Zarqawi and Israel: Is There a New Jihadi Threat Destabilizing the Eastern Front?

Zarqawi and Israel: Is There a New Jihadi Threat Destabilizing the Eastern Front?
Dore Gold and Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan D. Halevi
JERUSALEM ISSUE BRIEF
The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Vol. 5, No. 12
15 December 2005
FOR FULL ARTICLE
http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief005-12.htm

For the first time, Israeli defense experts are noting that groups identifying with al-Qaeda - or the global jihad - are determined to acquire operational footholds close to Israel's borders. The most dramatic sign was the November 9, 2005, suicide bombing of three Jordanian hotels in Amman by "al-Qaeda Mesopotamia" - the organization led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Militant Islamic websites immediately announced: "After the attack in the heart of Jordan, it will soon be possible to reach Jewish targets in Israel."

Al-Qaeda operations around Israel are becoming more prominent. In August 2005, an al-Qaeda rocket strike at the Jordanian Red Sea port of Aqaba also reached the Israeli resort town of Eilat. To Israel's south, a growing al-Qaeda presence in Sinai led to attacks on Israeli tourists in Taba and other coastal resorts in October 2004, followed by a major bombing at a hotel in Sharm al-Sheikh in July 2005. Sinai has also served as a rear base for the beginning of an al-Qaeda presence in the Gaza Strip. Zarqawi's terrorist network formally joined al-Qaeda in October 2004.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy head of al-Qaeda, has encouraged Zarqawi to extend his jihad in Iraq to neighboring states (i.e., Jordan and Syria), where there are already increasing signs of jihadi activity. In the next stage, Zawahiri envisions "the clash with Israel." The head of Israeli military intelligence, Maj.-Gen. Aharon Zeevi (Farkash), concluded recently: "We are not a high priority [for al-Qaeda], but our prioritization for them is increasing."

Many Western sources are convinced that Zarqawi was training his recruits in the use of toxins, including poisons and chemical weapons, at the Herat training camp in Afghanistan. In 2004, a Zarqawi associate named Azmi al-Jailusi confessed to trying to set off a chemical explosion in central Amman, near the headquarters of Jordanian intelligence, which had the potential to kill 80,000 people. In April 2005, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned that recurrent U.S. intelligence reports indicated that Zarqawi was seeking to obtain a "radiological explosive."

It would be a cardinal error for Israel to conclude that after the U.S. war in Iraq, the region to Israel's east is moving in the direction of greater stability and, therefore, Israel can take the risk of conceding its strategic assets in the West Bank. Zarqawi now wants to destabilize Jordan, but clearly seeks to target Israel as well. Dismissing the value of Israel's security fence, Zarqawi's organization has declared: "the separation wall...will feel the might of the mujahidin," hinting that Israel could face the same waves of insurgent volunteers that have entered Iraq. Were Israel to withdraw from the strategic barrier it controls in the Jordan Valley, then Israeli vulnerability could very well attract more global jihadi elements to Jordan, who would seek to use the kingdom as a platform to reach the West Bank and then Israel.

A Very alarming article by Dore Gold - Growing al-Qaida threat to Jordan worries Israel

Growing al-Qaida threat to Jordan worries Israel
By Martin WalkerUPI Editor
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published December 16, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Israel faces an ominous new threat on its eastern front, where Jordan is under pressure from political and religious radicalization spearheaded by al-Qaida, says a top Israeli policy adviser.

"There are serious implications for Israel in the future from the growth of al-Qaida-related terrorism, as exemplified by the attacks of the Zarqawi network in Jordan," claims Dore Gold, Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, in a new policy paper just published by Israel's Institute for Contemporary Affairs.

"After the November 2005 suicide attacks on three hotels in Amman, King Abdullah stressed that this was the work of Iraqis and not Jordanians," Gold writes. "The Western press went out of its way to emphasize how Jordanian opinion had turned against terrorist groups that would kill innocent Jordanian civilians. This analysis, however, tended to paper over the radicalization that segments of Jordanian society had undergone as a result of the Iraq War." Gold cites a poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project in mid-2005 which revealed that 60 percent of Jordanians expressed a lot or some confidence in Osama bin Laden. In comparison, in Morocco, only 26 percent responded the same way, and in Lebanon just two percent were willing to express support for bin Laden. More worrying, Gold suggests, was that Jordanian sympathy for bin Laden was increasing in comparison with Pew's findings in 2003, while such sympathy was decreasing at the same time in Morocco, Lebanon, and Turkey.

"The radicalization of Jordanian opinion has many sources," Gold suggests, in his new analysis, 'Zarqawi and Israel: Is There a New Jihadi Threat Destabilizing the Eastern Front?' It is co-authored with Lt. Col. Jonathan D. Halevi, a former advisor to the Policy Planning Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Some attribute it (this radicalization) to the Iraq War; if that is the case, then as the Sunni insurgency in Iraq persists, the process of radicalization is likely to continue, even if there was a discernable downturn after the November bombings in Amman," the paper says.

