Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril (2 page)

 

The prevailing approach in past peace efforts has been for all sides to take incremental steps, to work on small issues and leave the tough ones, like the final status of Jerusalem, to a later date. The problem is that we will never get to the end if we keep kicking the big problems down the road. We need to resolve immediately the final status issues: Jerusalem, refugees, borders, and security. At this point, it is our only hope of rescuing the two-state solution. There is no other option.

I have been highly critical at times of Israel’s behavior and intransigence, but it goes without saying that there is plenty of blame to go around on both sides for the failure of the peace process. Arabs and Israelis need to recognize each other’s respective needs. A two-state solution is predicated on the recognition by Israelis of the rights of the Palestinians to freedom and statehood and the recognition by Palestinians and the rest of the Muslim world of Israel’s right to security. We have no choice but to live together. Both sides have a moral responsibility to strive for peace. They also have a very compelling pragmatic imperative to do so: the alternative is more conflict and violence.

Geography, history, and international law all dictate that Jordan should be involved in the process of finding a solution to the conflict. We are home to over 1.9 million Palestinian refugees, the most of any country, and have friendly relations with Israel’s Arab neighbors and the United States. We are also one of only two Arab countries to have a peace treaty with Israel.

Resolution of the Palestinian conflict is the key to normalizing relations between Israel and the entire Muslim world. My father, in the last years of his reign, developed a proposal offering Israel a comprehensive peace with all twenty-two Arab countries in return for full Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab land and the establishment of a Palestinian state. Unfortunately, his proposal did not gain momentum, and it stalled with his death. On becoming king, I revived my father’s plan and had our government discuss it with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Eventually the Saudis developed the idea and took it one step further, when Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud presented it to the Arab League Summit in Beirut in 2002. The summit collectively adopted the Saudi proposal, which came to be known as the Arab Peace Initiative.

The initiative called for full Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories occupied since 1967, a negotiated settlement of the issue of Palestinian refugees, and the establishment of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. In return, all twenty-two Arab countries said they would “consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.” In addition, they stated, they would “establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.” I was surprised that the Israelis, and even some members of the American administration, shot down the initiative out of hand. My later discussions with many of them showed that they had not even read it. On the issues of refugees, for example, the initiative proposed “the achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly resolution 194.” The operative words here are “agreed upon”; when I would mention that to the Israelis, they would say “oh,” and some would admit they had never bothered to look at the text. The Arab Peace Initiative was subsequently approved by all fifty-seven member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). Unfortunately, Israel never took it seriously and never acknowledged it for the unprecedented opportunity it represented. We are still stuck in the old ways, negotiating lower-priority issues and putting off the difficult decisions. Israel seems to feel it has all the time in the world. But its delays, reversals, and stalling tactics have come at a price.

The events of the last eleven years have destroyed confidence on both sides. Today the credibility of the peace process is in tatters. And once trust has vanished completely between the two sides, it may prove impossible to rebuild. All friends of Israel should encourage it to engage fully and expeditiously to make peace. And the United States, as an old, true friend of Israel, should not hesitate to push, aggressively if needed, to get both sides to the negotiating table and to reach a final settlement.

The American president, Barack Obama, with his willingness to listen and to offer an outstretched hand to the Muslim and Arab world, opened up a brief window of hope. But Arabs and Palestinians are frustrated that so little concrete progress has been made. President Obama has been criticized for pressing Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to freeze settlements, and American prestige in the region was hurt by Israel’s intransigence. But it would be a terrible mistake for Obama to pull back. If America does not exert its moral and political strength now to broker a two-state solution, we may never see another such chance. The window is closing, and if we do not act soon, future generations will condemn our failure to seize this last chance for peace.

Peace for its own sake would be prize enough. But in my mind, I see benefits that far outweigh that precious commodity. There can be little doubt that terrorist organizations exploit the injustice resulting from the continuation of occupation. Resolving this conflict would deprive these organizations of their appeal. Many will argue that the hatred sown and nurtured by extremist factions on both sides in the Holy Land cannot be overcome. But history has shown that peace can prevail even among the fiercest of enemies. Not long ago observers might have thought that tensions across the Berlin Wall or between the factions in Northern Ireland would never be eased—and yet those struggles are now mostly memories. Why not aim to do the same in the Middle East?

Bringing peace is not the only struggle we face. Among our greatest challenges are political reform and the improvement of our economies. We need to learn to make things the rest of the world wants to buy, and to raise the living standards for all our people. Providing proper education and good jobs for young people is one of the most effective defenses against the siren call of the extremists. We cannot afford to have so many unemployed young men. And we must let women play a greater role in our economies. The impulse to hold women back for so-called religious or cultural reasons, to keep them out of the workforce, comes from a deep insecurity. It is unacceptable for half of society to be denied their rights and for half the workforce to stay at home.

Think of a world where the managerial expertise of the Israelis, the professionalism of the Jordanians, Lebanese entrepreneurship, and the education of the Palestinians could be combined effectively. I see the association of these potential partners as producing a regional economic powerhouse—a Middle Eastern Benelux. All this can be achieved. But the situation on the ground is rapidly getting away from us, rendering this outcome more and more unlikely. If current trends are not reversed soon, there will be no land left to swap for peace—no reason for Palestinians to cast their lot with moderate leaders rather than with the extremists. Our future will be doomed to war and conflict.

