State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan’s Identity

Marc Lynch

Columbia University Press

1999

6. The Jordanian-Israeli Peace Process: Publicity, Interests, and Bargaining

 

Few relationships more clearly demonstrate the importance of public sphere considerations than the Jordanian-Israeli relationship. Israel has been the constitutively excluded Other in Arabist discourse, and the longstanding covert (but widely recognized) Jordanian-Israeli relations have complicated Jordan’s identity and for its security. Indeed, the sharp contradiction between the demands of identity (Israel as enemy) and of interest (Israel as necessary partner) has long been of central concern. In the 1930s and 1940s, Abdullah pursued his personal and political interests in cooperation with the Jewish leadership in Palestine, but within the bounds of Jordanian and Arab public opinion and against the reservations of senior Transjordanian political figures (Shlaim 1987). Since at least the late 1950s, Israeli leaders accepted that the independent existence of Jordan under a Hashemite regime best served Israeli interests. Openly relying on Israeli support, however, would have fatally undermined regime survival, casting Jordan outside of the Arab order. Jordan and Israel engaged in “functional cooperation” on a wide range of technical and practical issues. The two states recognize a shared interest in maintaining quiet along their border, a Jordanian “interest” reinforced by the Israeli policy of massive retaliation in the 1950s-60s, and manifested by the Jordanian army’s prevention of cross-border fida’yin activity. The two sides are assumed to share a preference for preventing the emergence of a Palestinian state. Because of the covert ties and mutual strategic value, outside observers often assume these “shared interests” between the two states (Lukacs 1997; Garfinkle 1992; Satloff 1995b). Public Jordanian commitment to Arabism or to Palestinian rights, or public concerns about an Israeli threat, are assumed to represent empty words for Arab consumption rather than real beliefs. For this paradigm, the primary significance of the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty has been to “make public” relations which had been private, rather than to introduce qualitatively new kinds of relations.

While this paradigm correctly identifies certain dimensions of Jordanian interests, it ignores the importance of identity and public deliberation in producing state interests. Like rationalist approaches to state interests, it assumes that these Jordanian interests are fixed, exogenous, and unaffected by identity or norms. “Real” interests can be exogenously identified and behavior modeled accordingly, regardless of what actors actually say or do. Because it assumes constant, objective interests independent of public discourse, the paradigm captures only one dimension of Jordan’s interests. While shared interests between Jordan and Israel do exist, they must be articulated as such; they do not objectively appear. A different Jordanian regime might well conceptualize its relationship with Israel differently, and certainly wide segments of Jordanian political society have not accepted the notion of shared interests with Israel which trump all other interests. Shared interests with Israel could not be publicly avowed, since such a public admission would have clashed with Arabist norms and Jordan’s publicly constituted identity. Jordanian interests have often included those prioritized by the “shared interests” paradigm, but have never been reducible to them; only since the peace treaty could they even begin to be publicly justified.

Despite ascribed shared interests and the reality of functional cooperation, Jordanian-Israeli relations remained tacit until 1994. King Hussein met with Israeli leaders dozens of times, but always in secret (Zak 1985, 1997). The need for secrecy follows from the norms of the Arabist public sphere, which identifies Israel as the enemy and as a threat to Arab security, identity, and interests. Privacy was the necessary condition of the possibility of functional cooperation (Lukacs 1997). From the “shared interests” paradigm, these norms represent an externally imposed sanction rather than a constitutive dimension of Jordan’s interests; a constructivist perspective suggests that normative commitments to Arab identity and comprehensive peace did inform Jordan’s understanding of its interests. The Jordanian-Israeli “partnership” remained an “adversarial” one (Lustick 1977). Public alignment with Israel would have exposed Hussein to denunciation, subversion, and expulsion from the Arab order, but would also have meant compromising Jordan’s Arab identity and the pursuit of Arab interests. Hussein went to the brink several times, most notably in his London meetings with Shimon Peres in 1987, but never made the final leap into publicity. While external constraints explain his hesitation to meet publicly with Israeli leaders, the broader unwillingness to conclude an independent peace treaty in the absence of Arab and Palestinian support transcended constraint.

The “shared interests” paradigm misrepresents the very real conflict between the functional demands of coexistence and the sense of state interests derived from state identity. Israeli leaders invariably describe King Hussein as not only sympathetic to Israel, and hostile to the PLO, but also sincerely committed to Jordanian, Palestinian, and Arab interests, and sensitive to what Arab public opinion would bear (Peres 1995; Rabin 1994; Shamir 1994). Arabist norms ruled out Israel as a viable alliance partner, even when such an alliance might be the most rational dictated by either power or threat. For the vast majority of Jordanians, Israel represented the enemy described in Arabist discourse, not a partner for functional cooperation or coordination against the PLO. Israeli arguments that the Israeli deterrent would protect Jordan against threats from its Arab neighbors might reflect private discussions with Jordanian state officials, but were met with harsh denunciation by all Jordanian public discourse: Jordanian identity discourse would not accept the substitution of Israeli for Arab “friends.” Even where Israeli action manifestly supported the Jordanian regime, such as its “deterrence” of Syria during the 1970 crisis, Jordan could not acknowledge or admit publicly such assistance (Quandt 1978). Jordanian elites would tolerate relations with Israel to the extent to which they were not made public, and did not challenge Jordan’s normative position in the Arab order. Open collaboration with Israel would expose Jordan as outside the Arab consensus, while in violation of its own norms and identity. As long as the public facade was maintained, Jordanians could reconcile their strategic needs with their normative beliefs. This should not be dismissed as hypocrisy, or as evidence for the irrelevance of norms and identity. All policies had to be justified in terms congruent with Arab identity and interests. Regime autonomy was circumscribed by the rejection of public relations with Israel and the public acceptance of the “Arab Self/Israeli Other” identity frame, ruling out a number of policy options and severely restricting the extent of open cooperation and alignment. Most Arab states accepted Jordanian-Israeli tacit relations, out of recognition of Jordan’s security and functional needs, and the utility of Jordan’s moderate position for dealing with the United States, as long as Jordan did not openly defect from the Arab order and openly align with Israel. Making public the relations that had been private forced a direct engagement with the contradictions inherent in discourse and practice.

Jordan’s decision to “go public” in its relations with Israel took place only after major regional and domestic changes. Both Arab and domestic identity were at stake in the debates over the peace process. The severing of ties and Oslo allowed Jordan to dissociate its interests from Palestinian issues, while the wider peace process placed Jordan in line with an Arab consensus on a comprehensive peace. As long as the peace process moved forward on other tracks, Jordan’s policy coincided with changes in the regional order: Jordan’s peace was part of a broader regional transformation. While Syria might complain about Jordanian “individual” behavior, this criticism was tactical rather than existential and could be rebutted in tactical terms. The Gulf War, Madrid, and Oslo produced regional momentum toward a seemingly inevitable conclusion of the peace process. Jordan’s peace was a “strategic choice,” as King Hussein and regime officials consistently emphasized, made in order to align Jordan with the expected new regional order. Only with the transformation of regional order could Jordan’s state interests be brought in line with the demands of Arab and Jordanian state identity.

The interpretation of the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, like the severing of ties, depended upon competitive framing in the international, Arabist, and Jordanian public spheres. Comparing the peace treaty deliberation to the deliberation over the severing of ties reveals dramatically different processes. The severing of ties produced a negative response in the international arenas, a strongly positive reception in the Arabist arena, and an ambivalent Jordanian response, which eventually transformed into a positive consensus. The peace treaty, on the other hand, generated an extremely positive consensus in the international public sphere, an ambivalent and muted response in the Arabist arena, and an ambivalent Jordanian response, which became increasingly negative over time. Where the severing of ties was institutionalized at the levels of state and civil society and secured by a strong consensus on identity and interests, the peace treaty was institutionalized only at the state level. Even as Jordan and Israel developed increasingly normal, and even closer than normal, official relations, the opposition prevented the institutionalization of the peace in civil society by resisting all forms of normalization with Israel. Despite frequent claims that the vast majority of Jordanians—and even that all “true” Jordanians—supported the peace, the wide opposition in the public sphere effectively refuted this appeal to consensus.

Above all, the regime justified the peace treaty with Israel on the basis of specifically Jordanian interests, not with reference to Arab or Palestinian interests. The decision to emphasize, while reinterpreting, state interests represents the single most significant dimension of the public discourse over the treaty. Jordan, “like all states” (and implicitly therefore like Syria and its other Arab critics), must look out for its own survival and prosperity first. Second, Jordanian interests were disaggregated from “Arab interests,” with the major argument being that anything which benefited Jordan by definition was good for Arab interests. Finally, and most controversially, Jordanian interests were distinguished from Palestinian interests. Invoking the 1974 Rabat Summit, the Arab demands that the PLO be the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians, and the severing of ties, Jordan argued that its pursuit of narrowly defined state interests followed the Arab consensus in every sense. This meant that the central issue of refugees disappeared from Jordanian preferences, instead being deferred to the multilateral and quadrilateral talks as “regional” issues beyond the competence of Jordan to decide alone.

