The ‘Jordan Option’: an Illusion Played Out : Palestinians and Israelis Are Left to Confront What Others Always Knew: They Must Talk

To those familiar with the long history of relations between Jordan’s Hashemite rulers and Palestinian Arabs, King Hussein’s most recent decision to break off ties with the West Bank should not have been surprising.

The king’s relations with the Palestinians have always been ambiguous and indecisive. When he proposed a federated Arab kingdom of two autonomous regions --Jordan and Palestine--in 1972, a scheme nearly identical to today’s so-called Jordan option, it sparked protest demonstrations throughout the West Bank. Hussein then was accused by Palestinian nationalists of cooperation with “Zionism and imperialism.” Not only the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinians of the occupied territories, but also the rest of the Arab world and even Israel rejected the plan.

King Hussein’s lack of popularity was demonstrated again in 1976 when pro-Hashemite candidates were soundly trounced by supporters of the PLO in an election of West Bank mayoralties and local councils. This caused Israel to postpone indefinitely such elections. This year the intifada has all but obliterated remaining pockets of pro-Jordanian sentiment in the territories and finally brought home to Hussein, to the Israelis and, hopefully, to the U.S. government the futility of watering down Palestinian nationalist--that is, PLO--political influence in the West Bank and Gaza.

Yet while Palestinians have been cool if not downright hostile to Jordan’s claims of political suzerainty, they have freely accepted more than $50 million a year in subsidies to thousands of government employees in the territories, the right to travel abroad on Jordanian passports, half the seats in Jordan’s Parliament and many high-level Jordanian government and Cabinet posts. It could be argued that these benefits accrue to a relatively small number, but the salaries paid since December have been an invaluable asset in helping to overcome the economic setback caused by the intifada.

So it seems that the king has finally thrown down the gauntlet, challenging his West Bank subjects to choose overtly between him and the PLO. It remains to be seen whether the PLO or some other benefactor can replace Hashemite largess. Although the king has not yet cut off the flow of money or canceled Palestinian passport and citizenship privileges, these can no longer be taken for granted. The 450-member Palestine National Council, the PLO’s highest decision-making body (like a parliament-in-exile) has been requested to convene an emergency meeting to deal with the new situation--which some perceive as a crisis, others as an opportunity.

Whatever, it should demonstrate to all that the “Jordan option” as a basis for a peace settlement is a non-starter.

Attempts to circumvent Hussein in peace negotiations have been evident for the past year, even before the intifada . Since November there have been direct talks on terms of a settlement between certain members of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud Bloc and West Bank Palestinians who are generally recognized as leaders and spokesmen for the PLO within the territories. The most notable of these were the discussions between Moshe Amirav, a member of the Israeli parliament, and Faisal Husseini, the director of the Arab Studies Center in East Jerusalem and perhaps the Palestinian with the largest current following. Husseini and Amirav worked out a detailed plan for a two-state (Israel-Palestine) solution to the conflict. Amirav has claimed that Shamir was aware of his Palestinian contacts and that the prime minister even carried a copy of the plan to Bucharest last year for discussion with Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu. This, however, did not constitute approval; when the plan was published in the Israeli press, Shamir renounced it and Amirav was expelled from Likud. Husseini has since been in and out of jail, charged by the Israeli military with subversion.

I met separately with both Husseini and Amirav before Husseini’s latest arrest in July. Each emphasized even more emphatically his support for the most recent peace proposal, the document distributed at the last Palestine National Council meeting by Bassam Abu Sharif, one of Yasser Arafat’s closest advisers. Until now Arafat has neither openly commended nor condemned Abu Sharif’s proposal. But both Amirav and Husseini have publicly called for Israel and the PLO to accept it, most recently at a public meeting on July 26 in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem.

The meeting was the first time in which a Palestinian figure like Faisal Husseini came to a largely Jewish audience to lay out proposals for a reasonable settlement. It might be compared, on a smaller scale, to Anwar Sadat’s November, 1977, visit to Jerusalem. Within two days of his peace mission, Husseini was once again arrested and his Arab Studies Center closed by the Israeli military.

Even if the Amirav-Husseini contacts are aborted, they should finally lay to rest the frequently cited canard in Jerusalem and Washington that “there is no one to negotiate with.” The events mentioned here clearly demonstrate that King Hussein is neither the only nor the most appropriate interlocutor between Israel and the Palestinians in an Israeli-Arab peace settlement.