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

Marc Lynch

Columbia University Press

1999

7. New Jordan, New Middle East?

 

Peace with Israel led to a fundamental, public, and highly controversial reorientation of Jordanian foreign policy. To what extent was this change institutionalized, embedded within a consensus achieved through communicative action? I argue that a thin stratum of elites, particularly King Hussein, was fully convinced of the need for peace, based on their engagement with the international arena. The Jordanian public sphere, however, produced a consensus against rather than for the peace agreement. The Jordanian public vigorously debated the meaning of peace with Israel, the identity of the Jordanian state given its new international alliances, and the substance of Jordanian interests. Rather than blame public opposition on atavism, culture, anti-Semitism, psychological barriers, or irrational emotion, I argue that the trends in Jordanian public opinion reflect the rational evaluation of competing interpretive frames. Given a choice between two frames, one supporting and one opposing peace with Israel, the Jordanian public sphere inclined toward opposition only after an ongoing process of interpreting the costs and benefits of the treaty, the implications for identity, and changes in Israeli behavior. As the government failed to win the public debate, and eventually found itself facing a hostile popular will, it resorted to repression, shutting down the public sphere rather than engaging with it. The government remained bound to the treaty, but its enthusiasm waned. Over a series of crises between Israel and the Palestinians, and between Jordan and Israel, King Hussein began to accuse Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu of destroying the peace process. I have argued that changes in the conception of state interests can only become a new, stable set of preferences if they are institutionalized in domestic structures. In this chapter, I consider the implications of a failure to achieve such a consensus.

I proceed as follows. First, I summarize Israeli-Jordanian relations since the peace treaty in terms of the theoretical arguments developed in this book. Second, I examine the status of the Jordanian and Arab public spheres. Third, I examine official Jordanian-Israeli relations. Fourth, I examine Jordanian public debates over the peace treaty, particularly the interpretive framing struggles, the organization of civil society into an opposition coalition, and the state turn to repression of societal resistance. Finally, I compare the public deliberation over the peace treaty with the deliberation over the severing of ties.

 

Overview

Viewed from the outside, the peace treaty produced a new conception of Jordanian interests that rendered cooperation with Israel not only desirable but essential. After the signing of the peace treaty, a new academic and political consensus quickly emerged about the nature of Jordanian-Israeli relations. According to this new conventional wisdom, based on the “shared interests paradigm,” the treaty now allowed Jordan and Israel to openly pursue their shared overriding security interests. Israel was cast as Jordan’s only defense against a set of clear, objective threats: Iraq, Syria, and a Palestinian state. Even during periods of Jordanian-Israeli tension, Israeli officials confidently asserted that “Jordan and Israel enjoy important mutual interests and a close relationship at the highest levels.” ₁   Did this confident assertion of shared interests and close relations match Jordanian perceptions? Does it matter that Jordanian-Israeli relations moved from secret into the public? Does it matter that the Jordanian public rejected this conception of Jordanian interests?

The Jordanian public debate viewed the stakes of the peace treaty as a comprehensive regional realignment. As opposition leader Layth Shubaylat put it, “what was Arab and Islamic in Jordan’s strategic decisions is now Zionist and American... official Jordan has taken a strategic choice to distance itself from the Arabs and make itself their enemy.” ₂   The opposition mobilized within civil society, with the professional associations, the weekly press, and the Islamist movement leading the way. The major Associations passed binding resolutions forbidding their members from engaging in “normalization” with Israel. The weekly press gave full voice to the opposition frame. Leftist, Arabist, and some centrist political parties joined forces with the Islamists in a coalition opposed to normalization; accepting that they could not force the regime to abolish the treaty, they looked to deprive it of social meaning, along the Egyptian model. The Popular Conference to Resist Normalization and Protect the Nation (PCRN), organized by a coalition of opposition parties and civil society organizations, cast its discourse explicitly in terms of protecting Jordanian national interests and identity from a state action that placed the nation in danger. This form of opposition threatened the regime, forcing public engagement on normative grounds, with reference to a widely held conception of national security, identity, and interests.

Popular opposition to the treaty was not foreordained, or inherent in the Palestinian origin of much of the population, Islamic beliefs, or Arab culture. The initial response to the treaty was very much one of “wait and see”; one public opinion poll showed that 80 percent of Jordanians supported the July 1994 Washington Declaration, but that support was “soft,” conditional on rapid economic improvement and progress on the Palestinian and Syrian tracks ₃ . While both the regime and the opposition claimed overwhelming popular support for their positions, the truth seems to be that these two camps were competing for the support of a large, undecided public. Since the PLO had made peace, and many expected Syria to follow suit, the normative Arabist sanction did not hold; and the rise of the Jordanian public sphere after 1990 made a focus on Jordanian interests both plausible and normatively valid. During the period after the treaty, the regime, the opposition, and the undecided engaged in spirited, open debate, in which each side attempted to demonstrate the superiority of its interpretive frame. The terms of this debate were the nature of Jordanian identity and the best way to protect the entity, interests, and security. The major leading indicators in this interpretive struggle were Israeli behavior (toward Jordan, the Palestinians, and Lebanon); economic trends; and public freedoms (government tolerance of political opposition).

The shift toward the opposition frame followed from competitive interpretive framing of developments along each of these indicators. First, Israeli behavior did not justify Jordanian friendship. There was a widespread perception that Israel was failing to honor its signed agreements, especially with regard to water and access to West Bank markets. As Israel dragged its feet on negotiations with the Palestinians and Syria, attacked Lebanon, and built settlements in Jerusalem, many undecided Jordanians came to believe that Israel had not changed. With the election of Netanyahu, this belief, already established, deepened immensely. While King Hussein may well have initially welcomed Netanyahu’s election, as some have claimed, this was not true of the vast majority of pro-peace and undecided Jordanians. For these Jordanians, the demands of both identity and their conception of interests could be met only by an Israeli committed to peace with Syria, creating a Palestinian state, and economic cooperation at the regional level. While many had lost confidence that Peres held these goals, nobody believed that Netanyahu did. From the narrow perspective of strategic interests, the Hashemites could perhaps see the potential for cooperation with a Likud government; from the broader perspective of Jordanian identity and interests, the Jordanian public could not. Hussein’s growing anger with Netanyahu should be interpreted in light of Netanyahu’s abandonment of the idea of transforming regional structures, which badly hurt the regime’s domestic and Arabist framing of the peace. The attempted assassination of Hamas figure Khalid Misha’al in Amman outraged even the most enthusiastic advocates of peace.

Second, economic prosperity failed to materialize. The United States unwillingness to provide significant financial assistance, beyond the cancellation of some debt, dashed Jordanian expectations of a Camp David style financial package. The continuing deterioration of the Jordanian economy was exacerbated by IMF demands for reductions in bread subsidies. In June 1996 and again in February 1998, major riots broke out in the southern cities. Despite the expectation that the peace would bring large-scale foreign investment and joint ventures, very few such projects materialized; those that involved Israeli companies set off fierce public debates about the implications for Jordanian security, as well as whether or not such ventures were normatively appropriate. At the level of regional integration, the first MENA Economic Conferences in Dar al-Bayda and Amman held out the prospects of developing economic ties. After Netanyahu’s election, however, the 1996 conference in Cairo was deeply politicized, while the 1997 conference in Doha was boycotted by almost all Arab states (Jordan attended). At Doha, Jordan and Israel agreed to create the first American-sponsored economic free zone, sparking some joint ventures and investment, but trade and investment remained low. The 1998 conference, in the context of a near-complete freeze in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process, was quietly canceled. Therefore, at both the domestic and the regional levels, the economic dimension of peace failed to materialize.

Third, increasing repression of political opposition helped to convince many Jordanians that the price of the treaty was democracy and public freedoms, which helped to consolidate the belief that the regime had pursued “state/regime” interests at the expense of “Jordanian” interests. As opposition to the peace treaty escalated, the regime responded by an increasingly harsh repression of the public sphere. The government resorted to censorship, arrests, harassment, and general hostility to public challenge. A widespread belief that “democracy is the price of peace” drove many intellectuals and activists into the opposition camp; even if they recognized the potential merits of peaceful relations with Israel, they objected to the regime’s style and the rollback of the gains for liberalism since 1989.

The split between regime and opposition grew profound, with the two frames employing mutually exclusive discourse, normative positions, and interpretations. For example, a December 1997 survey revealed a striking contrast in the interpretation of a major part of the justification for the treaty: 59 percent of the members of Parliament believed that the peace treaty had ended the Israeli “Alternative Homeland” threat, while 73 percent of political party leaders and 72 percent of newspaper columnists believed that it had not. ₄   The consolidation of the societal consensus could be seen in the ability of the opposition to unite a diverse coalition against normalization. In January 1997, a boycott of an Israeli Trade Fair was supported by virtually every civil society organization, political party, and political figure in the country. Nidal Mansour wrote after the boycott that “for the first time I felt real unity despite all the differences among the coalition,” a unity based on the consensus that the Trade Show represented “an Israeli invasion of Jordan.” ₅   Opposition figures, particularly Islamists, regularly won elections in Professional Associations, university student councils, and other civil society institutions; Shubaylat was re-elected head of the Professional Associations while in prison, with more than 90 percent of the vote. In March and April 1998, after the opposition boycotted the 1997 Parliamentary elections, Islamists and opposition candidates again swept Association and student council elections. In the summer of 1998, an impressive coalition, encompassing the Islamist movement, opposition parties, civil society, independent political and cultural figures, and former regime figures such as Ahmed Obaydat and Taher al-Masri, formed a National Conference to draft a comprehensive alternative program for Jordan’s future.

