World Peace News: Top Stories

Jordanians share Palestinian despondency on peace
by Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

Reuters Translate This Article
29 November 2009

AMMAN (Reuters) - Outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip, despair at the failure of years of U.S.-led Middle East peacemaking is perhaps felt nowhere more keenly than in Jordan.

'The Palestinians are cornered,' said Taher al-Masri, a former Jordanian prime minister of Palestinian origin who is now deputy speaker of the kingdom's upper house of parliament.

'They have to look for alternatives other than just calling for negotiations. It doesn't mean they have to go to war, but depending on the good faith of the Americans or Europeans or on a positive Israeli response has ended now,' he added.

Jordan, a small aid-dependent country with many Palestinians among its 6 million people, has for years hitched itself to Washington in the hope that its U.S. ally would one day cajole Israel into accepting Arab demands for an end to occupation and the emergence of a Palestinian state in exchange for peace.

The peace treaty the late King Hussein signed with Israel in 1994 was never popular with his subjects and, 15 years on, even those who once backed the 'peace process' now view it as futile.

President Barack Obama's failure to secure his own demand that Israel stop building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is seen here as a humiliating sign that U.S. diplomacy can never achieve the far harder goal of a two-state solution.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Joudeh last week dismissed as 'insufficient' a 10-month Israeli halt to some construction in West Bank settlements, excluding those in East Jerusalem.

Obama's Cairo speech in June briefly raised hopes among some Arabs that the new president grasped their grievances and might adopt a less Israel-indulgent policy than his predecessor.

LET DOWN BY OBAMA

'The frustration, the disappointment, was biggest with Jordan,' said Nawaf Tell, a Foreign Ministry official who heads the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan.

'But Jordan will continue to invest in a serious peace effort irrespective,' he added. 'We don't have a choice.'

In 2002, Jordan joined all Arab states in collectively offering Israel full peace in return for withdrawal to its 1967 border, a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and a just and agreed solution for refugees.

King Abdullah still insists that the 'cornerstone for peace' is the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

'Israel should choose between peace that ensures its security and recognition, in accordance with the Arab peace initiative, and sticking to the fortress mentality in a region that faces the potential of continuous conflicts,' he told a delegation from the Israeli lobby group AIPAC this month.

Nevertheless, Jordanian policymakers are acutely aware of the dangers of ploughing on with a U.S.-led pursuit of a two-state solution that looks ever more divorced from reality.

'All moderates, all those who invest in the peace effort, have been weakened by Israeli actions,' Tell said. 'I wouldn't call it a vulnerability specific to Jordan.'

The kingdom, which hosts 1.7 million refugee and displaced Palestinians, suspects Israel has no interest in trading land for peace, only in endless negotiations that will buy it more time to tighten its grip on East Jerusalem and the West Bank—land captured from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war.

The advent of a right-wing Israeli government whose foreign minister has in the past urged the 'transfer', or expulsion, of West Bankers has revived old nightmares for Palestinians and for East Bank Jordanians who fear such an influx would eclipse them.

RECIPE FOR VIOLENCE

'It is extremely important to establish a Palestinian state for our future,' said Marouf al-Bakhit, a former prime minister who previously served as Jordan's ambassador to Israel.

'But with this Israeli government it is difficult. It is the perfect recipe for violence and deadlock in the peace process.'

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded that all Israeli settlement building stop before negotiations resume.

His Western-backed administration in Ramallah has decided instead to seek U.N. Security Council support for setting up a state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Rival Hamas Islamists who control Gaza say the plan is a waste of time.

Jordanian politicians acknowledge that such a move is likely to be doomed to failure but sympathise with the desperation that has spawned a rash of ideas to escape stagnation in peacemaking.

They include dissolving the Palestinian Authority set up under the 1993 Oslo accords, unilaterally declaring a state based on 1967 borders, or demanding Palestinian citizenship in a single state in all of pre-1948 British mandate Palestine.

'I believe a bi-national, democratic state is a viable option,' said Masri. 'I know the Israelis will not accept it, but what else can the Palestinians do? They tried everything.'

There is no chance of a Palestinian state worthy of the name emerging from conventional U.S.-brokered talks or any of the floated alternatives, a former senior security official said.

Instead, Jordan would ultimately be forced permanently to absorb Palestinians already living on its soil, as well as those likely to be squeezed into exile from the West Bank, he said.

Jordan will strive hard to avert any such a scenario, but many evoke the dangers of continued deadlock in peace efforts.

'Paralysis will lead to violence. We have no illusions about that,' said Tell, of the Center for Strategic Studies.

Any such eruption among the Palestinians would make life uncomfortable for Arab governments, especially U.S. allies.

'Public opinion in Arab countries is getting more and more frustrated. Even the moderate governments have to appease their public opinion, which is getting more outspoken,' Tell said.

Perceived injustice to the Palestinians also fuels Islamic militancy as far away as Pakistan and Afghanistan, argued Masri.

'Every Arab leader has been telling the world, start with the Palestinian question and even terrorism can be contained.'

(Editing by Dominic Evans)

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