1 00:00:01,380 --> 00:00:03,030 Welcome, everybody, in the afternoon. 2 00:00:03,060 --> 00:00:13,320 This is our last meeting of the seminar for this term, and I'm delighted to introduce our speaker today, Professor Dame. 3 00:00:13,860 --> 00:00:17,160 I don't think Professor Slade needs much introduction. 4 00:00:17,310 --> 00:00:24,870 Not necessarily, not surely, not in Oxford, but just just a few words to contextualise our talk today, maybe. 5 00:00:25,860 --> 00:00:33,390 But first, his name is emeritus fellow attending Antony's and he is a former professor of international relations here at the DPR. 6 00:00:34,200 --> 00:00:38,700 He was elected fellow of the British Academy almost 11 years ago. 7 00:00:39,510 --> 00:00:47,430 He has written extensively on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and his research has shed light on new light, 8 00:00:47,430 --> 00:00:50,640 I would say, on the history of Israel and the Middle East at large, 9 00:00:51,240 --> 00:00:56,670 to a degree that his work with others is now considered in hindsight or retrospective, 10 00:00:57,120 --> 00:01:01,380 to be ushering in a new era and a study of the region no less than that. 11 00:01:02,160 --> 00:01:09,840 Per today's talk, I just I would just mention two of his many books or many works. 12 00:01:10,290 --> 00:01:19,559 In 1998, he published the collusion across the Jordan King Abdullah, the Zionist movement and the partition of Palestine in less than ten years. 13 00:01:19,560 --> 00:01:27,900 After that, he published the biography of King Hussein, Lion of Jordan, The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace. 14 00:01:28,620 --> 00:01:30,569 And in today's talk, Prof. 15 00:01:30,570 --> 00:01:37,470 Stand would offer us the consideration of a Jordanian perspective of Israel in the context of today's various studies seminar. 16 00:01:37,530 --> 00:01:43,380 Professor, thank you for coming. Thank you, Yaakov, for your kind introduction. 17 00:01:44,010 --> 00:01:49,950 It's a pleasure for me to be here with you and to contribute to the Israel Studies Seminar. 18 00:01:51,150 --> 00:02:02,400 My topic is Jordanian Perspectives on Israel, and as you have just heard, I have written two books on Jordanian Israeli relations. 19 00:02:02,760 --> 00:02:11,670 The first one was about King Abdullah collusion across the Jordan, and the second one was the biography of King Hussein, 20 00:02:12,060 --> 00:02:26,010 his grandson, which in a sense is collusion, mark two thirds continuation of the story of very close Hashemite Zionist relations. 21 00:02:26,850 --> 00:02:32,340 So what I thought I would do today is not give an academic paper, 22 00:02:33,180 --> 00:02:45,060 but give a very informal talk and range over 100 years of Hashemite Zionist Israeli relations. 23 00:02:45,990 --> 00:02:58,860 And also, if I may give a personal perspective on Jordanian perspectives on Israel, because I have been involved in this field for a long time. 24 00:02:59,400 --> 00:03:04,890 I am not a stranger to controversies. I have generated a lot of controversies. 25 00:03:05,400 --> 00:03:10,680 And I would like to talk not just about Jordanian perspectives on Israel, 26 00:03:10,980 --> 00:03:18,540 but also the historiography of the subject and the controversies that I have been involved in. 27 00:03:19,440 --> 00:03:33,900 And I would like to begin by setting out some sort of a framework for understanding Hashemite Zionist Israeli relations. 28 00:03:35,130 --> 00:03:44,340 And two factors seem to me to be particularly important in constituting the framework, the context. 29 00:03:45,090 --> 00:03:54,930 The first one is the Hashemite tradition, the Hashemite dynasty headed by Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca. 30 00:03:57,060 --> 00:04:04,590 And there have been relations with the Zionists and Israel over the last century. 31 00:04:05,940 --> 00:04:09,599 And the head of this dynasty, Hussein the Sharif of Mecca, 32 00:04:09,600 --> 00:04:17,580 who briefly became towards the end of the at the end of the Second World War with the First World War, he briefly became the king of the Hejaz. 33 00:04:19,260 --> 00:04:28,320 He had a very. Positive attitude towards Jews. 34 00:04:29,790 --> 00:04:42,690 And there was never I didn't detect any any trace of anti-Semitism in him or his or his descendants. 35 00:04:43,050 --> 00:04:56,370 This is in marked contrast to the visceral anti-Semitism of the Saudi dynasty and other Arab leaders and Hussein. 36 00:04:56,370 --> 00:05:00,090 The Sharif of Mecca regarded the Jews as the people of the book, 37 00:05:01,200 --> 00:05:08,340 and he educated his four children in the tradition of respect for the Jews and tolerance towards the Jews. 38 00:05:09,240 --> 00:05:14,280 But he couldn't accept the Balfour Declaration of 1917, 39 00:05:15,180 --> 00:05:24,570 and the British offered him a defence pact if he would endorse the Balfour Declaration, and he refused. 