While repression enhanced the regime’s freedom of maneuver, it also signaled the failure of its attempt to establish new norms or to transform identity. I have argued that transformation of collective identity requires public sphere interaction; by closing the public sphere, the regime implicitly accepted that Jordan’s identity would not change. Netanyahu’s election and the collapse of the peace process crippled the attempts to forge a “New Middle East” and sparked the tentative reconstruction of an Arab order. This regional failure of identity transformation rebounded on the Jordanian debate. Having lost the argument, the government could only use repressive power to maintain its position. Indeed, especially after Abd al-Salam al-Majali replaced Kabariti in March 1997, the government seemed perversely inclined to impose its preferences on every issue, no matter how minor, to dismiss any real dialogue, and to pointedly reject any idea advanced in the public sphere. The treaty would remain in place, and the coercive power of the state would prevent effective opposition, but the larger project of embedding a new identity into Jordanian institutions was largely abandoned.

The public rejection of the treaty, and the collapse of attempts to transform regional structures, was matched by the growing crisis in official Jordanian-Israeli relations. The convergence of interpretations of Israeli behavior did not extend to a convergence of frames. King Hussein cast every step in the deterioration in terms of Netanyahu’s hostility to peace and Jordanian commitment to peace. As one well-informed American observer put it, King Hussein would not admit that his decision to ally with Israel was wrong, but would admit that Netanyahu had destroyed the foundations for cooperation. ₆   While Jordanian officials consistently emphasized that Jordan’s decision for peace was strategic, and not subject to change, the failure to embed this “strategic” decision in Jordanian identity or institutions made it vulnerable. The treaty provided too many substantive benefits, particularly in terms of cooperation with the United States, to be abandoned, but it did not necessarily translate into the warm peace originally advocated. As a moderate Islamist who later joined the Cabinet explained, “the peace treaty must be dealt with as an existing fact.... the only way to overturn the treaty now is to empty it of its meaning.” ₇

The freeze in the Palestinian-Israeli and Syrian-Israeli negotiations deprived Hussein of regional support for domestic transformation. Each crisis made successful final status negotiations less likely, while also confirming the opposition’s frame. In a series of increasingly bitter open letters, King Hussein asserted that Netanyahu was neither interested in nor capable of making peace with the Arabs. In other words, the Peace Camp had been abandoned by the Israeli side. Shortly after the King’s first letter, a Jordanian soldier attacked a bus of Israeli tourists at Baqoura, killing several. In the following tumult, Hussein’s grievances were lost as he personally traveled to Israel to apologize to the bereaved families—an authentic expression of his despair and grief, but also a pointed reminder of the contrast between himself and Netanyahu. The reception of Duqamseh as a popular hero horrified the King and much of the public, but expressed a deeply rooted hostility toward Israel that had not been changed by the peace treaty. The Misha’al Affair drove relations deeper into crisis. Indeed, a December 1997 opinion poll found that 81 percent of Jordanians thought that Jordanians still considered Israelis to be “enemies.” ₈   Hussein framed his attacks on Netanyahu in terms of the Jordanian desire to save the peace process, but the opposition frame rejecting the treaty on the grounds of identity and interests simply argued that they had been right all along.

 

Normalization, Identity and the Definition of Interests

The Jordanian public sphere did not neglect or ignore the peace process. Perhaps out of a need to discover the real preferences of the Jordanian public, the government at first allowed considerable latitude to public discussion. More crucially, the regime recognized the theoretical principle developed here, that identity and interests could be changed only through deliberation. Hiwar [dialogue] was a deeply entrenched Jordanian norm, and the government sincerely hoped to change public opinion, perceptions, and behavior through persuasion. While the government was prepared to use repressive force to guarantee the treaty if necessary, it preferred to persuade the Jordanian public of a new set of identities and interests. To this end, King Hussein became personally involved in the deliberation, linking his personal legitimacy and popularity to the treaty and rejecting all efforts to direct criticism at the Prime Minister, to the extent that the treaty came to be known as “the King’s peace.” In the months immediately before and after the treaty signing, the Jordanian public sphere engaged in active and contentious deliberation over the peace treaty. At this point the public sphere remained relatively open and engaged, despite loud complaints of government attempts to repress important information and dissenting opinions. The weekly press, at least, gave voice to the opposition; government officials took to distinguishing between “our” media (the daily press, television and radio) and “their” media (the weekly press).

Official tolerance of the public sphere began to wane after it became clear that the public was not sold on the benefits of the peace treaty. Harassment of journalists and weekly newspapers became increasingly common, as many opposition editors spent some time in jail and considerable time in court. ₉   The passage of a temporary Press and Publications Law in 1997 sharply curtailed the public sphere, as local activists and international human rights observers alike noted; Prime Minister Majali was cited by the Committee to Protect Journalists as one of the world’s ten enemies of the press for 1997. This highly restrictive law closed down most weekly newspapers and had a chilling effect upon speech in those that survived. In April 1998, the editorial board of al-Ra’i, the largest daily newspaper and the one in which the government owned the most shares, was replaced with a more politically compliant one in anger at even the muted political criticism in its staid pages. ₁₀   As the government clamped down on the weekly press, Jordanians turned away from the public sphere. In its annual “Democracy in Jordan” opinion survey, the Center for Strategic Studies found that in May 1997 the percentage of Jordanians who claimed to read the daily press had dropped from 52.3 percent to 34.2 percent in a year, while readership of the weekly press fell from 38 percent to 16.9 percent; a rational response to the declining credibility and contentiousness of the press. ₁₁

It was not only government repression that corroded rational-critical discourse in the Jordanian public sphere, however. As time passed and it became clear that the government was not responsive to public opinion on this—or, increasingly, any—issue, the public began to dichotomize into camps to the detriment of real public sphere interaction. The polarization of opinion over normalization blocked real dialogue between supporters and opponents of normalization that might hold out hope for a new consensus. Some liberals—and even nonliberals—grumbled that the operative term for public sphere debate had shifted from hiwar [dialogue] to jadal [argument], with the exchange of accusations and insults replacing the circulation of arguments geared to consensus. Once it became clear both that the government could not win a popular consensus and that public opinion could not force a change in government policy, each side seemed content to reinforce the solidarity of its own bloc. The opposition boycott of the 1997 elections after the failure of a highly publicized effort at hiwar between government and opposition powerfully symbolized this retreat. In the absence of dialogue, the government drew its conceptions of identity and interests less from participation in the Jordanian public sphere and more from the international public sphere. While this made for consistency in Jordan’s foreign policy in the short term, it also meant that official foreign policy alienated and antagonized most of Jordanian society; and it meant that official efforts to transform Jordan’s identity and public conceptions of interest had been abandoned.

Parliament was a particularly important institutional site for contesting the peace treaty. The government had already begun to prepare the way for ratification of the treaty, by manipulating the 1993 Parliamentary elections to ensure a compliant legislature (Ridel 1994). Nevertheless, the heated Parliamentary debate captured the intense differences in Jordanian political society as well as the limitations of hiwar in the face of a determined government. While the opposition dominated the proceedings, the government won its preordained majority. This “deliberation” satisfied nobody: the tolerance of Parliamentary speeches did not appease the opposition, who resented its lack of efficacy; the reasoned argument, no less than the occasional vitriol, in the opposition speeches angered and frightened the government.

In May 1995, the opposition succeeded in preventing the revocation of laws forbidding the sale of land to Jews and boycotting the Jewish state, but the laws were later passed. Parliamentary deliberations forced government officials to defend and explain Jordanian relations with Israel, although the most sensitive dimensions of security and economic relations were discussed only in closed session. During crises over Israeli actions in Lebanon and Jerusalem (see below), Parliament issued nonbinding resolutions demanding the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador and a freezing of relations; this could not compel government policy, but provided a powerful signal of Jordanian opinion. The decision to maintain the “one vote” electoral law led to the opposition decision to boycott the 1997 elections. The elections produced a Parliament almost devoid of opposition forces, especially the Islamic Action Front, and dominated by tribal, non-party candidates. To the surprise of most observers, however, this Parliament seemed determined to demonstrate its independence and integrity, and challenged the government on a number of issues. The controversial Press and Publications Law, for example, passed only after long and contentious deliberations. With regard to Israel, the new Parliament proved unenthusiastic about normalization and skeptical about the benefits of the peace process, reflecting the mood of the Netanyahu era of Arab-Israeli relations. During the 1998 vote of confidence on the new Prime Minister, Fayz Tarawneh, an unprecedented unified statement by 53 Members of Parliament demanded the freezing of normalization and the improvement of Jordan’s relations with the Arab world.

