Jordan's predicaments - Volume 7, Issue 7 - August 2001

 

The effects of the second Palestinian intifada have spread beyond Israel's borders. Jordan too has struggled to contain the political and security ramifications of the ten months of violent protests. In July alone, Jordan postponed parliamentary elections and had to grapple with an embarrassing diplomatic incident with Qatar over the fate of a senior Hamas politician. All of this is happening when Jordan no longer has the experienced King Hussein at its helm. The strategic uncertainty reigning on Jordan's eastern border in the shape of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and the serious economic problems facing the country, have compounded its predicament. Jordan and its Hashemite monarchy may have faced and survived worse in the shape of Nasserite radicalism in the 1950s and civil war with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) guerrillas in 1970, but its luck is not inexhaustible. As a relatively small and weak state buffeted by regional powers, Jordan can do little but try to weather the storm. The skills of King Hussein's eldest son and successor, Abdullah, are being put to the test.

 

Geography and demography dictate that Jordan can never be immune to the Palestinian problem. The West Bank was part of the Jordanian state between 1950 and 1967. It is generally assumed that around 60% of the population of more than 5 million comprises Palestinians dispossessed since 1948. Their majority is more decisive in the cities, including the capital Amman. Palestinian radicals have long looked with suspicion at the authorities in Amman, where raison d'etat has usually taken precedence over solidarity with the Palestinian cause. In turn, the East Bank minority has virtually defined its own brand of ethnic nationalism in terms of not being Palestinian.

 

If such features have become ever-present, there have been two more recent developments that have changed the situation to Jordan's disadvantage since it had to manage the first intifada between 1987 and 1993. First, in October 1994 Jordan concluded a separate peace treaty with Israel, as King Hussein, foreseeing ill health spell the premature end of his reign, sought to put an end to the threat of conflict with a stronger neighbour. Although the PLO's Oslo agreement with Israel some 13 months earlier gave diplomatic cover for the treaty at the time, the collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace-making in 2000 has left the Jordanian treaty looking retrospectively like a breaking of Arab ranks (Egypt has its own peace treaty with Israel, but has placed itself at the forefront of Israel's critics). With a strong and persistent anti-normalisation movement in the Kingdom that put pressure on King Hussein even during the good years of the Oslo process, the Jordanian treaty with Israel must now be considered vulnerable. The second recent problem faced by Jordan is that the death of King Hussein in February 1999 robbed the country of a leader with nearly half a century of experience, who knew all the players on the global stage, and, if he was not universally loved at home, was universally respected. After a messy succession, Abdullah, a man largely untutored in kingship, assumed the throne.

 

Abdullah has not performed badly over the last two-and-a-half years. His army background and demonstrable personal courage has secured him the support of the East Bank-dominated military establishment. In the arena of foreign affairs, traditionally the preserve of the throne, King Abdullah has in general terms been remarkably successful. He has maintained warm relations with traditional friends like Britain and the US; engineered rapprochements with difficult regional states, notably Libya and Syria; managed the mercurial leadership in Iraq; and has further reassembled post-Gulf War relations with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Well before the outbreak of the second intifada he had moderated the stridently cordial public diplomacy of his father towards Israel, but without sacrificing the low-key security cooperation needed to maintain Jordanian security against dissident Palestinians.

 

Where Abdullah and his small group of advisers have struggled has been over specific aspects of the Palestinian issue, especially where they have been squeezed between competing interests. The issue of the Hamas political leadership based in Jordan is a clear example. In August 1999, Abdullah decided to move against the organisation, barring its three leading figures from returning from a trip abroad. His decision seemed to offer a win-win-win prospect, as it was correctly predicted that such a move would be popular with Israel, the US and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, to whom Hamas has invariably been seen as a rival. Rather than accept the royal edict, however, the three Hamas leaders contested the decision, flying back to Jordan to provide a rallying point for the country's anti-normalisers and eliciting widespread public sympathy. Abdullah managed to extricate himself from a difficult position with the help of Qatar, which agreed to provide a home for the Hamas leaders. It was the flight back to Amman of one of these, Ibrahim Ghawshah, in July 2001 that led to the temporary impounding of a Qatari Airways plane causing a diplomatic incident. Five years ago, Qatar was Jordan's closest friend among the conservative Arab Gulf states; today, Doha is threatening Amman with a $2.2m law suit.

