Israel, Palestine, and the land in between
“The Palestinian state, befitting the circumstances of its creation, closely resembled its Ba’athist allies. However, the idiosyncrasies of Palestinian politics and the economic and social situation of the Palestinian people after Yasser Arafat’s declaration of al-Nasr made this resemblance superficial. While the structures of governance resembled the Ba’athist model of a three-legged institutional stool of Army, Party and State supporting the monarchical powers of a President-for-life, in practice they were heavily factionalized. Institutions reflected the distribution of power rather than creating it, particularly in the Palestinian state’s early days…
Life in Palestine, with respite from an ongoing war with Israel and peace with its neighbours, was improving. Foreign aid funded much of the country’s reconstruction. Most aid came from the Soviet Union and its allies and satellites. Syria, while receiving substantial aid of its own, pitched in, providing discounted military equipment along with temporary shelter and transit aid for tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees fleeing Lebanon. Iraq, which had rescued many civilians from starvation and thirst during the war through their contributions of humanitarian aid, began to pour oil money into Palestine, contributing aid and investment. Iraq’s state oil company quickly concluded talks with Arafat’s new government to build an oil pipeline through Palestine to the port of Aqaba. This, along with a proposed pipeline through Syria, would allow alternate export routes for Iraqi oil production…
From the day of victory, patriotic Palestinians in the diaspora, especially from Europe, sent millions of dollars to the Palestinian government through the purchase of ‘solidarity bonds’. Other Palestinians in the diaspora, swept up in the fervor of victory, uprooted their lives and moved to the new Palestinian state. Immigrants from as far afield as the United States, France and Honduras immigrated to Palestine, where their skills and hard currency proved useful in boosting the economy. These individuals, called ‘returnees’, were loathed, admired and loved in roughly equal parts by the rest of the Palestinian refugee population, who had lived in sweltering, squalid camps rather than modern Western cities for their exile…
The situation of the returnees and the issues of foreign aid are a microcosm of the basic structure of the Palestinian regime. For example, foreign policy in the Palestinian Arab Republic was, constitutionally, the responsibility of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was directly answerable to the President. Meanwhile, the military was the responsibility of the National Defence Committee, chaired by the Defence Minister and including the President, Prime Minister, military chiefs of staff, the heads of military and civilian intelligence agencies, and the Chairman of the PLO. The cabinet and the Foreign Affairs and Liberation Committees of the National Popular Assembly played a role in reviewing the country’s foreign policy and military decisions and direction, but the Ministers in charge were meant to have near-absolute control, with the confidence of the President.
However, in reality, Palestinian foreign policy was highly fragmented. This was due to the long tradition of Arab states (and others) of sponsoring Palestinian nationalist organizations and paramilitary groups, to act as a tool of foreign policy. While the creation of a Palestinian state produced an entity that could legitimately claim to speak for the Palestinians as a nation, organizations with sponsors remained semi-autonomous actors for years to come. Factions such as the Iraqi-funded Arab Liberation Front (which was hastily incorporated into the PLO) or the PFLP, DFLP (with their extensive Soviet funding) were able to maintain their own networks and diplomatic-representative structures separate from the Fatah-dominated PLO, supported by Syria. Similarly, units within the military, the Palestine Liberation Forces, were generally divided by political allegiance within the Palestinian national body. That is, PFLP fighters tended to serve in PFLP-commanded units, Fatah fighters served in Fatah units, and so on.
Only Arafat’s political skill prevented outright contradictory policy or potentially violent conflict between armed factions from breaking out from this intense division. Instead, under Arafat and his chief foreign advisor, Khaled al-Hassan, Palestinian policy was a mess of compromise and rent seeking from all of Palestine’s allies. While Arafat could impose his will if absolutely necessary, he generally turned a blind eye to the proclivities of the various Palestinian guerrilla organizations, whether in taking money for their own patronage networks or acting on their own within the red lines of Palestinian foreign policy. This produced an inefficient state reliant on patronage, weak military cohesion, and phenomena such as the export of Palestinian combatants to various revolutionary conflicts throughout the world…”
Gerald O’Connor. Fragmentation and Institutionalization in Palestinian Politics (1970-1985). Middle East Politics 39:3 (1990). 336-359
“After the Six-Day War, Israelis found themselves the surprised rulers of tremendous swathes of new territory. Israel had quintupled the land area under its control with almost no planning for such an eventuality beyond a military occupation. Making the situation even more problematic was the presence of large numbers of hostile Arabs on this new territory. Between 1967 and 1971, tentative settlement of the territories by Israelis, motivated by messianic fervour on the religious right and Zionist gusto on the left, began. Meanwhile, the state lacked a consistent policy towards the territory, leaving the army largely in charge. While various proposals were bandied about, the nation’s splintered politics made the status quo the only realistic option.