State Policy

There is serious disagreement as to whether the treaty should be considered a success or a failure. While the “warm peace” hoped for by King Hussein and Israelis has failed to materialize, security cooperation has developed and become well-entrenched, although this has been less true since late 1997. Despite increasing disenchantment publicly expressed by the Jordanian government, Jordan has been Israel’s closest ally and defender in the Arab world. Jordanian-Israeli relations since the treaty fall into three clearly identifiable stages: first, a honeymoon period of great expectations; second, a stabilizing period of positive relations, in which numerous protocols and agreements were signed, and in which relations seemed to be generally positive; third, a period of sharp decline after the attack on Lebanon, actions in Jerusalem, and the election of Netanyahu, in which relations have not been broken but in which relations have become cold and increasingly hostile, and progress toward normalization has largely stopped. There have been moments of increased warmth, but the general trend has been clear.

Since the treaty there have been several cases that allow evaluation of the impact of the peace treaty on Jordan’s international behavior. Chapter 8 provides a detailed study of the transformation of Jordanian-Iraqi relations. Here, I evaluate Jordanian-Israeli relations since the treaty, which included the May 1995 Israeli confiscation of land in Jerusalem, the April 1996 Israeli assault on Lebanon, the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, and the August 1997 Misha‘al Affair. Israeli actions on other tracks angered Jordanians for their own sake, in that Jordanians identified with the Palestinian and Lebanese suffering. Such actions also provided important signals about Israel’s “type”: was Israel the kind of state that would honor its commitments and seek peaceful, cooperative relations with Arab states, or was it the kind of state which would violate its commitments and pursue its preferences through power? Each of these events put the demands of the competing frames into sharp and unavoidable conflict. Would Jordan act as a member of the Peace Camp and put its relations with Israel and its commitment to the peace process above all other interests, or would Jordan act as an Arab state and stand with urgent Arab concerns? Could Jordan use its close relations with Israel to influence Israel behavior, vindicating the claim that engagement might change, or at least constrain, Israel?

In the first stage after the peace treaty, Israel and Jordan enjoyed something of a honeymoon at the official level and among Israelis, if not at the popular Jordanian level. Rabin and Hussein enjoyed extremely close relations, and shared a common vision of the regional order. The leaders, and other officials, met regularly to discuss the implementation of the treaty, signing a series of supplemental agreements. In April 1995, Jordan and Israel exchanged ambassadors, and regular visits between high level officials began to build personal contacts between the two sides. Shimon Peres took a highly publicized walking tour of Amman during a state visit, and was charmed at the warm reception from Jordanians. Tourism, primarily Israeli visitors to Jordan, boomed almost immediately, and plans to jointly develop Aqaba and Eilat, as well as the Jordan Valley, were drafted.

The first signal that the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty could not be insulated from broader regional politics came in early May 1995, when Israel announced the confiscation of land in Arab East Jerusalem. The confiscation surprised nearly everyone, and outraged Jordanians who viewed Jerusalem as an issue of particular importance and sensitivity. A number of Arab states, including Jordan, announced that they would hold a mini-summit to consider unified action against the Israeli action. Rabin refused to reconsider, until the Likud opposition joined in a no-confidence motion brought by the Arab parties in the Knesset, threatening to bring down the government. A furious Rabin grudgingly froze the land confiscation and the Arab mini-summit was canceled.

This was one of the first major tests of Jordanian behavior in an Arab-Israeli confrontation after the peace treaty. The regime found its efforts to use its friendly ties to Israel to mediate the conflict ineffective, and the crisis caused a temporary but sharp deterioration in Jordanian-Israeli relations. On May 15, Foreign Minister Kabariti officially complained to Shimon Peres that “Jordan considers the Israeli measures to be directed at Jordan directly and to show a lack of respect for the Jordanian role in Jerusalem.” After Israeli Ambassador Shimon Shamir informed the Jordanians that the decision would not be reversed, Prince Hassan met with the American Ambassador, again with little effect. Finally, King Hussein wrote directly to Rabin, emphasizing the importance of Jerusalem. Officials warned that “Jordan’s firm commitment to the peace process... can not serve as cover for Israeli behavior in Jerusalem.” ₁₂   None of these efforts succeeded in modifying Israeli behavior, undercutting two major regime claims: that Jordan could use its friendship to influence Israeli behavior; and that the peace process had modified Israeli ambitions on the West Bank and Jerusalem, or that at least the desire to keep the process moving would constrain them. As Kabariti complained, “such Israeli measures cause embarrassment to all supporters of the peace process.” ₁₃

Societal and Parliamentary reaction was less restrained than the official attempts at mediation. Where the government cast its objections in terms of its commitment to the peace process, a special session of Parliament attended by more than 60 (out of 80) deputies called informally to cancel the peace treaty. With the controversial vote on revoking boycott laws only days away, Parliament showed every indication of rejecting the revisions, which would have been a major setback for Jordanian-Israeli relations. ₁₄   With Parliament firmly in the hands of a pro-government majority, such an action would have to be taken as an expression of societal consensus. In an interview with an Israeli newspaper, Kabariti noted that the confiscation “will not help us implement the peace process at the public level... how can the King now ask Parliament to abrogate the boycott laws, when the entire Jordanian public believes Israel is violating treaties?” ₁₅   After Israel froze its decision, the pro-government deputies returned to the fold and passed the laws, but the event left a strong impression that an opposition consensus capable of overcoming regime commitments could be mobilized. It strengthened the opposition frame by providing concrete evidence that Israel had not abandoned its ambitions on the West Bank and Jerusalem. While the regime denounced the Israeli action, and therefore the popular mobilization did not directly contradict official policy, there were very clear differences in the relative priority of the Jordanian peace based on narrow Jordanian interests and Arab and Palestinian interests. The resolution of the crisis kept these contradictions from coming to a head.

The assassination of Yitzhaq Rabin in November 1995 affected all dimensions of the peace process. For Jordan, it represented a particularly damaging blow because of the close friendship and deep trust between Hussein and Rabin. While Shimon Peres shared Rabin’s commitment to the peace process, his conception of Israeli interests and of Jordanian-Israeli relations differed from Rabin’s. Furthermore, Rabin’s murder undoubtedly evoked Hussein’s own sense of personal vulnerability; the headline in the Jordanian Islamist weekly, “One Less Murderer!” reportedly infuriated Hussein. Hussein’s eloquent eulogy at Rabin’s funeral struck many as the ultimate example of what Arab-Israeli peace should mean: a demonstration of affection, mutual respect, and hope for the future. Jordanians reacted less positively to this articulation of the Peace Camp frame. For many Jordanians, Rabin remained the leader of an enemy state, the Israeli Chief of Staff in 1967, the harsh repressor of the Intifada. Hussein’s evocation of his close, personal friendship with Rabin sharply contrasted with the public conceptions.

In March 1996, a series of suicide attacks in Israel led to the convocation of the extraordinary anti-terrorism “Summit of Peacemakers” at Sharm al-Shaykh. This Summit, while widely dismissed as a public relations stunt, did in fact serve to concretely embody the concept of the Peace Camp, so central to King Hussein’s identity frame. The wide attendance of the Summit seemed to lend plausibility to the idea that there existed a moderate center committed to peace, threatened by a small, violent minority.

In April 1996, however, Israel mounted a large-scale bombing campaign on southern Lebanon. While ostensibly in retaliation for Hizbullah rocket attacks on northern Israel, most observers interpreted the attack as part of Shimon Peres’s reelection campaign—proof that he could be trusted with security. World public opinion became outraged only when Western journalists revealed an Israeli bombing attack on a UN facility full of children; Arab public opinion reacted immediately. The timing of the “Grapes of Wrath” campaign could not help but recall the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, only a few years after Camp David, which helped ensure that peace treaty’s failure to lead to a broad Arab-Israeli peace. For Jordanians, as for Egyptians fourteen years earlier, the Israeli attack swung the internal and regional debate over relations with Israel against the “Peace Camp” frame.

Jordanians, horrified at the Israeli assault on Lebanon, demanded government action. As in the Jerusalem crisis, the government attempted to use its diplomatic ties with Israel to mediate while refraining from public comment. To the anger of the public and Parliament, the government did not issue any public condemnation for more than a week as it attempted diplomacy behind the scenes. On April 14, Kabariti phoned Peres asking him to stop the attacks in order to “remove all causes of tension and resume the peace process.” On April 16, Kabariti made an unprecedented trip to Jerusalem [rather than Tel Aviv] desperately seeking to mediate. These efforts were firmly rebuffed, angering even the pro-Israel camp. On April 18, King Hussein’s frustration boiled over into his first public criticism of Israel in years, as he “strongly condemned Israel’s flagrant aggression and the criminal military operations inflicted on the brotherly Lebanese people.” That the language of his condemnation was among the strongest used by any Arab leader is indicative of the sense of betrayal he undoubtedly felt. Kabariti simultaneously summoned the Israeli Ambassador to register an official protest. According to the official Jordanian news agency, Kabariti “told [Ambassador] Shamir that Jordan was outraged because its quiet diplomatic efforts to mediate an end to the eight-day-old blitz were only countered by further Israeli escalation of the fighting.”