"But even prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the emergence of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, now infamous as the al-Qaida terrorist leader in Iraq, was not a unique phenomenon in northern Jordan. In the late 1990s, it had been reported that 500 men from Zarqa and the adjacent Palestinian refugee camp were in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban. The neighboring city of Salt has contributed even more mujahideen that have been killed in Iraq than Zarqa, including the suicide bomber who murdered 125 Shiites in one attack on Feb. 28, 2005. What is striking is that many of these volunteers came from the same Transjordanian Bedouin background as Zarqawi."

Jordan has one of the best intelligence services in the Arab world, particularly in response to domestic challenges, Dore notes. But as the threats come from outside its porous borders with Iraq or Syria or even Saudi Arabia, Jordan will have a far more difficult time contending with the threat of terrorism.

"In the past, Israel could be certain that if there was a violent organization determined to attack it from Jordanian territory, the Hashemites would not permit their kingdom to be exploited for such purposes," Gold writes. "With the spread of al-Qaida-related terrorism throughout the countries neighboring Jordan, the kingdom's capacity to block such attacks may be reduced."

"Israel's national security doctrine for decades viewed the Jordan Valley as critical for Israel's security from threats along its Eastern Front," Gold continues, as part of his strong contention that Israel must buttress its defenses on the eastern front.

"Were Israel to make a territorial withdrawal from the strategic barrier it controls in the Jordan Valley (which it once considered at Camp David in 2000), then Israeli vulnerability could very well attract more global jihadi elements to Jordan, who would seek to use the kingdom as a platform to reach the West Bank and then target Israel's civilian infrastructure," he argues.

"Those advocating such a withdrawal take for granted that Jordan will remain a stable buffer that can thwart threats to its own security and to the security of Israel, as well. Jordanian stability is a global interest of the entire Western alliance. It can only be hoped that this beleaguered state will be provided the resources it needs by the United States and its allies to contend with the new threat environment it faces."

"In the past, radical challenges to the Hashemite regime emanated from the Palestinian population in Jordan," Gold contends. "With the spread of Islamic militancy in Jordan, the Hashemites are now facing an added internal threat from the direction of those who had been its most important pillars of support. Of course, Transjordanians had been involved in the Muslim Brotherhood in the past, but they were primarily active in its pragmatic wing that worked with the Jordanian government."

What changed, says Gold, was the arrival of Muslim fundamentalism, specifically the coming of Salafi jihadists. He says this first became apparent in 1993, when Jordanian security forces uncovered a plot by Hizb ut-Tahrir to assassinate King Hussein. Radical Islamists set off bombs in cinemas in Amman and Zarqa in 1994.

"But now there is a danger of this activity becoming more widespread," Gold stresses. "Jordanian security officials have estimated that recently 500 Jordanians have been arrested for links with al-Qaida. Indeed, according to a report in the London Sunday Times, Jordanian security sources believed that the Iraqi suicide bombers who attacked in Amman received help from Jordanian soldiers. If the report is true, it means that Zarqawi's network had penetrated the Jordanian defense establishment in a manner reminiscent of al-Qaida's recruitment of members of the Saudi National Guard."

"Jordan now faces multiple challenges to its security," Gold concludes. "It hosts nearly half a million Iraqi refugees, some of whom could be recruited for jihadi activities. Its border with the Sunni portions of Iraq is relatively porous. In addition, Jordan will undoubtedly be affected by developments within two other neighbors -- Syria to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south. Saudi clashes with local al-Qaida cells have become a regular occurrence since May 2003. Syria, which serves as the main conduit for the mujahideen fighting for the insurgency in Iraq, is paying a price for this role."

As the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad becomes further isolated and embattled by the pressures of the international community due to its involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, Gold suggests that militant Islamic elements, that have grown with the Syrian involvement in Iraq, will become emboldened.

"All this will have implications for Jordan," Gold suggests. "Zarqawi's strategy is based on a significant escalation of the destructive power of terrorist attacks: from bringing down U.N. headquarters in Baghdad to trying to destroy whole hotels elsewhere. Of greatest concern has been his readiness to employ even the crudest weapons of mass destruction. The sophistication of his network is bound to increase. It becomes a paramount interest for Israel to recognize the changing threat of terrorism as Zarqawi's network threatens to become active in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle."

