Anwar Nusseibeh, former Jordanian Defense Minister, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today that no Israeli leader in his view was likely to move towards the Arabs on a peaceful settlement and for this reason he is gloomy about the prospects for a Mideast settlement in the near future. In one of the few interviews he has granted to an Israeli news organization, the 60-year-old Jerusalemite, now “retired” from political life, was asked which of the Israeli leaders would be most likely to make peace with the Arab states. “None,” he quickly replied.
Nusseibeh resigned as Jordan’s Ambassador to London in Jan, 1967. Earlier he had been Defense Minister and then Governor of Jerusalem. An attorney by profession, the soft-spoken native of Jerusalem spends his retirement quietly at his home off the Nablus Road, a five minute walk from Jerusalem’s Old City.
During the hour long interview Nusseibeh declared that it might be hard to bring Arabs and Israelis to forget their differences in this generation. Israelis remembered the World War II holocaust; Arabs were conscious of the refugees’ plight and the dispossession of their land, he said But education might ultimately prove the best vehicle to bring the two sides to shed the “psychological problems” that have created the Mideast impasse. “The Israelis will have to become more acclimatized to the Middle East and the Arabs will have to overcome the fears to which they are subject and in the shadow of which they live,” he said.
Nusseibeh was asked whether he ever acted, as widely believed, as the “go-between” in bringing Premier Golda Meir and the Jordanian King Hussein to Secret talks in the last year. He says simply “this is not true,” adding further that he does not accept that secret talks between the two sides have taken place at all. He cites the statements of both Israeli and Arab leaders as evidence for this conclusion.
His own visits to Jordan are occasioned by private or family affairs, he stresses, and while he usually attempts if he can to pay a courtesy call on the King and meet his ministers, this is because “Jordan is a small place” and one tends naturally to meet the people one knows. Nusseibeh has also met with Israeli leaders too but, he says, there is no need for him to transfer messages and ideas from Arabs to Israelis since the leaders of both sides make public statements frequently and express their views openly.
KISSINGER MIGHT BE AN ASSET
Secret talks as a way of obtaining a Middle Eastern peace are not really that valuable, Nusseibeh asserted “because the attitudes of both sides have never been secret.” As for other ways of getting the two sides to closer positions, Nusseibeh refers to statements by Arab leaders that there is no problem in accepting American Presidential envoy Henry Kissinger as a possible mediator. With a smile, the former Jordanian minister noted that Kissinger’s Jewish origin “might even be an asset when he talks to the Israelis.”
Still, he added, the fundamental question in American-Israeli relations “is whether President Nixon can persuade–not pressure–the Israeli Prime Minister to accept the minimum that the Arabs demand.”
Israel would gain a “tremendous victory,” the former Defense Minister stated, if it were to accept a peace settlement that would return the administered territories to the Arabs but would bring the Israelis “recognition and peace. If you say this isn’t a valid price–that’s your privilege–but it’s the price the Arabs have offered to pay. Territories are not the guarantee of peace. The guarantee is peace and recognition and the relations which would evolve thereafter.”
Nusseibeh says he would welcome the principle of demilitarization–but not only of the areas Israel would vacate. “If I had my way I would advise the demilitarization within reason of the entire Mideast area. We have so much else to do to which we can more usefully devote our resources.” At any rate, he said, demilitarization should be “on a basis of reciprocity. You might find it difficult to believe, but Arabs fear Israeli aggression too. I think a formula could be found so that a feeling of security for both sides could exist, and if it should be on the basis of demilitarization, why not?” he asked.
Of the Israeli leaders, Nusseibeh said they were “all charming,” but he said they were still the main obstacle to a settlement because of their insistance on imposing Israeli conditions. Saying that “I don’t think that any occupation is desirable,” Nusseibeh blamed the Israelis for ruthless and objectionable conduct in pursuit of this policy, but he credited the Israelis for “permitting Arabs to move freely across the Jordan River, to and from East Jordan and the Arab states.”
He cited “the fact that I can speak to you freely, provided that I don’t throw a bomb. If this house is bugged, I haven’t heard about it. But the ruthlessness in all else is clear,” he added with a certain bitterness. Nusseibeh rejected the concept, advanced by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, by which Jordanians would be able to live in Israeli-administered territory but would be able to participate in the political life of Jordan. “I don’t subscribe to the Dayan principle that I can live in Israel and participate in the politics of China,” he said.
OVERALL REGIONAL SETTLEMENT NEEDED
Nusseibeh was skeptical of a partial Suez Canal settlement with Egypt which he said, unless closely tied to the full implementation of Resolution 242, might “freeze the situation.” What was needed was an overall settlement for the whole region. Thus he did not envision a separate peace with Jordan first. “It would be worth extending ourselves to reach an acceptable situation on a global level,” he said.
On Jerusalem, Nusseibeh says that Arab sovereignty and administration should be restored to the Arab sector of the city. “I see no reason why in this context the city shouldn’t remain open,” he added, noting that there was no good reason for restoring the barbed wire and walls that divided Jew from Arab in Jerusalem before 1967.
Asked if there was any merit to Deputy Premier Yigal Allon’s alleged proposal to provide extraterritorial status to Jordan over the Moslem quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City as part of an overall settlement with Jordan, Nusseibeh noted that the Israeli leader had emphatically denied making the suggestion. He added that once one accepted the principle of restoring Arab sovereignty and administration, the area to which it will apply is already defined under Resolution 242 and the Charter of the United Nations.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