The response in the Jordanian public sphere revealed the power of the opposition frame. The attack on Lebanon simply could not be reconciled with the regime frame of a new Israel, a reliable partner in peace led by Peres, a visionary of peace. The Parliamentary opposition again called on the government to abrogate the peace treaty and expel the Ambassador. The arguments of peace treaty advocates to “not abrogate the treaty... do not sacrifice Jordanian interests to a non-Jordanian cause” fell dangerously flat. ₁₆   Rallies of thousands filled the streets with banners denouncing Israel and the peace treaty. Kabariti warned that “there is a sense of alarm in Jordan and within the Jordanian public.... the situation is really dangerous and explosive.” For the second straight year, virtually all Jordanians boycotted the Israeli Independence Day festivities. The Islamist newspaper al-Sabil published an opinion poll of dubious scientific but considerable political value which claimed that 77 percent of Jordanians supported abrogating the peace treaty immediately. ₁₇   Opposition writers leveled deeply effective criticism against government attempts to maintain its peace camp frame: “The Information Minister says that Jordan... will work to save the peace process. What about saving the Lebanese people?” ₁₈

These events preceded the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, which is usually blamed for the collapse of the peace process. Rabin’s confiscation of Jerusalem land and the assault on Lebanon under Peres badly damaged the Peace Camp’s position by demonstrating Israeli behavior inconsistent with its frame. The case for a Peace Camp identity depended upon the portrayal of Israel as sympathetic toward Jordanian interests, trustworthy, and sincerely interested in peace. The opposition frame, portraying Israel as hostile, contemptuous of international law, antipathetic to Arab interests, and more interested in regional power and domination than in peace, seemed to better account for Israeli behavior. As one palpably frustrated centrist wrote, “they don’t want peace. We thought they had changed... but we do not find any evidence of any Israeli inclination for peace.” ₁₉   The regime’s inability to influence Israeli behavior undermined the argument that Jordan could use its connection to Israel to pursue Arab interests.

The election of Benjamin Netanyahu in May 1996, while not the first crisis in Jordanian-Israeli relations, posed a serious challenge to them. The return of the Likud threatened to leave Jordan in its worst possible outcome: publicly bound to Israel and isolated from all other Arab and Palestinian actors. Jordan’s strategy in the peace process had been premised on its irreversibility and the construction of new regional institutions and order. King Hussein had been careful to cultivate relationships with the Likud, and did not immediately condemn Netanyahu. Unlike most Arab leaders, Hussein called on Arabs to give the new leader a chance. In June, an Arab summit in Cairo warned against an Israeli retreat from its commitment to the peace process and advocated a freeze on normalization until the new Israeli leadership proved itself. In July, Prime Minister Kabariti met with Netanyahu for the first time, delivering four specific questions on the peace process. In August 1996, Hussein and Netanyahu met, with discussions focusing on bilateral issues. Hussein pointedly called on the new Prime Minister to live up to Israeli commitments, a theme that would be central to Jordanian discourse.

In September, however, Israel sparked uprisings and armed confrontations between PNA and Israeli personnel by opening an archaeological tunnel in an extremely sensitive part of the Old City of Jerusalem. This Israeli action particularly infuriated King Hussein because Dore Gold, Netanyahu’s close adviser, had visited Amman only two days before and had not warned the Jordanians of the tunnel opening; Jordanians felt that Israel hoped to implicate Jordan as complicit in the action. In October, a meeting in Washington called by President Clinton with Hussein, Arafat, and Netanyahu (Mubarak declined to attend) witnessed a surprising outburst from Hussein, in which he warned of his loss of trust and his deep disappointment. ₂₀   On October 9, King Hussein warned that the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty would be in question if Israel did not live up to its commitments to the Palestinians, and two days later Kabariti bluntly stated that the Israeli-Palestinian crisis was causing a Jordanian-Israeli crisis. On October 23, Hussein again called on Israel to live up to its agreements, warning that “the Middle East is on the brink and I fear we may all fall into it.”

Throughout December 1996, Hussein had spoken publicly and met privately with Israeli officials about the need to move the peace process forward, warning that the stagnation strengthened the opposition’s position and weakened the hand of the Peace Camp. In January 1997, Hussein helped to mediate the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations with a well-publicized intervention into the bargaining over the fate of Hebron. In a last-minute visit to Israel and to Gaza, Hussein personally pleaded with both sides to accept a compromise in order to prevent the peace process from collapsing completely. When Netanyahu finally agreed to a partial withdrawal from Hebron on January 25, commentators on all sides viewed it as a landmark decision, evidence that Netanyahu had changed and was now committed to the peace process.

By March 1997, these Jordanian hopes had faded. Netanyahu’s obstructionist tactics in the negotiations with the Palestinians left Hussein frustrated and furious. On February 25, Netanyahu visited Amman; two days later, in a move reminiscent of the tunnel opening, Israel announced the beginning of construction of a new settlement in Jebel Abu Ghunaym/Har Homa, a move that would effectively cut East Jerusalem off from the West Bank. On March 10, Hussein sent a blistering open letter to the Israeli Prime Minister expressing his disenchantment: “I no longer believe that you are a serious partner in peace.” The attack on Israeli tourists at Baqoura, as discussed above, obscured Hussein’s arguments, putting him on the defensive. Hussein’s framing of the Baqoura incident demonstrates the power of his commitment to the peace process. While Netanyahu exploited the situation by attempting to blame Hussein for creating a hostile atmosphere conducive to the Jordanian soldier’s attack, Hussein quietly rebuked the attack by personally traveling to Israel to apologize to the bereaved Israeli parents. Hussein’s words and deeds reinforced his frame: he was part of a Peace Camp threatened by Netanyahu’s defection. The response of Jordanian society equally demonstrated how isolated Hussein was in this frame.

Perhaps the most provocative event was the Misha’al Affair of August 1997. A Mossad operation, evidently approved by Netanyahu, attempted to assassinate Khalid Misha’al, a Hamas leader resident in Amman. After the action went wrong, with the agents captured, Hussein demanded and received an antidote for the poison used against Misha’al; the release of Jordanian prisoners in Israeli jails; and most significantly the release of Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas. King Hussein viewed the operation as a direct repudiation of the very essence of the peace treaty: “it was an act against Jordan itself, its integrity and its sovereignty, and the results were devastating for the trust we had built.” The attack undercut support for the treaty even among those who had believed in its strategic value; as one Jordanian politician explained, “Jordan made a strategic alliance with Israel... but the attack... demonstrates that Israel—or at least Netanyahu—does not value Jordan as a strategic ally.” In February 1998, the Israeli investigation committee refused to rule out future operations in Jordan, causing the Jordanian government to lodge an official complaint, and the Minister of the Interior to state publicly that the decision would negatively affect Jordanian-Israeli relations. Jordan temporarily froze most dimensions of security cooperation, including covert channels between the intelligence agencies. ₂₁

The tension in the official Jordanian-Israeli relationship did not lead to a decisive break between the two states. In March and April 1998, King Hussein and Prince Hassan met with Netanyahu, attempting to restore relations and to influence Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Their failure to convince Netanyahu to move forward on the peace process continued to chill relations. Jordan attempted to insulate security cooperation with Israel from public scrutiny. Joint exercises and maneuvers brought the Jordanian military together with American and Israeli counterparts. ₂₂   At the same time, most Jordanians perceived the security cooperation as not involving anything beyond state interests; every such action was widely denounced by the opposition and mainstream public opinion alike. Jordanian-Israeli security cooperation was enhanced by the United States. The sale of F-16s to Jordan was a response to Jordan’s new role in the security architecture of the region. In March 1996, Jordan agreed to the deployment of an American Air Expeditionary Force as part of a deal to bring F-16s to Jordan. In defending the decision to transfer these fighters, the Defense Department representative told Congress: “Jordan has worked very closely with Israel to enhance trade, tourism, diplomatic and especially military relations between the two countries in an unprecedented fashion.” ₂₃   Clashes between the Clinton Administration and the Republican Congress over U.S. aid to Jordan soured U.S.-Jordanian relations in 1996 and 1997, however. In 1997, the problem was resolved only when Egypt and Israel each agreed to allow $50 million of their own aid packages to be diverted to Jordan.

While virtually every aspect of Jordanian-Israeli relations is now routinely and heatedly debated, security relations remained a taboo topic in the Jordanian public sphere. Issues such as the military budget, defense policy, recruitment, weapons acquisition, and deployment remain strictly off limits to public debate. Even the relatively liberal Press law of 1993 forbids discussion of all aspects of the military. In this regard, military cooperation with Israel and the United States in the wake of the peace treaty has, with one exception, not been an issue of public controversy inside of Jordan. When former Prime Minister Taher al-Masri published a devastating critique of Jordanian-Israeli relations in January 1998, for example, he explicitly exempted security cooperation as “beyond the red lines which cannot be discussed.” After reports that Jordan had decided to close Mossad offices in Jordan after the Misha‘al Affair, Jordanian officials were forced to publicly deny that any such offices had ever existed. In June 1998, Deputy Prime Minister Jawad al-Anani bluntly asserted that Jordanian-Israeli security cooperation had virtually ended as a result of the Misha‘al Affair and the stalemate on the Palestinian track.