With the Special Period and the subsequent landslide victory of Yigal Allon and Tekumah in 1971, there was finally an actor who could push through a real solution. This came in the form of the Ze’evi Plan, named for Major-General Rehavam Ze’evi, whose proposal for a ‘state of Ishmael’ formed the basis for the plan. The plan was implemented through a series of parliamentary acts, executive decrees and military actions over the course of 1972 and 1973, and its structure forms the basis of much of Israeli policy today.
The Ze’evi Plan and its successor in the Allon Doctrine were based in a particular understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflict. The conflict was seen as rooted in Arab intolerance to a Jewish state in their midst, but the proponents of the Plan saw the Arab states as fundamentally rational. Use of the stick and carrot, with a powerful Israeli military to enforce consequences and a realist foreign policy geared towards playing the regional ‘game’, would ensure Israeli security. The belief in rationality and potential cooperation with Arab actors extended to territory controlled by Israel. In areas that the Ze’evi Plan covered, Israel relied on the creation of Arab protectorates, with sectors of Arab society aligning themselves with Israel in a patrimonial relationship in order to maintain or gain power. While revisionists have attempted to extend this framework to the treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens or even all of Israel, this article will only discuss the three regions that are traditionally viewed as subject to the assumptions: The Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank of the Jordan River.
The Golan Heights, captured from Syria during the Six-Day War, was in some ways the easiest region for the Allon government to implement their vision for a few reasons. First, the geopolitical consequences of their actions were reduced by Israel’s relationship with Syria. While the two countries had signed an armistice, Israeli strategic planners considered Syria their leading antagonist and believed that Israel would need to occupy the valuable Golan region indefinitely.
As well, the population generally held either ambivalent or favourable attitudes towards Israel. While the Six-Day War had produced between 80,000 and 110,000 Syrian refugees, the 1970 war had produced tens of thousands of refugees flowing in the other direction. Mostly Druze, Circassians and Bedouins from the Hauran and Hermon regions, these refugees found shelter in sweltering camps in the Israeli-held Golan Heights. The IDF forces that held the Heights treated these refugees with a mix of suspicion for their Syrian origin and, particularly towards the Druze militiamen who had fought alongside Israeli forces in their invasion of Syria, admiration. Allon, who had long favoured Israeli support for a Druze state and had been the architect of the effort to recruit Druze fighters, jumped at this chance to reward a group he described as “Israel’s greatest ally among the Arab peoples.”
In March 1972, the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law, creating the new administrative category of the “Autonomous Administrative Territory” (AAT). This type of region would be governed under a mix of Israeli civil and military law, along with customary and religious courts for most lower-level disputes and family law. The Golan Heights Territorial Council, a parliamentary body with consultative and limited legislative powers, was created, with elections to be held in September of that year. The Council oversaw civil administration, local courts, and the Golan Territorial Guard, a paramilitary force staffed largely by Druze militiamen who were responsible for maintaining internal and border security alongside the IDF garrison. The Council was funded largely through Israeli grants and some level of local tax power, and Jewish Israeli settlement was limited by law to a yearly number, based on approval by the Territorial Council
Refugees from Syria who lived in the Golan were not made into Israeli citizens. Rather, they kept their pre-existing Syrian citizenship while gaining AAT documentation that granted them permanent residency and voting rights in the Golan along with automatic work permits and temporary residence in Israel. Most Druze refugees, settling among their brethren in the Heights, remained in place, while most Circassians immigrated to Israeli cities, particularly Jerusalem. Bedouins, though migrated en-masse to the West Bank, where the new administration promised them a new beginning…
Unlike the Golan Heights, many Israelis believed that the Sinai might one day be handed back to Egypt in exchange for a peace agreement. While this had not prevented settlement of the region, the expanses of desert were less hospitable and thus less desirable to Israeli migrants seeking to build kibbutzim or religious communities. However, due to the presence of the Abu Rudeis oil fields, the region was strategically important. Thus, under the Sinai Law of March 1972, Israeli military administration and commercial law would govern the Sinai Desert Autonomous Administrative Territory, along with formalized traditional Bedouin dispute resolution systems and religious courts.