This chapter considers explanations for the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, while chapter 7 discusses the effect of the treaty on both the Jordanian polity and its international behavior. Like the severing of ties, the peace treaty represents a critical case for rationalist and constructivist theories. Rationalist approaches offer powerful explanations for the Jordanian decision to sign the treaty and for the distribution of benefits within the treaty but depend upon constructivist public sphere theory to explain the changes in Jordanian preferences which account for its bargaining behavior. A public sphere explanation accepts the importance of shifts in the balance of power, but places them within the perspective of the collapse of the Arabist public sphere in the Gulf War, and the transformation of Jordanian preferences toward the West Bank after the severing of ties. The strategic bargaining in the peace negotiations depends upon prior changes in Jordanian identity and interests, which need to be explained, not assumed. The peace treaty involved Arab and domestic deliberation over the meaning of such a peace for Jordanian and Arab identity and interests, which structured and gave meaning to the strategic interaction.

 

Jordan, Israel, and the Peace Process

While I do not discuss earlier Jordanian-Israeli negotiations in any length (see Madfai 1993; Tahboub 1994; and Quandt 1993 for such discussions), earlier moments in the Arab-Israeli peace process provide context for the discussion of the Wadi Araba negotiations. King Hussein met frequently with American and Israeli leaders in pursuit of a peace agreement, and Jordan had numerous opportunities to seek a formal agreement. In 1987, Shimon Peres and King Hussein initialed a draft of a peace settlement which collapsed only when Prime Minister Shamir refused to endorse his Foreign Minister’s initiative (Peres 1995). Prior to the severing of ties, Jordan’s preference was for a comprehensive peace within an Arab consensus in which it recovered the West Bank. Jordan’s interests in peace negotiations fundamentally changed with the severing of ties. After the reconstruction of Jordan’s identity and institutions, it no longer sought to reclaim the West Bank; this change in Jordanian preferences made the Wadi Araba negotiations possible. After Oslo, in which the PLO sought its own separate peace, Jordan no longer felt constrained by the demands of Arab consensus, although it still identified its interests in terms of achieving a comprehensive peace at the regional level.

Camp David represents a particularly important case demonstrating Jordan’s conflicting interests in the peace process. When Sadat reached agreement with Israel, he hoped for a comprehensive peace, even though he was willing to settle for a separate peace (Telhami 1990). To that end, the Camp David Framework included a Jordanian role in a transitional Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank. Jordan did not reject participation out of hand; Jordan sent the United States a set of questions on the Accords, seeking to get clarifications of their true meaning (Quandt 1993; Madfai 1993). Joining the Camp David process would have provided a leading Jordanian role in the West Bank; formalized Jordan’s relations with Israel; solidified political, economic, and security relations with the United States; and provided an important push toward regional transformation around the Egyptian initiative. All of these outcomes accord well with Jordanian preferences; Jordan’s rejection therefore seems rather surprising.

Jordan’s decision to reject Camp David has been explained in terms of the economic incentives provided by Gulf states, Hussein’s distrust of Sadat’s intentions, the fear of domestic unrest, and other such variables. Some analysts have focused narrowly on King Hussein’s personal pique at Jordan’s being included in the Accords without being included in the negotiations. This explanation neglects the broader context of the construction of Jordan’s interests. I would argue that Jordan’s refusal to participate in Camp David follows directly from the formation of an Arab consensus, articulated in the Baghdad Summit, against the Egyptian gambit. When it became clear that Jordan’s participation would place Jordan outside the Arab consensus, rather than pushing the consensus toward accepting the Camp David framework, Jordan chose to stay with the Arab consensus.

Wadi Araba

The Jordan-Israel peace treaty came as the culmination of Jordanian participation in the Madrid peace process, which brought all the Arab “Confrontation States” into the process of negotiations. This changed the central Arabist issue from an existential debate—should there be negotiations?—into a distributional debate—under what conditions should a treaty be signed? The avowed goal of the Madrid Process around which an Arab consensus had converged was a comprehensive peace, in which the Syrian, Lebanese, Jordanian, and Palestinian tracks would be linked. Despite efforts to secure coordination around common positions, the Arab states largely failed to maintain coordination, instead moving directly to bilateral talks. Jordan attended the Madrid Conference and the Washington negotiations both on its own behalf and as an “umbrella” for the PLO. After months of fruitless negotiations, this process seemed stalled, until the surprise announcement of the PLO-Israel Declaration of Principles in August 1993. This unilateral Palestinian defection opened the door to Jordanian movement. The day after the PLO-Israel signing ceremony in Washington, Jordan and Israel signed a working agenda. In July 1994, the two states issued a joint declaration ending the state of war, and after several months of public negotiations announced a treaty. On October 26, 1994 Jordan and Israel signed the treaty in the Jordanian desert to much international fanfare, and soon thereafter moved toward implementation of its key provisions.

The major articles of the treaty involved land, water, and security guarantees; in addition, wide ranging provisions for normalization, good relations, and joint development led many observers to label it a “remarkable document” and a blueprint for true regional peace (Satloff 1995b). Based on its negotiating positions, Jordan received some benefits. A small portion of Jordanian territory under Israeli occupation returned to Jordanian sovereignty. While few Jordanians had been aware of the existence of this occupied territory, and it had never ranked as an important Jordanian interest, the negotiators could claim the return of land for peace. Border demarcation generated some controversy, as the two sides took recourse to maps from the days of the British Mandate and bargained hard over the precise boundaries. Overall, however, these were minor disputes, and the more difficult questions of the territorial dispensation of the West Bank were left to the Palestinian track. Several areas in which Israel had established agricultural settlements were leased back for 25 years, renewable. This annex to the treaty generated considerable controversy, as Jordanians wondered about its implications for Jordanian sovereignty over the land, and Syria attacked the agreement as a precedent for Israeli demands on the Golan. Jordan regained some water rights, without compensation for past Israeli water appropriations, with the emphasis upon joint ventures to develop new water sources. Politically, each side recognized the other’s borders and legitimacy as a sovereign entity and committed itself to avoiding hostile alliances and to not causing threatening population movements. This represented perhaps the most important provision, since it granted Israel unconditional Arab recognition, while establishing a legal barrier against the Israeli “Jordan is Palestine” threat. Each side promised to normalize relations and to prevent any cross-border hostile activity and propaganda. The treaty called for extensive economic cooperation and joint development programs.

One of the most important dimensions of the treaty lay in what was not discussed: the key issue of refugees, which was deferred to the quadrilateral (Jordanian-Palestinian-Egyptian-Israeli negotiations. The refugees formed the most serious issue between Jordan and Israel in the Arabist public sphere and had always been on the Jordanian short list of interests. The removal of the refugees from the list of Jordanian priorities was necessary for the achievement of the treaty, and signaled a major change in Jordanian positions. I argue that the acceptance of a peace treaty that did not deal with the refugee issue could have been accomplished only as a result of the transformation and redefinition of Jordanian identity after the severing of ties. Jordanian issues could be advanced, distinct from Palestinian issues, in radically new ways. Even though the opposition denounced the exclusion of the refugee issue, the new consensus on the external identity of the state bound their hands: only “Jordanian” issues could be the terms of legitimate debate. Official discourse framed the clauses on refugees as allowing for coordination with the Palestinians and the Egyptians on this sensitive issue, rather than as Jordanian abandonment of the issue.

Overall, the treaty represented Israeli rather than Arab, Jordanian, or Palestinian discourse, assumptions, and interests. For example, the question of refugees was not only deferred to future negotiations, but also defined from the Israeli point of view as a humanitarian rather than as a national issue. Extensive provisions dealt with security and terrorism, but with little regard for potential threats from Israel to Jordan. Article 4.4 prohibits either party from participating in any alliance with security implications for the other, a provision interpreted primarily as governing Jordanian alliances with Arab states rather than Israeli alliances. Article 11 demands the revision of all legislation deemed prejudicial against the other party. But once again, this meant Jordanian revision of its laws against selling land to Israelis, not revision of Israeli laws against selling land to non-Jews. Whether this distinctive feature of the treaty is explained by the extreme imbalance of power or by some version of constructivism, it must be recognized.

Jordanian officials, of course, rejected this characterization of the treaty, justifying the Jordanian moves both in terms of the details of the treaty and in terms of a broader agenda of regional transformation. Where Israelis, and most outside observers, generally observed that the differences between the two sides were minor, Jordan emphasized the depths of difference in order to claim that they had won substantial concessions. ₁   Jordanian spokesman emphasized that they had won full sovereignty over all occupied land, and that the leasing of land back to Israel was both a creative solution to a difficult problem and a sovereign decision on Jordan’s part. The agreements on water rights were portrayed as fair and as the best possible outcome given the crushing water needs of both sides. As for the abandonment of the refugee issue, Jordan argued that it could not negotiate over the refugees without Palestinian participation, effectively turning Arabist arguments on their head. In addition, Jordanians argued that the treaty’s discussion of economic development and cooperation offered the foundations for a new conception of regional order, and represented a victory rather than a loss. Jordanian discourse called for rapid movement to normalize relations and to lay the foundations for the joint pursuit of absolute gains.

