End the Myth of the ‘Threat From the East’

Now that the 40-day Islamic mourning period for Jordan’s King Hussein is over, it is time to reassess the Jordanian-Israeli relationship, so critical to Mideast peace. Unfortunately, the new king has been greeted by unsettling developments.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu created a furor on the eve of his visit to meet King Abdullah II in Amman last month when he suggested that Israel would have to deploy troops along the Jordan River because of the threat posed against Israel from the east, meaning of course Iraq.

This position ignores the state of Jordan, which lies between any future Palestinian state and the Iraqi border. Netanyahu’s statement is neither an election gimmick nor a momentary lapse of judgment. As his 1993 book, “Israel Among the Nations,” makes clear, he has consistently made this argument, and so have others who oppose a Palestinian state.

The mythology of the “threat from the east” is a vital brick in the ideological architecture of those opposed to the peace process. Without it, there is no strategic reason to oppose territorial compromise on the West Bank. Thus, the peace process skeptics must believe that Jordan is either uncommitted to peace with Israel, that it is too weak to rebuff an Arab partner bent on mischief with Israel or that the West Bank Palestinians will take over Jordan and turn it into an appendage of their interests--and that West Bank interests mean war.

These fears, often expressed in Israel from the political right, are of course deeply insulting to Jordan. At worst, they depend on a deep-seated fear among many Jews that no Arab can be trusted.

In truth, these fears are simply invalid and are based on a series of strategic misconceptions which lie at the heart of opposition to the Middle East peace process by many who are strongly committed to Israel.

They demonstrate complete misunderstanding of the future strategic situation facing Israel: the existential certainty that a future conflict is likely to involve countries that possess weapons of mass destruction. Iraq would not seriously be in a position to attack Israel unless it had chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons mounted on missiles. Therefore if the Palestinians invited Iraq to the West Bank or Gaza, they would risk the destruction of their homeland should Israel and Iraq go to war. Indeed, why should Iraq even send troops to the West Bank when Baghdad would find it easier to attack Israel from a distance with missiles? Any missiles placed on Palestinian territories by Iraq would be far more vulnerable to Israeli attacks than missiles fired from home bases.

Once discovered, they would jeopardize the future of the Palestinian state. Following this logic, no Palestinian leader would have any interest in allowing the missiles in the first place.

Instead of focusing on the infinitesimal strategic threat a Palestinian state would pose, Israeli leaders would be far better advised to pay attention to the dawning long-range threat from weapons of mass destruction delivered from Iran, Syria, Iraq or even Libya.

But let us say for a moment that for some reason a Palestinian leadership invited Iraqi troops in. Practically, they could only reach the West Bank by traversing Jordan. That means the Palestinian invitation would amount to a declaration of war on Jordan as well as on Israel. It strains credulity to think that a Palestinian leader would simultaneously take on these two states; logically, he first must overthrow or undermine the Jordanian government before inviting Iraqi troops.

Therefore, the danger is not who controls the West Bank but who controls Jordan. Thus, what critics of the peace process and skeptics of Jordan fail to understand is that Israel’s real strategic borders are not the Jordan River or the boundaries with any future Palestinian state, but rather Jordan’s boundaries with Iraq and Syria. Strategic depth for Israel lies not in control of the West Bank but in the integrity of Jordan’s borders; a stable Jordan as part of a moderate bloc and at peace with Israel means Jordanian land and air space are denied to potential aggressors.

Given the critical importance of Jordan to Israeli security, the next question is easy to ask and to answer: What can Israel do to strengthen the current regime? Israel should vigorously promote the peace process and economic development in Jordan by accelerating implementation of existing trade agreements. In this light, Israel’s unilateral announcement that it was cutting previously agreed upon water sharing because of the current drought was a grave error.

As is widely acknowledged, poverty--not Iraq or the Palestinians--remains the greatest threat to the Hashemite kingdom.

Americans and Israelis opposed to the peace process have used the “threat through Jordan” as a policy of no compromise with the Palestinians.

It is a mischievous impediment to strategic thinking in the region. Indeed, mischief is its very purpose.