There is one exception to this public sphere red line: the January 1998 invitation to join Israeli-Turkish naval exercises led to one of the first public debates on security related issues in the history of Jordan. This debate, like the debate on Doha discussed below, effectively captures the major themes in the interpretive struggle over Jordanian foreign policy. Since the exercises coincided with the seating of a new Parliament and a vote of confidence for the government, numerous deputies had the opportunity and the incentive to air concerns about the exercises. The government defended them as purely humanitarian in nature and as carrying absolutely no implications about Jordanian membership in a Turkish-Israeli alliance, a claim sharply challenged by a number of Deputies. Syria, feeling that the alliance was primarily aimed at it, criticized Jordanian participation, launching the harshest Syrian-Jordanian exchange since the Asad-Hussein reconciliation in June 1996. In September, the Jordanian Information Minister asserted that “Jordan will not be a party to any alliance against an Arab state or take part in any maneuvers which threaten an Arab state’s security.” ₂₄   Jordan eventually sent a single observer to the exercises, a compromise between the need to demonstrate a commitment to security cooperation with Israel and a mobilized public opinion.

 

Civil Society and the Jordanian Public Sphere

With the peace treaty imposed from above, normalization [tatb’i] quickly became the centerpiece of political confrontation in the Jordanian public sphere. Coined in Egypt after Camp David, “normalization” meant publicly accepting Israel and Israelis politically, economically, socially, and culturally. In practice, this became a contest over the norms of the Jordanian political system and the shape of the Jordanian public sphere. Unable to resist the state’s decision to accept political normalization—a peace treaty, embassies, ambassadors—the opposition concentrated on the other spheres, entrenching its resistance in civil society. The Jordanian Resistance emulated the Egyptian model for frustrating official attempts at normalization by mobilizing and organizing civil society (Baker 1990). The Professional Associations passed resolutions banning members from professional interaction with Israelis despite the revision of the laws governing such contacts. Women’s organizations, university student councils, local clubs, writers associations—indeed, virtually every organization with elected rather than state-appointed leadership—quickly adopted similar resolutions. Several organizations coordinated activities, beginning with the Popular Committee to Resist Zionism and Normalization licensed in 1992; 1994’s Popular Committee coordinating the anti-normalization activities of opposition political parties; the Popular Conference to Protect the Nation and Resist Normalization in 1995; the Committee to Prevent the Israeli Trade Show in 1997; and the National Conference organized by the National Reform Forces in 1998. Despite significant differences in their positive programs, the constituent members of these organizations could unite in defense of basic shared norms. For arguably the first time in Jordanian history, a semi-permanent coalition of Islamists, leftists, Arab nationalists, and Jordanian nationalists stood together in direct opposition to the government.

While the regime adopted specific political strategies in response to this opposition, in the long run it counted on economic benefits to overcome societal resistance. This strategy rested upon assumptions about human behavior consistent with rationalist premises. Because individuals primarily respond to economic incentives and narrowly defined self-interest, principled positions will change in response to shifts in economic incentives. Therefore, people would abandon Islamist movements, political opposition, and all forms of ideology if they could find more employment opportunities and a better quality of life. That Jordanians would abandon their hostility to Israel if they saw the peace treaty improving the economy was an article of faith among Jordanian policymakers [and most Western academics]. Prominent government figures argued that the success of the peace primarily depended on the extent to which the international community contributed to revitalizing the economy. The Resistance rejected the rationalist economic view of human behavior, arguing for the autonomy of norms, principles, and beliefs. Rejecting that “the people were for sale,” the Resistance placed greater weight on their ability to counter regime propaganda through effective access to the public sphere. Against the rationalist world of self-interested actors, the Resistance posed identity, norms, and public discourse. In one sense, then, the normalization struggles can be seen as a direct test of the competing views of the relationship between norms, interests, public sphere structure, and behavior. In another sense, however, such a juxtaposition of interests and norms badly misrepresents the situation: the opposition consistently argued that its defense of norms also best served Jordanian interests. Since the promised material benefits did not materialize, the opposition could claim convincingly that norms and interests ran together and not against one another.

Identity Framing

The normalization debate concerned the right of the political public to contribute to the interpretation and formation of national interests against King Hussein’s claim to personal sovereignty over such interpretations. The Resistance defended an image of Jordan as an Arabist state, committed to Arab ideals, and internally democratic under the wise leadership of the monarch consulting with the people. The identity claims advanced by the Resistance drew on precisely those norms which had been secured through public debate during the 1990s. The regime, on the other hand, proposed a state identity oriented toward economic development, pragmatism, condemnation of terrorism, and so forth. While the regime did not repudiate the Arab identity of the state, it contended that the norms and positions that comprised that Arab identity needed to be replaced.

These competing identity claims [Peace Camp vs. Arabist] generated widely divergent interpretations of Jordan’s interests. The regime identified Jordanian interests in terms of a New Middle East of economic development and regional cooperation. Israel, from this perspective, represented no particular threat, while Syria and Iraq required great vigilance. The Resistance defended existent conceptions of interest, insisting that Israel remained the greatest threat to Jordanian and Arab security. As one centrist writer put it, “we will never believe those... who pretend that Jordanian interests were threatened and the treaty with Israel saved them... because this supposes that the danger to our interests was not from Israel but from the Arabs.... Whoever says this insults Jordan and its history and the meaning of its existence as a state.” ₂₅   Where the Resistance saw Jordanian security as best protected by renewed Arab coordination, the regime preferred a close alliance with Israel. The regime and the Resistance therefore advanced fundamentally different claims about both the identity of the state and its interests.

The Resistance denounced the rapid pace of normalization as the most urgent threat to Jordanian security, independence, and values. Hussein, for his part, repeatedly vented his frustration with what he considered the slow pace of normalization. One of the key battlefields of this period would be over the patriotism and even the Jordanian identity of the Resistance. Asserting personal sovereignty over the definition of Jordanian interests, Hussein increasingly resorted to denying the Jordanian identity of his opponents. When Ahmed Obaydat, a respected former Prime Minister, publicly attacked normalization, he was dismissed from the Senate. In his speech announcing the appointment of Zayd bin Shakir to form a new government in January 1995, Hussein apologized for the lack of progress in achieving normalization, an apology that hardly responded to the Jordanian public sphere’s concern with the dangers of normalization. In February 1996, he replaced Sharif Zayd with Abd al-Karim al-Kabariti, reportedly because of his frustration with the slow pace of change. After Kabariti angered King Hussein with his “grandstanding” during the Baqoura incident, Hussein appointed Abd al-Salam al-Majali, the architect of the peace agreement with Israel and the politician most closely associated with the peace treaty.

The attempted reconstruction of the Jordanian polity around peace with Israel touched on deeply held national myths. In March, Jordan celebrates the anniversary of the battle of Karameh. In 1968, the Jordanian army, in cooperation with the Palestinian resistance forces, repelled a large Israeli punitive raid on the Jordanian village of Karameh. Driving the Israeli army back and inflicting significant casualties, the combined forces claimed a major victory that helped to break the air of defeat in Arab publics after the 1967 war. While the Palestinians won the media battle with the Jordanians in the Arab, international, and even Jordanian public spheres, claiming Karameh as a victory for the Palestinian Revolution, many Jordanians felt that the victory was as much if not more their own. The anniversary of the battle became a national holiday, one of the few victories of the Jordanian army, and a symbol of Jordanian Arabist convictions.

In 1995, however, celebrating victory over Israeli aggression became rather problematic for a Jordanian government fervently striving to reverse popular hostility to Israel. The anniversary inevitably became a symbolic battlefield between the regime and the Resistance. The regime sought to impose a new reading of the battle, emphasizing Jordanian heroism and honor while downplaying the Israeli aggression: “Karameh will remain a point of honor no matter what changes.” ₂₆   Even firm supporters of the peace treaty hesitated before the bald reversal of decades of nationalist history and mythmaking. The centrist Taher al-Udwan admitted that “the pictures on TV last night stirred powerful emotions.... we will never forget our martyrs... for this is a noble part of Jordanian history.” ₂₇   This comment nicely captures the regime’s dilemma. Since Jordanian history offered few events that could be appropriated to the dominant Arabist normative structure, Karameh had been seized upon and pumped up into a monumental moment in the pantheon of Jordanian nationalist history. Pride and belief in Jordanian valor that day transcended all political positions and all identities, from Jordanian chauvinists to Palestinian revolutionaries. As such, it served as one of the very few truly unifying national myths, allowing Jordanians to feel that they had contributed to the war against Israel and for Palestinian rights.

The new interpretation would reverse all that, transforming a myth of resistance to a specific national enemy into a bland celebration of national pride and heroism. Instead of celebrating a common front against an aggressor, Karameh was to represent a spirit of sacrifice and belonging in the absence of any historical memory of the actual events. Netanyahu, then leader of the opposition, was even quoted in the Jordanian press as proposing a joint memorial for the Jordanians and Israelis (though apparently not Palestinians) killed in the battle. This crass revisionism enraged many Jordanians: “he wants us to equate the aggressors with those defending themselves.... they behave as conquerors who may rewrite history as they wish.” ₂₈

Throughout the normalization battles, the theme of the authority of history would recur. For example, the Jordanian school curriculum became a sensitive issue. Initially both opponents and supporters of normalization interpreted the treaty as requiring a revision of school history texts to remove all references to Israeli aggression or hostility, the creation of Israel at the expense of Palestinians, or anything else offensive to Israelis. While such revisions might be seen as an admirable attempt to overcome deeply entrenched nationalist myths reinforcing conflict, for Jordanians sensitive to the politics of history such revisions represented a direct assault on the national identity: “What we see... is the erasing of our history.” ₂₉   Why, they asked, were Arabs asked to surrender their national memory, while Israel’s myths and prejudices remained unchallenged? Why should Arab myths be replaced with Zionist myths? When it became apparent how explosive such revisions would be, government spokesmen disavowed any such intentions. However, the issue remained: which version of history would be told? The Arab or the Israeli? Would Jordan abandon its own historical narrative? Was normalization possible without substantial modifications of that narrative?

