King Hussein’s forthright announcement that he has ended his fruitless year-long efforts to bring the Palestine Liberation Organization into the peace process because of continued PLO intransigence was hailed by Israeli leaders Thursday as an “historic opportunity” for the Palestinian people to “take their fate into their own hands.”
Premier Shimon Peres, speaking at Tel Aviv University, called on the Palestinians in the administered territories to “seize the moment.” Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in a television interview Thursday, urged the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to cut themselves away from the PLO and “stand up for yourselves, take care of the 1.25 million Palestinians in the territories and join Hussein in a move to peace.”
Peres, declaring that the prospects for peace have improved, summoned the Palestinians to act immediately. The Jordanian ruler, he said, did the right thing by “exposing the truth about the PLO,” and “a great deal will now depend on the inhabitants of the occupied areas….Will they let time pass, eating away at their fate, or will they take the opportunity, take their fate into their own hands?”
Hussein, in a 3 1/2 hour television address to the Jordanian people Wednesday, expressed in unambiguous terms his frustration with the PLO and its leader, Yasir Arafat. “I and the government of the Kingdom of Jordan announce that we are unable to continue to coordinate politically with the PLO leadership until such time as their word becomes their bond, characterized by commitment, credibility and constancy,” Hussein said.
PALESTINIANS URGED TO SEIZE THE MOMENT
Peres warned the Palestinians that “to follow the PLO is to go nowhere and get nowhere. They’ll kill a few more people; a little more terrorism. But basically they’re killing their own future,” the Premier said. Hussein’s announcement came as “no surprise to me… Two weeks ago I saw already that the Hussein-Arafat talks were a total failure.” The public rift between Hussein and the PLO is “something to rejoice over,” he added.
Rabin stressed in his television appearance that he spoke “as Minister of Defense, the man in charge of the territories, in appealing to the Palestinians in the territories to come forward and, together with Hussein, negotiate with Israel.” He called Hussein’s speech “an opening to peace.”
Rabin observed, “If only five or six West Bank figures would rise up and take up the leadership call, realizing that the PLO has consistently foiled peace efforts, this would bring a breakthrough. What are they waiting for? A miracle? Here is a golden opportunity,” Rabin declared.
In private conversations later he said West Bank Palestinian leaders will have to admit the PLO has led them into a dead end. “I hope they will come forward now and say this publicly and move ahead without the PLO,” he said.
The off-and-on negotiations between Hussein and Arafat, encouraged by the United States, during the past year, and similar contacts over the last few years were aimed at finding a formula by which Jordan and the PLO could negotiate with Israel on behalf of the Palestinian people. A minimal condition, insisted on by Israel and the U.S., was PLO acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 which would imply recognition of Israel and renunciation of terrorism.
STATEMENT BY HUSSEIN
Hussein said he told Arafat last October that he needed a written agreement to the American conditions. “Hinging on this agreement, of course, was an immediate opening of an American-Palestinian dialogue on the basis of which we would have continued our efforts for convening an international peace conference, to which the PLO would be invited to participate as a representative of the Palestinian people,” Hussein said Wednesday.
“But our brethren in the Palestinian leadership surprised us by refusing to accept Security Council Resolution 242” even though American assurances “met the PLO’s requirements” and “reflected a significant change in the United States position” by accepting a PLO role in peace talks, Hussein said. “Thus came to an end another chapter in the search for peace,” the Jordanian monarch declared.
NOT ‘A FINAL DIVORCE’
Yet Hussein’s speech was not “a final divorce” from the PLO, but rather “a move designed to challenge the PLO’s claim to exclusive representation of the Palestinians,” according to Tel Aviv University’s Prof. Asher Susser, a leading Israeli political analyst.
“He does not want to slam the door completely on the PLO, but he wants to create new conditions in which cooperation with the PLO, together with forces from inside the territories, would erode the PLO’s exclusivity,” Susser said Thursday.
He noted that Hussein, in fact, reaffirmed Jordan’s acceptance of the 1974 Arab League summit conference decision in Rabat, Morocco, that the PLO is the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.
According to Susser, Hussein was not signaling that he was about to enter into peace negotiations on his own but was attempting to give new momentum to the peace process, with the inhabitants of the administered territories playing a greater role than before and with stronger inter-Arab involvement and support.
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