Jordanians Lose Sense of Security

King Hussein has ruled Jordan for 45 years with a mixture of benevolence and firm-handedness, winning public trust by providing the stability and security lacking in most of the Arab world. But nothing has shaken that trust like Israel’s attempted assassination of a Hamas leader in downtown Amman last month.

Just how secure are we, Jordanians suddenly are asking, if Israeli intelligence agents try to knock off a Jordanian citizen in the capital? Where is our stability, they are demanding to know, if Israel signs a peace treaty with us and then violates our sovereignty?

Hussein accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of stabbing him in the back with the attack on Khaled Meshaal, a political leader of the extremist Islamic movement. But to many Jordanians, the strike left the Hashemite king looking like a dupe.

“Israel’s use of political violence inside Jordan has really challenged the regime,” said Radwan Abdullah, a political scientist who echoes what many Jordanians are saying privately. “It is taken as a challenge of the ability of the regime to maintain security and stability.”

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No one suggests that the monarchy is losing its legitimacy or its grip. Hussein is in close contact with the people and in charge of a vast, effective security apparatus. Although there are no reliable public opinion polls, he still seems to have support--particularly as Jordanians compare their situation with more repressive alternatives across the border in Syria and Iraq.

But political analysts say the Meshaal affair has brought public antipathy for the peace treaty with Israel to a high and has eroded confidence in the king at a time of deepening discontent over the country’s internal problems.

Jordanians already were angry over their troubled economy, alleged government corruption, a restrictive press law imposed this year and upcoming legislative elections that are seen as a setback for efforts to democratize Jordan.

The opposition--led by the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood--is boycotting Tuesday’s vote because it says it has been unable to wrest any real power from the government through the electoral system that was launched in 1989. Thus, the vote has lost credibility even before it takes place, and this, along with the Meshaal affair, has prompted fears of a radicalization of an Islamic movement that has maintained good relations with the king until now.

“Just one undesirable repercussion of the current mistake is the shift of Hamas and the Islamic parties to the center political stage in Jordan to a degree that would have been unimaginable beforehand,” Shimon Shamir, Israel’s former ambassador to Jordan, wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently.

In exchange for the agents who were captured after the botched job by the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, Netanyahu released the jailed spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, strengthening a radical movement that rejects all peacemaking with Israel.

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Hussein’s 1994 treaty with Israel has never been popular among Jordanians, about two-thirds of whom are Palestinians originally from the West Bank. Many people felt the king should have waited to make peace with Israel until the Jewish state ended its occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Others accepted the treaty but were disappointed when it failed to produce the economic benefits that Hussein and the Israeli government had said would follow.

Now some members of Jordan’s elite say they feel that the king’s ego and desire to play a regional role have clouded his judgment. Jordan has made a strategic alliance with Israel, they say, but the attack in Amman demonstrates that Israel--or at least Netanyahu--does not value Jordan as a strategic ally.

Jordan and Israel began a quiet alliance in the early 1960s. But the political dialogue between them began to break down under Netanyahu when Israel opened a new tunnel door in Jerusalem’s Old City in September 1996 without first informing the king. Relations worsened over the protracted negotiations for an Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank city of Hebron, and over Israeli construction of a new Jewish neighborhood in historically Arab East Jerusalem.

Disregard for the king and threats to the survival of the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements renewed Hussein’s fears about the stability of his own country. He has long worried that an upheaval in the West Bank would send another wave of Palestinians into Jordan and threaten Hashemite rule.

“The only channel of dialogue that remained intact was the covert channel, in which the Mossad and other [Israeli agencies] held ongoing discussions with Jordanian counterparts,” Shamir wrote. “Nonetheless, Netanyahu’s decision to approve the failed attack against Meshaal in Amman struck a serious blow to the covert dialogue, which would have been the case even if the operation had gone as planned.”

Jordan sent the remaining Mossad agents packing.

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Despite this major setback, Shamir and other political analysts say they believe that continued common interests--and Jordan’s ongoing feeling of vulnerability--make it unlikely that Hussein will surrender the peace treaty with Israel to Jordanian public opinion.

Jordanian officials say that Hussein distinguishes between peace with Israel and relations with Netanyahu. By condemning the Meshaal attack publicly and responding moderately, the king proved his commitment to peace and focused international criticism on Netanyahu.

That doesn’t help much at home, where Jordanians increasingly feel they do not understand their king.

“I used to know what the king thinks, but I don’t now,” said Taher Masri, onetime speaker of the legislature. “I think he still thinks his charisma and support of the people is high enough to draw on . . . that he can absorb and dilute frustrations. . . . But things are much more complicated now.”

A former prime minister, Masri represented Jordan at the 1991 Mideast peace conference in Madrid and supported the treaty with Israel. Now he has doubts about the prospects for both peace and democracy in Jordan.

The Meshaal attack “highlighted the fact that Israel is penetrating our national security. All unnecessary cooperation with Israel should be slowed,” he said.

Masri, a centrist, said he decided to join the Islamic boycott of the upcoming elections because “the channels of communication with the king have been disrupted for a long time. We’ve tried dialogue through normal channels, but they were being closed.”

After a devaluation of the Jordanian dinar led to popular unrest in 1989, Hussein launched a process of democratization with parliamentary elections. Much to his surprise, the Islamic Action Front won the largest bloc, with 19 seats in the 80-member legislature. The rest were tribal leaders and independent politicians largely loyal to the king.

For the next elections, in 1993, the regime changed the election law in a manner clearly meant to diminish the strength of the opposition. The Islamic Action Front’s share of the legislature dropped to 16 members. When the government refused to reverse the election law for this week’s vote, the opposition pulled out.

In eight years, the Islamic opposition had been unable to pass any of its proposals in parliament or to keep the government from imposing some others. It could not block the increase in bread prices in August 1996 that led to mass rioting. Nor was it able to block amendments to stiffen a 1993 Press and Publication Law that bans media criticism of the king, royal family, security forces and heads of friendly states.

The reason for the election and press laws, political observers say, is growing dissatisfaction over issues such as the peace process with Israel.

“The Jordanian process of democratization was initiated by the king. It comes from above,” said Asher Susser, a historian and Israeli expert on Jordan. “The monarchy offered it, and what they give they can take back. It was not instituted to erode the monarchy. When they feel it eroding, they pull back.”