A voice is being heard loud in the wilderness of Arab politics. It carries with it the weight of experience and a deep knowledge of Arab politics. It is the voice of HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal, joined, lately, by that of Farouk Qaddoumi of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
While the coupling of these two voices might, at first glance, seem odd, the fact is that both have reached the same conclusions, although starting from different premises and points of departure.
Prince Hassan was the first to raise the issue of Jordan’s continued sovereignty over the occupied West Bank in a meeting with a civil society group made up of Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin from the village of Eebal, near Nablus, a few weeks ago.
Now, with an extreme right-wing coalition formed between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, which may rule Israel for the foreseeable future, the question is: What can be done to revive the Arab and international concern about the fate of the Palestinian problem?
Prince Hassan expressed an honest and direct opinion when he said that the so-called peace process has died and with it the two-state solution, even though he emphasised that he is not against such a solution. His remarks raise a very important issue regarding Jordan’s continued sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories.
According to the provisions of international law, only states inherit states; this explains Prince Hassan’s allusion to Jordan’s inherited sovereignty over these territories from mandatory Palestine. The Palestine Liberation Organisation has not been considered an international person, a fact that has had terrible consequences since its agreement to the Oslo process in 1993.
What Prince Hassan was delicately putting on the table for consideration is that there is a way to revive Arab and international interest in the fate of Palestine and the Palestinians. In the background, of course, was the extremist Israeli coalition formed as a prelude to the forthcoming Israeli elections.
Qaddoumi’s call for a return of the occupied West Bank to Jordanian sovereignty is not the result of defeat and bankruptcy, but the voice of a wounded soldier that has come to face the realities on the ground.
Not that he has any doubt about the illegitimacy of Israel in the first place, which I can personally vouch for and share, but the sad truth is that in spite of his personal convictions, he has come to take international and regional political realities into consideration. The ultimate sad truth is that the peace process died.
I came to know and respect “Abu Lutuf”, as he is called, since the early days of the Madrid Peace Process, which started in 1991. “Lutuf” in Arabic means civility and politeness, and Abu Lutuf was indeed always polite; a revolutionary, a diplomat who clearly, forcefully and forthrightly expressed even a contrary opinion with politeness and decorum.
With him, unlike with Abu Ammar, the late Yasser Arafat, you knew immediately what the man meant by what he said.
The wounded veteran of the struggle for Palestine chose to remain in exile rather than accept the Oslo Agreement of 1993. And, sadly, as is the case in many other situations, the harsh realities of Arab and international politics dawned on him a bit too late.
I, too, went to the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, unhappy and with the conviction that UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 were not just, but also, at best, a compromise dictated by our Arab defeats in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1982 (Lebanon), and the widening gap in the military and political power balance between us, Arabs, on the one side, and Israel and the West, on the other.
I went fully aware of the rules of the game, so obviously tilted in their favour; rules that even today are, sadly, partly of our own making. Then, and now, it is our weakness and dividedness that is the most important element of power in the hands of Israel.
The occupied West Bank remains until today, according to international law, under Jordanian sovereignty. The entire international community has acknowledged Jordan’s sovereignty over the West Bank. And while it is true that only two states recognised such sovereignty de jure, Britain and Pakistan, the entire international community, including the five members of the UN Security Council, acknowledged it de facto. From 1948 to 1967 even Israel de facto acknowledged Jordan’s sovereignty.
The question now should be whether raising the Jordanian sovereignty issue can be of help to the Palestinian cause, especially now when a most extreme right-wing coalition government rules Israel; Lieberman has already declared that the Golan Heights are Israeli territory, “like Tel Aviv”, while Israeli settlers abuse daily Muslim and Christian holy places and have even extended their activities across Jordan, to Salt’s Ain El Jadour, where armed Israelis were found last week.
Jordan has a declared honest policy of supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state on the land of Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital. Asserting the historical fact of Jordan’s sovereignty does not encroach on the right to resist in any way, shape or form, nor does it have anything to do with the right of return or any other issue related to the Israeli-Arab conflict or the future destiny of Palestine.
I would have liked to call on other Arabs to help, but I know how futile that is. Which brings to mind a lament in Arabic: “You would have been heard had you called on the living, but there is no life in those you are calling.”
It is sad to say that the children of Palestine and their parents and grandparents are scratching out a living under the brutal conditions imposed by Israel, or in refugee camps in Jordan and elsewhere in the world, while much of the so-called Arab money is supporting the chaos and mayhem engulfing our region, or is being spent on outlandish living styles that even the tales of “One Thousand and One Nights” cannot match.
The writer is director of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies and former foreign minister of Jordan. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.
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