The Sinai region’s natives were primarily Bedouin, many of whom lived the traditional, semi-nomadic Bedouin lifestyle. Israel sought to gain the support of these communities, primarily by ruling with as light a hand as possible. The Israeli military governor acted largely as a mediator over clan disputes, and soon had a full-time negotiator appointed to his staff for this purpose. The Territorial Council, which was dominated by nonpartisan clan representatives, was largely toothless by choice, ceding most of its power to individual clan leaders. The Bedouin were allowed to maintain, as long as they passed Israeli security inspection, large stocks of weaponry including assault rifles and light machineguns. IDF recruiters worked among the Sinai Bedouin, promising adventure and good jobs to the recruits as well as favourable treatment of clans that contributed large numbers of young men to their sheikhs. Bedouin militias soon became a core element of Israeli strategy in battling Egyptian raids against Israeli positions…
The West Bank of the Jordan River was the most complex region for the Allon government to grapple with, and one where their decision was, in many ways, the most inspired. The region contained strategic hills protecting Israel’s densely populated central corridor from assault from the east, as well as access to the vital Jordan River valley. The region had more inhabitants than the Golan and Sinai put together, with nearly 700,000 Arab residents in 1970, predominantly identifying as Palestinians. The region contained sizeable urban centers such as Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Bethlehem, and included parts of Greater Jerusalem. This inhabited land was also the location of numerous Jewish historical and religious sites, such as the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The region, known as Judea and Samaria to many on the Right, beckoned with a siren call to religious Zionists and some members of the left, who mounted a settlement campaign with the tacit consent of the state.
Arguments within the security cabinet over how to resolve the issue of the West Bank were intense, nearly sparking a walkout by Yisrael Galili and a collapse in the governing coalition at the height of the discussions. However, Galili and the remainder of Mapai were eventually corralled into acceptance of a modified and perfected plan, proposed by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Rabin. This plan would be implemented through a mix of executive decrees and foreign policy maneuvering, and consolidated through subsequent treaties.
This first of these actions actually took place during the war. With the PLO victorious in the East Bank and riots in the West Bank, Ze'evi launched a harsh campaign to suppress the unrest in the occupied territories. This led to the expulsion of anyone suspected of links to the PLO, as well as their immediate families. This included nearly 50,000 people. As well, anyone who had voluntarily fled the West Bank, either during the Six-Day War or the repression of 1970, was barred from reentry. This made the population far smaller and more docile, a necessary element of the Ze'evi Plan.
On 12 April 1972, after secret negotiations with the exiled King Hassan I of Jordan failed, a group of Israeli-supported Palestinian and Bedouin leaders gathered in Nablus and issued the Nablus Declaration. This document, which would act as a temporary constitution, declared King Hassan's claim to the throne of Jordan vacant, due to his cowardice in the face of the Palestinian invasion. In his place, 30-year old Prince Ali bin Al Nayef, first cousin of Hassan and the late King Hussein, was declared King of Jordan; Ali had fled across the river to the West Bank during the Palestinian invasion, and was subsequently detained by Israeli intelligence. The country's temporary capital would be at Nablus, and the monarchy would restricted to a ceremonial position under a constitution.