The Resistance insisted on retaining the “real” meaning of Karameh within its authentic historical context, which of course fit neatly within the Resistance interpretive frame: the spirit of resistance to Israeli aggression and Jordanian-Palestinian cooperation against the common enemy. Rather than an anonymous national holiday, “Karameh remains an invasion of Jordan by the Zionist enemy in which we joined with the Palestinians in all heroism.” ₃₀   Beyond contesting the regime’s interpretation, and beyond defending the nationalist myth, the Resistance sought to turn Karameh into a test case for the struggle to rewrite history. Karameh presented an opportunity for the Resistance to force the regime to publicly acknowledge, and to embrace, the implications of its positions in precisely a way that would offend the most loyal and patriotic Jordanians.

The annual attempt by the Israeli Embassy to host Israeli Independence Day festivities is another example. What Israelis consider Independence Day, most Arabs—and especially Palestinians—consider the anniversary of the theft of their land and their expulsion from their homes. Holding such a celebration would be a victory for normalization, to be sure, but even supporters of the peace treaty found the invitation to celebrate the loss of Palestine in Amman to be in rather bad taste. In the first opportunity, May 1995, Israel planned an extravagant celebration, inviting thousands of prominent Jordanians. The party was almost universally boycotted; the only Jordanian attendees were a few visibly unhappy government representatives and a number of tabloid journalists eager to snap pictures of whoever dared attend. In 1996, the celebration coincided with the furor over the Grapes of Wrath campaign against Lebanon, and once again Jordanians boycotted. The festivities fared no better in subsequent years. Israel’s Ambassador continued to be persona non grata in most public events. When Israel was finally able to open an Embassy (for the first few years it operated out of a hotel in Amman), this generated accusations that the Embassy would be a “spy center” for Israeli operations in the Middle East.

The 1998 celebration of Israel’s fiftieth anniversary sparked a revisiting of the historical narrative of injustice and hostility. These fiftieth anniversary celebrations could have been framed differently: the revelations of Avi Shlaim and the New Historians about the long history of Hashemite-Zionist contacts, or Moshe Zak’s accounts of Hussein’s personal relationship with Israeli leaders, could have been reinterpreted (as they generally were in Israel) as evidence of a long positive identification in light of current friendly relations. Instead this dimension of Jordanian history continued to be ignored and repressed in the Jordanian public sphere, and used against Jordan in the Arabist and Palestinian arenas. No new grand narrative was proposed; after two years of Netanyahu and the collapsing peace process, few Jordanians were interested in celebrating a history of Jordanian-Israeli contacts.

Battles of this kind raged across the Jordanian public sphere in the months after the signing of the peace treaty. Resistance to cultural contacts became much stronger after the moves to peace, as the official peace removed legal barriers. The Resistance needed to enforce societal conformity much more rigidly without the political system’s power behind it. When the leader of a small political party, Ahmed Zu’ubi, toured Israel and met with Israeli politicians, he was expelled from the Doctors Association. When a group of dentists attended a professional conference with Israelis, they were expelled from the Dentists Association. The Doctors Association boycotted a major international medical colloquium held in Amman because Israeli doctors attended. The Professional Associations building maintained a blacklist of “normalizers,” who found themselves snubbed in their professional and social activities. A New Middle East based on economic integration and joint ventures could hardly be realized if Jordanian professionals refused to deal with their prospective partners.

One of the earliest battlefields was the Jordanian Writers Association. ₃₁   In 1993, JWA President Fakhri Qawar protested the invitation of the well-known Arab poet and critic Adonis to participate in the Jerash cultural festival because of his publicized contacts with Israeli academics. In June 1994, Zulaykha Abu Risha came under pressure for participating in an academic conference with Israeli women. On August 19, 1994, a special session was convened to strip her of her membership. While this did not succeed, the session passed a set of bylaws governing normalization which became a model for the Professional Associations. These restrictions, passed by a democratic vote in an open meeting, would become a central object of controversy as the normalization debate expanded. As the regime insisted that the opposition should “state its positions and then respect the will of the majority,” the Resistance positions adopted by genuinely democratic means posed a stark dilemma. Which majority should carry its mandate—the majority claimed by the state, or the majority elected by the citizens? While the overwhelming majority opposed normalization, sharp differences emerged over the meaning of normalization and how to implement resistance. According to hardliners, the resistance to normalization in this uncertain age required absolute, clear guidelines banning all contact with any Israelis.

Frustrated at the hard-line interpretations and blunt political tactics of the Resistance, JWA President Mu’nis Rizaz resigned on March 8, 1995. The ensuing elections became a major test of strength between the government and the Resistance. Even though Ibrahim al-Abassi was quickly constructed by the government as the alternative to the Resistance leader Salem al-Nahass, Abassi’s platform equally declared opposition to normalization: “We will resist all forms of normalization with the Israeli enemy.” ₃₂   Nevertheless, for a government desperate to find some entry into civil society, Abassi represented “realism” against “narrow party doctrine.” ₃₃   The elections became a spectacle, the focus of extraordinary local, Israeli, and international media coverage. The government intervened with all its weight, with government ministers attending in their capacity as members and long-inactive members bused in from all over the kingdom to vote. ₃₄   In the end, Abassi won a narrow victory, and his immediate assertion that he would continue the policy of resisting normalization did not prevent government supporters from jubilantly claiming—on Israeli TV—that “our side won.”

That comment, however, sparked the next crisis. Hamada Fara’na, a liberal columnist outspoken in his defense of democracy, was disciplined for insulting the Association and for engaging in normalization by analyzing the election for Israeli TV. Even a publicized phone call of support by the King to Fara’na did not swing support in his favor. ₃₅   The suggestion that there was an “our side” composed of the regime, Jordanian supporters of the peace treaty, and Israel represented a political identity claim very few Jordanians would publicly accept. Fara’na would remain a highly polarizing figure in the normalization debate. After being elected to Parliament in 1997, he and Representative Mohammed Rifa’t publicly met with members of the Israeli Knesset, prompting another major debate over normalization. During a tense Parliamentary debate, one deputy reportedly yelled at Fara’na, a Palestinian and former member of both the Palestinian National Council and the Jordanian National Charter Commission, that he was not a real Jordanian, because “your place is in the Knesset, next to Netanyahu!” ₃₆

The Opposition Coalition

The Resistance organized itself as a coalition of political parties, societal institutions, professional associations, and independent personalities. Bahjat Abu Ghurbiya, a respected veteran Palestinian figure, headed the Popular Committee to Resist Normalization and Protect the Nation, which acted as an umbrella for the various opposition political parties. The emphasis in the name upon “Protecting the Nation” conveys the public position carved out by the Resistance, in defiance of the regime’s effort to portray all opposition as servants of foreign interests. While the Islamic Action Front carried the greatest political weight, leftist and Arab nationalist groups were prominently represented in the Committee in order to convey a broad societal consensus. The coalition of opposition parties established informal links with the Professional Associations, women’s and student organizations, and other civil society organizations. The government declared the Committee an illegal, unlicensed political organization, raising a series of lawsuits against newspapers for “publishing the name and statements of an illegal political organization.”

In early 1995, the Resistance planned a national conference which would adopt a comprehensive strategy for resisting normalization and draft an Honor Code to guide individual behavior. This National Conference aimed at producing a national consensus outside the state and government frameworks, consciously drawing upon the language, format, and norms of the National Charter conference of 1991, which had claimed to produce a reference point for Jordanian norms and discourse for the 1990s. The appropriation of the National Charter discourse took on even greater significance in light of calls by Israeli figures for Jordan to abolish its National Charter which considers Zionism intrinsically opposed to Jordanian identity and interests. ₃₇   It was clear that the government could not generate the public consensus necessary to legitimate any new charter in line with the treaty. The Resistance discourse emphasized that its concerns emerged not from opposition to the Jordanian nation or its interests, but out of its concern for Jordan. By surrendering to Israeli power, the government had put Jordan in great danger; the Resistance framed its mission as minimizing the impact of that surrender until such a time as it could be reversed. This emphasis upon protecting Jordanian identity, security, and interests is the most important dimension of its frame. Rather than placing itself in opposition to Jordanian identity and interests, it claimed to better represent that identity and those interests than did the government.

The government was not comforted by this Resistance appropriation of Jordanian identity and interests. If anything, such a claim was more threatening than any certifiably “foreign” opposition. The government tried to portray the Resistance as tied to foreign agents, dismissing it as primarily concerned with interests and identities other than Jordanian. The government alternately accused the Resistance of “having a Palestinian face,” of being controlled by Syria and Iraq, and of being the tool of Islamic fundamentalist radicals controlled from abroad. However, the clarity and consistency of Resistance framing of the national identity and the national interest undercut this government frame. The Jordanian public therefore faced a choice not between “Jordan” and some other reference point (the PLO, Arabism, Islam), but between two competing conceptions of Jordanian identity and interests: the government, claiming that the peace treaty and normalization served Jordanian interests; and the Resistance, claiming that these changes threatened Jordanian interests.