"Al-Qaida's global strategy has been to seek the weakest link in any region it hopes to penetrate," Gold writes. "Al-Qaida thrives in weak or failed states like Sudan, Afghanistan, remote Iraqi Kurdistan prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion, or Chechnya. If the state structures are in a process of being built up, al-Qaida is seeking to destabilize them by increasing insurgent activities. That has been the primary goal of Zarqawi's network in Iraq and is likely to become his chief political strategy in Syria and Jordan. All of this indicates that the region to Israel's east is likely to enter a period of greater instability."

Out of Jordan by URIYA SHAVIT - HA'ARETZ.... On the Events of September 1970 in Jordan

Out of Jordan
By Uriya Shavit
(I don't have the exact date of this article as I came across it today through a link from another website)

The Israeli public remembers the events of Black September as the operation in which the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan decisively eliminated a Palestinian uprising in the course of one month. The actions taken by King Hussein 32 years ago to expel Yasser Arafat and the senior Palestinian leadership from his country are used as a preferred example by those who claim that in the Middle East, the name of the game is cruelty and mercilessness. The Israeli invasion of the Palestinian cities two weeks ago sharpened the analogy between the conditions that the king faced and the method of operation he chose, and the conditions facing Israel and the method of operation it has chosen.

But the seemingly well-known events of Black September did not last for only one month. The military struggle between Jordan and the Palestinians lasted for a year and a half. The climax came in September 1970, but the battle was won only after 10 bloody months, during which the Palestinians surprised the Jordanians with their tenacity.

A good starting point for understanding the processes that led up to the confrontation can be found in March 1968, when Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered the Jordanian village of Karameh, about seven kilometers east of the Jordan River, where the young and then unknown leader of Fatah, Yasser Arafat, had his headquarters. The move came in response to a series of attacks carried out by Palestinian organizations against Israel, from Jordanian territory. Prime minister Levi Eshkol declared that the goal of the operation was to prevent "a new wave of terror" against Israel. The UN Security Council condemned the action.

Between 128 and 170 Palestinians were killed during that operation, depending which version one accepts. But, unexpectedly, even the IDF, still basking in the glory of the Six-Day War, suffered heavy casualties: 28 soldiers were killed, 80 were wounded, four tanks remained in Palestinian hands. And Yasser Arafat managed to escape.

A state within a state
The limited achievement on the battlefield captured the imagination of the Palestinians in Jordan and of the entire Arab world. Arafat was glorified as the person who had managed, to some extent, to restore downtrodden Arab dignity. Thousands of young Palestinians wanted to enlist in his organization. Fatah became the most important organization within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In the wake of the battle of Karameh, Arafat's men became more daring. In the refugee camps and in several Jordanian cities, they behaved as though they owned the place: They walked around armed and in uniform, set up checkpoints, collected taxes, and refused to travel with Jordanian license plates on their cars.

The strengthening of the Palestinian organizations posed a dilemma for King Hussein. On the one hand, about two-thirds of his subjects were Palestinians, who supported the guerrilla warfare against Israel. Hussein could thus not oppose them without antagonizing most Jordanians - and without risking a confrontation with Nasser's Egypt, which supported the Palestinians. On the other hand, the increasing power of the Palestinians undermined his sovereignty. The Jordanian police and army were no longer the source of authority in the Jordanian refugee camps, and they gradually lost authority in the north of the kingdom as well.

King Hussein's first attempt to reestablish his authority was made in November 1968. He reached a seven-point agreement with the Palestinian organizations: Members of these organizations were forbidden to walk around the cities armed and in uniform; they were forbidden to stop civilian vehicles in order to conduct searches; they were forbidden to recruit young men who were fit to serve in the Jordanian army; they were required to carry Jordanian identity papers; their vehicles were required to bear Jordanian license plates; crimes committed by members of the Palestinian organizations would be investigated by the Jordanian authorities; and disputes between the Palestinian organizations and the government would be settled by a joint council of representatives of the king and of the PLO.

The agreement reached between the sides did not withstand the test of reality. The Palestinian organizations continued to accumulate power in Jordan, and to do as they pleased in the refugee camps. They even intensified the fighting against Israel. During 1969, they conducted 3,170 operations against Israel from Jordanian territory, without bothering to coordinate them in advance with the Jordanian army. The counterattacks carried out by Israel damaged the Jordanian economy, and forced about 70,000 Jordanian subjects to flee from their homes in the Jordan Valley.

In the spring of 1969, the United States began its efforts to promote a political agreement between Israel and the Arab states. King Hussein hoped that president Richard Nixon's Republican administration would be less friendly toward Israel, and would force it to withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967. He went to Washington to make it clear that Jordan was willing to become more flexible, in order to ensure the success of the American initiative. The Palestinian organizations anxiously observed his moves. They were afraid of a separate Jordanian-Israeli agreement, which would destroy the dream of a Palestinian state stretching to the Mediterranean Sea.