 

If the Hamas saga exposed Abdullah's naiveté, his lack of personal gravitas could be seen in his handling of the refugee issue in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It is widely perceived that the the refugee issue, concerning the right of Palestinians to return to their homes in what is now Israel, was one of the two factors that did most to scupper the Camp David peace summit organised by then US president Bill Clinton in July 2000 (the other being the status of Jerusalem). Arafat and the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, were unable to forge a compromise on the refugee issue, with Barak unwilling to respond to Palestinian demands that the right to return be recognised. In spite of the centrality of the issue to Jordan's future, Amman played no direct role in the negotiations leading up to the summit and seemed generally marginalised in terms of influence. Perhaps King Abdullah's greatest failing in diplomacy is simply that he is not his father.

 

The tentative nature of Abdullah's leadership has been seen in the way that he has managed the impact of the intifada on domestic politics. Even before the return to violence in the Palestinian areas in late September 2000, Abdullah had vacillated between social conservatism and liberal reform. His instincts are generally believed to favour the latter, although many feared that political liberalisation would benefit only the Islamists and Palestinians. The result of this tension was that Abdullah became caught up in a tangle, appointing a hard-nosed conservative, Abdul Raouf al-Rawabdeh, as his first prime minister, together with an enthusiastic exponent of change, Abdul Karim al-Kabariti, as his main court adviser. There followed several months of unseemly intra-élite sniping and a year of policy confusion. Eventually, in June 2000, Abdullah summoned the will to replace Rawabdeh with his own man, Ali Abu al-Ragheb, the present incumbent – although this move was soon followed by the intifada and the loss of a stable climate for reform.

 

There is no better example of the frustrations that have beset Abdullah's handling of domestic affairs than the issue of National Assembly elections, held every four years since the reinvigoration of parliamentary life in 1989.

 

Abdullah recently announced that the elections due in November 2001 would be postponed for six months. The main reasons for the postponement were twofold. First, it was claimed that holding national elections in such a volatile climate would be risky, and that simmering tensions – notably between East Bankers and Palestinians and between Islamists and regime supporters – could spill over into public disorder. Second, it was argued that the highly charged political atmosphere, which it is feared has boosted the fortunes of anti-normaliser radicals of leftist, nationalist and Islamist shades, and generally helped to mobilise and politicise the population, might give rise to a more awkward outcome in terms of parliamentary representation. Although most of Jordan's friends abroad would give it the benefit of the doubt regarding the postponement, Abdullah has apparently been uncomfortable with this step. He has attempted to soften his decision by increasing the number of deputies in the assembly from 80 to 104, with all constituencies – including the under-represented urban concentrations of Palestinians, as well as the rural, East Banker-dominated areas – set to benefit. He also decided to limit the postponement to six months – constitutional provisions allow for a one-year delay (extendable by a further 12 months) – for fear of being labelled authoritarian.

 

Attempts to address endemic economic problems have not escaped the deteriorating dynamics of the region. The collapse of the peace process has dashed for the moment Jordanian ambitions of becoming a hub for growing regional integration. The situation will continue to deter foreign direct investment, regardless of whether Amman remains faithful to the policy prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which stepped in following a foreign debt default in 1988. With Jordan also suffering from curtailed economic opportunities in Iraq owing to international sanctions against Baghdad, unemployment has continued to rise and per capita income to fall.

 

Abdullah has generally been more animated over the issue of the economy than his father. He has campaigned for relief of the Kingdom's $8 billion external debt, while vigorously trying to encourage younger entrepreneurs, especially in information technology. Much beyond this, however, and economic policy becomes intensely political. Rawabdeh, for example, made much of the need to resist demands for privatisation on the grounds that such a policy would disproportionately favour the Palestinian-dominated private sector, at the expense of the East Bankers, who are mostly to be found in state-related employment.

 

With its multiple difficulties at home and abroad, Jordan's prime objective must be to navigate the present crisis, and hope that a stable cease-fire is followed by the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace-making. Although King Abdullah has been reluctant to criticise Washington's disengaged stance towards the crisis, he evidently believes that the international community has not done enough to defuse a situation which has great potential for escalation.

 

His call for the deployment of international monitors to Palestinian areas – a proposal which has to date been endorsed by neither side – reflects deep concern.

 

Abdullah's nightmare is that Israeli-Palestinian violence will increase to such a degree that Israel sends its forces back into the Palestinian self-governed areas of Gaza and the West Bank. If so, pressure from within and from elsewhere to tear up the 1994 peace agreement with Israel may prove irresistible. Even that, however, would not be as bad as things could get. A significant outpouring of Palestinian refugees across the River Jordan would further tip the balance of ethnic demographics in the Kingdom. It could also raise anew the old cry that 'Jordan is Palestine', once expounded by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. At that point, the implications of the second intifada would certainly be greater for Jordan than for Israel.

 

 

Source: World Bank