Israel recognized this group, calling itself the Restoration Council, as the legitimate government of Jordan, and immediately entered into negotiations with them. Three weeks later, under the terms of a new agreement, a peace treaty was signed between Jordan and Israel, with mutual recognition. Jordan granted Israel’s military temporary rights to extensive access, particularly along the Palestinian border, and vowed to ‘resist aggression that threatens the security of Jordan and Israel.’ Subsequent treaties in October 1972 and January 1973 would formalize this situation, with the IDF maintaining full control of the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea coast, along with far-reaching access rights in the remainder of the territory. Jordan also recognized the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem and the settlement of Gush Etzion, although the boundaries of what constituted Jerusalem excluded outlying villages that might become suburbs at a later date. Jordanians were also given full access and a role in governance of the city’s Muslim and Christian holy sites. For potential settlers, this announcement was terrifying. However, they were mollified by the Jordanian government’s announcement that it would legalize all current Israeli settlements and allow limited annual Israeli immigration to Hebron and other 'holy sites'. The new government also privately promised that restrictions on Jewish land ownership and immigration would be lifted as soon as possible. Religious Zionists began to migrate to historically important areas such as Hebron, bringing their families. In the Jordan Valley, volunteers, usually linked closely to the leftist establishment, were granted free housing and tax exemptions in exchange for near-permanent military duty, with these soldiers responsible for helping secure the Jordan Valley from Palestinian infiltration.
The new Jordanian regime was, in its early days, run almost entirely by Israeli military and civilian advisors. These advisors constructed a government with an ostensibly democratic constitution, but one that maintained largely unaccountable security services and a concentration of power in the office of the Prime Minister. The country, under its constitution, had no army. Instead, the paramilitary Jordanian National Guard became the country’s primary security force. Staffed disproportionately by Bedouins and led by Israeli-trained volunteer officers, the National Guard was the strong right hand of the Israeli-backed administration in Nablus. Its intelligence wing, the Internal Security Directorate, was a feared agency that operated with no oversight beyond its Israeli handlers. Economically, the government relied on Israeli transfers, although with peace and Israeli investment, the economy began to grow rapidly. Between the growing economy, the heavy Israeli and Jordanian security presence, and the co-option of many notables who feared Arafat’s leftism as much or more as subservience to the Jews, the new Jordan was secure, for now…”
Ariel Hundert. The Zionist Raj: The Ze’evi Plan and Israeli Security. Middle East Politics 39:3 (1990). 198-215
“The Palestinian state, befitting the circumstances of its creation, closely resembled its Ba’athist allies. However, the idiosyncrasies of Palestinian politics and the economic and social situation of the Palestinian people after Yasser Arafat’s declaration of al-Nasr made this resemblance superficial. While the structures of governance resembled the Ba’athist model of a three-legged institutional stool of Army, Party and State supporting the monarchical powers of a President-for-life, in practice they were heavily factionalized. Institutions reflected the distribution of power rather than creating it, particularly in the Palestinian state’s early days…
Life in Palestine, with respite from an ongoing war with Israel and peace with its neighbours, was improving. Foreign aid funded much of the country’s reconstruction. Most aid came from the Soviet Union and its allies and satellites. Syria, while receiving substantial aid of its own, pitched in, providing discounted military equipment along with temporary shelter and transit aid for tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees fleeing Lebanon. Iraq, which had rescued many civilians from starvation and thirst during the war through their contributions of humanitarian aid, began to pour oil money into Palestine, contributing aid and investment. Iraq’s state oil company quickly concluded talks with Arafat’s new government to build an oil pipeline through Palestine to the port of Aqaba. This, along with a proposed pipeline through Syria, would allow alternate export routes for Iraqi oil production…
From the day of victory, patriotic Palestinians in the diaspora, especially from Europe, sent millions of dollars to the Palestinian government through the purchase of ‘solidarity bonds’. Other Palestinians in the diaspora, swept up in the fervor of victory, uprooted their lives and moved to the new Palestinian state. Immigrants from as far afield as the United States, France and Honduras immigrated to Palestine, where their skills and hard currency proved useful in boosting the economy. These individuals, called ‘returnees’, were loathed, admired and loved in roughly equal parts by the rest of the Palestinian refugee population, who had lived in sweltering, squalid camps rather than modern Western cities for their exile…
The situation of the returnees and the issues of foreign aid are a microcosm of the basic structure of the Palestinian regime. For example, foreign policy in the Palestinian Arab Republic was, constitutionally, the responsibility of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was directly answerable to the President. Meanwhile, the military was the responsibility of the National Defence Committee, chaired by the Defence Minister and including the President, Prime Minister, military chiefs of staff, the heads of military and civilian intelligence agencies, and the Chairman of the PLO. The cabinet and the Foreign Affairs and Liberation Committees of the National Popular Assembly played a role in reviewing the country’s foreign policy and military decisions and direction, but the Ministers in charge were meant to have near-absolute control, with the confidence of the President.
