Behind the Headlines Debate over Jordan’s Role in the Autonomy Talks

President Anwar Sadat’s recent assertion that Jordan is not at this juncture, a fit partner to the Israeli-Egyptian-U.S. negotiations for Palestinian autonomy has revived debate here over the “Jordanian option” which has been strongly favored by the opposition Labor Party as the best means of settling the future of the West Bank and its Palestinian populace.

Sadat expressed his views in the course of a meeting with former Premier Yitzhak Rabin in Cairo last week. It was headline news in Israel, especially since Rabin is the chief rival of Shimon Peres for leadership of the Labor Party. Peres, the party chairman, lost no time raising the issue in the labor Party’s political committee immediately after the Rosh Hashanah” holiday. He invited leading scholars and experts on the Middle East and Arab affairs to speak at the political forum.

They included Prof. Itamar Rabinowitz, head of Tel Aviv University’s Shiloah Institute, who spoke of the Jordanian option from the regional viewpoint; Prof. Shimon Shamir, former head of the Shiloah Institute, who recently visited Egypt, analyzed the Egyptian point of view; and Prof. Amnon Cohen of Hebrew. University, a former advisor an Arab affairs to the Defense Minister, who discussed the pro-Jordan elements in the occupied territories. Asher Sessar a Tel Aviv University researcher, reported on the rift between Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Peres himself defended the Jordanian option as the best of four possibilities. He said the others were talks with the population of the territories; postponement of any decision on the future of the territories; of talks with the PLO.

SAYS JORDANIAN OPTION REMAINS VALID

— According to Peres, the Jordanian option remains valid, based on previous agreements with King Hussein, Jordan’s ties and investments on the West Bank and statements by leading foreign diplomats in favor of a solution through negotiations with Jordan. In that connection, Peres referred to former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger former Undersecretary of State Joseph Sisco and the former British Prime Minister James Callaghan, who spoke in favor of the Jordanian option after meetings with Hussein.

Peres criticized the Likud and Premier Menachem Begin in particular for claiming that the Labor Party, by adopting a Jordanian option, would bring about a PLO-ruled Palestinian state. On the contrary, Begin’s autonomy plan presents the real danger of such an outcome, Peres said, because without Jordan, only the PLO is left. He observed that Israel cannot appear before the world always as a purveyor of the negative and with an autonomy plan without partners.