Thirty years ago, Jordan’s King Hussein and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin leaned for hours over a map and delineated the border between the two countries, clearing the final obstacle in months of talks over a peace deal mediated by the US, their common ally.
The agreement was signed on October 26, 1994 in the border area of Wadi Araba. It was only the second – and to date, last – formal peace accord between an Arab state and Israel, made possible in large part because of the friendship that developed between the two men over the course of the talks.
Not since has there been such a bond between an Israeli and an Arab leader. With the current war in Gaza straining Jordan’s and other Arab states' ties with Israel, it is unlikely to be replicated anytime soon.
But the “warm peace” envisaged by Mr Rabin and King Hussein faltered early on. It received a blow when Mr Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an opponent of peace with the Palestinians, and another a year later when hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to power, expanding Israeli settlements and supporting movement and other restrictions against the Palestinians.
Mustafa Hamarneh, a confidant of the late king and now a member of Jordan’s Senate, said “the regression in the peace process” started with the ascendancy of Mr Netanyahu in 1996.
“You can never isolate the Jordanian track from the Palestinian track,” Mr Hamarneh said.
Ties between Jordan and Israel will remain government-to-government but “never people-to-people, and that's precisely because of Israeli politics”, he said.
Jordan has fiercely criticised Israel's conduct in the Gaza war, and there has been no public contact between the two sides since it began. But bilateral security channels remain open. Industrial zones on the border with Israel, which receive US tariff exemptions and account for a significant proportion of Jordanian exports, operate normally.
In the past few months, the authorities have clamped down on anti-Israel demonstrations as protesters began voicing support for Hamas in the Israel-Gaza war.
Custodianship
The 1994 treaty ended the state of war between the two countries and obliged them to prevent threats to each other’s security. It provides for Israel to supply water to Jordan to compensate for shortages in the kingdom. It also resulted in debt forgivingness and financial aid to Jordan, which are crucial for its economic survival.
Israel returned 380 square kilometres of occupied Jordanian land. It also recognised a “special” and “historic” Jordanian role in the Muslim shrines of Jerusalem, a nod to the Hashemite’s monarchy’s claim to custodianship of Al Aqsa Mosque.
The recognition is politically important because Palestinian factions and socialist Arab regimes, particularly Syria, long accused the monarchy of undermining the struggle for Palestine, through its alliance with the US and traditionally open channels with Israel.
However, since Mr Netanyahu returned to power for a third time in late 2022, members of his right-wing government have been encouraging more religious ultra-nationalists to enter the Al Aqsa Mosque compound and pray there, while restricting the entry of Muslims.
-
US president Bill Clinton applauds Jordan's King Hussein and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin after the peace treaty signing at Wadi Araba border area, on October 26, 1994. All photos: Reuters -
Israeli workers unload a road sign directing traffic to the new border crossing between Jordan and Israel in 1994. The deal provided water and an economic boost to Jordan -
King Hussein and Mr Rabin share a joke. The personal connection between the men made the deal possible -
Marwan Muasher, Jordan's first ambassador to Israel, is welcomed by Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres in April 1995, after walking across the Jordan River bridge into Israel -
Mr Rabin, King Hussein, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat pose for a picture, a scene that appeared unthinkable before the 1994 treaty -
King Hussein and Mr Rabin in conversation on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in November 1994, a few weeks after the treaty was signed
King Hussein described the peace treaty as a “balanced” and “honourable”, but both he and Mr Rabin took risks to reach it. Mr Rabin had to convince his compatriots that Israel would not be weakened by openness to a country where a large proportion of the population is of Palestinian origin, while King Hussein did not want to appear as selling out the Palestinian cause.
The king, who died in 1999, mastered the media, and was “consistent in word and deed” as he addressed “Israeli public opinion, and especially American Jewry and American public opinion in general”, Mr Hamarneh said.