For the “shared interests” paradigm, the changes involved in the formalization of peaceful relations between Jordan and Israel had less to do with strategic realities than with public discourse. At Madrid, Israeli Prime Minister Shamir referred casually to “a situation of de facto nonbelligerency with the Kingdom of Jordan” and expressed confidence that “a peace treaty with Jordan is achievable.” ₂   In terms of the threat of war, the need to deploy military forces, and other such Realist concerns, very little changed because of the peace treaty. Nevertheless, it should be taken seriously that virtually everyone viewed the treaty as a major change. That this change lies primarily in the realm of the public sphere does not diminish its reality. By signing treaties with Israel, Hussein transformed Israel into a legitimate partner for political, economic, and security cooperation. The treaty made public what had been private. Publicity, however, places new demands on relations, forcing both sides to justify them before the public sphere. Jordanians could now publicly question and challenge the value and nature of relations with Israel, and the government had to publicly explain and defend its policies. ₃   King Hussein attempted to transform the demands of publicity into an advantage, demonstrating a depth of positive relations in order to set an example for others. By cultivating close relations with Israel, pushing for normalization, speaking eloquently at the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, and speaking often in favor of an historic reconciliation, Hussein framed the Jordanian-Israeli peace as a step toward the construction of a new cooperative regional order. This official Jordanian frame perplexed many observers who approached the treaty from a Realist framework. How could the justifications for the treaty, as a pragmatic response to external pressures and the hardheaded pursuit of the national interest in the face of an untenable balance of power, be reconciled with the push to rapid normalization and close political, economic, social, and cultural ties?

Regional transformation plays an important role in the reconfiguration of state preferences. Such a transformation depends upon communicative action, the negotiation of a new consensus within the relevant public spheres. The shift in Jordanian policy extended to a comprehensive embrace of an American-Israeli alliance, a repudiation of Iraq, and an escalating campaign against the Islamist opposition. Hussein took a leading role in the “Peace Camp,” urging Arabs to embrace normalization with Israel, join in economic projects, and to repudiate Islamist movements. This vision of regional politics shifted the fundamental regional fault line from Arab/Israeli to Peace Camp/Enemies of Peace. Such an identity frame would transform Jordan’s relations with Israel from a liability, to be carefully concealed from public scrutiny, into an advantage, making Jordan a preferred intermediary between the Arab world and Israel. The debates about Jordanian interests therefore involved a wider debate over regional identity and regional order. Normalization was not a byproduct of the peace, or an Israeli demand grudgingly accepted, but an essential component to the regime’s framing of the political meaning of the treaty.

Rationalist Explanations: The Peace Treaty as Strategic Bargaining

American political scientists, perhaps grown callous to major regional change in the wake of the Israeli-PLO breakthrough and the end of the Cold War, have seen little that is problematic in the case. The balance of power explained the Jordanian decision to seek a peace treaty, and determined rather accurately the distribution of benefits in the peace treaty. Because of the presumed absence of serious Jordanian-Israeli differences and the existing relationship between the leaders, political scientists found little of interest in the treaty beyond its implications for other peace negotiation tracks.

Given the distribution of power and of preferences, a simple two-level game model can account for the distribution of goods in the negotiated outcome (Telhami 1990). Changes in the international and regional balance of power made the Jordanian decision to seek a peace treaty necessary. At the international level, the collapse of the Soviet Union profoundly affected the calculus of all regional states. The Arab confrontation states, especially Syria, lost strategic support, economic support and political backing. In the new unipolar world, international economic and military assistance ran through Washington, and the price for American aid would presumably be peace. At the regional level, the destruction of Iraq represented a major setback in an Arab bid for any balance of power with Israel. Prior to the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq’s powerful military seemed to offer the first possibility of parity with Israel since the 1967 disaster. The destruction of Iraqi power after its invasion of Kuwait and the imposition of a semi-permanent sanctions regime destroyed this option, reinforcing Arab and Jordanian dependence upon the United States. The participation of Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab states in the coalition against Iraq shattered whatever norms of Arab solidarity against outside intervention remained, and placed all of them within the American sphere of influence. The American need to maintain sanctions on Iraq, its temporary position of unchallenged hegemony in the region, and the promises made to these coalition partners in the Gulf war all led the United States to view 1991 as a window of opportunity to achieve a satisfactory resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

These changes in the balance of power and the preferences of major actors left Jordan little choice but to come to terms with Israel in the time and manner it did. The timing of the treaty follows from the assumption of the inevitability of peace. If Jordan waited for Syria to sign, then it would be seen as irrelevant and would gain nothing in negotiations. Jordanian leaders saw a brief window of opportunity between the PLO settlement and an anticipated Syrian settlement in which they might be able to cash in the peace card for major economic and political payoffs. ₄   Rabin reportedly reinforced this interpretation in May 1994, urging the King to “get off the fence” before the opportunity passed (Susser 1994; Makovsky 1995: 154–60).

While the sharply skewed balance of power established the potential range of outcomes, the structure of domestic constraints also contributes to the possible win-sets (Putnam 1987). Negotiators on both sides assumed that the near-even division in the Israeli democratic public greatly exceeded the popular constraints on the Jordanian monarch. Rabin’s thin majority in the Knesset prevented the Israeli side from offering concessions beyond the absolute minimum dictated by the balance of power. The fact that the final treaty passed the usually sharply divided Knesset by a vote of 105–3 (with 6 abstentions) indicates how successfully the Israeli negotiators produced a document within the bounds of the Israeli domestic consensus. Likud opposition leader Netanyahu endorsed the treaty, and even Ariel Sharon, the most prominent advocate of the “Jordan is Palestine” thesis, only abstained. At the same time, the surge of opposition in Jordan and the defection of key regime figures to the opposition shows how far outside the acceptable win-set of the Jordanian public the final document lay. Prior to the beginning of the direct negotiations (November 1993), elections held under a controversial new election law produced a more compliant Parliament, which made ratification of a treaty inevitable. The presumption that the Israeli delegation operated under tighter boundaries than did the Jordanian mattered as much as any empirical comparison of the efficacy and extent of opposition. While the Jordanian negotiators tried to use public opinion for bargaining leverage, it could not credibly portray itself as bound by an effective opposition. Israelis continued to believe, correctly in the event, that Jordan’s authoritarian system could force through an unpopular agreement more efficiently than could Israel’s contentious democracy.

Finally, Telhami points to the composition of negotiating teams, specifically the centralization of decisionmaking. The Jordanian need for a fast resolution of negotiations further strengthened an already overwhelming Israeli position. On numerous occasions, Hussein stepped in to overrule the tough bargaining strategy of his chief negotiator, Fayz Tarawneh, in order to speed up the process. Hussein’s strategic vision of the need for a peace treaty outweighed his concern with the details of the treaty, to Jordan’s detriment in the final disbursement of benefits. In short, the combination of the balance of power, the relative domestic constraints, and the structure of the negotiating teams all combined to produce a peace treaty sharply skewed toward Israeli interests.

 

Rationalist Explanations

Each of the competing rationalist hypotheses elaborated above has been applied to Jordanian decisionmaking in the peace process. In each case, Jordanian foreign policy is seen as rational pursuit of some stable interest which is identified as consistently dominating Jordanian priorities. The peace treaty reflects continuity in the pursuit of this fundamental, basic interest, rather than change. Three major rationalist explanations have been advanced: strategic interaction based on Jordanian-PLO (rather than Jordanian-Israeli) rivalry; political economy/rent-seeking; and regime survival. As before, I do not argue that any of these explanations is necessarily wrong, but that each is incomplete or misleading in important ways.

The first rationalist alternative assumes that Jordan-PLO rivalry is the single overriding consideration driving Jordanian foreign policy. From this perspective, neither the disengagement nor the various developments in the peace process fundamentally affected Jordan-PLO rivalry, and the revival of the Jordanian claim to the West Bank awaited only a propitious balance of power. Jordan and the PLO adopted new strategies without fundamental change in their preferences. The Oslo agreement reversed PLO fortunes, with huge implications for Jordan (L. Tal 1993). The PLO’s position on the Gulf war had left it bereft of Gulf financial support and with tattered international legitimacy. As the Madrid process stalled, the Intifada sputtered and Hamas mounted a serious challenge to the PLO’s claim to be the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. With the Oslo Accords, Arafat made a powerful bid against his rivals. American and Israeli recognition of the PLO as a legitimate partner for negotiations seriously eroded one of Jordan’s principal international resources, that it was the only acceptable partner for any settlement. On the other hand, the PLO lost power at the level of its own constituency. Its betrayal, in the eyes of many Palestinians, of the most basic political norms upon which the imagined Palestinian entity had been constructed led to massive defections (Said 1995; Dajani 1994). In short, the moment of the PLO’s international triumph marked a moment of crisis for its representative legitimacy. The PLO position after Oslo thus created both threats and opportunities for Jordan. The Jordanian treaty with Israel can be read as an attempt to minimize the dangers of Oslo while positioning Jordan to take advantage of its possibilities. By signing a peace treaty with Israel, “Hussein is now clawing back ground he lost to the PLO” (Susser 1994).

