Hussein's Kingdom to Come

...Analysts here believe three developments led to his move: To begin with, they say, it was no mere coincidence that the King's initiative came the day before the deadline for the registration of candidates in the West Bank's March 28 municipal elections, the first since the Israeli occupation began...

...Even so, Hussein may have made too much of his proposal to back out empty-handed...

...PROPOSING A PAPER UNION Hussein's Kingdom to Come BY eliahu salpetep Tel Aviv From the alarmed denunciations that advance rumors of King Hussein's "federation plan" provoked in Arab capitals last month, one would have thought he was about to disclose a secret treaty with Jerusalem or the establishment of an Israel-Jordan confederation...

...Yet, the optimists argue, by giving the West Bankers autonomy, Hussein could shift to them the blame for coming to terms with their Israeli neighbors...

...As Defense Minister Moshe Dayan expected from the outset, this has aided Israeli-Arab coexistence on the West Bank and fostered the feeling among Palestinians that there are other possibilities for the future besides terrorism or reunion with the Hashemite government in Amman...

...Indeed, the Holy City is likely to be the main stumbling block in any attempt to arrive at a feasible compromise between Israel and Jordan...

...Of course, this presupposes that he would ultimately accede to some kind of Israeli presence on the West Bank, an issue not mentioned in his proposal...

...Meir, no dove in any circumstances, must consider the 1973 general elections, when her Labor Alignment's chief challenger will be the Gahal group, dominated by the Rightist, nationalistic Herut party...

...Nonetheless, some people here saw significance in comments made on the eve of Hussein's speech by Israel Galili, the minister without portfolio who is probably Mrs...

...Sooner rather than later, his enemies????and he has many among both Palestinians and the other Arab governments????will begin to prod him about carrying out his grandiloquent project...

...That, however, is much more than Hussein offered in his plan, which would make Jerusalem the capital of the Palestinian state of his United Arab Kingdom...

...Why, then, did Hussein make his dramatic declaration at this time...

...The outcome was an official communique not only declaring the King's plan unacceptable but denouncing it as "contrary to the advancement of a peaceful settlement...

...Yet when he finally announced his scheme, it amounted to a constitutional amendment for creating one more Arab paper union, not a peace settlement between his country and Israel...

...And the crowning irony of their prodding and his propaganda pitch could well be that he will find himself forced to negotiate the difficult compromises that would make a settlement with Israel possible...

...Unable to prevent the balloting by encouraging nonparticipation, apparently the King felt he had better help the candidates????known as "Hussein's men"????who favor some kind of future link between the West Bank and Jordan...

...It is still too early to tell whether Hussein's plan was just another propaganda round in the constant inter-Arab fighting, or a sincere first step toward working out an agreement with Israel...

...But privately no less than officially both Jordan and Israel have unequivocally denied the existence of any secret agreement between them...

...Meir's closest confidant...

...Immediately following Hussein's speech...

...In a sense, Hussein was acknowledging the success of Israel's "open bridges" policy, which has granted Arabs and Arab merchandise virtually free movement (subject to customs and duties) between the West Bank and the Kingdom of Jordan since June 1967...

...At a minimum, she would have to retain such West Bank cities as Hebron, known as "the City of the Patriarchs" and a holy place to Orthodox Jews, for relinquishing it would undoubtedly cause a split with the National Religious party, the Alignment's largest coalition partner...

...Meir could go to the electorate as the first Israeli leader to achieve a full peace treaty with an Arab country, but Hussein would still have to make concessions in two vita) areas...

...Since the proposal calls for the populace of each region to elect its own parliament and local officials, something Jordan cannot very well arrange while Israel controls and administers the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the federation could not be implemented until Amman regains "the occupied parts of Palestine" lost in the Six Day War...

...Thirdly, Hussein probably felt he should act while the Palestinian terrorists were at their lowest ebb and least capable of retaliating against him...

...For if Cairo should reach an interim agreement with Israel, removing the threat of renewed warfare, who in Washington or Moscow would show much concern over whether or not Jordan recovers the West Bank...

...The King evidently decided he was becoming too isolated in the Arab world, that events were passing him by, and that it was more important to do something than to worry about its possible results...

...2) the war must not lead to the erosion of a clear Jewish majority in Israel's population...

...For most Israelis this meant they must insist that the River Jordan remain "the security border"?in other words, that no Arab military forces be allowed to enter the West Bank????and that no major Arab-populated territories be annexed to Israel...

...With Hussein remaining in the role of monarch, these autonomous states would be united under a federal government????consisting of a National Assembly and Central Council of Ministers????responsible for such matters as defense, economic development programs and the conduct of foreign affairs...

...Prime Minister Golda Meir held urgent consultations with top Cabinet members...

...Many observers believe the Israelis would agree to giving Hussein some kind of sovereignty over the Islamic holy places in the city and allowing the Jordanian flag to fly over the Dome of the Rock...

...Even though Amman had denounced the vote and urged the Palestinians to boycott it, many of the region's most important leaders chose to run for office, including a number of Palestinian nationalists unfriendly to the throne...

...In the present climate, his federal alternative might also undercut whatever emotional support the terrorists enjoy among West Bank Palestinians...

...Ostensibly speaking about the ideas "bequeathed to us by the late Premier Eshkol" (who headed the government during the Six Day War), Galili recalled that Eshkol had stressed two principles: (1) Out of war must come secure defensible borders for Israel...

...These problems would be secondary if Mrs...

...Some cynics here took the view that Hussein, too, wants to have the best of both worlds: that is, to regain his Palestinian subjects for prestige reasons, but to leave Israel the problem of preventing the reemergence of terrorists among them...

...The wording, interestingly, paralleled an official Jordanian comment that the King's new proposal "represented a durcissement [stiffening] of Jordan's attitude" toward Israel...

...Basically, the plan envisions the formation of a United Arab Kingdom composed of the East Bank, the West Bank, "and other parts of Palestine that would join" (i.e., the formerly Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip...

...Secondly, the analysts note, the persistent rumors of impending Israeli-Egyptian negotiations about opening the Suez Canal were obviously worrying Hussein...

...As matters stand now, at least, those terms would have to be quite favorable for Israel...

...Eliahu Salpeter, our regular Middle East correspondent, is a member of the editorial board of Ha'aretz, one of Israel's leading newspapers...

...Typically, the initial local reaction came from Sheikh Jabbari, the Mayor of Hebron and a past critic of Hussein, who said that without Israeli acceptance of the plan, "the King is selling the fish in the sea," a not-too-complimentary Arab way of saying that he is trading property he does not own...

...Israel will not budge from its demand for security arrangements on the West Bank sufficient to resist any future Arab threat from the East, or from its insistence on the continued unification of Jerusalem under predominantly Jewish control...

...Thus he sought to offer a "federal platform" as an alternative to the idea of a separate Palestinian national entity joined one way or another with Israel...