“He really built tremendous goodwill to secure the Israelis, and to [convince them to] make concessions. It went OK with Rabin. And they formed a good friendship.”
Mr Rabin also realised that the king had his own constituency to assuage and that “he can't simply move the way the Israelis want him to move”, he said.
The Oslo effect
The king received a tactical boost when it became known in 1993 that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was engaged in secret negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords in the same year. The accords mainly produced limited self-rule for the Palestinians, and the start of final status negotiations without defining what the outcome should be.
Although the accords helped Jordan proceed with its own talks with Israel, the king was “furious” that Mr Arafat had not informed him about the negotiations, and that he had settled for so little, Mr Hamarneh said.
“Hussein was an Arab, completely. The Palestinian cause was his. I think that's his legacy. Whether you see him that way or not, that's the way he saw himself – a powerful Arab.”
The Oslo Accords pushed the king to speed up the process of negotiating a formal peace with Israel. But he felt that a co-ordinated move with the Palestinians “could have probably yielded much better results”, Mr Hamarneh said.
“In retrospect, it definitely would have,” Mr Hamarneh said.
The war in Gaza, however, has brought Jordan perceived security and demographic threats not seen in decades. The kingdom has fiercely criticised Israel’s conduct in the war and its incursions into the West Bank, saying they could prompt another mass influx of Palestinian refugees into the kingdom.
The last two major waves occurred when Israel was created in 1948, and when it seized the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
Robert Satloff, a senior member of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, said that despite the heightened volatility in the region, the mutual interests underpinning the peace between Jordan and Israel have remained constant.
Jordan, which has mismanaged its water resources, “would go dry” without the Israeli supply, while Jordan is indispensable for Israel “as a security partner” and “its first line of defence to the east”, he said.
“The Jordanians don't provide this contribution to Israel's security out of the kindness of their heart. It's because they share common adversaries,” said Mr Satloff, referring to the extremist groups that have proliferated near their borders over the past 30 years.
Infiltration
In recent months, infiltration attempts into Israel from Jordan have increased. Although most have failed, they have been raising concern that Jordan, despite adhering to security requirements in the peace treaty, could turn into a launch pad for attacks by non-state groups.
Israeli forces last week shot dead two members of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood who tried to mount a cross-border raid near the Dead Sea.
Reacting to a brief march in Amman last week to commemorate one of the two dead men, Prime Minister Jafar Hassan said that Jordan “will not be a place for sedition and gambling and we will not accept risking the future of this country”.
“We will not allow any party to bring the instability and destruction seen elsewhere into Jordan,” Mr Hassan said, without mentioning Israel.
The anniversary of the peace treaty is about to pass without any official mention. The last time the agreement came up in the state-dominated media was in November last year, when the loyalist parliament hinted that it could review the treaty, but no action was taken.
“Abrogation or abandoning the peace treaty is not on the table,” said Marwan Muasher, Jordan's first ambassador to Israel.
“I think the dilemma today is, can Jordan continue with its economic and security co-operation with Israel in the same way that it did before October 7? I don't think that is possible,” said Mr Muasher, who oversees Middle East research at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.
He expected continuation of a cold peace, “without much co-operation” until the “core issue” of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is addressed.
“If the occupation does not end, then Jordanian fears that Israel might try to solve the problem at its expense are going to stay there.”
Among many in Israel, there is a growing sense that the country cannot return to anything resembling the status quo under Netanyahu.
“We have a prime minister who has damaged the relationship repeatedly in each one of his terms in office,” Nimrod Novik, who was foreign policy adviser to Shimon Peres, Israeli prime minister from 1984 to 1986 and 1995 to 1996, told The National.
“Until there is a change [of leadership] in Jerusalem, nothing good is going to happen. Not in Gaza, not in south Lebanon, not in the West Bank, and not in Israel's standing worldwide. We are sliding in a very dangerous trajectory.”
Willy Lowry contributed to this report from Washington DC