While this strategic interaction argument accurately captures the interdependence of the Palestinian and Jordanian tracks, it fails to take into account the fundamental changes in Jordanian identity and interests after the severing of ties. Quite simply, the evidence does not support this widely repeated argument. Jordan’s refusal to take advantage of opportunities to challenge PLO or PNA representation and its support for the PNA in its interaction with Israel belie any assumption that Jordanian behavior is driven by its strategic conflict with the Palestinian leadership. As documented in chapters 3 and 4, Jordan in the mid-1990s continued to have conflictual relations with the PLO, and later the PNA, but it no longer sought a return to the West Bank. Since 1994, Jordan has consistently and emphatically declared its support for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and pushed for progress on the Palestinian-Israeli track. The Jordanian conception of its state interests is now built upon the conviction that Jordanian security and interests depend upon a successful peace process and regional transformation. In this vision of Jordanian identity, a Palestinian state serves, rather than threatens, Jordanian security and vital interests.

A second rationalist reading of the Jordanian decision, most cogently advanced by Brand (1994), suggests that Jordan’s primary concern in foreign policy is budget security and rent-seeking. Because of the Gulf War, Jordan lost Gulf financial support, American aid, the Iraqi market, and the huge volume of remittances from expatriates in Kuwait. Facing serious economic problems, with no evident alternative sources of support, Jordan turned to the United States. The price of this support was obvious: a peace treaty with Israel. James Baker, for example, asserts that “simply stated, the King was broke and needed America’s help to persuade his longtime benefactors in Riyadh to help him out” (Baker 1995: 450). The American failure to deliver on many of these promises, both in direct American financial aid and in repairing Jordanian relations with the Gulf states, undermined support for the treaty among Establishment figures. As the economy continued to deteriorate, support for the treaty dwindled. Increasing evidence suggested that Jordanian decisionmakers had few expectations of immediate economic benefit from the peace treaty. Thouqan Hindawi, a major figure in the government that shepherded the peace process to its conclusion, resigned in a very public outburst in December 1994. He explained that contrary to the government promises of a coming economic boom because of the treaty, Jordan in fact had received no concrete commitments on debt reduction, new investment, or loans. ₅   A World Bank report (1994) made available prior to the peace treaty’s conclusion found that peace would have few short-term economic benefits, and that the long-term prognosis included serious threats. This suggests that the economic rewards were more of a public sphere justificatory strategy than a major cause. Even leading advocates of the treaty such as the economist Fahd al-Fanik criticized the government for overselling the economic dimension of the treaty.

This is not to say that the economic dimension was unimportant. As in Camp David, the provision of financial incentives such as debt relief and investment helped to make the decision easier, even if it did not cause the decision. More significant, however, was the powerful idea of a transformed regional order in which Jordan’s close ties to Israel, relatively developed banking and technology, and high levels of education might allow the Jordanian economy to find a profitable niche. The peace had more to do with the principle of a substantive change in norms and institutions than with specific budgetary considerations. The idea of a New Middle East based on regional economic integration was part of the broader issue at stake. As Prince Hassan often explained, a Middle East Market could allow Jordan to break its dependence upon foreign aid and turn its particular combination of human capital, close ties to Israel, and poor natural endowments to its long-term economic advantage. A political economy explanation for the Jordanian-Israeli treaty goes deeper than “peace for cash,” and can be usefully combined with the constructivist, public sphere approach developed here.

A third common rationalist explanation is regime survival: Hussein signed the peace treaty in order to best guarantee personal and dynastic survival. On this argument, economic hardships and Oslo threatened the very survival of the Hashemite regime and perhaps of Jordan itself (L. Tal 1993). The peace treaty, above all, offered an American and Israeli guarantee of the Hashemite regime. Since the treaty, Israeli figures have regularly spoken of the Hashemite regime as a vital Israeli interest, and an Israeli deterrent guarantee is widely recognized in the region. On the other hand, such an Israeli preference for Hashemite rule in Jordan over either a Palestinian or a Jordanian nationalist government was widely held before the treaty. The peace treaty placed extreme stress on the Jordanian political order, and Jordanian behavior (see below) seems to transcend any conception of a peace treaty based on compulsion or threat. The polarization of society, the loss of public confidence, the need to restrict democratic participation, and being outside the Arab consensus all put the regime in danger. The treaty inflamed Syrian anger, increasing the risks of Syrian, Palestinian, or Islamist subversion. The impetus given by the treaty to sever ties with Iraq further destabilized Jordanian society and increased the risks of Iraqi subversion. While it could be argued that Hussein concluded he had no choice, the peace treaty still represented a risky decision. In other words, the treaty created both new guarantees and more dangers. A long-term American and Israeli guarantee for the Hashemite regime may have played some role in the decision to pursue peace, but there are few short-term threats to regime survival that could explain such a dramatic departure.

 

Jordanian Identity and the Peace Bargaining

These rationalist perspectives depend upon the prior specification of preferences. They ignore the central problem of how the situation came to be defined such that Jordan negotiated alone for narrowly defined interests and why the situation was not so defined in the past. The benefits Jordan won in the treaty—border revisions, water sharing—had not been high-priority Jordanian interests prior to 1994. Assuming the decision to begin negotiations toward a serious settlement on these bases, bargaining theory correctly explains the distribution of benefits in the outcome. The bargaining seems to reflect significant change in Jordanian preferences over outcomes, however. The question should be: “Why did Jordan negotiate for these narrow state interests and ignore its own long-asserted interests in refugees and a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace?” Explaining the redefinition of interests is essential. I argue that the severing of ties brought on the reconception of Jordanian identity on which the narrow specification of Jordan’s interests was based, while the Gulf War, Oslo, and the Jordanian liberalization dramatically changed the public sphere structure in which these interests were articulated, justified, interpreted, and pursued.

The removal of the issues of refugees from the top of Jordanian preferences represents the single most important point of departure. At the beginning of the talks, during the explanations for Jordan’s decision to go to Madrid and in the Washington talks, the refugee issue occupied a very high place in Jordanian concerns. The 1993 Working Agenda placed the refugee issue near the top of the issues to be negotiated. After Oslo, it dropped down the list, and the July 1994 Washington Declaration hardly mentions it. The peace treaty itself refers only to the humanitarian problem of refugees, and leaves the solution to the multilateral and quadrilateral negotiations.

This particular articulation of Jordanian preferences depended upon the disaggregation of Jordanian and Palestinian identities and interests. The relationship between the Jordanian and Palestinian delegations emerged as a contentious issue, as many Jordanian nationalists believed that the Joint Delegation hindered the pursuit of particular Jordanian interests. ₆   Because Israel refused to negotiate directly with the PLO, Jordan offered the only formula by which the Palestinians could participate. The changes wrought by the severing of ties were taken seriously, however, and Jordan refused to negotiate for the Palestinians or take their place. The formula of a joint delegation emerged, in which the Palestinians formed a distinct and autonomous delegation under a Jordanian umbrella. As Israel had no intention of making progress at these talks, while the PLO preferred the Oslo back channel by mid-1993, the progress of the Washington negotiations was impeded. Jordanian negotiators refused to move ahead while the Palestinian track was blocked, despite considerable American and Israeli pressure and incentives.

The revelation of the secret talks at Oslo in August 1993 exploded in Jordan. Despite the sometimes tense relations in the Joint Delegation, Jordan had maintained cooperation in the face of powerful incentives to defect (Ashawi 1995; M. Abass 1994). The Joint Delegation had facilitated an effective justification frame in Jordan of coordination [tansiq] with the PLO. This coordination, like the support of Iraq in the war, put the regime on the side of major forces in the political public which had traditionally been hostile or suspicious. By working closely with the PLO, Jordan showed itself to be supporting the Palestinian cause in practice and foregoing its own ambitions in the West Bank. The revelation of the Oslo negotiations, not only outside the framework of the joint delegation but also unknown to most Jordanian decisionmakers, could be interpreted only as a premeditated deception. King Hussein has consistently maintained that he was not informed of the Oslo talks and was completely surprised by their announcement; his anger and concern at their implications for Jordan are well documented. Abd al-Salam al-Majali, the head of the Jordanian delegation, claims that he heard about Oslo on the radio. ₇   In his memoirs, Mahmoud Abass (Abu Mazen) (1994) provides an elaborate story of his failed effort to tell Hussein about Oslo. The fact that Jordan had only been waiting on the Palestinians was demonstrated by the rapid Jordanian-Israeli progress after Oslo.

Like the Gulf war, Oslo had a dramatic impact on the foundations of the Arabist public sphere. Oslo fragmented what remained of a Palestinian consensus and destroyed the institutions of the Palestinian public sphere. After Oslo, Arafat could no longer convene the Palestinian National Council, which had been the ultimate site of Palestinian participation. Hamas emerged as the leading opposition force to the emergent PNA, arousing Arafat’s fears of Jordanian-Hamas collaboration against him. The organizational and doctrinal ties between Hamas and the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood fed Arafat’s suspicions, particularly given the traditionally close relations between King Hussein and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas leaders based in Amman had offices in the Muslim Brotherhood buildings, and were generally allowed to operate without official harassment. As Jordanian-PNA and Jordanian-Israeli relations improved, the government grew less tolerant of Hamas activity, though it still refrained from a full crackdown that would have provoked a full, direct confrontation with the Muslim Brotherhood. The fragmentation of the Palestinian consensus resonated among Jordanians of Palestinian origin, generating tremendous uncertainty about their future in Jordan and their status in the Palestinian national identity. Could the Oslo process ever lead to a Palestinian state? Would the refugees ever be allowed to return, even if such a state emerged?

