Perhaps the deepest significance of this week’s signing of a draft peace treaty between Israel and Jordan could be seen in a busy Tel Aviv newspaper office: No one bothered to watch the ceremony on television.
Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin of Israeli and Abdul Salam al-Majali initialed the draft Monday as King Hussein, his brother Prince Hassan and Israel’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, looked on, smiling behind them. And in the newsroom, the journalists just kept on with whatever they were doing.
Hard-bitten? Cynical? Insensitive to the flapping of the wings of history?
No doubt there is a little of all those characteristics in the Tel Aviv press corps. But arguably the real meaning of these journalists’ seeming apathy is that peace with Jordan, though not yet formalized, is already taken for granted. It is part of the fabric of Israelis’ lives.
Soon — within three months of ratification — Israelis will be free to cross the border for a weekend, a day, or just a few hours in a foreign country, the way people in Western Europe have been doing for years, to the envy of many Israelis.
Rabin and Peres flew to Jordan on Sunday night for negotiations that lasted until the signing ceremony Monday morning. It was the Israeli leaders’second visit to Amman in as many weeks.
HUSSEIN IS SEEN AS ‘ONE OF US’
Even before the signing, Israelis had assimilated the bright new reality of close relations with Jordan in their collective psyche. Hussein, white-bearded and grandfatherly, is seen as “one of us.”
Those who did pause to watch the television broadcast of the initialing ceremony in Amman nodded in agreement when Rabin told the king that when he visits here, he will be warmly welcomed not only by the government but also by the people of Israel.
Hussein, for his part, has come to behave like “one of us.” With his gravelly voice and kindly eyes he went on camera this week to offer his personal condolences to all Israelis over the tragic loss of two Israeli soldiers killed last Friday during the failed bid to rescue the Nachshon Waxman from his Hamas kidnappers.
The strategic decision to go for a full peace treaty now, without waiting for Syria or the Palestinians, was made in Amman many months ago. The negotiations have been proceeding — in Washington and in the area — on that basis.
Why, then, some observers here are asking, was the tactical timetable suddenly rushed? Why did Rabin, Hussein and their ministers and aides have to work through the night Sunday at a royal palace outside Amman in order to complete the peace treaty draft by the next day?
At least part of the answer is that both leaders have one eye on Washington, and are anxious to offer what help they can to the incumbent at the White House, whom each of them considers a friend of their countries.
President Clinton’s foreign policy image has improved in recent weeks, with the Haiti invasion and the Iraqi standoff ending well.
Calling the agreement “an extraordinary achievement,” Clinton quickly announced his intention to attend the formal signing ceremony of the treaty, slated for Oct. 26. on the Israeli-Jordanian border. His participation at the signing at some Biblical site full of scenic grandeur will surely go down well back home.
And what better timing for such an event than days before a daunting congressional election, in which Clinton’s Democrats are facing midterm losses all around the country?
The leaders of Israel and Jordan are not partisan as far as American politics go. (If anything, Rabin is said to be a Republican.) Their objective is not merely to help Clinton, the man and the politician, at a particular political juncture; it is rather to offer a grand gesture to the American president and people, culminating decades of close alliance and support which both of these Middle East states have enjoyed from a succession of American administrations.
For Israel, that support has formed the basis of its foreign and defense policies.
JORDAN’S DEBT TO WASHINGTON
For Jordan there have been ups and downs in its relationship with the United States — with the steepest down coming at the time of the Gulf War in 1991, when Hussein unwisely sided with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
His debt to Washington is all the greater now — because the current administration, in the interests of Middle East peace and a “new order” in this region, decided to forgive Jordan’s massive indiscretion and look forward to the future rather than harping on that past.
Furthermore, Clinton’s presence at the signing ceremony next week will signify on the part of the United States — no matter who is in the White House — a determination to stay with Mideast peacemaking, and to reward those states that bring their parts of the peace process to successful fruition.
That message is especially beamed at Damascus, where President Hafez Assad has reportedly reacted with anger at Jordan’s separate peace with Israel.
If Assad sees this peace as an attempt by Rabin to play the Arab parties against each other, he is probably not wrong. Throughout the peace process, the Israeli premier has been conscious of the tactical benefits to be achieved by moving ahead first with one partner, then another.
Taking a broader view, however, Assad should be pleased. For peace with Jordan, which enjoys wall-to-wall popularity in Israel, will be an integral part of the comprehensive peace package that Rabin intends, eventually, to present to the Israeli public in the context of a referendum or elections over a land-for-peace accord with Syria.
Withdrawal from the Golan is a painful proposition for many, perhaps most Israelis. But setting such a deal in the context of a comprehensive regional peace would, in the view of pundits here, secure its passage by a substantial majority.
Then the next signing ceremony could be Assad’s moment to star before the world’s cameras. It’s up to him.
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