In order to undermine the political contacts and to bring about a military conflagration between Jordan and Israel, Arafat and his partners stepped up the armed conflict against Israel. Hussein reached the conclusion that he had to act - but his hands were tied. He couldn't do more than Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser allowed him to do. At the beginning of February 1970, Hussein went to Cairo, and received Nasser's secret acquiescence to take more decisive action against the Palestinian organizations.

When the king returned to Jordan on February 10, he published a 10-point edict. Among its provisions were a ban on interference by members of the Palestinian organizations with the activity of the Jordanian security forces, a ban on organization of meetings or assemblies without the permission of the Interior Ministry, and a ban on Palestinian political activity.

The Palestinian organizations were not impressed. On February 11, they established a united military headquarters in order to prepare for a possible Jordanian attack. That same night, 300 people were killed in confrontations that broke out between the two sides in the streets of the capital, Amman. King Hussein was afraid of losing control. Nasser allowed him to impose limitations on the Palestinians, but warned him not to accept an all-out Jordanian war against the Palestinians. Hussein ordered the Jordanian army to refrain from additional activities, and declared: "We are all fedayeen" [Palestinian commando groups]. Afterward, he fired his interior minister, who was the greatest enemy of the Palestinian organizations in his government. The first round of battle between the sides ended with a clear victory for Yasser Arafat.

Who gave them rifles?
At the end of July 1970, Egypt decided to accept the plan proposed by U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers, which called for an immediate cease-fire in the war of attrition between Egypt and Israel, and for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 242. After Egypt, Jordan also announced that it accepted the plan.

The dramatic decision brought about an intensification of the Palestinian battle against Jordan. The radical left organizations in the PLO, George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Naif Hawatmeh's Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front- General Command, decided to undermine Hussein's regime in order to ensure the failure of "the Rogers Plan," and perhaps the deposition of the king. In their opinion, the Hashemite regime had to be eliminated in any case, since it was conservative and pro-Western.

Yasser Arafat, head of Fatah, feared that the move to depose Hussein was premature. The Jordanian army numbered 55,000 well-trained soldiers, as well as an armored corps and an air force, whereas the Palestinian organization numbered at most about 15,000 fighters, armed mainly with light weapons. Arafat chose to play both sides against the middle and to maneuver in the ensuing chaos: On the one hand, he didn't stop the radical organizations; on the other, he didn't come out openly against Hussein.

At the beginning of September 1970, the activities of the leftist Palestinian organizations in Jordan turned into open defiance of King Hussein himself. On September 1, a failed attempt on Hussein's life was made while he was on his way to the Amman airport. On September 6, members of the Popular Front hijacked three planes: A Swissair plane and a TWA plane were hijacked to the airport in Zarqa, and an additional plane, belonging to Pan American, was hijacked to the Cairo airport. Three days later, a British plane was hijacked, and brought down near Amman. The passengers were held hostage. The hijackers demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners in various countries. A spokesman for the Popular Front said in Beirut that the hijackings were carried out in order "to teach the Americans a lesson, because of their long-standing support of Israel."

Yasser Arafat did not condemn the hijackings, which aroused an international protest against the Palestinians. Hussein knew that the international community would now be more sympathetic toward a decisive battle against the Palestinian organizations, and that Nasser - who wanted to promote the Rogers Plan - would be less supportive. The Jordanian king quickly lost control of his kingdom. At the height of the drama of the hijacked planes, the Palestinians declared the area of Irbid in the north of the country a "liberated region," and announced that they were preparing for "the showdown."

Hussein's inner circle, citizens of Transjordan who feared a Palestinian revolt, explained to the king that the time had come to defeat the Palestinians. "On September 15, at the palace in Sweileh, north of Amman, the associates and advisers of the king gathered," wrote Prof. Asher Susser of Tel Aviv University in "Between Jordan and Palestine," his 1983 Hebrew biography of Wafsi al-Tal, Hussein's prime minister. "These people, who had long supported strong action against the fedayeen, convinced Hussein that the time had come to act. They estimated that the army could expel the fedayeen from the large cities within two to three days. Hussein's hesitations disappeared. That same day, he made the decision to strike at the fedayeen. The uncertainty and frustrations of the past weeks disappeared. The atmosphere in the palace on the night of September 16 was like that in military headquarters on the eve of battle. Operational plans were made and organized quickly. The assumption was that there were only a few hours left before the all-out and unavoidable confrontation."

Syrian advances
On the morning of September 16, Hussein declared martial law. On September 17, the military attack began. Patton tanks from the 60th armored brigade, accompanied by armored vehicles, entered Amman from all sides, and attacked the headquarters of the Palestinian organizations. Battles took place in Zarqa, Sweileh, Salt and Irbid as well. The opinion of the king's advisers, that the Palestinians could be defeated within days, proved incorrect. The Palestinians surprised the army with their stubborn resistance. There was house-to-house fighting. Hussein knew that the longer the fighting continued, the greater the risk that Arab and international pressure would force them to stop the attack and to reach a compromise with the Palestinians.