Unable to carry the public sphere argument, the government chose to exert power instead, shutting down the public sphere outlets it could not control and systematically distorting media coverage. The National Conference had been scheduled and postponed numerous times in the first half of 1995. Finally, it was scheduled for May 29, receiving a reluctant permit from the Mayor of Amman. The government had a last-minute change of heart, and after unsuccessful midnight negotiations between the Prime Minister and Ishaq Farhan of the Islamic Action Front, the government withdrew its permit. Armed troops surrounded the building, participants were turned away, and the government issued a terse statement citing security concerns and its dissatisfaction with the text of the preliminary Conference Resolution. A smaller Conference was eventually held, with much less fanfare and public attention.

The opposition coalition achieved its most united front in January 1997 with the organization of a boycott of an Israeli Trade Show scheduled for Amman. Fronted by former Prime Minister Ahmed Obaydat, the coalition against the Trade Show rapidly achieved a critical mass and a public consensus. While the controversy over the Parliamentary elections diverted attention for most of 1997, the boycotting parties formed a coalition of National Reform Forces to propose an alternative to the rejected government policies. This National Reform coalition aspired to bring together the traditional opposition and regime loyalists who believed that the treaty threatened Jordanian security, identity, or interests. It planned a National Conference for the summer of 1998, which would present such an alternative; in foreign policy, this entailed a reorientation back toward Arabism, Syria, and Iraq, and away from the United States and Israel.

The debate over normalization has implications for the broader construction of state identity and interests. The regime position combined support for normalization with the valorization of state interest as the highest good. Jordanian identity becomes congruent with subordination to statist interpretations of the national interest; all competing interpretations become, by definition, foreign. Foreign, in turn, becomes discursively restricted to those Palestinian and Arab norms, groups, and interests that in the past had been considered part of the Self. It is the reversal of Self/Other claims that most characterizes the identity struggle inherent in the normalization debate: As liberal opposition figure Toujan Faisal asks: “How can everyone with an opinion contrary to the state be accused of having ties to foreign agents, knowing that this opinion is an Arab nationalist one, and the foreign agents are Arabs, while the ‘foreign’ they reject is the enemy of the Arab umma. Has the state come to consider Israel ‘inside’ and Arabs a hostile ‘outside’?!?” ₃₈

 

Arab Identity and the New Middle East

The struggle over Jordanian identity was embedded within a larger struggle over regional identity; indeed, the transformation of Jordanian identity, institutions, and interests depended to an important degree upon a transformation of regional identity and institutions. The debate over the peace treaty and normalization invoked two sharply competing conceptions of regional order and of state interests. Jordan’s embrace of peace with Israel extended to an ambitious agenda for a new regional order. While the debate over a “New Middle East” raged throughout the region, few Arab states had more tangible interests in its achievement (Khuli 1994; Salameh 1995). Were a regional order inclusive of Israel to be established, Jordan would be uniquely well-placed to exploit its close relations with Israel for political influence and to attract foreign investment and assistance. Furthermore, in a region structured around economic cooperation and shared institutions, Jordan’s perennial security dilemma would be profoundly reduced. Hussein and Prince Hassan enthusiastically embraced this vision, with the November 1995 Amman Economic Summit marking an important step toward realizing such an institutional vision. This conception of Jordanian interests, in which Israel would provide security, regional influence, and access to economic prosperity, clashed sharply with conceptions of Jordanian interests based on Arabism. While some supporters suggested that Jordan could be a part of the new order without sacrificing its Arab identity, opponents posited the Arab order and the New Middle East as “not only two different concepts but contradictory ones.” ₃₉

The New Middle East is understood in the international public sphere as an economically integrated region free of war, extremism, violence, and turmoil (Peres 1993). Proponents of this position paint grand visions of regional development projects uniting Israeli technical sophistication with Arab natural resources, manpower, and capital. This discourse is presented as a dramatic break from and diametric opposite to the nationalist, military dominant politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Despite its visionary image, this project rests on assumptions consistent with the neoliberal position. The envisioned international society is one of rational, sovereign, and radically individuated states pursuing absolute gains through institutionalized cooperation. Strategic interaction between states does not end, but shifts from the military sphere to the economic and cultural sphere. In the Arabist order, conflict and cooperation were mediated by the Arabist public sphere, with interaction rendered meaningful by reference to shared norms embedded in shared identity. The New Middle East would replace this international society with an interest-based community of autonomous actors pursuing common economic interests. The appeal to the common identity of Arab states has no place: cooperation is based on shared interests, not shared identity, while institutions reduce transaction costs and uncertainty rather than expressing shared commitment to norms.

State identity plays a different role in the two conceptions of regional order. In the Arabist order, the state is defined by its Arab identity or lack thereof, such that sovereignty carries different meaning for Arab and non-Arab states. The international system is composed of essentially unlike units: Arab states differ from non-Arab states. In Middle East order, on the other hand, states are essentially similar units, despite differences in capabilities, political systems, or ethnic identity. Accepting the Middle East description rather than the Arab means abandoning the normative dimensions of the Arab state: there would be no difference between the Arab and the non-Arab state. State interests are primarily defined in economic terms, with no allowance for an articulation of interests based on political or identity considerations. Regional institutions “will encourage people living in the Middle East to see the regional framework as an entity in its own right” (Peres 1993: 111). Thus, membership in the Middle East would replace Arab identity as the source of state interests. International institutions would be built on these assumptions of state identity free of Arab specificity: “Arab states will be required to abolish... any agreement which allows a distinction between relations between Arab states and relations with other regional states” (Farhan 1994). In other words, the New Middle East represented a bid to construct a new regional identity, embodied in regional institutions, which would profoundly change the nature of strategic interaction.

Peres proposed replacing Arab-Israeli enmity with a new, common enemy for Israel and Arab regimes: fundamentalism. A new fault line would be drawn to replace the Arab-Israeli divide: the rational, moderate, democratic peacemakers against the fanatical, backward, violent fundamentalists. Hussein’s assertion of a Peace Camp identity powerfully articulated what such a vision would look like for Arab states. Where the MENA economic conferences offered an institutional expression of the economic dimension of the New Middle East, the Sharm al-Shaykh anti-terrorism summit of November 1995 embodied the peace camp identity claim. By providing a common enemy, the Peace Camp/Enemies of Peace divide served the agenda of constructing a new shared identity. Even after the collapse of the peace process, King Hussein continued to argue that there existed a large majority in favor of peace, both in Israel and in Jordan, and that Netanyahu did not represent this large majority.

The idea of a New Middle East generated an energetic debate throughout the Arab world (Barnett 1996/1997, 1998). Arab intellectuals debated the implications of a New Middle East, holding high profile conferences and filling the pages of the prestige Arab press. Syria, as the state most profoundly outside the peace process consensus (except for Iraq), viewed the New Middle East in almost purely conflictual terms, emphasizing the dangers of Israeli expansionism and hegemony, and viewing multilateral conferences and economic development schemes as Israeli attempts to move past the unresolved political differences. Egyptian intellectuals and policymakers took a more complicated and communicatively engaged approach to the debate. Like Israel, Egypt hoped for a new regional order; also like Israel, Egypt hoped to be its leader. Egyptian intellectuals saw both dangers and opportunities in a new regional order. After 1995, Egypt increasingly began to call for a revitalized Arab order and became increasingly hostile to Israel (Gerges 1997).

Netanyahu disavowed the idea of a New Middle East, and instead advanced a traditional Realist view of regional politics. For Netanyahu, peace could only follow from the balance of power, interpreted as Israeli strategic superiority; treaties, normalization, and economic interaction could be the fruits of peace, but could not produce peace. ₄₀   No concession should be made that was not forced by the balance of power; no treaty should be signed that might constrain Israel’s ability to impose its preferences. After Netanyahu’s election, moves toward normalization and a New Middle East ground to a halt. The centerpiece of this vision had been the annual MENA economic summits, which brought together Arab and Israeli officials and private-sector representatives. The first two MENA summits, in Casablanca and Amman, generated great enthusiasm and seemed to be laying the groundwork for the institutionalization and routinization of economic interaction. The third MENA conference, in Cairo, which followed the change in Israel’s leadership, was far more politicized than the two earlier summits, and expressed strong condemnation of Israeli behavior. The fourth MENA conference, scheduled in Doha in 1997, generated a long and impassioned debate over whether it would even be held. Coinciding with provocative Israeli actions toward the Palestinians and with a major American-Iraqi confrontation, the Doha summit struck most Arab states as inappropriate. Despite tremendous American pressure, most Arab states boycotted the summit. Jordan attended, but it stood as a clear outlier in the Arab consensus on the issue.