However, in reality, Palestinian foreign policy was highly fragmented. This was due to the long tradition of Arab states (and others) of sponsoring Palestinian nationalist organizations and paramilitary groups, to act as a tool of foreign policy. While the creation of a Palestinian state produced an entity that could legitimately claim to speak for the Palestinians as a nation, organizations with sponsors remained semi-autonomous actors for years to come. Factions such as the Iraqi-funded Arab Liberation Front (which was hastily incorporated into the PLO) or the PFLP, DFLP (with their extensive Soviet funding) were able to maintain their own networks and diplomatic-representative structures separate from the Fatah-dominated PLO, supported by Syria. Similarly, units within the military, the Palestine Liberation Forces, were generally divided by political allegiance within the Palestinian national body. That is, PFLP fighters tended to serve in PFLP-commanded units, Fatah fighters served in Fatah units, and so on.
Only Arafat’s political skill prevented outright contradictory policy or potentially violent conflict between armed factions from breaking out from this intense division. Instead, under Arafat and his chief foreign advisor, Khaled al-Hassan, Palestinian policy was a mess of compromise and rent seeking from all of Palestine’s allies. While Arafat could impose his will if absolutely necessary, he generally turned a blind eye to the proclivities of the various Palestinian guerrilla organizations, whether in taking money for their own patronage networks or acting on their own within the red lines of Palestinian foreign policy. This produced an inefficient state reliant on patronage, weak military cohesion, and phenomena such as the export of Palestinian combatants to various revolutionary conflicts throughout the world…”
Gerald O’Connor. Fragmentation and Institutionalization in Palestinian Politics (1970-1985). Middle East Politics 39:3 (1990). 336-359
***
“After the Six-Day War, Israelis found themselves the surprised rulers of tremendous swathes of new territory. Israel had quintupled the land area under its control with almost no planning for such an eventuality beyond a military occupation. Making the situation even more problematic was the presence of large numbers of hostile Arabs on this new territory. Between 1967 and 1971, tentative settlement of the territories by Israelis, motivated by messianic fervour on the religious right and Zionist gusto on the left, began. Meanwhile, the state lacked a consistent policy towards the territory, leaving the army largely in charge. While various proposals were bandied about, the nation’s splintered politics made the status quo the only realistic option.
With the Special Period and the subsequent landslide victory of Yigal Allon and Tekumah in 1971, there was finally an actor who could push through a real solution. This came in the form of the Ze’evi Plan, named for Major-General Rehavam Ze’evi, whose proposal for a ‘state of Ishmael’ formed the basis for the plan. The plan was implemented through a series of parliamentary acts, executive decrees and military actions over the course of 1972 and 1973, and its structure forms the basis of much of Israeli policy today.
The Ze’evi Plan and its successor in the Allon Doctrine were based in a particular understanding of the Israeli-Arab conflict. The conflict was seen as rooted in Arab intolerance to a Jewish state in their midst, but the proponents of the Plan saw the Arab states as fundamentally rational. Use of the stick and carrot, with a powerful Israeli military to enforce consequences and a realist foreign policy geared towards playing the regional ‘game’, would ensure Israeli security. The belief in rationality and potential cooperation with Arab actors extended to territory controlled by Israel. In areas that the Ze’evi Plan covered, Israel relied on the creation of Arab protectorates, with sectors of Arab society aligning themselves with Israel in a patrimonial relationship in order to maintain or gain power. While revisionists have attempted to extend this framework to the treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens or even all of Israel, this article will only discuss the three regions that are traditionally viewed as subject to the assumptions: The Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank of the Jordan River.
1: The Golan Heights
The Golan Heights, captured from Syria during the Six-Day War, was in some ways the easiest region for the Allon government to implement their vision for a few reasons. First, the geopolitical consequences of their actions were reduced by Israel’s relationship with Syria. While the two countries had signed an armistice, Israeli strategic planners considered Syria their leading antagonist and believed that Israel would need to occupy the valuable Golan region indefinitely.