From the official Jordanian perspective, the Palestinian defection from coordination removed any justification for restraint. With Arafat moving unilaterally in pursuit of Palestinian interests, and Syria negotiating for the Golan Heights, Jordan could convincingly articulate specifically Jordanian interests irreducible to Palestinian concerns. If the Palestinians acted without Jordan, why should Jordan not now look to its own interests?

Identity represented a crucial dimension in the treaty outcome. Among all the justifications for the treaty, the trump card clearly was seen as the guarantee the existence of Jordan as an entity. The treaty “defined Israel’s eastern border for the first time in history,” ending the discursive struggle in the international public sphere: Jordan is not Palestine. In other words, the treaty offered a formal Israeli endorsement of the identity consensus secured between Jordanians and Palestinians after the severing of ties. Al-Rai’s lead editorial prior to the signing ceremony, entitled, “Jordan is not Palestine!,” claimed that the treaty “silences the Israeli idea... that Jordan is the eastern extension of the Hebrew state, which was a source of Israeli aggression and threat.... this treaty means that Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine.” ₈   Fahd al-Fanik emblematically asserted that “the main reason for the peace treaty was, in fact, to end the threat of the Alternative Homeland.” ₉   Information Minister Jawad al-Anani explained that “Jordan’s basic concern is to achieve Jordanian rights and to confirm its self and its independent entity.” ₁₀   At the signing of the Washington Declaration in July 1994, Shimon Peres declared adamantly that “I affirm here that Jordan is Jordan and Jordan is not Palestine.” ₁₁   As various dimensions of the treaty came under fire, this occupied an ever more central position in the regime’s justifications: “From every official platform... we hear the cry that the Alternative Homeland has been ended with a stroke of the pen... and this is the most important achievement of the agreement.” ₁₂   The consistent, determined focus on the confirmation of Jordan’s state identity in the framing of the treaty indicates the centrality of identity concerns.

Since Jordanians and Palestinians were already convinced that Jordan was not Palestine, the change involved in this affirmation of Jordan’s state identity was on the part of Israel. To what extent did this signal a change in Israeli preferences? The Jordan Option, whether in the form of a Jordanian-Israeli condominium over the West Bank, a confederation under Jordanian domination, or an imposed Alternative Homeland in the East Bank, had been a part of almost every Israeli final status proposal for decades; it essentially disappeared from official discourse after Oslo and Wadi Araba. Even before the peace process, the Gulf War seems to have made many Likud thinkers re-evaluate their support for the Jordan is Palestine idea: as unfriendly as King Hussein had been during the war, all agreed that a Palestinian or nationalist regime in Jordan might well have allowed the entry of Iraqi troops and thereby brought Israel into the war (Schiff 1991). Rabin and Peres both preferred dealing with Jordan, but recognized that a workable peace agreement could now be made only with the PLO; both envisioned a final status agreement involving a confederation between the Palestinian areas and Jordan. In general, however, the severing of ties, the consistent Jordanian refusal to negotiate for the Palestinians, and the creation of the PNA as a reality on the ground, removed the Jordan option from Israeli strategy. Many Israelis were reluctant to acknowledge that the treaty had changed reality. The fact that Ariel Sharon, the most prominent advocate of the idea, abstained from voting rather than rejecting the treaty, indicates that Israelis did not necessarily regard the treaty as marking the definitive end of the “Jordan is Palestine” idea. However, after the ratification and institutionalization of the treaty, the idea faded from mainstream Israeli discourse (even for Klieman 1998). The return of the Likud in 1996 brought no significant return to the “Jordan is Palestine” argument. Netanyahu had long expressed support for the idea (Netanyahu 1993), and Sharon held a prominent place in Netanyahu’s narrow, right wing coalition. Despite all of these reasons to expect a resurgence of the argument, particularly as the Oslo process collapsed, it did not return. The treaty with Jordan offered important benefits to Israel and was widely popular. The treaty changed Israeli strategies, if not preferences, making the maintenance of the Jordanian peace treaty preferable to the pursuit of the Alternative Homeland, and creating an increasingly institutionalized Israeli interest in maintaining the treaty. The change in Israeli preferences, generally recognizing that Jordan would neither be Palestine nor rule Palestine, brought all three major actors in the peace negotiations (Jordan, the PLO, and Israel) into accord on this basic and crucial point.

The various responses to “Jordan is Palestine” are central to the reconceptualization of Jordanian identity. The Israeli threat served as the justification for the need to emphasize and develop the Jordanian identity, a valorization of state identity frowned upon from the perspective of Arabist norms. From this perspective, the consolidation of the Jordanian identity helped the Palestinian cause by confirming the distinctive Palestinian identity and thereby forcing Israel to come to terms with the Palestinians rather than continue to hold out hope for a Jordanian intermediary. Prior to Oslo, this ability to justify the public assertion of Jordanian identity in terms of Palestinian—not Jordanian—interests was extremely important. After Oslo, the justification of Jordanian identity in terms of Jordanian interests assumed an increasingly prominent place. For example, compare characteristic justifications put forward by centrist commentators. In early 1992, a typical formulation reads: “to confirm the Jordanian national identity is also to confirm the Palestinian national identity... to confront together the Zionist expansionist project which aims to erase both identities.” ₁₃   After Oslo, Jordanian identity became an acceptable end unto itself, not merely a means toward advancing the Palestinian cause: “Jordan has nothing to apologize for as a nation or as a nationalism.” ₁₄

Official discourse defended the reliance on narrowly defined interests partly in terms of the identity claim discussed above, and partly in light of Arab-level developments. The distinction from Arab interests was defended by the claim that all the Arabs had chosen the peace process at Madrid. The Arab consensus that the PLO must negotiate for Palestinian interests was an integral part of the official frame. Official discourse regularly invoked the Rabat consensus and the severing of ties, justifying the pursuit of narrowly defined Jordanian interests in terms of an Arabist frame. ₁₅

The change in conceptions of Jordan’s state identity and its implications for its preferences in the peace negotiations represents a major dimension which is not captured by rationalist bargaining theory. The removal of the refugee issue from the top of Jordanian preferences depended upon the reconstruction of Jordanian identity. First, Jordan’s identity changed, with the severing of ties. Second, Jordan’s preferences changed, with the refugee issue dropping out, making the final status outcome possible. Third, this change in preferences over outcomes in the West Bank defined Jordanian strategies in the bargaining, making this Jordan a different actor, in many respects, from the Jordan that discussed possible settlements with Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. Fourth, Israel’s negotiations with the PLO, combined with the growing recognition that Jordan’s preferences and identity had changed, led it to abandon the Jordan option as a viable final settlement. The recognition that “Jordan is Jordan” represented the achievement of a powerful and critically important acceptance in the international public sphere of this “reality.” This acceptance of Jordan’s identity allowed its interests to be recognized as legitimate and to be publicly avowed. Finally, the centering of a Jordanian identity within a Jordanian public sphere made the articulation and justification of specifically Jordanian interests more normatively defensible.

Arabist Debates Over the Peace Treaty

While bargaining alone for narrow state interests fits the rationalist model of state behavior, it should hardly be considered collectively rational. The best solution for all Arab actors in a final settlement with Israel could be achieved only by bargaining as a single, powerful actor rather than as individual, weak states. Arab unity represented a textbook collective action problem. Each individual state could arrive at substantial benefits through an individual settlement, defecting from the collective position. Those states that stood fast while others defected would receive substantially less in an eventual settlement, but if all held together they would receive the best payoff in the end. Thus the classic stag hunt dilemma: how to prevent the individual from grabbing for narrow self-interests at the expense of larger prospective collective benefit? Prior to the Madrid conference, for example, representatives of all the participating Arab states met in Damascus to “guarantee a unified Arab stand throughout all the phases of the conference... [and to give mutual] assurance that not a single Arab state would establish relations with Israel... before Israel gave the Palestinians and the Arabs what they demand.” ₁₆   Recognizing the importance of maintaining a united front, Arab states generally preferred collective bargaining in multilateral fora; Israel, hoping to exploit the differing interests and suspicions of the Arab states, preferred bilateral negotiating tracks. In fact, the Arabs largely failed to maintain coordination, with Israeli preferences for bilateral negotiations prevailing.

After the Gulf war, the PLO defection and the failure of the Arab actors to maintain coordination against the temptation of the individual solution, Jordan had little choice but to move quickly for whatever it could still get. The problem in 1994, from the point of view of many Arabists, was “not individual treachery but a general Arab malaise.” ₁₇   Throughout the 1980s, most Arab states had cultivated projects of national identity formation while attempting to insulate domestic politics from the Arabist arena (Baram 1990; Brynen 1991). This long-term shift in the approach to the Arabist public sphere and national identity carries important implications for the Arab collective action problem. For the rationalist, changes occurred in the balance of power, not in the identity of the actors. The identity and interests of the state actor of the 1950s or the 1970s; only the externally imposed constraints and the balance of power had shifted. The autonomous, self-interested actor faced different expectations about the probability and expected payoffs of defection, and in the 1990s Arab states rationally decided to defect. For the constructivist, this increased individualist behavior represents a change in conceptions of self, replacing the self bound up in collective Arab norms, dialogue, and interests with a self based upon state borders and narrowly internal norms, dialogue, and interests (Barnett 1998).

