POLITICS-MIDDLE EAST: Debating Peace Dividends

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Kim Ghattas

AMMAN, JORDAN, Jan 14 2000 (IPS) - Lebanese and Syrians are eagerly awaiting the economic boost they are convinced will come with peace. But in Jordan, many have realised that the 1994 peace treaty has not brought much hope and is even being countered by a campaign against normalisation with Israel.

In a lecture delivered in the United States last October, Jordan’s deputy prime minister and minister of planning Rima Khalaf pointed out that Jordan’s economy was doing better before the peace treaty and since 1994, the country’s gross domestic product (gdp) had fallen from 10 percent to 1.5 percent.

Khalaf seems to imply, almost directly, that stagnation of Jordan’s economy is a direct consequence of the absence of peace dividends.

“Exports to Israel and Palestinian territories, anticipated to reach 400 million US Dollars by 1999, came up to a mere 58 million Dollars, because of tariff barriers erected by Israel, (which is) also impeding flow of goods and transfer of technology to Jordan,” said Khalaf.

“The anti-normalisation movement in Jordan, which did not exist in 1994, is a direct consequence of the absence of qualitative peace,” she added, referring to the campaign that was launched by the National Conference to Fight Normalisation (NCFN), created in 1995.

The difference in peace with Israel for Jordan and Syria is that Hafez el Assad will probably ask for a much higher price to put his signature on a treaty with Israel than the late King Hussein of Jordan did.

Jordan had some of its debt to the US erased, it received foreign aid and Washington increased its annual aid from 9 million Dollars to 225 million Dollars.

But it now realises that it may have settled for too little, seeing that Israel is asking for 22 billion US Dollars for its withdrawal from the Golan Heights, a mountainous territory occupied by Israel in 1967. It is not known yet what amount Syria will demand, but it will almost certainly be in billions alongside with other benefits.

It is, however, mainly the long-term business opportunities, generated by a climate of stability and trust that will make a difference for the economies of countries in the Middle East.

When King Hussein signed the peace treaty with (the late Israeli Prime Minister) Itzhak Rabin, he said that peace between Jordan and Israel will be a warm one, as opposed to the cold peace that still prevails between Israel and Egypt since the Camp David agreement of 1978.

But there has been very little direct interaction or investment between Jordan and Israel. Last November, a sheep farm and dairy products factory was inaugurated, as a joint Israeli- Jordanian project, the first government level project since 1994.

In the private sector, there is more joint co-operation but rarely in the open, due to the anti-normalisation campaign. There is also a lot of apprehension to be overcome before Jordanians feel comfortable about dealing with Israelis.

“We woke up one day and we were at peace with Israel, it all went too fast for us. We needed more time to get used to the idea,” says a Jordanian who refused to be named.

“We grew up with terrible stories about the Israelis, we were close to be believing they were not really human beings and then suddenly we’re supposed to shake hands and do business with them,” he adds.

It is somewhat easier for the younger generation to accept the idea of peace, considering most did not witness any of the wars that shaped the Arab-Israeli relations, since 1948.

Jordanian engineer Ibrahim Sawalha, 25, was curious to see what Israel was like from close after having caught a glance of it on the Cable News Network (CNN) television and over the wall that separates the two dividing resorts of Jordan and Israel, Aqaba and Eilat.

In 1996, he was offered to participate in the Mashav programme, a six-month internship with field studies in Israel, along with a group of Jordanians. “I was very excited about it and boasted about my experience, but I got quite some criticism,” says Sawalha, who studied engineering in Scotland.

“When I came back for the weekends to Amman (the capital of Jordan) and people asked me where I had been during the week, hearing that I was living in Israel did not go down well,” he recalls.

There has been no official Jordanian effort to promote Israeli- Jordanian cooperation of any kind and no programmes of trust building have been conducted, King Hussein’s policy having been to leave it up to his people’s personal decision to opt for normalisation.

But, for a few years now, Jordanians have become very cautious about normalisation almost stopping trying to reap the benefits of peace since the NCFN launched its campaign against normalisation. The group announced in September it would “soon” publish a blacklist of people who “normalised” with Israel.

The definition of normalisation is rather vague and there seems to be no agreement in whether to include ministers or high-ranking officials. The list has not been issue yet but is keeping many on their toes.

Jordan has 14 professional associations, with by-law forbidding normalisation with Israel, punishable with expulsion from the association. No professional can work in Jordan without being a member of an association.

In September last year, three Jordanian journalists visited Haifa University in Israel and were threatened with expulsion from the Jordan Press Association, until they signed a letter saying they were against normalisation with Israel.

Jordan’s population is about 60 percent Palestinians, refugees from 1948 or 1967, many of whom are strongly opposed to peaceful relations with Israel before a comprehensive and fair peace has been reached between Israel and its Arab neighbours, mainly Palestinians.

“The refugee issue is not solved yet, the Palestinian territories issue is not solved yet, economic issues have not been touched yet. When people see this, how can they accept normalisation,” says Abdellatif Arabiyat, secretary general of the Muslim Action Front in Jordan.

He warns that there will be no real peace or normalisation with Israel until all Arab occupied land has been returned and Palestinians have their independent state.

Until then, Jordanians will have to continue waiting for the real benefits of peace.