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The Israel-Jordan Peace Negotiations ( 1949-51 ): King Abdallah's Lonely Effort

Key takeaways

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Reading notes

• It emerges clearly that King Abdallah conducted the talks throughout with complete sincerity but with a singular lack of sober appraisal

• Abdallah was assassinated on 20 July 195

• a US member of the UN Palestine Conciliation Commission then visiting Amman, who recorded the talk in vivid detail. 'I am an old man', said Abdallah. [He was sixty-nine years old.] 'I know that my power is limited. I know that I am hated by my own son [Tallal]. I also know that my own people distrust me because of my peace efforts. I know I could get a peace settlement if only I had some encouragement

• A year earlier, the Arab League had passed two Resolutions (on 1 and 13 April 1950) to expel any member that made a separate peace with Israel. Abdallah was quite ready to defy this decision of the Arab League but not his own pe

• UN Palestine Conciliation Commission representative by appealing in what the diplomat described as 'an almost imploring tone' - 'Please help me. I can do it if I get some help and encouragement. But I am an old m

• people outside Jordan altogether failed to grasp that the country had undergone a peaceful revolution in the previous six months, caused by the arrival in Amman of the Palestinian refugees, and that Palestinian Arabs were now in control the

• n assumed that the decline of the King's authority in this period was the direct, inevitable result of the Palestinians' increased representation in the parliamentary elections and of the proclamation on 24 April 1950 of the Union between the two banks of the Jordan and their amalgamation in one single stat

• f erosion of the King's authority was revealed earlier than th

• e setback in March of that year, a full month before the elections, when he failed to find a Prime Minister prepared to co-operate with him in seeking a settlement with Isra

• el. Prime Minister Tewfik Abu el-Huda (a Palestinian, born in Acre) had resigned at the beginning of March 1

• The King had to pay a price for Huda's agreeing to serve - he was forced to suspend the negotiations with Israel until after the elections on 17 April 1950

• The meetings with Israel that took place intermittently in the following year were marked by the dichotomy of the regime in Amman, with the King and his Council of Ministers moving further and further away from each other

• The King was extremely disappointed by both of Huda's successors, Said el-Mufti (Prime Minister from 14 April to 3 December 1950) and Samir el Rifai (from 4 December 1950 to 25 July 1951

• Kirkbride tried in vain to use his influence as British Minister in Jordan to further agreement between Jordan and Israel. At the end of September 1950 he informed London that the struggle between Abdallah and his Ministers had come to a head

• Abdallah showed optimism at a meeting with Reuven Shiloah, the Israeli representative - an optimism caused by the new Prime Minister's appointment. He explained to Shiloah that in the past Samir had been a mere bystander without executive authority, but this was no longer the case. The King's optimism was, however, misplaced

• Abdallah's determination to achieve peace with Israel is borne out by documents numerous enough to convince the most confirmed sceptic.

• The day after the Jordanian parliament proclaimed the Union between the two banks, Abdallah met Reuven Shiloah, keeping it secret from his new Prime Minister, Said el-Mufti. A few days later, he finally divulged the fact of the meeting to the British Minister, asking him to inform el-Mufti about it and plead with him to renew contacts with Israel.

• One of the Foreign Office officials who read this report approved of Kirkbride's masterly inaction, but nevertheless commented: 'What- ever happens, Abdallah [may] tell the Israelis that it is the British who are holding him back.' This comment proved prophetic. A few days later, the Israeli Foreign Minister, Moshe Sharett, indeed informed Sir Knox Helm, the British Minister in Israel, that Abdallah had told the Israeli envoy, 'Kirkbride was advising him to go slow, but he [Abdallah] was determined to go ahead.

• the West Bank, he got the impression from them that they were seemingly in favour of a peace settlement with Israel. His government, however, contended that he was mistaken and that its impression was exactly the opposite. To clear the matter up, the Council of Ministers sent a 'fact-finding' Ministerial Commission to the West Bank (22-26 July 1950).

• kbride was in the West Bank at the time, having assigned himself the thankless task of explaining to the Palestinians there that they would do well to agree to a settlement with Israel.

• first Armistice Agreement was signed between Israel and Egypt in February 1949. The Mount Scopus Agreement with Jordan was signed as early as July 1948, followed in November by the 'Sincere Cease-Fire Agreement' in Jerusalem. Meetings with the King himself were again possible from January 1949

• d. When these negotiations began seriously, they lasted for three months, from the end of November 1949 to the end of February 1950, by which time it had become clear that the two sides could not bridge the gap between them

• Three Stages:

• hs (from 27 November 1949 to 23 January 1950) focused on attaining a comprehensive peace settlemen

• Jordan demanded territorial concessions from Israel

• The Israeli and Jordanian delegations at the UN had in fact co-operated in foiling UN plans for internationalizing the city

• 'a, etc.) and Israel demanded the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and Mount Scopus with the Hebrew University and the Hadassah Hospital. On 13 February, the Jordan Council of Ministers rejected the Israeli demand

• e. Concretely, he proposed a Non-Aggression Pact for five years. He asked Samir el-Rifai to draft the terms, and when the latter jibbed at the task, the King himself dictated the text then and there in Arabic to the Israeli representative, Reuven

• No representative of the Jordan Council of Ministers was present at the meeting in which Abdallah made this proposal; this explains why he said he would submit the matter to his government for discussion only when the Israeli government informed him of its favourable reaction to his plan.12 This was the start of the third and last stage of these contacts

• xt. At the next meeting, which took place on 18 February, both parties, however, met with bitter disappointment

• nt. Jordan presented a diluted text that had only the vaguest resemblance to the initialled document: it was not called a non-aggression pact but described as a modification of and annex to the Armistice Agreement

• he Israeli draft was marked by excessive legalism. Entitled 'A Pact of Non-Aggression and Amity', it was decked out in all the nice distinctions of international law, including a provision on conciliation and arbitration in case of disagreement. All the same, the Israeli draft did refer to all the provisions that had been agreed on in the first draft, with the exception of the outlet to the sea under Jordan sovereignty, reference to which was omitted.

• n. Prime Minister Tewfik Abu el-Huda reacted furiously to the Israeli draft. He found it completely unacceptable, declaring he saw no point in attempting to reach agreement with the Jews, who were 'trickste

• he Sharett did not doubt the King's sincerity. When urged by his advisers to mobilize US and British diplomacy to persuade the King to continue negotiating, Sharett asked rhetorically, 'Mobilize against whom?' 'The

• Sir Thomas Rapp, Head of the then still influential British Middle East Office (BMEO) in Cairo, visited Israel and Jordan towards the end of 1950. H

• Rapp went so far as to suggest the use of bribes to promote agreement

• ly. The British documents will surprise anyone expecting to find an exclusively pro-Arab or pro-Arab League lin

• The British favoured a settlement for two main reasons. They were apprehensive of being subjected to Jordanian pressures to come to that country's assistance in case of a serious border incident with Israel.

• The second reason was that Britain had reached the conclusion that in order to play a strategic role in the Middle East, she would need Israel in time of w

• In the last few months before Abdallah's assassination, Israel no longer had any real hope that the contacts with Jordan would bear fruit