On September 18, two days after the attack began, a small Syrian armored force invaded northern Jordan. Two days later, it was joined by two Syrian armored brigades, which were reinforced the next day, and swelled to the size of a division. The opening of an additional front against Jordan was the desired scenario for the Palestinians. The Jordanians were afraid that Syria aspired to exploit the civil war that had broken out in the kingdom in order to occupy it and to realize the dream of "Greater Syria." They confronted the Syrians with the 40th armored brigade, and managed to halt their advance.

The U.S. and Israel shared Jordan's fear. Reconnaissance flights by the Israel Air Force above the Syrian force aroused fears in Damascus that Syria would be defeated in another war if it did not withdraw its forces from Jordan. Syria was thus forced to take its troops out of northern Jordan. Its involvement at the time remained a subject for historical debate. Hafez al-Assad, who was the Syrian defense minister in September 1970, told his biographer, Patrick Seale, that Syria's intention in invading northern Jordan was only to protect the Palestinians from a massacre.

Whatever the case, the swift Syrian withdrawal was a severe blow to Palestinian hopes. Jordanian armored forces steadily pounded their headquarters in Amman, and threatened to break them in other regions of the kingdom as well. The Palestinians agreed to a cease-fire. Hussein and Arafat attended the meeting of leaders of Arab countries in Cairo, where Arafat won a diplomatic victory. On September 27, Hussein was forced to sign an agreement which preserved the right of the Palestinian organizations to operate in Jordan. For Jordan, it was humiliating that the agreement treated both sides to the conflict as equals.

The agreement declared that Jordan "would support the Palestinian liberation movement"; that "both sides would withdraw from the cities," and "that all the prisoners would be released." The only clause that served the Jordanians was the one that stated that the Jordanian police would be the only body authorized to impose law and order. But Hussein had no reason to assume that the Palestinians would observe this clause any more than they had before, after signing similar agreements.

According to conservative, minimum estimates, several hundred Palestinians died in the battles of September 1970; according to the maximum estimate, there were several thousand casualties. Their independent military might suffered a major blow. Those were the circumstances which gave the name "Black September" to the events of the bloody month. But politically, Arafat and the Palestinian organizations were not dealt a decisive blow. Even after bringing the main force of his army to bear against them, Hussein did not succeed in expelling them from the country, and they were able to prepare for the next stage of the campaign.

But two developments outside Jordan determined the fate of the Palestinian organizations in Jordan. On September 28, Nasser died of a sudden heart attack. He was only 52 years old, and it was said that the tremendous pressure that he had been under because of the events of Black September had brought about his demise. With Nasser's death, the most important protective umbrella of the Palestinians in Jordan disappeared, and Egyptian involvement in the Jordanian-Palestinian conflict waned for the time being. Two months later, the Syrian defense minister, Hafez al-Assad, the leader of the pragmatic branch of the Ba'ath party, seized control in Damascus. So Syria was also not free for the time being to be involved in Palestinian affairs.

The time was ripe for the third and last stage of the continuing war between King Hussein and Yasser Arafat.

Hussein's last battle
After Nasser's death, Arafat understood correctly that his position had been weakened. On October 31, 1970, he signed a five-point agreement, which was similar to that signed in November 1968, and was designed to return control of the country exclusively to King Hussein. The agreement stated that members of the Palestinian organizations were expected to honor Jordanian laws, instructed them to dismantle their bases, and forbade them to walk around armed and in uniform in the cities and villages.

Had the Palestinians honored that agreement, Hussein would have had difficulties in continuing to act against them. But the PFLP and the DFLP - the two organizations to the left of Arafat - refused to accept its conditions. They called on their members to ignore the Jordanian government, and at a meeting of the Palestinian National Council, they were responsible for prompting the acceptance of the proposal that Transjordan would be part of the Palestinian state to be established in the future.

The open defiance caused renewed conflict between the Palestinians and the Jordanian army, whose commanders were in any case eager to finish the work they had begun in September. At the beginning of November 1970, incidences of fighting erupted between members of the PFLP and DFLP and the Jordanian security forces. On November 9, Jordanian prime minister Wasfi al-Tal, the sworn enemy of the Palestinians, announced that in accordance with the agreement signed a month earlier, the authorities would no longer allow the Palestinians to walk around with weapons or to store explosives. The announcement was not honored, and the security forces received instructions to confiscate the Palestinians' weapons.

