Senior PLO Official in Jordan Ordered to Leave

Khalil Wazir, the top-ranking official of the Palestine Liberation Organization here and the deputy to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, said Tuesday that the Jordanian government had given him 48 hours to leave the country.

The expulsion of Wazir, the deputy military commander of the PLO, came a day after Jordan announced the closing of 25 offices belonging to Fatah, the mainstream Palestinian guerrilla faction headed by Arafat.

The Jordanian moves were immediately applauded in Israel. Prime Minister Shimon Peres said Tuesday that the order closing the offices was an “important development because the Fatah in the PLO were the main obstacle to a solution or to discussion” of the Palestinian problem.

The departure of Wazir, who is widely known as Abu Jihad, will be a major blow to the PLO, which is now left without a major official in any country near Israel. Since his arrival here in 1982 from Beirut, Wazir has been in charge of PLO operations in the so-called “occupied territories,” which in Palestinian parlance also includes all of Israel.

Police with submachine guns blocked the entrances to the Fatah offices scattered around Amman on Tuesday, but there was considerable confusion as to whether other PLO offices would be affected.

In announcing the closing of the Fatah offices Monday, a Cabinet statement said other offices of the PLO would be allowed to remain open in Amman. But PLO officials said that at least two other sites, those of the Palestine National Fund and the PLO education office, were also closed Tuesday. The Jordanians said the closings were ordered after Fatah had made unwarranted criticism of Jordanian policies regarding the West Bank of the Jordan River, contending that those policies conformed to American-Israeli “objectives.” Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the Six-Day War of 1967.

The split with Fatah is only the latest step in a general deterioration of relations between Jordan and the PLO that came to the surface last February when Jordan’s King Hussein announced that he was abandoning coordinated peace moves with Arafat because of the PLO’s reluctance to accept U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for peace. The resolutions implicitly accept Israel’s right to exist within secure boundaries.

Reason Called Pretext

Wazir said Tuesday that the reason given for closing the Fatah offices in Amman was a pretext for an overall Jordanian plan to crack down on the PLO.

“The Jordanians want to cut relations with the Palestinian leadership, and then they want to have a free hand for themselves in the occupied territories,” Wazir said in an interview after receiving the expulsion order. “We believe that in this they will fail. Cooperation with us was their best chance to help the people inside.”

Wazir said he will be moving with his family to Tunis, the Tunisian capital, where most of the PLO was forced to resettle in 1982 after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon forced the PLO to flee its Beirut headquarters.

“If I’m not here, it doesn’t mean everything will stop,” Wazir said, referring to guerrilla activity in the Israeli-controlled areas. “In fact, activity will increase. Watch and see.”