Just hanging on
As Jordan's monarch visits Washington this week, Sana Abdallah reports from Amman on the rhyme and the reason
When Jordan's King Abdullah II speaks with President George W Bush in Washington today, he will again seek greater American involvement in ensuring the implementation of the Middle East "roadmap", which Jordan, like other Arab countries that supported the blueprint, sees as having been placed on the backburner of US priorities.
Ahead of the monarch's visit, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, better known as Abu Alaa, came to Amman to speak about this issue with the king and other senior government officials on 30 November.
Jordanian and Palestinian officials in Amman said that Abu Alaa presented the king with Palestinian "ideas and proposals" to relay to Washington on how to end the continued clashes in order to launch the implementation of the "roadmap".
King Abdullah had apparently asked Abu Alaa during a late-October meeting in the Red Sea port city of Aqaba to come up with "clear and tangible ideas" that he could take to Washington that would persuade the US administration to take a firm stand against Israeli measures obstructing the "roadmap".
In other words, the king was seeking a commitment by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to "take proactive measures to deal with the security situation", as one official put it, noting that the Palestinians, unlike the Israelis, tended to heed Jordanian advice.
While the details of these "ideas" were not revealed, Jordanian officials said they were in line with the king's calls for a Palestinian need to "restrain militants, confiscate illegal weapons and discourage all forms of incitement to violence" -- conditions outlined in the "roadmap".
Palestinian officials in Amman said that Abu Alaa wanted the king to relay to Bush the Palestinian commitment to the "roadmap" in order to "ensure a better US understanding of this position".
The "roadmap", drawn up by a Quartet Committee that included the United States, Russia, the European Union and the UN calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by 2005. It was recently unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council.
Abu Alaa said in Amman that the PA was seeking "more US understanding of the Palestinian position in its seriousness, credibility and faithful commitment, if the Israeli side is also faithful to its commitment".
This was the message the Palestinian prime minister had also relayed to US Assistant Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs William Burns in Amman, at the first meeting between Abu Alaa and an American official.
While he told Burns that the PA was ready to do its part, Abu Alaa insisted that Israel must also take responsibility for its commitments and stop its political assassinations of Palestinian activists, halt its settlement activities, and -- most importantly -- end the construction of the separation wall, which the Israelis call the "security fence".
Burns, who went to Israel on 30 November after meeting the Jordanian monarch and Abu Alaa, insisted that the Bush administration was still committed to the "roadmap" and the establishment of a Palestinian state according to the timetable set out in the document.
But he also told Abu Alaa that the Palestinians "must stop terror and violence" against Israel, leaving room for speculation on how Washington intends to ensure the application of the "roadmap", or whether it will exert real pressure on Israel to live up to its commitments by putting a halt to settlement activities and the dividing fence.
When King Abdullah goes to Washington, he will also express Jordan's own protest against Israeli settlement activities and the separation barrier, which Jordanian Ambassador to the United States Marwan Muasher said threatened the peace process and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Muasher told journalists after meeting Abu Alaa that the Israeli measures not only affected the Palestinians, but Jordan as well. While he did not explain how the Israeli activities affected the kingdom, other officials explained that Jordan has linked the level of its relations with Israel to its behaviour. Ties between the two countries have been lukewarm since the start of the Intifada, and the Israeli onslaught on the Palestinians, three years ago. Jordan has refused to dispatch an ambassador to Tel Aviv since 2000, although it has maintained official ties in line with the 1994 peace treaty.
They said the Israeli measures were sparking additional clashes between the Palestinians and Israelis, thus expanding the "cycle of violence" and postponing the possibility of a peaceful settlement. That is a destabilising factor for Jordan, half of whose 5.4 million population is originally Palestinian, and which shares the longest border with Israel.
Amman has repeatedly said it would not be pulled into the violence or allow it to "spill over" into its territories. And a series of recent infiltration attempts into Israeli territories from the kingdom -- which were violently met by both Jordanian and Israeli border guards -- sent strong warning signals that it was becoming more difficult to control this position.
The strong geo-demographic and traditionally historic ties linking Jordan and Palestine will also be an issue the king will try to explain to Bush, telling him that unless Washington makes a serious effort to stop Israeli provocations, Jordan may not be able to hold the fort much longer.