Until January 1971, the Jordanian army heightened its control in all the central cities. At the beginning of that month, the Jordanian army began an attack against the Palestinian bases along the highway between Amman and Jerash, in order to cut them off from the other cities and to take over the roads linking their strongholds. In response to the operation, the Palestinians agreed to hand over their weapons to the Jordanians. This agreement was not honored either. Toward the end of March, after a Palestinian arms warehouse was discovered in Irbid, the Jordanian army placed a curfew on the city, arrested some of the Palestinian activists, and expelled others. The takeover of Irbid was completed at the beginning of April. Afterward, many senior members of the Palestinian organizations, who were aware of their weakness, began to withdraw from Amman as well.

Yet, despite the series of defeats, the Palestinian organizations did not give in. On June 5, the senior Palestinian organizations, including Yasser Arafat's Fatah, came out with a declaration on Radio Baghdad in which they called for the deposition of King Hussein. The reason they gave for this was that deposing him was the only way to prevent the signing of "a peace agreement between Israel and Jordan."

In mid-June 1971, after three tense months during which the sides made efforts to fortify their positions by political means, Jordan embarked on the final campaign against the Palestinians. The Jordanian army, which for almost 10 months had been pushing the Palestinian organizations out of the major cities, used large forces to expel them from the mountainous regions of the cities of Jerash and Ajloun, in the north of the kingdom, where about 3,000 armed Palestinians were located.

The members of Fatah declared that they preferred to die in battle rather than surrender to the Jordanian dictates. After four days of battle, the Jordanian army overcame the last pockets of resistance. King Hussein held a press conference and declared that there was now "absolute quiet" in the kingdom. Seventy-two Palestinians who were afraid of the Jordanian soldiers chose to undertake the most humiliating action possible for them: They fled to the West Bank and surrendered to IDF soldiers.

The Palestinian rout was complete. King Hussein had removed the grave threat to his throne, and had strengthened his control over the kingdom. Fatah, beaten and humiliated, established an avenging arm - called "Black September." The first operation by this group took place on November 28, 1971. Four of its members assassinated Wasfi al-Tal, Jordan's prime minister and the enemy of the Palestinians, on the steps of the Sheraton Hotel in Cairo. Tal's last words were: "They've killed me. Murderers, they believe only in fire and destruction."

After Black September
The saying that history repeats itself, once as tragedy and once as farce, has not proved itself in the Middle East. Here the tragedies tend to repeat themselves again and again. For Jordanian identity, September 1970 was a turning point. The continuing effort made by King Hussein to blur the differences between the identity of Transjordanians and that of Palestinians was replaced by the "Jordanization" of the administration and the army in the kingdom, and paved the way for Hussein to gradually relinquish his desire to reestablish his total sovereignty over the West Bank. The American and Israeli support of Jordan in the face of the Syrian invasion of the north of the kingdom strengthened Jordanian recognition of the fact that the stability of the kingdom depended on the support of the West.

For the Palestinian leadership, Black September was the month in which it proved that the military might of its members should not be underestimated, and that it had the ability to formulate the agenda of the Arab states and of Israel. At the same time, the Palestinian leadership also proved that it wasn't aware of the limitations of its power, and had wrongly estimated the willingness and the capability of Arab countries to fight for its people. Since then, the Palestinian leadership has returned to the achievements - and the mistakes - of Black September, at every critical junction at which it has found itself. For Yasser Arafat, Black September was a test. He was asked to honor agreements, and repeatedly violated them; he was asked to rout out the extremists in his camp, and he didn't rout them out; he was asked to opt for realistic strategic goals, and he didn't opt for them. From Jordan he continued to Lebanon, from Lebanon he was expelled to Tunis, from Tunis again to Gaza and to Ramallah, where he found himself, 32 years after Black September, once again causing chaos, and once again besieged by armored forces which he will not be able to subdue.

The lessons learned from the events of Black September have not been quickly forgotten. After the recent invasion of the IDF into the Palestinian cities, the Hashemite Kingdom sent several serious warnings to Israel. They included a warning about the tragic consequences of deporting Yasser Arafat back to Jordan.

HOW JORDAN CAN HELP PALESTINE by Joseph Braude - THE NEW REPUBLIC

HOW JORDAN CAN HELP PALESTINE.
Good Neighbor
by Joseph Braude
Only at TNR Online
Post date 08.30.05

My Comments are in red....

Israel's unilateral pullout from Gaza this month marked more than just a blow to the settler movement. By departing Gaza without a peace deal, Israel affirmed with finality that the dream of economic integration and political partnership between Israelis and Palestinians is dead. And that means a viable Palestinian state will have to be built in consort with another power. Ten years of conflict among Israel, Palestinian Islamists, and the Palestinian Authority have left Gaza and the West Bank deeply wounded--its physical and human infrastructure hobbled, its institutions of civil society gutted--and badly in need of a partner in security and economic reconstruction. The natural candidate is Jordan, Palestine's neighbor to the east.

