Israel, Jordan Stepping Up Cooperation on West Bank

When workmen plowed through the 35 sacks of rubbish that had accumulated in the entryway over the years and re-entered the office of the Cairo-Amman Bank here the other day, they found a desk calendar opened to June 7, 1967.

On that day, the second day of the 1967 Middle East War, known as the Six-Day War, Israeli troops were sweeping through what had been Jordanian territory here on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

“We came in the early morning that day, and the rumor was that the Israeli army was coming,” the bank’s branch manager, Medhat Kanaan, recalled. “So we closed up and went home.”

The doors stayed locked until late last month, when the Israeli occupation authorities announced that an agreement had been reached with Amman to reopen the bank under parallel Israeli-Jordanian supervision.

Workmen are still scrubbing and painting, but the branch is expected to welcome its first customers next week, not only as the first Arab bank to operate here since 1967 but also as the most extraordinary example yet of cooperation between Israel and Jordan in the administration of the occupied territories.

Even though the two nations are still technically at war, there has long been a degree of tacit cooperation between them over the Delaware-size bulge of contested land on the West Bank. But Jordan has always been cautious lest it appear to be endorsing the Israeli occupation.

Now, however, the cooperation has reached new heights in the wake of Jordanian King Hussein’s break with the Palestine Liberation Organization last February. Jordan has begun actively asserting itself on the West Bank, and Israel has welcomed the change.

On Sept. 28, Israel appointed Arab mayors to succeed Israeli officials in three large West Bank towns--men who had been approved by Jordan and whose selection was immediately and publicly endorsed in Amman.

PLO sympathizers increasingly find themselves squeezed between the Israeli military authorities on one side and Jordanians, applying economic and administrative pressure, on the other.

Hotbed of Nationalism

The president of Nablus’ An Najah University and the head of its public relations department were recently forced out of their posts in what Palestinian sources describe as a joint move by the two governments. The university is the West Bank’s largest and has long been considered a hotbed of Palestinian nationalism.

In another step that reflects the trend, Jordanian television recently added weather reports for Jerusalem, Nablus, Hebron and other West Bank towns to its nightly English-language newscast.

“I have the feeling it’s all the same country,” a Palestinian businessman in East Jerusalem remarked the other day.

Israeli officials and pro-Jordanian Palestinians alike insist that there is no coordination between the two governments. They say it only looks that way, but since Jordan’s break with the PLO, Amman and Jerusalem have a common interest in supporting what they see as more reasonable Palestinians.

Seen as Traitors

Whether by design or by accident, this common policy carries great risks, particularly for the Palestinians who cooperate with it. They are viewed as traitors by their hard-line compatriots, who see their compromise as capitulation and a betrayal of the dream of an independent Palestinian state.

Speaking of last week’s municipal appointments, former Nablus Mayor Bassam Shaka charged in an interview that the new mayors “do something to help the occupation and against self-determination for the Palestinians.” Shaka lost both legs above the knee in 1980 in a car bomb attack by Jewish terrorists, and in 1982 he was deposed by the Israeli military authorities.

A reminder of the risk is the Israeli army outpost perched atop a six-story building opposite the Cairo-Amman Bank. It is on Zafer Masri Street, which was renamed earlier this year for the man who accepted Israel’s appointment as mayor of Nablus last December and was assassinated three months later by Palestinian extremists.

Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal and George Habash’s Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have already threatened the three new Arab mayors with a similar fate, and several West Bank Palestinians working on behalf of Jordan have hired bodyguards.

Pro-Jordan Official Knifed

On Sept. 26, Dr. Yasser Ubeid, a health official considered to be pro-Jordanian, was wounded by two knife-wielding men outside a Palestinian refugee camp near Ramallah. Political motives are suspected in the attack because Ubeid recently accompanied the Israeli minister of health, Mordechai Gur, on a visit to the same city, and he has appeared on Jordanian television to praise Hussein’s contributions to West Bank health care.

