After the 'plucky little king', who will be peacemaker?

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): They're all going to his funeral, of course, Clinton and Netanyahu and Mubarak and a couple of dozen other world leaders, but they weren't much help to Jordan's King Hussein when he was still alive. And they're going to miss him now that he's gone.

Just last October, the 'plucky little king' (or PLK, as he was known to two generations of Middle Eastern correspondents) was dragged from his sickbed to mediate between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat when the Wye River summit was breaking down. He did the job, and the deal was signed -- but then, as so often, Netanyahu went home and failed to implement it. Hussein might as well have stayed in bed.

Hussein was the glue that held the Middle East peace process together. It was the PLK who opened the road to a Palestinian state in the Israeli-occupied territories by renouncing Jordan's own claim to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1988, he who enabled the Palestinian Liberation Organization's delegation to attend the post-Gulf War Middle East peace talks in Madrid in 1991 by making them part of Jordan's delegation, and he who finally ended Egypt's desperate isolation by becoming the second Arab leader to make peace with Israel in 1994. What will happen to Middle East peace now that he is no longer on the scene?

Nothing right away, it seems safe to say. Jordanian (at least 70 percent of whom are actually Palestinians) will wait a while to get the measure of their new king, Abdullah, before deciding whether to give him the unquestioning loyalty they gave to Hussein. Jordan's parlous economic situation certainly gives cause for complaint, but when you live sandwiched between Israel and Iraq you learn to be very cautious about rocking the boat.

And on the wider scene, nobody is going to make a move until they know the outcome of the Israeli election in May. If Netanyahu loses the election and the settler/ultra-nationalist coalition loses its ability to block Israel's compliance with the Oslo peace accords, there will be a lot more Arab patience on offer.

The departure of Netanyahu would more or less counter-balance the loss of Hussein, and Israel's neighbors would then wait and hope that a less rigid Israeli government can save them all from the war that waits down the road. But it is still entirely possible that Netanyahu will pull another rabbit out of his hat. In terms of pressing Israelis' buttons, he has the knack of being totally convincing for 15 or 20 minutes at a time -- and if he picks the right time, he could still be re-elected. Then things get interesting right away.

The real significance of Hussein's death (at the relatively tender age of 63 -- the average age of Arab rulers is half a decade older) is to underline the fragility of the entire "peace process" in the Middle East. To an extraordinary extent, it depended from the start on the desire of men who had grown old in power to settle this problem that had dominated their lives before they handed over the watch. That made them much more willing to compromise than their successors may be.

The first of this elder generation to die (at the hands of a fellow Israeli) was Yitzhak Rabin, whose assassination three years ago allowed Netanyahu to come to power. The current Israeli prime minister is not so much antipeace as pro-Netanyahu, but even if he had not been shackled to allies who truly did fear peace, the simple fact that he had never distinguished himself in Israel's wars made it far more difficult for him to make concessions for peace. And the same will be true for the successor generation of rulers in all of Israel's Arab nabbers.

Jordanian will obey Hussein's son Abdullah, at least for a while: he is half-English and speaks Arabic badly, but he has a Palestinian wife and he does control the security forces.

But not only can Abdullah not assume his father's role as mediator and fixer (for the other Arab leaders have known one another longer than he has been alive). To maintain his credibility with his own subjects, he will have to be much more pricky and difficult with the Israelis.

This is how the peace process finally dies: not with a bang, but just with impatience, mistrust, and too much posturing for home audiences. So long as all the old Arab leaders were in place, there was a chance to push it forward even with Netanyahu in power in Israel, but it would have required the United States to exert leverage on Israel with a determination that President Clinton was just not willing to risk. He reckoned that he owed his presidency to Jewish votes, and the political action committees in Washington never let him forget it.

Monica Lewinsky notwithstanding, Clinton will still be in power for another 23 months. By the time he goes, even if he is replaced by somebody willing to give Israel the strong U.S. push towards peace that its own domestic politicians actually need (so that they can blame American pressure), it may be too late. Other Arab rulers may have disappeared, and been succeeded by men who must establish their patriotic credentials by defying Israel. Then the process will really be over.