The concept of "Jordanian-Palestinian confederation" has never been clearly defined and at times has raised objections from nationalists in both countries. For some, it implies less than full sovereignty for either people. For others, it raises the specter of the "alternative-homeland" solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once envisioned by some revisionist Zionists--the notion of a mass transfer of Palestinians across the Jordan River. This idea is, of course, immoral and unacceptable. Yet if confederation in the sense of mass transfer is to be firmly repudiated, confederation in the sense of heightened political and military coordination as well as economic interdependence between Jordan and Palestine is to be welcomed; in fact, it may represent the most viable path to rebuilding the shattered economy and fractured society of the West Bank and Gaza. Seen this way, confederation is not an alternative to a Palestinian state but rather the best available framework in which to build one.

So it's a good sign that prominent voices on both sides of the Jordan River are calling for closer links between the Palestinian and Jordanian leaderships - it is a good sign for who? The question now is whether Jordan's King Abdullah and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will move towards a formal alliance. Palestinians, Jordanians, Israelis, and Americans should all be hoping that they do.

Cultural ties between the east and west banks of the Jordan River are one of the great historical continuities of the topographical designation known as Palestine. Israel's foremost Jordan scholar, Tel Aviv University professor Asher Susser, has observed, "Historically it has been much easier to travel from east to west across the Jordan River than from the southern part of the east bank to its northern part." The resulting confluence of personal and family ties between east bank cities like Kerak and Salt and west bank cities like Nablus and Hebron has created a longstanding sense of solidarity across the river--quite literally, blood that runs thicker than water. This observation is nothing new. But here's what has changed in recent years: The so-called "West Bank" Palestinians, once refugees, who populate the "East Bank" capital Amman have won greater power and influence in the country today than at any time in its history--making Amman, in effect, a Palestinian-majority city-state, culturally and economically distinct from Jordan's northern and southern provinces.

It has been 35 years since "Black September," a bloody civil war in Jordan that left ethnic Jordanians fully in control of the country's military, security services, and government--and most Palestinian refugees languishing in camps and urban poverty. Since that time, the children and grandchildren of many '48 and '67 refugees have been integrated into mainstream Jordanian society and now dominate the economic life of Amman. Their clout in the city's businesses and banks has been fortified by the inflow of several hundred thousand Palestinians from Kuwait, banished by that country's emir in 1990 as punishment for the PLO's support of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. These affluent, educated people were allowed to bring most of the money they had earned along with them to Amman as part of an arrangement that made their migration a gift to the Jordanian economy. In the country today, ethnic Jordanians still dominate the public sector, security services, and armed forces; but they are economically weaker than ethnic Palestinians who dominate an increasingly robust and globalized urban private sector.

King Abdullah's current reform agenda seeks to parlay this reality into a new decentralized form of governance. As part of a set of initiatives termed "Jordan First," Abdullah has called for redistricting his country into three "governorates"--northern, southern, and central--each with heightened authority over its own law-making. The expressed purpose of the shift is to strengthen Jordanian nationals' allegiance to the state by vesting the historically disenfranchised--largely ethnic Palestinians--with more ownership over their local governments. But there's a tacit understanding that "Jordan First" could be more than that: It could signal the beginning of a new federal structure, a segment of which would be open to innovative arrangements and alignments across the Jordan River. As the Ramallah-based Palestine Media Center noted in a recent paper, "Abdullah's new decentralization plan for Jordan is a far reaching move to enfranchise Jordan's Palestinian majority and may also represent the foundation of a political infrastructure for future cooperation with the West Bank."

No less significant than the king's proposed political reforms has been a decision he made earlier this year with immense symbolic meaning to Palestinians. The king formally relieved his half-brother Hamza of his role as crown prince and replaced him with his own ten-year-old son Hussein, whose mother, Queen Rania, is a Palestinian with roots in the West Bank town of Tulkarem. The promise of a half-Palestinian king reigning in Jordan gives the present monarch unprecedented popularity with Palestinians on both sides of the Jordan River--and the sort of credibility that would be needed for the king to sell his subjects on a closer relationship with the West Bank.