The contestation of the peace treaty must be placed within the context of these changes in public sphere structure. First, the participation of many Arab states in the coalition against Iraq shattered the discourse of Arab unity prior to the initiation of peace negotiations. Jordan’s position outside the coalition set Jordan outside the official Arab consensus as represented by Egypt, Syria, the Gulf, and the Arab League. Isolated from the Arab public sphere, Jordan turned inward. Second, the participation of Syria in the Madrid talks drew the teeth of any Arabist rejection of the peace negotiations. Third, inside of Jordan this period represented the high point of democratic discourse and public sphere openness. King Hussein’s alignment with Iraq had placed his regime on the same side as the political public for one of the first times in Jordanian history, giving the regime considerable political capital in this early stage of the peace negotiations. Therefore, while the public sphere was relatively open, the public was not inclined to vigorously oppose the regime’s foreign policy. Criticism focused upon issues of domestic policy: public freedoms, the World Bank, the sales tax, privatization, corruption, administrative reform. One wave of opposition to the peace process did bring down the “peace government” of Taher al-Masri. That Jordanian chauvinist forces played more of a role in the defeat of Masri, the first Prime Minister of Palestinian origin in the democratic era, than did the more visible anti-peace opposition is suggested by the easy confirmation of Masri’s successor with a virtually identical policy statement. ₁₈

After the Gulf war, as the United States mounted a concerted campaign to arrive at a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Jordanian participation in the proposed peace conference was never really in doubt. Jordan had long called for the convocation of such a conference oriented toward the guidelines of the UN resolutions 242 and 338, and could hardly refuse now. Jordan badly needed the international validation implicit in an invitation to Madrid. The regime saw little reason to refuse such an invitation, and in fact treated the invitation as something of a triumph. At any rate, “Jordan is not able to swim against the tide for even one moment.... it is blockaded by land, air and sea, without allies or friends.” ₁₉   Under such conditions, Jordan could lose little by participating and could hope for substantial benefits.

The acceleration toward a peace treaty therefore took place within a public sphere structure dramatically changed by the Gulf war and Oslo. The Gulf War weakened the sanctioning power of Arabist norms, while the PLO defection at Oslo prevented the Palestinian leadership from criticizing the Jordanian action. Even Realists admit the centrality of the removal of Arabist and Palestinian sanctions for enabling the Jordanian move. The argument developed here goes beyond constraint, however, arguing that Jordanian preferences changed based upon the transformation of state identity within these reconfigured public spheres. A comprehensive peace would resolve Jordan’s most pressing strategic problems, and allow it to finally reconcile its private needs and its public beliefs. The severing of ties meant that the return of the West Bank was not necessary within this comprehensive peace.

Jordan justified the peace treaty in the Arabist arena largely by arguing against its relevance. In a major speech to the Jordanian Parliament about the peace process, Hussein emphatically rejected Arabist criticism: “If anyone speaks of us moving alone... let me remind them that we have acted alone only once... and that was our position in the Gulf crisis... and we suffered the consequences.... Nobody may outbid us at the Arab level or at any level.” ₂₀   This frame rejecting Arab outbidding contained a number of important elements. First, all the Arab states went to Madrid in order to negotiate a peace, and it was inadmissible to now recant on that consensus. Jordan was not moving alone, since the decision to begin peace talks was a collective Arab decision. Second, Jordan argued that it had been the Arab state most devoted to coordination, but that others had failed to maintain this coordination. Hussein met several times with Syrian President Hafiz al-Asad, and kept the other Arab parties informed at every step of the negotiations. The other Arab states did not match this commitment, however, and insisted on acting alone and not coordinating moves to Jordan; how could Jordan be expected to be the only party bound by these demands? Third, the PLO decision to seek a separate deal at Oslo meant that Jordan was certainly now free to pursue its own rights and interests. No generalizable argument could be made as to why Jordan had to be the last to sign an agreement. Fourth, in general, every Arab state had the right to pursue its interests in the negotiations, and “Syria can no more deny Jordan this right than Jordan would deny Syria its rights.” Jordan retained its right to make sovereign decisions, within the context of the claimed Arab consensus. Finally, Jordan’s Gulf War position demonstrated the sincerity of its Arabism, and no other Arab state, or member of the Jordanian opposition, could now criticize Jordan on these grounds.

The diminished relevance of the Arabist public sphere does not mean that the Jordanian treaty went unremarked. Shortly after the text of the treaty became public, Syria attacked the provision leasing Jordanian land with Israeli settlements back to Israel as a precedent for the Golan negotiations. King Hussein responded brusquely: “With all due respect, this is none of his business. It is Jordan’s business.” ₂₁   Hussein made little effort to dispute the Syrian interpretation or to offer justifications appropriate to the Arabist public sphere. Instead, he denied the sphere’s relevance, simply asserting Jordanian state interests. Syria and Jordan clashed over the treaty, with Jordan accused of abandoning Arab coordination, and Hussein denying the applicability of the concept. Syria and Jordan also clashed over the pace of normalization, and over Syrian fears that Jordan and Israel would cooperate to increase the pressure on Syria to sign its own deal. Despite Hussein’s occasional accusations of Syrian support for Jordanian opposition groups, Syrian criticism seems to have been largely confined to public argumentation and not to have extended to subversion. Only in June 1996, at the Cairo Summit to discuss Netanyahu’s election, did Hussein and Asad meet and agree to clear the air and end hostile media campaigns.

Palestinian opposition factions denounced the treaty vigorously, but their complaints seemed oddly irrelevant. A national strike in the West Bank and Gaza condemned the Jordanian peace, but the PNA quickly moved to contain the fallout. The Damascus-based opposition groups, including the PFLP and DFLP, as well as Hamas, denounced the Jordanian moves as repeating longstanding Jordanian treachery, putting regime interests ahead of Palestinian interests. Their opposition to Arafat’s peace moves, and their dependence on Syria, helped to bind together Jordan and the PNA by linking them together in the Peace Camp: the common opposition in a sense helped to produce shared identity and interests between Jordan and the PNA. Some PLO figures worried about Hussein’s intentions with regard to the PNA, and Arafat reportedly held deep suspicions about Jordanian-Israeli coordination against Palestinian interests. Arafat did not attend the signing ceremony. The articles dealing with Jerusalem particularly enraged Palestinians, who saw Jordanian-Israeli collusion to prevent a Palestinian presence in the city. However, as Jordan did not use its treaty to undermine Arafat, some of these suspicions faded. A steady stream of high-level consultations and agreements, combined with a consensus on a common interest in the formation of a Palestinian state with good Jordanian relations, secured cooperation between the two actors. Wadi Araba ratified the conception of an East Bank Jordan, even more deeply entrenching the severing of ties. Jordan consistently affirmed that peace could only be complete and secure after the achievement of a Palestinian state, rejecting Israeli efforts to play Jordan off against the PNA.

Overall, Jordan won the deliberation in the Arabist arena. Even if it did not necessarily persuade many Arabs that the treaty was a good thing, or that rapid normalization served Arab identity or interests, it did persuade Arab states that it had not violated any norms or collective Arab demands. Unlike Egypt after Camp David, Jordan was not expelled from Arab institutions or sanctioned by the Arab order. The combined weight of the Madrid process, Oslo, the absence of compelling alternatives to the United States, and Syrian hopes for its own deal helped Jordan to achieve grudging acceptance of its new status. Other Arab states resisted Jordanian appeals for rapid normalization, and were less enthused about regional transformation, but they attended the MENA economic conferences, began relations with Israel, and refrained from overtly punishing Jordan. A certain degree of the reticence is explained by the general desire of Arab leaders to make their own deals with Israel, and some came from the lack of surprise at the treaty. More basic, however, is the general recognition that the Arab order now rested upon the pursuit of state interest, and that regional order was now defined by the American agenda. Few Arabs expressed surprise at the treaty, accepting it even if they did not enthusiastically embrace it; Egyptian hesitation derived more from concern over Jordan’s contesting its role as interlocutor for Israel than from a principled rejection of the treaty.

Jordanian Debates Over the Peace Treaty

The collapse of the Arabist public sphere corresponded with the rise of the Jordanian domestic public sphere. Jordanian public opinion did pay attention to Arab positions toward Jordanian peace moves, and largely accepted Jordanian participation in the negotiations to the extent that positions were coordinated with the PLO and the other Arab participants, principally Syria. At the Jordanian level, a very active, open print public sphere had developed in which political criticism was a norm. The freedom to criticize the PLO over Oslo created expectations about the ability to criticize Jordanian peace moves. The independent weekly press had come into its own, and when Jordanian peace moves picked up in the summer of 1994 these platforms were established, popular, and open to the opposition. Unwilling, and to an important extent unable, to simply abolish the measures of freedom that had become such an important element of regime legitimation, the government was infuriated by the opposition in these independent newspapers and set out to curb it by all legal means. While the independent press acted as a platform for critical voices, and even the semi-official dailies provided some measure of diversity, the government-controlled radio and TV strictly adhered to a pro-government position—one that was intolerant of all dissent and energetically marketed peace.