As well, the population generally held either ambivalent or favourable attitudes towards Israel. While the Six-Day War had produced between 80,000 and 110,000 Syrian refugees, the 1970 war had produced tens of thousands of refugees flowing in the other direction. Mostly Druze, Circassians and Bedouins from the Hauran and Hermon regions, these refugees found shelter in sweltering camps in the Israeli-held Golan Heights. The IDF forces that held the Heights treated these refugees with a mix of suspicion for their Syrian origin and, particularly towards the Druze militiamen who had fought alongside Israeli forces in their invasion of Syria, admiration. Allon, who had long favoured Israeli support for a Druze state and had been the architect of the effort to recruit Druze fighters, jumped at this chance to reward a group he described as “Israel’s greatest ally among the Arab peoples.”
In March 1972, the Knesset passed the Golan Heights Law, creating the new administrative category of the “Autonomous Administrative Territory” (AAT). This type of region would be governed under a mix of Israeli civil and military law, along with customary and religious courts for most lower-level disputes and family law. The Golan Heights Territorial Council, a parliamentary body with consultative and limited legislative powers, was created, with elections to be held in September of that year. The Council oversaw civil administration, local courts, and the Golan Territorial Guard, a paramilitary force staffed largely by Druze militiamen who were responsible for maintaining internal and border security alongside the IDF garrison. The Council was funded largely through Israeli grants and some level of local tax power, and Jewish Israeli settlement was limited by law to a yearly number, based on approval by the Territorial Council
Refugees from Syria who lived in the Golan were not made into Israeli citizens. Rather, they kept their pre-existing Syrian citizenship while gaining AAT documentation that granted them permanent residency and voting rights in the Golan along with automatic work permits and temporary residence in Israel. Most Druze refugees, settling among their brethren in the Heights, remained in place, while most Circassians immigrated to Israeli cities, particularly Jerusalem. Bedouins, though migrated en-masse to the West Bank, where the new administration promised them a new beginning…
2. The Sinai Peninsula
Unlike the Golan Heights, many Israelis believed that the Sinai might one day be handed back to Egypt in exchange for a peace agreement. While this had not prevented settlement of the region, the expanses of desert were less hospitable and thus less desirable to Israeli migrants seeking to build kibbutzim or religious communities. However, due to the presence of the Abu Rudeis oil fields, the region was strategically important. Thus, under the Sinai Law of March 1972, Israeli military administration and commercial law would govern the Sinai Desert Autonomous Administrative Territory, along with formalized traditional Bedouin dispute resolution systems and religious courts.
The Sinai region’s natives were primarily Bedouin, many of whom lived the traditional, semi-nomadic Bedouin lifestyle. Israel sought to gain the support of these communities, primarily by ruling with as light a hand as possible. The Israeli military governor acted largely as a mediator over clan disputes, and soon had a full-time negotiator appointed to his staff for this purpose. The Territorial Council, which was dominated by nonpartisan clan representatives, was largely toothless by choice, ceding most of its power to individual clan leaders. The Bedouin were allowed to maintain, as long as they passed Israeli security inspection, large stocks of weaponry including assault rifles and light machineguns. IDF recruiters worked among the Sinai Bedouin, promising adventure and good jobs to the recruits as well as favourable treatment of clans that contributed large numbers of young men to their sheikhs. Bedouin militias soon became a core element of Israeli strategy in battling Egyptian raids against Israeli positions…
3. The West Bank
The West Bank of the Jordan River was the most complex region for the Allon government to grapple with, and one where their decision was, in many ways, the most inspired. The region contained strategic hills protecting Israel’s densely populated central corridor from assault from the east, as well as access to the vital Jordan River valley. The region had more inhabitants than the Golan and Sinai put together, with nearly 700,000 Arab residents in 1970, predominantly identifying as Palestinians. The region contained sizeable urban centers such as Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Bethlehem, and included parts of Greater Jerusalem. This inhabited land was also the location of numerous Jewish historical and religious sites, such as the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. The region, known as Judea and Samaria to many on the Right, beckoned with a siren call to religious Zionists and some members of the left, who mounted a settlement campaign with the tacit consent of the state.