There is a tendency in life and in politics to default to the status quo. But in this case the seeming stability is misleading. I hear the mounting frustration and anger, and I fear it will soon eclipse all dreams of peace and reconciliation. I do not think most Americans and Europeans recognize the urgency of the situation. It is because of this sense of urgency that I have decided to write this book. In the eleven years since I succeeded my father, I have seen and learned a great deal. I am determined to share my story openly and honestly, in the hope that it can help make a difference.

 

In my region, we live history, for better and for worse. What may seem abstract and intangible at a distance is part of the fabric of our everyday lives. I have decided that the best and most persuasive way to tell this story is through the story of my own life—by sharing what I have seen, what I have done—to show how the personal and the political are often intertwined.

I never intended to hold the position I am now entrusted with, and expected instead that I would spend my life in the army. Part of my story is about that military experience and what it taught me about Jordan and about leadership more generally. I have tried to tell my story simply, using the straightforward language and imagery of a military man rather than the long-winded phrases and vocabulary beloved by politicians.

I hope in this book to challenge some of the false ideas about the region in which I live. Too often, when people in the West hear the words “Arab,” “Muslim,” or “Middle East” they think of terrorism, suicide bombers, and wild-eyed fanatics hiding in caves. But I want them to associate our region with multimillion-dollar IT start-ups in Jordan, Nobel literature prize winners in Egypt, and the historic architecture of Damascus.

One of the most dangerous ideas to have emerged in recent years is the suggestion that the West and the Muslim world are two separate blocs, heading inevitably on a collision course with each other. This concept is ill-informed, inflammatory, and wrong. For over a thousand years Muslims, Jews, and Christians have lived together peacefully, enriching one another’s cultures. For sure, there have been conflicts, such as the Crusades or the European colonization of many Middle Eastern countries after World War I. But these are political, rooted in the motivations of a certain time and context, rather than manifestations of an eternal cultural hostility.

After my military education at Sandhurst, I served for a year in Britain’s 13th/18th Hussars, a proud regiment that traces its history back to almost six decades before the battle of Waterloo. The regiment also fought bravely in the Crimean War in the nineteenth century. In that conflict, made famous by Alfred Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Britain and France fought alongside the Ottoman Empire to protect it from invasion by the Russians. More than half of the Ottoman Empire’s thirty million subjects were Christian, with many serving in the Ottoman army. And Muslim soldiers fought bravely on both sides of the conflict, including in the French and Russian armies.

This pernicious idea of a clash of cultures bleeds into the modern political arena, giving strength to extremists on all sides and empowering those who wish to set men and armies against each other. If an Algerian, an Afghan, or a Jordanian carries out a terrorist attack, he is inevitably described in the West as a “Muslim terrorist.” But if a similar attack is carried out by an Irishman or a Sri Lankan, they are rarely called a “Christian terrorist” or a “Hindu terrorist.” Rather, they are described according to the political motivations of their group, as an Irish Republican Army activist or a Tamil separatist.

People with a narrow view of history assume that the way things are now is the way they have always been. But the economic and technological ascendancy of the West is relatively recent, born out of an amazing flourishing of innovation in Europe and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To those who take a longer view, things can look quite different. In the Middle Ages, when Washington, D.C., was just a swamp, the great cities of Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Damascus were the world’s leading centers of learning and knowledge. Over the centuries, the pendulum of history swung toward the West, and by the twentieth century the Arab world had fallen far behind.

My family, the Hashemites, are descended from the Prophet Mohammad, and for generations have been leaders and rulers in our region. In the sixth century, my ancestor Qusai was the first ruler of Mecca. My heritage is one of tolerance and acceptance of different cultures and faiths. The Holy Quran says:

I have never felt that interacting with Western culture comes at the expense of my identity as an Arab or a Muslim. As somebody born in the East but educated in the West, I feel a deep affinity for both cultures. My hope is that this book can, in a small way, act as a bridge between them. All too often extremists on both sides frame the discussion and dominate the debate. All too often the voices of moderate Arabs are drowned out by those who shout the loudest. I will not shout, but I do want my message to be heard. I want to tell the world that while there are great problems in our region, there is also cause for hope.

O
ne constant in my life ever since I was a small child has been the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Some people in the West and Israel like to portray this as the continuation of a centuriesold struggle. They are wrong. It is a relatively recent conflict, rooted in Jewish immigration into Palestine in the early twentieth century. In the Middle East, perhaps more than any other place, history matters, though far too many people use historical grievances as an excuse for not dealing with current problems. If you want to understand where you are going, it helps to know where you have come from. So before I try to explain the situation we find ourselves in today, and offer some suggestions on how to get out of the current stalemate, I would like to say a few words about the distance we have come.

As the Ottoman Empire, which extended over much of the Middle East from the early sixteenth century, was taking its last breath toward the end of World War I, the Arabs began to follow new nationalist leaders. One of these was my great-great-grandfather, Sharif Hussein bin Ali, the sharif of Mecca. A member of the Hashemite family, which had ruled Mecca since the tenth century, Sharif Hussein was an outspoken supporter of Arab nationalism. He was believed by other Arab nationalists to have the religious status and political experience to lead the Arab nationalist movement and the planned revolt against Ottoman rule, and to represent his people in negotiations with the British to secure an independent Arab state. His role was formalized by the Charter of Damascus in 1915. Negotiations between Sharif Hussein and the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, resulted in the secret Hussein-McMahon correspondence of 1915-16 in which Sharif Hussein was promised support for a united and independent Arab kingdom under his rule. The agreement with McMahon was later subject to differing interpretations by the British and Arabs.