Jordan failed by Israel
When Jordan signed its peace accord with Israel 25 years ago this month, it was in a different era guided by different leaders. Peace between the Palestinians and Israelis had blossomed the year before, and Jordan was being pushed to act quickly to avoid being left out of the picture. Jordan’s King Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the peace accords on Oct. 26, 1994. Yet, 25 years on, Jordanians are left with a bitter taste, as
Israel quickly changed after the peace deal was signed. Rabin’s assassination in 1995 exposed the reality that much of Israel’s society and many of its politicians were more interested in annexing Palestinian and Jordanian lands than creating a Palestinian state. The assassination and subsequent turmoil allowed Israel’s growing political right to reverse the concessions to Palestinians that Rabin had agreed, while holding both Egypt and Jordan at bay. The feeble Jordan-Israeli peace accord became little more than a process of extracting Amman from the conflict, while the 1979 peace accord with Egypt managed to push Cairo out of the circle too. I can’t imagine any Jordanians who look at their peace with Israel as anything but a failure that has bound them to an intolerable situation, in which Israel continues to violate Jordanian interests — from vows to annex the Jordan Valley along the Jordan River to the suffocating control of East Jerusalem, which was once under the dominion of the Jordanians. Under normal circumstances, in the shadow of a genuine peace, Israel and Jordan might be celebrating the 25-year-old peace accord. But that’s not happening and relations remain cool. Israel’s aggression has made it clear that Arabs can expect little from “peace” and must instead live in subtle subservience as Tel Aviv’s military power continues to grow while Arab armies flounder. Since Rabin’s death, Israel has meticulously dismantled the
Oslo Accords, which supposedly served as a foundation for the Jordanian peace deal and was presumably one of the goals of the Egyptian agreement.
In his largely ignored speech to the 74th UN General Assembly last month, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned of the concerns that continue to grow. Speaking directly of Israel’s violations of the peace accords, he cautioned: “It is a global moral tragedy that the occupation continues. But no occupation, no displacements, no acts of force, can erase people’s history, hopes or rights, or change the true heritage of shared values among the three monotheistic faiths. And nothing can take away the international rights of the Palestinian people to equality, justice and self-determination.” Although his speech was one of the shortest delivered at the UN that week — at only nine minutes — the king’s words probably carried the greatest weight and concern for the region’s future. It doesn’t take many words to explain that, so far, peace with Israel has offered far less in reality than what was promised.