Arguments within the security cabinet over how to resolve the issue of the West Bank were intense, nearly sparking a walkout by Yisrael Galili and a collapse in the governing coalition at the height of the discussions. However, Galili and the remainder of Mapai were eventually corralled into acceptance of a modified and perfected plan, proposed by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Rabin. This plan would be implemented through a mix of executive decrees and foreign policy maneuvering, and consolidated through subsequent treaties.
This first of these actions actually took place during the war. With the PLO victorious in the East Bank and riots in the West Bank, Ze'evi launched a harsh campaign to suppress the unrest in the occupied territories. This led to the expulsion of anyone suspected of links to the PLO, as well as their immediate families. This included nearly 50,000 people. As well, anyone who had voluntarily fled the West Bank, either during the Six-Day War or the repression of 1970, was barred from reentry. This made the population far smaller and more docile, a necessary element of the Ze'evi Plan.
On 12 April 1972, after secret negotiations with the exiled King Hassan I of Jordan failed, a group of Israeli-supported Palestinian and Bedouin leaders gathered in Nablus and issued the Nablus Declaration. This document, which would act as a temporary constitution, declared King Hassan's claim to the throne of Jordan vacant, due to his cowardice in the face of the Palestinian invasion. In his place, 30-year old Prince Ali bin Al Nayef, first cousin of Hassan and the late King Hussein, was declared King of Jordan; Ali had fled across the river to the West Bank during the Palestinian invasion, and was subsequently detained by Israeli intelligence. The country's temporary capital would be at Nablus, and the monarchy would restricted to a ceremonial position under a constitution.
Israel recognized this group, calling itself the Restoration Council, as the legitimate government of Jordan, and immediately entered into negotiations with them. Three weeks later, under the terms of a new agreement, a peace treaty was signed between Jordan and Israel, with mutual recognition. Jordan granted Israel’s military temporary rights to extensive access, particularly along the Palestinian border, and vowed to ‘resist aggression that threatens the security of Jordan and Israel.’ Subsequent treaties in October 1972 and January 1973 would formalize this situation, with the IDF maintaining full control of the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea coast, along with far-reaching access rights in the remainder of the territory. Jordan also recognized the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem and the settlement of Gush Etzion, although the boundaries of what constituted Jerusalem excluded outlying villages that might become suburbs at a later date. Jordanians were also given full access and a role in governance of the city’s Muslim and Christian holy sites. For potential settlers, this announcement was terrifying. However, they were mollified by the Jordanian government’s announcement that it would legalize all current Israeli settlements and allow limited annual Israeli immigration to Hebron and other 'holy sites'. The new government also privately promised that restrictions on Jewish land ownership and immigration would be lifted as soon as possible. Religious Zionists began to migrate to historically important areas such as Hebron, bringing their families. In the Jordan Valley, volunteers, usually linked closely to the leftist establishment, were granted free housing and tax exemptions in exchange for near-permanent military duty, with these soldiers responsible for helping secure the Jordan Valley from Palestinian infiltration.
The new Jordanian regime was, in its early days, run almost entirely by Israeli military and civilian advisors. These advisors constructed a government with an ostensibly democratic constitution, but one that maintained largely unaccountable security services and a concentration of power in the office of the Prime Minister. The country, under its constitution, had no army. Instead, the paramilitary Jordanian National Guard became the country’s primary security force. Staffed disproportionately by Bedouins and led by Israeli-trained volunteer officers, the National Guard was the strong right hand of the Israeli-backed administration in Nablus. Its intelligence wing, the Internal Security Directorate, was a feared agency that operated with no oversight beyond its Israeli handlers. Economically, the government relied on Israeli transfers, although with peace and Israeli investment, the economy began to grow rapidly. Between the growing economy, the heavy Israeli and Jordanian security presence, and the co-option of many notables who feared Arafat’s leftism as much or more as subservience to the Jews, the new Jordan was secure, for now…”
Ariel Hundert. The Zionist Raj: The Ze’evi Plan and Israeli Security. Middle East Politics 39:3 (1990). 198-215
Last edited:
