Saddam Hussein and of his relentless grip on power. He spoke of the Iraqi people as deserving of democracy, and he floated ideas for reorganizing Iraq along federal lines. But he made his first open call for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein only in 1995. Such a risky move must have been made with at least the tacit backing of America and Israel. The call came after Hussein granted asylum to Saddam's two second cousins and sons-in-law. On 8 August, Lieutenant-General Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid and his brother, Colonel Saddam Kamel Hassan al-Majid, arrived in Amman and were accommodated with their wives and children in the Hashimiyya Palace. The younger brother had been the head of Saddam's personal bodyguard. Hussein Kamel had been the minister of military industries. Hussein gave Hussein Kamel not just asylum but a platform to vent his grievances against the Iraqi regime. With the Jordanian monarch standing by his side, Hussein Kamel declared his intention to overthrow the regime in Baghdad.

Hussein's own call for replacing the Ba'th regime in Baghdad came after one last try to persuade Saddam to mend his ways. Following the defection, the king sent a message to Saddam through Marwan Kasim, urging him to open a dialogue with the West, accept UN resolutions and ‘join in the region's march towards peace'. Saddam's rejection of this advice prompted Hussein to advocate openly political change in Iraq. In a nationally televised speech, on 23 August, Hussein accused the Iraqi regime of endangering Jordan during the Gulf War by firing missiles across its airspace into Israel and of undermining its credibility in the Arab and international arenas. He charged that a few days before the defection, high-level discussions took place in Baghdad about attacking Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Such a move, he claimed, would have inevitably exposed Iraq to dismemberment and fragmentation, and led
to the destruction of ‘the eastern gate of the Arab homeland'. The speech gave a hint of a personal ambition to rule Iraq by referring to the establishment of Iraq under the kings of the Hashemite monarchy until their demise in the coup of 1958. Hussein concluded with a promise to keep the Jordanian–Iraqi border open so as to ‘assist the people of Iraq until the long night of their suffering comes to an end'.
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Hussein Kamel's real reason for leaving Iraq was not political disenchantment with the regime but a falling out with Saddam's ghastly son Uday. In Jordan, Kamel spoke with respect about Saddam but by calling for regime change in Iraq he burned his bridges. At first Hussein Kamel cooperated fully with Jordan's intelligence officers. He also gave CIA officers, British MI6 officers and UN arms inspectors a thorough briefing on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. What he revealed was that in 1991, after the Gulf War, all Iraq's chemical and biological weapons had been destroyed on orders.
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When the Anglo-American forces invaded Iraq in 2003 they discovered that everything that Kamel had told them back in 1995 was true: Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
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The two defectors were not the most gracious of house guests. Prince Talal bin Muhammad, Hussein's nephew and national security adviser, painted a particularly unflattering picture of Hussein Kamel:

He became increasingly truculent when he realized that the Americans were only interested in him for the information he could provide. He thought that the Americans would depose Saddam and have him as the head of Iraq. He also realized that the Iraqi opposition would not go anywhere near him because he stank of blood. He got increasingly disenchanted and stopped cooperating with us. He would sit up and play cards with the Jordanian guards at Al-Hashimiyya Palace and talk about his time at the top. He was semi-literate. He came with his brother Saddam Kamel, who was married to President Saddam's other daughter. There were about twelve children at different ages so we set up a school at Al-Hashimiyya Palace for them. The king's daughters, Alia and Zain, looked after the women. The men had lots of weapons and cash with them. They were not dependent on us. They would get drunk every night, and their guns would be lying around. They would make jokes about the massacres that they had committed against the Shia and Kurds. He was proud that he had killed 30,000 of his people in one day. This is the kind of scum that he was.
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After six months of increasingly exasperating behaviour, Hussein Kamel and his brother decided to go back to Iraq. His decision came as
a relief to his Jordanian hosts, as he had long overstayed his welcome. Forty-eight hours after their return to Iraq, the two brutal brothers were shot and dismembered on Saddam's orders. The women and children were spared. Relations between Iraq and Jordan remained tense and troubled, and rumours continued to circulate about Iraqi plans of attack. The challenge to the Iraqi regime reflected a more assertive and independent regional policy on the part of Jordan. It rang the alarm bells in Damascus and Cairo, and it prompted the presidents of both countries to rebuke Jordan for meddling in Iraq's internal affairs.

The Egyptians were also critical of Hussein for proceeding too fast towards normalization with Israel. This issue was aired at the second Middle East North Africa Summit (MENA) convened in Amman at the end of October 1995. Hundreds of government officials and business leaders from the region, North America, Europe and Asia attended this conference. Its goal was to facilitate the expansion of private sector investment in the region, to cement public–private partnership, and to work to enhance regional cooperation and development. The Jordanian hosts appeared in a confident mood, presenting 137 projects for which they sought foreign investment of $1.2 billion. From the Jordanian point of view, the summit was a success. Hussein hailed it as ‘a landmark where we tried to present Jordan and Israel in a state of peace, and hopefully as a step towards comprehensive peace in the area to the world, and to call the world to come and be our partners… to benefit with us in the dividends of peace'.
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Amr Musa, the Egyptian foreign minister, struck a dissonant note in his opening speech. He warned against hurrying towards normalization before Israel accepted a Palestinian state, withdrew from Syrian and Lebanese territories, and removed the threat of weapons of mass destruction from the region. To Hussein this appeared like an attempt to undermine the summit, so he replied that they should not walk but run to peace. He also reminded Musa that Egypt was the country that had broken ranks and entered into full peace sixteen years earlier.
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Hussein's hopes for a better future suffered a shattering setback with the assassination of Itzhak Rabin. On Saturday evening, 4 November 1995, at a peace rally in Tel Aviv's largest square, a right-wing Jewish fanatic fired three bullets at the prime minister at close range. His aim was to derail the peace process and to put an end to the withdrawal from the Land of Israel. Rabin was rushed to hospital, where he died an
hour later from his wounds. He was seventy-three years old. In his jacket pocket was found a neatly folded sheet of paper with the words of a song he had sung in the rally – ‘The Song of Peace'. It was stained by his blood and pierced by one of the assassin's bullets.

The assassination of Israel's prime minister was a catastrophe for Hussein on every level. In a letter of condolence to Israel's president, Ezer Weizman, Hussein spoke of the loss of a true friend and a true champion of peace. ‘I shall always remember him,' he wrote, ‘as my dedicated colleague and fellow shepherd of the Jordanian-Israeli peace process.'
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Rabin was buried with full military honours on Mount Herzl, Israel's national cemetery. Leaders from over eighty countries gathered in Jerusalem at a day's notice to pay homage to the fallen leader. Several Arab countries were represented: Egypt by President Mubarak; Jordan by King Hussein, Oman, Qatar, Tunisia and Morocco by their foreign ministers. Bill Clinton spoke at the graveside, ending his eulogy with two Hebrew words
Shalom, haver,
‘Peace, friend.' Hussein's words at the graveside resonated round the world. He mourned his friend with a eulogy that was both eloquent and rich in historical resonance. More than any of the other Arab guests, the king felt the poignancy of the moment. He was in Jerusalem for the first time since 1967 to pay homage to the commander who had led Israel's forces in the June War. ‘We are not ashamed,' said the king, ‘nor are we afraid, nor are we anything but determined to continue the legacy for which my friend fell, as did my grandfather in this city when I was with him and but a boy.'
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