“There will be more Zafer Masris, but in the end, people will vote their interests,” a pro-Jordanian West Banker predicted. He asked not to be identified by name.

What the latest phase of Israeli-Jordanian cooperation on the West Bank amounts to, this source said, is “normalization without agreement,” or, alternately, “Camp David autonomy without Camp David.”

The reference is to the Israeli-Egyptian agreements worked out with U.S. mediation at the presidential retreat outside Washington in 1978. In addition to paving the way for the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty the next year, those agreements envisaged a five-year period of West Bank autonomy during which a permanent solution to the Palestinian problem would be sought.

Want Stronger Presence

“Those that believe in the Jordan option on both the Israeli and Jordanian sides hope that in time--one, two, or three years--there will be a stronger Jordanian presence in the (occupied) territories,” the pro-Jordanian source said.

Under those circumstances, it is hoped, moderate West Bank Palestinians will be willing to join Jordan in negotiations that could end the Israeli occupation.

“Sure, all of us, including me, say the PLO is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” this source added. “The PLO is important as a symbol.” But, as an organization, “they are dealing themselves out.”

That leaves Palestinians on the West Bank with little choice, the source said. “I’m not happy with” the growing Jordanian-Israeli cooperation, he said, “but when I dread the alternative to this, then I accept it; the alternative is an absence of the PLO and Jordan, and the presence of only Israel.”

Complicated Situation

It is too early to judge whether the new Jordanian-Israeli cooperation is succeeding in swaying opinions among the West Bank’s 800,000 Palestinians. A recent poll suggested overwhelming support for the PLO and little liking for King Hussein, but most independent observers say the situation is more complicated than the survey suggests.

“Part of the clout the PLO has in the West Bank is terrorism; part is money,” a senior Israeli government official said. And currently, there is reportedly less PLO money flowing into the occupied territories.

Jordan has announced a $1.3-billion, five-year investment program for the West Bank. But so far, according to Palestinian sources, the money is mostly a promise. The United States has chipped in $4.5 million to date, but King Hussein has made it clear that vastly larger sums must be forthcoming from the West if the program is to meet its target.

Another question is whether the present confluence of Israeli and Jordanian interests on the West Bank will last.

Both See Threat

Both Hussein and Israel see an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank as a security threat--Israel because of long-standing animosity with the PLO, and Hussein because his Hashemite kingdom already has a Palestinian majority and he fears it might be exploited as a fifth column to undermine his throne.

But both are interested, within limits, in improving the quality of life for Palestinians in the occupied territories.

“What Jordan wants is to make life bearable on the West Bank so that people on the West Bank don’t leave for the East Bank,” an East Jerusalem journalist with good contacts in Amman said.

And Israel sees improved living standards as helping to minimize its security problems in the area.

The problem is that many Israelis see the kind of joint, or “condominium,” rule suggested by the current level of Israeli-Jordanian cooperation on the West Bank as the pattern for a final resolution of the Palestinian problem.

Step Toward Confederation

But for Hussein, that is at most an intermediate step on the way to Israeli evacuation of most of the West Bank and the formation of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation there in which Jordan would be the senior partner.

“Jordan can’t live forever with Israeli occupation of the West Bank,” a senior Israeli government official conceded.

In the meantime, the branch office of the Cairo-Amman Bank will provide a test of Israeli-Jordanian cooperation.

“This institution is linked to Jordan, and there is value to commercial ties,” said Shmuel Goren, Israel’s coordinator of activities in the occupied territories. He said Israel hopes the ties “will grow stronger and contribute to quiet, understanding and dialogue, and may also help in the political realm.”

Medhat Kanaan, returning after nearly 20 years as manager of the branch, said that all he wants is that the bank will be able to attract deposits from those West Bankers who now have millions of Jordanian dinars stuffed in sugar bowls or under their mattresses.

“A modern economy can’t work without a banking system,” he said.