The openness of the Jordanian public sphere became a public issue second only to the peace treaty itself. King Hussein and his government regularly asserted the existence of a Jordanian national consensus for peace. The public sphere had not produced such a consensus, however, and the perceived need to maintain the appearance of one drove the repression of the public sphere. The assertion of the right to political opposition often took priority over the actual exercise of such opposition, as the political public found itself compelled to defend its legitimacy as a public. A major achievement of the democratic era had been to bind the public to a Jordanian identity and norms through participation in an open Jordanian public sphere. Now the regime again strove to bind the public to a Jordanian identity while closing down the public sphere. “Loyalty” replaced “participation” as the mechanism of proving belonging [intima] to the Jordanian identity. As opposition to the Jordanian peace moves grew, the regime attempted to portray the opposition as essentially non-Jordanian. A concern for Arab interests rather than the regime’s narrow definition of Jordanian interests became evidence of a non-Jordanian orientation and hence illegitimacy. In sharp contrast to the principle of public sphere participation, the regime sought to reestablish a norm of the inviolability of royal decisions: “because the King enjoys the confidence of his people, he does not have to defend his every move to them.... it is the right of the leader to act without needing to justify or interpret.” ₂₂   What could be farther from the norm of democratic, public sphere accountability so prominent in the early 1990s?

The regime did make considerable efforts to persuade the Jordanian political elite that Jordan’s interests required the moves toward peace. The National Conference, which ratified the decision to attend the Madrid Conference, was a carefully stage-managed spectacle with none of the real dialogue that had characterized the National Charter conference on which it was modeled. ₂₃   Hussein, Hassan, and various senior officials met with representatives of political society in various roundtables, salons, conferences, and public events in order to present their interpretations. It was only as political society converged around opposition to the peace treaty that the regime clamped down on the public sphere. While accepting the need for hiwar, Hussein and Hassan stressed the need for dialogue to be “responsible” and “constructive,” and to avoid the competitive “outbidding” characteristic of Arab public debates. ₂₄   The opposition divided between those who were willing to consider a settlement with Israel that met well-specified criteria and those who rejected any settlement on principle. While the regime preferred to portray all opposition as of the latter variety, the evidence does not support this contention.

During the peace negotiations, there was considerable public debate over its meaning for Jordanian identity and interests. Hussein often asserted that the opposition represented only a small minority of Jordanians, and that the vast majority supported his moves to peace. Hussein floated the idea of a national referendum over any peace treaty in July 1994, but the idea quietly faded away as the negotiations drew to a close and the outcome of such a referendum seemed less certain than a vote in the Parliament, where an absolute pro-government majority existed. Later, the opposition picked up the call for a referendum, but their calls were ignored. Hussein and Prime Minister Majali each explained that because “the vast majority of Jordanians support the peace... there is no need for a referendum.” ₂₅   A Center for Strategic Studies opinion poll which showed that 80 percent of Jordanians supported the Washington Declaration was often cited as evidence for this popular support; less often mentioned by government officials was the heavily conditional nature of the support in that opinion poll, which linked support to rapid economic improvement and changes in Israeli behavior. ₂₆

The opposition framed its objections in terms of both interests and identity. At the level of interests, the opposition made specific arguments about the text of the treaty and its implications for Jordanian security, water rights, economic development, and sovereignty. At the level of identity, the opposition argued that the treaty with Israel would cause Jordan to lose its Arab and Islamic identity. Cut off from its Arab roots, Jordan would stand alone and weak against Israeli domination. While the government emphasized the Jordanian state interests achieved in the treaty, the opposition denied the priority of these interests in relation to the wider Arab interests and identity. Above all, the opposition insisted that because Israeli identity, interests, and behavior had not changed, it was unjustifiable to believe that the enemy had now become a friend. All Israeli actions were interpreted from a suspicious, hostile frame; until proven otherwise, Israel was assumed to remain an enemy.

The regime frame responded that Jordanian negotiators had secured all of Jordan’s rights and interests. First, it argued that the treaty had returned “every centimeter” of Jordanian occupied territories and some of its rights to water, while decisively ending the threat of Israeli expansion eastward. Second, the government emphasized the economic benefits of peace in order to deflect attention from the political concessions in the treaty, and relied heavily on the premise that economic interest would trump political ideology or concerns over identity. Finally, King Hussein advanced a major innovation in identity discourse, with broad implications for domestic and regional political order. In this new frame, forces on both the Arab and the Israeli side shared an interest in peace but were challenged by extremists. With the treaty, Jordan stood not with Israel against Arabs but with the Peace Camp against Extremists. All Arab states had made a strategic decision for peace, making any criticism of Jordan’s treaty hypocritical. The regime argued that Israel had changed, having made a strategic decision for peace, and that until proven otherwise it should be given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to prove its commitment to peace and positive relations with Jordan.

The Parliamentary debates over ratifying the peace treaty were highly charged, unrestrained, and tightly focused. ₂₇   While there was never any doubt that the government’s regular majority would approve the treaty, the opposition took advantage of the platform to advance powerful critiques of the treaty’s text, its significance, and the justifications presented by the regime. Supportive deputies generally repeated official interpretations without extensive commentary; the Parliamentary debate was dominated by the opposition. Islamist deputies sometimes referred to religious and principled reasons to reject any form of treaty with Israel, but they and other opposition deputies offered detailed, rational critiques. Deputies contested the provisions relating to security cooperation, those forbidding hostile alliances, the definition of terrorism, and the constitutionality of the treaty. They showed particular unease over the absence of any provision for the refugees and worried that this might in fact help bring about the Alternative Homeland, despite the regime’s protestations that the treaty ended this threat. They rejected the argument that the occupied land had returned to Jordanian sovereignty, asking how an arrangement in which the land continued to be farmed by Israelis, patrolled by Israeli policemen, and was not subject to Jordanian taxes or laws could be considered sovereignty. They warned against rapid normalization, especially before Israel had delivered on promised Jordanian rights. They warned that the treaty opened Jordan to Jewish settlements and exposed it to Palestine’s fate; they warned that the Jordanian economy would be overwhelmed by the Israeli economy; they warned that Jordan would become a bridge for Israeli penetration into the Gulf. Deputies blasted the government for repressing debate, concealing the text of the treaty even from Parliament, so that they had to rely on the Israeli media to discover the terms of the treaty, and for surrounding the Parliament building with tanks and soldiers and excluding the public from the deliberations. In the end, the Prime Minister responded to the challenges by repeating official interpretations, and the treaty was ratified by a comfortable majority. King Hussein then called on the nation to move beyond debates over the treaty, and for the minority to accept the will of the majority.

Six months after the Wadi Araba signing ceremony, a leading Resistance voice wrote: “We understood, if not agreed with, your justifications for the agreement with the enemy... but what we see now leads us to believe that these justifications were not the real impetus.... they were nothing but sand thrown in our eyes.” ₂₈   The Resistance demonstrated a firm grasp of the international balance of power and the pressures upon Jordan: “we have said all along that it is Jordan and not Israel that will make concessions... because the balance of power will impose the solution.” ₂₉   Had the regime admitted it had been forced to sign the treaty to make the best of a bad situation, this would have been true, would have shown respect for the minds of the citizenry, and would have provided a shared basis for further debate about the appropriate response to this imposed situation. Instead, the official media celebrated the treaty as a victory for Jordan, in the face of both the obvious balance of power realities and the outcome that people could see in the treaty’s text. The stark contrast between the official claims and reality fed the opposition’s frame: “If Jordan was forced into a settlement as the least bad choice... how is that changed into a victory? How can one who enters negotiations weak and alone and poor leave them rich and strong and triumphant?” ₃₀

The course of events after the signing of the treaty cast doubt upon the claim that the Jordanian decision had been motivated by rationalist calculations of power, threat, or budget security. Behavior—the rapid move to an exceptionally close relationship between the Jordanian and Israeli leaderships—contradicted the interpretive frame of a Jordan compelled to sign by the preponderance of power: “The most important matter which contradicts the idea of pressure [as the reason for the treaty] is the great enthusiasm of the executive authority for normalization” (Mayeteh 1994b: 22). To many observers it appeared that “this is not gradual normalization between enemies who want to become friends, but closer to the embrace of brothers meeting after long separation... or long lost lovers finally finding the way to marriage.” ₃₁   The very warmth of the official Jordanian-Israeli relationship which led Israelis to consider the treaty successful led Jordanians to doubt the official justifications for the treaty. As Hussein argued for a transformation of regional and national identity and institutions, the dominant public image became one of Israel and the Jordanian regime allied against the Jordanian people.

