Honor King Hussein: Thwart Palestinian Statehood

(Washington, D.C.): Amid the funeral dirges accompanying the eulogies for Jordan’s King
Hussein, a seemingly inappropriate musical number keeps coming to mind: Joni Mitchell’s “Big
Yellow Taxi” with its refrain, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got
’til it’s gone.”

After all, as the eulogies to the man widely known as “the Little King” make clear, Hussein’s
death has left a hole in the politics of the Middle East that few outside the region appreciated until
he no longer filled it. Like Fred Astaire, King Hussein managed to make the most complex of
diplomatic moves appear easy and natural when they were neither and were, instead, often fraught
with grave danger for him and his country. His son and successor, King Abdullah, is unlikely to
be able perform so ably.

The Little King’s Legacy

King Hussein’s departure puts into especially sharp relief his most extraordinary contribution:
No
other Arab leader since Anwar Sadat was murdered so genuinely and wholeheartedly
embraced peace with Israel. With his passing, the difference has never been more clear
between his policy and that of what is, at best, a “cold peace” favored by Egypt’s Mubarak or cold — and
occasionally hot — wars waged against the Jewish State by Syria’s Assad, Iraq’s Saddam, Saudi
Arabia’s King Faud, Iran’s ruling mullahs and the Palestinians’ Arafat.

Importantly, evidence of the King of Jordan’s mortality also puts a spotlight upon one other
reality of the contemporary Middle East: Each of these aging despots face growing
internal(or, in the case of Iraq, external) challenges to their rule. Such succession contests are
unlikely to prove conducive to regional stability. This will be particularly true if — as is often the case — these authoritarian rulers wind up trying to suppress domestic pressures
for reform by engaging in foreign adventurism.

Who Will Be Threatened by a Palestinian State

Finally, the death of the Little King obliges American policy-makers to come to grips with yet
another fact that they have generally chosen to ignore until now. The creation of a
Palestinian
state on the West Bank of the Jordan River — an event explicitly endorsed by First Lady
Hillary Clinton and implicitly welcomed by her husband and his Administration — is likely
to prove a mortal threat not only to Israel, but to the Hashemite Kingdom on the East
Bank, as well.

One of the most difficult parts of King Hussein’s elegant high-wire act involved his
relationship
with the Palestinians that make up a majority of Jordan’s population. In September 1970, King
Hussein was obliged to suppress Arafat’s forces which were, like bad guests, turning on their
host. What came to be known as “Black September” seriously weakened the PLO and banished it
to Lebanon. Shared hostility to Palestinian terrorism and nationalism underpinned the King’s
courageous, clandestine contacts with successive Israeli governments — a relationship that
remained covert until, at last, following the Gulf War, he took the further step of formally making
peace with Israel.

After 1970, Hussein ruled his subjects — Palestinian and Bedouin, alike — firmly but fairly. In
the
absence of a sovereign state of their own, his Palestinians seemed content with establishing
themselves as preeminent, if subservient, forces in the Jordanian economy and parliament. For his
part, Arafat nurtured an abiding enmity toward the King, on occasion directly threatening him and
encouraging Palestinian schoolchildren to “wish for the day when Kerak [Jordan] trembles before
Abu Amar [Arafat].”

Consequently, should Arafat make good on his threat to declare a Palestinian state on or after
4
May, all bets are off. Such a state will surely become radicalized, seeking ties and
support from
nations like Iraq, Iran and Syria that share with Arafat and the Islamic terrorists of Hamas an
abiding commitment to the ultimate destruction of Israel. This development will create intense
pressures on the majority of Jordanians to take sides with their Palestinian brothers against Israel.
(Recall that in a similar situation, when in August 1990, Jordan was forced to choose between its
traditional Western allies and Saddam Hussein, even King Hussein was unable to resist popular
demands for solidarity with the Iraqi dictator.)

What is more, with the demise of the man who personified his country for many of its people,
nationalist impulses seem likely to work in favor of forging a single Palestinian state that spans the
Jordan River, rather than preserving an artificial construct known as Jordan, bequeathed as spoils
to a loyal Bedouin tribe by the victors of the First World War. Should that happen, the
Palestinians may well acquire overnight a formidable conventional military force — a Jordanian
army capable of posing a significant threat to Israel, especially if it were to be employed (as it was
repeatedly prior to 1973) in league with other Arab armies. War has not treated Jordan well in
the past and likely will not do so in the future.

The Bottom Line

Even before King Hussein’s death prompted the world to reflect upon the unique contribution
to
peace made by an independent, sovereign and well-ruled Jordan, some far-sighted American
legislators were seeking to end the Clinton Administration’s ambiguous stance toward a
Palestinian state which would put all that at risk. A bipartisan concurrent resolution introduced in
the House recently by, among others, Representatives Matt Salmon (R-AZ)
and Eliot Engel,
(D-NY), calls on President Clinton “unequivocally [to] assert United States opposition to the
unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, making clear that such a declaration would be a
grievous violation of the Oslo accords and would not be recognized by the United States.”

This is an important first step. Given the serious problems a
Palestinian state will pose to U.S.
friends — including Jordan and Israel — and to this country’s interests in the Middle East more
generally, however, the United States should steadfastly oppose the creation of such a state, even
if a future Israeli government foolishly decides to accede to it (thereby making a unilateral
declaration unnecessary).

To do otherwise would be to demean the memory and destroy the legacy of a king whose full
value is only now being appreciated after he’s gone.