The Jordanian debate over attending the Doha MENA conference powerfully captures the tension between the competing conceptions of Jordanian interests and regional order. On the one hand, most of the Jordanian public sphere embraced the Arabist frame that the MENA process represented normalization and served Israeli interests; hence, participation rewarded Israel, and should be withheld in order to punish it for its behavior in the peace process. On the other hand, Jordanian state officials saw concrete benefits in the MENA process, and wanted to attend in order to continue to attract foreign investment and in order to continue to build a regional infrastructure. These arguments held little power in the Jordanian public sphere, however, particularly given widespread frustration with the lack of economic prosperity since the treaty. The government therefore justified its participation in terms of the principle of hiwar: the way to influence Israeli behavior was not to ignore it, but rather to engage with it. Because Jordan had taken a strategic decision for peace, and because it had tied its interests so conclusively to the peace process, it made no sense to boycott Doha. In the end, the Jordanian regime decided to attend, and agreed to the formation of a Jordanian-Israeli industrial zone in Irbid and advanced plans to sign a trade agreement with Israel. The divergence between popular and official conceptions of Jordanian interests, the increasing difficulty of defending the official frame, and the continuing power of the state to carry out its decisions despite public opposition are all demonstrated in this debate.

 

Consensus Formation: The Disengagement and the Treaty

The peace treaty resembles the severing of ties in its dramatic challenge to the norms, identity, and interests of the Jordanian polity. Where the severing of ties eventually produced consensus, however, the peace treaty thus far has not. Public sphere structure is one important explanation for the variation in outcomes. The disengagement responded positively to the Arab consensus. The decision to surrender political claims to the West Bank and endorse PLO claims satisfied the public demands of an existing Arabist public sphere consensus, and served to harmonize the Jordanian position with that consensus. The peace treaty, by contrast, had an ambiguous relationship to the Arabist public sphere. Since Madrid, most Arab states had accepted the principle of peace with Israel and differed primarily over the acceptable terms of the peace. Jordan’s peace move did not respond to a fully formed Arab consensus, but neither did it blatantly contradict an Arab consensus. Jordan assumed an active role in pushing a peace camp that might form a new Arab consensus.

The disengagement took place before the system shocks of the Gulf war and Oslo. While the efficacy of the Arabist sanctions had decreased markedly since the 1960s, they still played an effective role, particularly in the context of such clearly expressed a consensus as that over PLO representation of the Palestinians of the West Bank. The peace treaty, by contrast, followed the profound shocks to the Arabist system, as well as the remarkable development of the Jordanian public sphere in the 1990s, which further muffled the effective influence of Arabist debates on Jordanian behavior. The changes in the Arabist public sphere between 1988 and 1994 had important implications for the unfolding of the two cases.

The cases should also be compared in terms of their relationship to the international public sphere. The disengagement had not been welcome to American and Israeli policymakers, who clung to the idea of a Jordanian final settlement of the West Bank. These commentators stressed the reversibility and tactical nature of the disengagement. The peace, by contrast, was enormously popular in the international public sphere. The decline in the efficacy of the Arabist public sphere noted above coincided with relatively increased salience of international opinion. Much Jordanian discussion of the peace treaty was clearly oriented toward the international public sphere. The sharp contrast between discourse primarily aimed at satisfying the Arabist public [1988] and at satisfying the international public [1994] explains a great deal in the development of the contestation of these two cases. In each case, Jordanian state officials needed to prove the reality of their commitment to the new policy and to convince skeptical publics of their intentions.

The domestic public sphere gained and lost efficacy in direct relation to the shifting salience of the two primary external public spheres. The domestic print public sphere of the 1990s provided a dense, more independent, and more rational-critical national forum for public debate of the peace treaty. By 1994 the days had passed when public debate could be stifled by replacing one or two editors of state-owned newspapers. Comparable stifling of debate in 1994 required a highly contentious and difficult series of measures against numerous independent newspapers. Nevertheless, the similarities in the government—public sphere interaction in the two cases is striking. In 1988, the disengagement brought on an outpouring of impassioned public debate, which the government repressed. The repression of this debate contributed to the buildup of societal pressure which led to the April 1989 explosion of popular discontent that shook the regime. In 1994, the peace treaty brought on an outpouring of impassioned public debate, which the government attempted to repress. The riots of summer 1996 should be seen as a direct response to the growing distortions of the public sphere and the polarization of society.

In the severing of ties, an effective consensus on Jordanian external identity and interests was secured through this public debate. While this consensus did not extend to domestic identity, it provided for stability and consistency in Jordanian policies toward the West Bank itself. Bargaining in the peace process built upon this identity consensus, recasting Jordanian interests in terms of narrow state concerns. In the peace process, by contrast, the regime’s vigorous efforts to achieve consensus failed. Two mutually exclusive frames, each claiming to best interpret reality and to articulate Jordanian national interests, continue to compete in the public sphere. The absence of consensus on the new conception of Jordanian identity, Jordanian interests, and the nature of regional order is the most basic fact governing the political process in this period.

 

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Endnotes

Note 1:  Dore Gold, Political Advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, interviewed on CNN, November 1997; Shimon Shamir, Israel’s first ambassador to Jordan, used identical language in his “Soul Searching for Peace with Jordan,” Ha’aretz, October 26, 1997.  Back.

Note 2:  Layth Shubaylat, interviewed in Shihan, January 26, 1998.  Back.

Note 3:  CSS 1994.  Back.

Note 4:  CSS 1998.  Back.

Note 5:  Nidal Mansour, “The Israeli Trade Show and Democracy,” al-Hadath January 13, 1997.  Back.

Note 6:  Thomas Friedman, New York Times June 30, 1998.  Back.

Note 7:  Bisam al-Amoush, interviewed in Shihan June 14, 1997.  Back.

Note 8:  CSS 1998.  Back.

Note 9:  Human Rights Watch 1997.  Back.

Note 10:  al-Hayat, April 17, 1998  Back.

Note 11:  CSS 1997.  Back.

Note 12:  See Sultan al-Hattab, “Jerusalem for peace,” al-Rai May 20, 1995.  Back.

Note 13:  Kabariti in al-Aswaq May 10, 1995, (FBIS-NES-95&-;090).  Back.

Note 14:  Mohammed al-Mohasina, “Freezing the land grab... a Jordanian role?” al-Dustur May 26, 1995.  Back.

Note 15:  Kabariti in Davar May 10, 1995 (FBIS-NES-95–091).  Back.

Note 16:  Fahd al-Fanik, “Protect Lebanon, but... ” al-Rai April 23, 1996.  Back.

Note 17:  Al-Sabil April 23, 1996.  Back.

Note 18:  Samih al-Mayeteh, “Arabism without action,” al-Sabil April 23, 1996.  Back.

Note 19:  Saleh al-Qullab, “They don’t want peace.” al-Dustur May 18, 1995.  Back.

Note 20:  Thomas Friedman, “Bibi and the King,” New York Times October 9, 1996.  Back.

Note 21:  David Makovsky, “Jordan said to have frozen security ties,” Ha’aretz, October 12, 1997; Shimon Shamir, “Soul searching for peace with Jordan,” Ha’aretz October 26, 1997.  Back.

Note 22:  The Jerusalem Report November 27, 1997.  Back.

Note 23:  “Arms Transfers,” p.4.  Back.

Note 24:  Samir Mutawi, in al-Dustur September 11, 1997.  Back.

Note 25:  Tahir al-Udwan, “Arabism is our natural surrounding,” al-Dustur November 8, 1994.  Back.

Note 26:  Mohammed Ibrahim Daoud, “In memory of Karameh,” al-Dustur March 22, 1995.  Back.

Note 27:  Taher al-Udwan, “The men of Karameh,” al-Dustur March 22, 1995.  Back.

Note 28:  Bisam Haddadin, “Karameh,” al-Dustur March 16, 1995.  Back.

Note 29:  Fahd al-Rimawi, “The Israeli daily decision maker,” al-Majd March 20, 1995.  Back.

Note 30:  Samih al-Mayeteh, “Karameh,” al-Dustur March 21, 1995.  Back.

Note 31:  See Musa Barhuma, “The Jordanian Writers Association reaches a decisive point,” al-Wasat May 29, 1995.  Back.

Note 32:  Tala’at Shana’a, “What do the candidates say?” al-Dustur April 5, 1995.  Back.

Note 33:  Hamada Fara’na, “The JWA elections,” al-Dustur April 8, 1995.  Back.

Note 34:  For alleged government interventions, see “What happened in the JWA elections?” al-Ahali April 13, 1995.  Back.

Note 35:  Hamada Fara’na, “My side of the story,” Shihan April 22, 1995.  Back.

Note 36:  Mohammed al-Khuraysha, during Parliamentary debate over the Press and Publications Law, quoted in al-Hayat July 18, 1998, and his elaboration in al-Hadath July 18, 1998.  Back.

Note 37:  “Israel calls on Jordan to abolish its National Charter” al-Sharq al-Awsat October 7, 1995.  Back.

Note 38:  Toujan Faisal, “There is confusion in our house,” Shihan May 13, 1995.  Back.

Note 39:  Naji Allush, “New Arab nation or new Middle East?” al-Majd October 3, 1994.  Back.

Note 40:  For example, see Netanyahu’s important speech at the graduation ceremony of the National Defense College, August 14, 1997 (http://www.israel-mfa.gov.il/mfa/speeches/netanndc.html).  Back.