In this context of shared recognition of power realities and divergent interpretations of political norms, rationalist explanations took on a distinctive role. The pro-treaty forces, unable to appeal to norms, instead fought to discredit once and for all any appeal to norms and replace them with an emphasis on national interests. As Fahd al-Fanik acidly asserted, “the reference point for the opposition is ideological or principled with sentimental slogans.... while the reference point for the supporters is Jordan’s present and future interests, its stability and regime.” ₃₂   Only the balance of power and national interests were to be permissible in public sphere argumentation, and only Jordan could serve as the referent of this self-interest. To the extent that Jordanian national interests replace Arab or Palestinian interests, the opportunities for movement shift. And to the extent that these new norms become internalized, the way in which actors understand political reality changes. The Resistance to normalization aimed at preventing the institutionalization of these new norms, while maintaining the norms of the Arabist tradition. Crucially, the opposition accepted the centrality of Jordanian interests, defending their status as “Jordanian patriots” and denying any affiliation with non-Jordanian parties or states. The struggle over the peace treaty revealed a consensus on the priority of Jordanian state interests underlying the dissensus on the nature of those interests.

While framing arguments within the context of the national interest, the opposition strove vigorously to regain Arabist norms and identity as the locus of public claims within the context of the Jordanian public sphere. The Resistance claimed to speak for the Jordanian nation and to better represent the Jordanian national interest than the government. Naji Allush, a widely respected Palestinian Arabist intellectual, made the connection between identity and of interest most explicit: “There is a big difference between the Emirate of Transjordan... and the Jordan which is part of the Arab nation and bound to its norms.... The Jordan which signed the treaty is the former.” ₃₃   Accepting the treaty meant forfeiting Jordan, or at least the Jordanian identity defined by Arabist norms. Kamal Rashid framed the issue even more starkly: “The Jordanian Self can find some small things to celebrate... but if the Self of the Arab or Islamic nation speaks then his words are only pain and sorrow... [but] the issue is indivisible and the Jordanian Self can not speak alone.” ₃₄   The struggle thus moved inexorably from a competition to define interests to one over national identity.

Justifying the treaty rested on a bid to transform Jordanian identity. King Hussein asserted that “real peace can not result from treaties.... it can only emerge from a change in people’s minds and hearts.” The Resistance agreed: “They frankly say, “it is not enough to sign a treaty.. peace must become acceptable and a way of life for the people.’... they know that if you resist they will not achieve their goals.... they will not succeed unless you submit to the enemy’s control.” ₃₅   Both regime and opposition considered the real field of struggle to be the norms of the public sphere: what norms would be seen as legitimate, which interpretive frame would be seen as best describing reality, in what kind of language would debate be conducted?

“Are you with the people or with the government?” came to be the operative question, as political position and national identity became increasingly bound together. ₃₆   Supporters of the treaty attempted to equate support for the treaty with patriotism: “position on the peace treaty distinguishes those who see Jordan as their nation [watan] from those who do not.” ₃₇   The opposition, for its part, distinguished between “Jordan” and “the Jordanian government,” asserting that the opposition rather than the government best spoke for and defended Jordanian interests. As one opposition newspaper masthead starkly claimed after the revocation of the boycott on Israeli products: “The government wins... the nation loses!!” ₃₈   This discourse proved strikingly effective, as the government’s reversal of long-held Jordanian positions left much of the uncommitted public deeply disconcerted. Since the opposition stood up for many of the policies and norms which until quite recently had been at the core of Jordanian policy—commitment to Iraq, resistance to Israel, support for Palestinian opposition, appeals for Arab unity—while the government advanced radically new, and dangerously unjustified, policies—support for the Iraqi opposition, rapid normalization, condemnation of Palestinian terrorism, state interests—the opposition claim to represent the national interest bore considerable weight. In short, a major dimension of the political struggle over the peace treaty was over the bases on which the struggle would—and should—be fought. Was it sufficient that the treaty be shown to serve Jordanian interests? Or did the maintenance of an Arab identity take precedence over any considerations of narrow state interest?

 

Conclusion

The Jordanian decision to sign a peace treaty with Israel responded both to strategic concerns and to changes in public sphere structure. The Gulf War and Oslo changed the regional context of Jordanian policy, making an agreement with Israel both possible and, arguably, necessary. This agreement reflected the balance of power, but also involved an ambitious project of transformation of both Jordanian identity and interests and regional institutions and identity. The shift from privacy to publicity meant that for the first time Jordan could publicly avow its interests in its relations with Israel. This public avowal both made it possible to openly pursue agreements in pursuit of these shared interests and placed the interests themselves open to legitimate public deliberation.

 

---

Endnotes

Note 1:  Hosni Mubarak, June 1994: “There are few differences between Israel and Jordan.” Shimon Peres, December 1993: “All we need is a pen to sign a peace treaty with Jordan.”  Back.

Note 2:  Shamir, Closing speech at Madrid peace conference, text in New York Times, November 2, 1991.  Back.

Note 3:  Not all dimensions of Jordanian-Israeli relations were open to public discussion; security cooperation remained a red line, excluded from public deliberation, as did some sensitive issues related to Israeli investment and land purchases.  Back.

Note 4:  Fahd al-Fanik, “The latest Jordanian move,” al-Rai June 21, 1994.  Back.

Note 5:  Thouqan al-Hindawi interviews published in Shihan December 10, 1994 and al-Bilad December 14, 1994, and commentary by opposition leaders in al-Majd December 8, 1994.  Back.

Note 6:  Ashrawi (1994) for a Palestinian perspective on the joint delegation and Abd al-Salam al-Majali, “Memoirs” published in al-Rai, April 1&-;4, 1995 for a Jordanian view.  Back.

Note 7:  Majali, “Memoirs.” Peres (1995), p. 304, claims not to have informed the Jordanians. There is evidence that King Hussein and Prince Hassan, like the Americans, were aware of the back channel negotiations, but did not take them seriously.  Back.

Note 8:  “Jordan is not Palestine!!” al-Rai October 24, 1994.  Back.

Note 9:  Fahd al-Fanik, “Dangers of the Alternative Homeland,” Shihan December 10, 1994.  Back.

Note 10:  Anani interviewed on Jordan TV, June 6, 1994, Jordanian Documents [hereafter JD] 94/2/27.  Back.

Note 11:  Peres in joint press conference with Abd al-Salam al-Majali, July 21, 1994.  Back.

Note 12:  Bater Wardum, “The personality of Jordan after the treaty,” al-Majd December 26, 1994.  Back.

Note 13:  Mohammed Daoudiya, “The necessity of dialogue,” al-Dustur February 3, 1992.  Back.

Note 14:  Tareq Masarweh, “What is the Jordan we want?” al-Ufuq September 7, 1994.  Back.

Note 15:  Abd al-Salam al-Majali, interviewed in al-Dustur November 7, 1994; King Hussein press conference, August 2, 1994, JD 94/3/25.  Back.

Note 16:  Joint statement issued in Damascus, quoted in New York Times October 25, 1991.  Back.

Note 17:  Fahd al-Rimawi, “Collapses,” al-Majd August 1, 1994.  Back.

Note 18:  Filastin al-Thawrah 870, December 1, 1991, skates around the identity issue, suggesting delicately that al-Masri threatened “existing power centers of which he was not a part.”  Back.

Note 19:  Saleh al-Qullab, “Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine,” al-Dustur July 27, 1991.  Back.

Note 20:  Hussein speech to Jordanian Parliament, July 9, 1994. JD 94/3/3.  Back.

Note 21:  Hussein interview, ABC Television, October 25, 1994, JD 94/4/37, p. 261.  Back.

Note 22:  Fahd al-Fanik, al-Rai August 10, 1994  Back.

Note 23:  The official discourse, such as the official publication Battle for Peace (1994), highlights this conference; few other Jordanians refer to it.  Back.

Note 24:  For example, Hussein press conference, Washington, July 29, 1994, JD 94/3/23; Hassan at roundtable with opposition deputies, Royal Court, August 1, 1994, JD 94/3/24.  Back.

Note 25:  Majali interviewed in al-Ahram, August 17, 1994, JD 94/3/41; Hussein interviewed on Radio Monte Carlo August 17, 1994, JD 94/3/39.  Back.

Note 26:  Center for Strategic Studies opinion survey, August 1994; Personal interviews with Mustafa Hamarneh, director of the Center, Aguust 1994.  Back.

Note 27:  Text of Parliamentary Debates as published in al-Dustur; summaries and text of Foreign Relations Committee report and deliberations in JD 94/4/48.  Back.

Note 28:  Fahd Rimawi, “The Israeli daily decision maker,” al-Majd March 20, 1995.  Back.

Note 29:  Rimawi, “Shylock,” al-Majd September 5, 1994.  Back.

Note 30:  Rimawi, “Blocking the Zionist dream,” al-Majd September 12, 1994.  Back.

Note 31:  Rimawi, “The Israeli daily decision maker.”  Back.

Note 32:  Fanik, al-Rai July 26, 1994; even more bluntly, “all principles which contradict interests must be abolished.” al-Rai August 19, 1994.  Back.

Note 33:  Naji Allush, “Jordan and the Peace Treaty,” al-Majd October 24, 1994.  Back.

Note 34:  Kamal Rashid, “A great day... but for whom?” al-Majd October 31, 1994.  Back.

Note 35:  Bahjat Abu Ghurbiya, “No!!!!” al-Majd October 24, 1994.  Back.

Note 36:  Fanik, “The government opinion,” al-Rai October 15, 1995.  Back.

Note 37:  Fanik, al-Rai November 5, 1994.  Back.

Note 38:  al-Sabil, August 1, 1995.  Back.