Jerusalem spurs PLO-Jordanian suspicions

Jerusalem spurs PLO-Jordanian suspicions

By Jack Redden

AMMAN (Reuter): The restoration of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock, aided by Jordan's King Hussein, symbolizes a continuing Jordanian interest in the future of the West Bank that concerns Palestinians as much as Israelis.

While headlines portray the battle over the West Bank as a struggle between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, it is not so simple a tug-of-war.

Jordan's formal withdrawal of claims in 1988 and repeated denials since then have not quelled suspicions among those Palestinians who are convinced the king wants to again rule the area he lost to Israeli troops in 1967.

"I think King Hussein has never given up his dream," said a PLO official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "His main rival is the PLO. Jordan considers the weakness of the PLO allows them to speak louder and louder."

Fahed al-Fanek, a Jordanian economist, wrote recently his country had re-established a ministry for Palestinian affairs: "Perhaps the government noticed the recent weakness of Yasser Arafat and was tempted to have a second thought about disengagement."

Many regard the rivalry as needlessly divisive at a time when Israel is tightening its grip on Jerusalem, especially since people have been flowing back and forth across the Jordan Valley for millennia.

But the Jordanian-Palestinian divide is a favorite topic of conversation in Amman. Every Jordanian statement on the West Bank, every PLO-Jordanian negotiation, is scrutinized for territorial implications.

The angriest comments are in private, but one of the periodic public outbursts followed the U.S. refusal in March to term Jerusalem occupied territory. Jordanians accused the PLO of weakening the Arab claim to Jerusalem by forcing Washington's hand.

Jerusalem, always a focus of the rivalry, took on added significance after the PLO-Israel peace accord last September. In return for an offer of limited self-rule, the PLO agreed not to raise the future of Jerusalem for another three years.

Jordan has no such restriction in its peace talks with Israel. In addition, when King Hussein officially dropped his claims to the area in 1988, he pointedly retained his interest in the religious sites of East Jerusalem.

Some see his interest in Jerusalem as a search for religious legitimacy by a Hashemite dynasty that lost its centuries-old control of the most important sites in Islam -- Mecca and Medina -- after World War I.

But suspicious Palestinians see it as the continuation of an understandable early Hashemite ambition to expand their rule beyond the poor and backward Jordanian kingdom they acquired in 1921.

After the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, when Jordanian troops proved the best Arab force, Palestinian nationalists who had rejected earlier overtures of King Abdullah were powerless and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, became part of Jordan.

Abdullah was assassinated by a Palestinian in 1951 after praying in Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque. The grandson standing beside him was crowned King Hussein less than two years later.

The restoration of that Jerusalem mosque compound's crowning glory -- the seventh century Dome of the Rock -- is now spawning new rumors of Jordanian designs.

A senior PLO official said the king, after a high-profile role in paying for the repairs, had asked Israel for permission to participate in the re-opening. The story was dismissed by Jordanian leaders but the accuracy is less important than the distrust it reflects.

Palestinians striving for an independent state know key players in the Middle East peace game -- Israel and the United States-- are publicly opposed.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres held secret talks with Jordan in the 1980s about a federation between the kingdom and the West Bank. Officially the United States still supports such a peace settlement.

The case for federation usually focuses on economic benefits -- and the disadvantages of trying to run a tiny, resource-poor Palestine -- rather than any natural affiliation.

In reality, the populations are already heavily mixed. Only the percentages in Jordan are in dispute -- some say Palestinians are slightly less than a majority, others maintain they are up to 70 percent of the population.

"The real danger facing our Jerusalem is the Israelis, not King Hussein's attempts to have some special status there," said Suleiman al-Najjab, a member of the PLO's executive committee living in Amman.

"Instead of getting into polemics with Arab countries on who would have the upper hand in Jerusalem in the future we must concentrate on what Israel is doing," he said. "This rivalry doesn't help."