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October 29, 2004/Cheshvan 14 5765, Vol. 57, No. 9
Quiet anniversary for Israeli-Jordanian peace
GIL SEDAN
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Ten years ago this week, in the midst of a desert storm in the Arava valley, the late King Hussein of Jordan and the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel signed a peace accord ushering in an era of hope that relations between the neigh-bors would become a model for a new Middle East.
The 10th anniversary of that day went by this week with little fanfare and no official celebrations marking the milestone.
What happened?
The Israel-Jordan peace agreement was like the official marriage of a couple that had been carrying on a secret relationship for years. The leaders of both countries sighed with relief, pleased that they would no longer have to hide their affair.
Today, ties between Israel and its eastern neighbor are not at their best. This, though, has less to do with the couple itself not getting along than it does with tension inside the "family" - the Arab world, that is, and in particular the Palestinians, who comprise two-thirds of Jordan's 5.5 million population.
"We cannot ignore what's happening in the West Bank and Gaza, neither can we ignore terrorism," Marwan Mu'ashar, Jordan's foreign minister, told Israeli jour-nalists in Amman recently.
The Israel-Jordan peace deal was followed by inflated optimism. Rosy scenarios envisaged other countries in the Middle East following suit, the economies of both countries prospering, the border opening up for mutual tourism and trade thriving - and spilling over from Jordan to the rest of the Arab world.
But this week in Amman, Israeli Ambassador Ya'acov Hadas sat in a fortified embassy, totally isolated from the local political community, lamenting the stagnation in relations.
Meanwhile, masses of Jordanians marked the anni-versary by demonstrating against ties with the Jewish state.
"We have ups and downs, quarrels and appeasements," Hadas said in an interview with the Ma'ariv newspaper.
The "downs" are the result of the collapse of the peace process with the Palestinians and the emergence of a strong anti-Israeli lobby in Jordan.
The first widely publicized misunderstanding took place in 1996, two years after the peace agreement, when Israel opened a new exit to an archaeological tunnel next to the Western Wall.
Palestinians claimed Israel was trying to collapse the mosques on the Temple Mount. As a result of the incitement, Palestinian Au-thority security forces faced off against Israeli soldiers, leaving some 70 people dead.
Later that year came Israel's botched assassination attempt on Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in downtown Am-man. Then, in March 1997, a Jordanian soldier opened fire on a group of teenaged Israeli girls on a field trip along the border, killing seven. The soldier became a hero in Jordan, and Jordanians were outraged when King Hussein apologized to the girls' families.
Relations really took a turn for the worst after September 2000, when the Palestinian intifada began. Two Israeli diplomats were injured in shooting attacks, and an Israeli businessman was murdered in Jordan in August 2001.
Jordan is perturbed by construction of Israel's West Bank security barrier, which Jordan says jeopardizes its own security by prompting fears of a new influx of Palestinians.
Israeli bureaucracy and lack of initiative bears some of the blame for the stagnation in relations between the two countries.
Eight years ago Jordan and Israel signed an agreement on special arrangements for the neighboring Red Sea port towns of Aqaba and Eilat.
The agreement stipulated that Israel and Jordan would cooperate on issues relating to the two cities. There was talk of cooperation on environ-mental management, pest control, flood management, town zoning and land use policies, energy and natural resources, emergency re-sponse services, and the promotion of binational and multinational events.
The agreement also called for the establishment of a Special Tourism Zone in the region, in which cross-border tourism would be encouraged by simplifying crossing pro-cedures; a binational Special Economic Zone; and a binational Red Sea Marine Peace Park.
All were dreams. All remained on paper.
Shimon Shamir, a former Israeli ambassador to Jordan, once spoke of an agreement to transport merchandise by truck from Jordan to the port of Haifa. The agreement was delayed because government ministries could not agree which of them would cover the approximately $110 cost for the police motorcyclist to escort the motorcade.
According to Israel's Tourism Ministry, some 150,000 Israelis visited Jordan last year, the vast majority of them Israeli Arabs. Some 18,400 Jordanians visited Israel.
But the main obstacle to normalization between the two countries is located in Jordan.
Since the signing of the peace treaty in 1994, Jordan's monarchy has tried to maneuver carefully between its reliance on Israel as the behind-the-scenes guarantor of the regime and its desire to maintain close ties with the Arab world, which frowns on friendly relations with the Jewish state.
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