Meanwhile, across the Jordan River, a different set of political factors also mitigates in favor of heightened collaboration with Amman. The death of Yasir Arafat marked the end of his long campaign to marginalize Jordan's political role in Palestine. Arafat had evicted Muslim clerics loyal to the king from the religious administration of Arab East Jerusalem and replaced them with PLO firebrands. His very position, for that matter, as Palestinian Authority chief following the Oslo accords amounted to a displacement of longstanding Jordanian influence over the West Bank. Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is by contrast one of the most pro-Jordanian members of the PLO's old guard. As the Palestine Media Center's paper noted, Jordan's special role in securing East Jerusalem has been gradually reestablished over the past two years; and recent initiatives by Abbas call for a greater Jordanian role in Palestinian reconstruction than at any time since the Oslo accords were first signed. Perhaps the most dramatic change in Jordan policy under Abbas has been his effort to gain King Abdullah's help in reestablishing security in the West Bank. Though only some of these proposals have been accepted by all parties concerned, the extent of Jordanian military involvement that Abbas apparently envisions is extraordinary. Abbas proposed importing King Abdullah's Badr Forces--Palestinians trained to fight under Jordanian supervision--to put down the mounting chaos in the West Bank. This idea was reportedly rejected by some of Abbas's Palestinian colleagues--who feared a loss of turf--and by Israel, which feared a return of Palestinian refugees under a military guise. But earlier this summer, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon approved a new Jordanian-Palestinian security cooperation project in the northern West Bank. If this pilot program proves successful, it could lead to further Jordanian involvement elsewhere in Palestinian areas.

Palestinians understand that the sooner they establish security in West Bank cities and towns, the sooner those towns will be released by Israel to join an emerging Palestinian state. Abbas's manifest enthusiasm for a Jordanian role in this process would seem to reflect his belief that the king's army could help rescue the deteriorating security situation in Palestine. And Abdullah is just as keen as Abbas to stem the chaos in Palestine: In a speech earlier this month, the monarch reiterated his concern about a new wave of refugees from across the Jordan River--and his emphatic refusal to accept them. What both these leaders have been expressing, in essence, is a sense of mutual interdependency on matters of security.

The United States--which earlier this year dispatched a senior military official to oversee the streamlining of the Palestinian police forces--should acknowledge the wisdom of this old fashioned "trans-Jordanian" sentiment and seek to build on it. Indeed, the United States, more than any other outside power, is the linchpin of integration between Jordan and an emerging Palestine. Washington's substantial commitment of foreign aid to both governments gives it unique clout to encourage and cajole Jordanians and Palestinians toward a policy of heightened political and economic intimacy.

In doing so, the United States has to be careful, as the story of Adnan Badran illustrates. Badran, a Palestinian who became Jordan's prime minister this year, was given a mandate by the king to implement fast-track American-style economic reforms--and soon faced a rebellion in Jordan's parliament. Though Badran's adversaries--led by the powerful south Jordanian speaker of the parliament, Abd al-Hadi al-Majali--voiced their opposition in terms of economic policy differences, the underlying ethnic tension was unmistakable. Free market reforms that trim the public sector and transfer growth to the private sector were understood by many ethnic Jordanians to further threaten their standing in the country--because the public sector is their bread and butter--vis-à-vis Palestinians, whose wealth comes mainly from business. Conservatives in parliament managed to force a reshuffling of Badran's cabinet, which had included an unprecedented number of Palestinian ministers, and force a delay in the new government's plans.

The lesson here for the United States is that free-market reforms should be introduced with due consideration to their impact on longstanding ethnic tensions in Jordan; after all, ethnic accord within the country is vital to the engineering of greater integration across the Jordan River. As Yasir Abu Hilala, a columnist for the Jordanian daily Al-Ghad, observed, "In Jordan, it is possible to design a project of political reform that takes into account the fears that are associated with identity."

But there's a flip side to the importance of treading lightly on ethnic tensions within Jordan. The United States should also use its formidable influence to help resolve the festering disputes that underlie those tensions to begin with--in particular, the ambiguous status of Palestinian refugees, as well as former Palestinian refugees who now hold Jordanian citizenship (the latter grouping, in fact, being considerably larger than the former). Recognizing the permanent status of this community's members as Jordanian--rather than paying lip service to the decades-long counterfactual assertion that their repatriation in Palestine is imminent--will allow all Jordanian nationals to publicly debate the merits of confederation with an equal sense of entitlement.

"[Confederation] is one of the options that I would say is the best for the Arab-Israeli crisis," Samir Abu Libdeh, a visiting scholar from Jordan at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. "But I don't think the issue of confederation is clearly open without discussing internal matters of defining the Palestinians and Jordanians." With all Jordanians equally vested in their country's well-being, Amman would be well positioned to form a close alliance with the new Palestinian state. And for anyone who wants to see the Palestinian national project succeed - on someone else's expense and not Israel's, that would be welcome news indeed.

Confederation is politically defined as A group of nations or states, or a government encompassing several states or political divisions, in which the component states retain considerable independence. The members of a confederation often delegate only a few powers to the central authority. This scenario could be entertained when an Independent Palestinian is declared and only then. Other than that, such a scenario will certail mean the resolution of the Arab - Israeli conflict on Jordan's expense.....

Joseph Braude is the author of The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for Its People, the Middle East, and the World.