40 00:05:25,050 --> 00:05:33,390 He said he's perfectly happy for Jews to come to Palestine and to live happily under his rule and [INAUDIBLE] protect them. 41 00:05:35,310 --> 00:05:41,610 But he's not prepared. He he can't accept the Jews forcing their way in through the window. 42 00:05:42,540 --> 00:05:46,530 So he took his principled stand against the Balfour Declaration, 43 00:05:46,980 --> 00:05:57,390 and the British then abandoned him to the tender mercies of his great rival, Ibn Saud, who overrun his kingdom of the Hejaz. 44 00:05:58,680 --> 00:06:13,230 And the other important factor to bear in mind in all of this is the colonial factor, the role that Britain played in the politics of the region. 45 00:06:15,840 --> 00:06:28,740 In a sense, Britain helped to create both of these and these countries, Transjordan and later Israel. 46 00:06:30,180 --> 00:06:40,800 This through this process started with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which Britain wrote into the mandate of the League of Nations in 1920. 47 00:06:41,940 --> 00:06:49,530 So Britain was not obliged to help the Zionists create a national home for the Jews in Palestine. 48 00:06:49,770 --> 00:06:53,969 But Britain did not fulfilled, did not honour the second part of the promise, 49 00:06:53,970 --> 00:07:01,530 which is to protect the civil and religious rights of what were described as the known Jewish communities. 50 00:07:02,370 --> 00:07:12,960 So Britain with the Balfour Declaration, started the process of the gradual Zionist takeover of most of the country. 51 00:07:14,310 --> 00:07:23,010 And in 1921, Winston Churchill, the Colonial Secretary, created the Emirate of Transjordan, 52 00:07:23,610 --> 00:07:30,210 and as he later boasted, he created the Emirate of Transjordan by the stroke of his pen. 53 00:07:30,630 --> 00:07:37,230 One sunny afternoon and still had time to paint some watercolours of Jerusalem. 54 00:07:39,060 --> 00:07:43,080 So Jordan was an artificial creation. 55 00:07:43,560 --> 00:07:50,580 It was a product a progeny of the British Empire created to suit British imperial interests, 56 00:07:50,820 --> 00:07:59,040 as was the Zionist movement in Palestine, the Zionist with a junior partners of the British Empire. 57 00:08:00,360 --> 00:08:09,630 So from the beginning, both Transjordan and the Zionist movement were the clients of the British Empire, 58 00:08:11,130 --> 00:08:16,980 and both were somewhat uneasy in the Arab environment. 59 00:08:19,410 --> 00:08:31,230 King Abdullah lacked legitimacy in the Arab world, and the Zionists, of course, were in conflict with the environment from the beginning. 60 00:08:34,920 --> 00:08:42,810 There was one other factor, and that is that the two movements, the two sides had a common enemy. 61 00:08:43,740 --> 00:08:54,270 Palestinian the Palestinian national movement may be an enemy, is too strong a word, but certainly an opponent and a rival for King Abdullah. 62 00:08:54,810 --> 00:09:05,520 The Palestinian national movement was the major rival in contention for possession of Palestine and for the Zionists. 63 00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:10,770 The principal enemy were the local Palestinians. 64 00:09:12,450 --> 00:09:20,759 So having a common enemy or opponent or rival gave a basis. 65 00:09:20,760 --> 00:09:24,570 Provided a basis for collaboration between. 66 00:09:24,810 --> 00:09:36,480 The two sides. And there were some periods during the reign of King Hussein when I would argue there 67 00:09:36,480 --> 00:09:43,770 was active collaboration between the two sides in suppressing Palestinian nationalism. 68 00:09:50,070 --> 00:10:01,170 King Abdullah was an extremely ambitious ruler, and his greatest ambition was Greater Syria, 69 00:10:02,190 --> 00:10:06,390 because he was given by the British a backwater, the Transjordan. 70 00:10:08,400 --> 00:10:18,870 And his aim was to make himself the king of greater Syria, to bring under his rule, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. 71 00:10:19,860 --> 00:10:25,140 He was described by a British official as a falcon trapped in a canaries cage. 72 00:10:26,040 --> 00:10:35,850 He was a falcon, but there he was, trapped by the British in the small cage of Transjordan, and he wanted to expand in all directions. 73 00:10:36,240 --> 00:10:42,840 But he was a client of the British, and he couldn't do anything without the agreement. 74 00:10:50,500 --> 00:10:57,490 From the beginning of his rule, he tried to cultivate friendly relations with his neighbours to the West. 75 00:10:58,780 --> 00:11:13,660 He had high opinion of the Jews, of the knowledge of the capacity for developing country lands, 76 00:11:14,200 --> 00:11:20,950 for the technology, for the know how and for the international influence. 77 00:11:22,000 --> 00:11:25,600 So all along he tried to get along. 78 00:11:25,870 --> 00:11:29,409 He tried to get on well with them and he cooperated with them. 79 00:11:29,410 --> 00:11:34,330 And there were many friendly meetings between the two sides. 80 00:11:35,140 --> 00:11:46,150 He also leased to the Jewish Agency the lands that he owned on the East Bank of the River Jordan private lands and the Jewish Agency. 81 00:11:46,450 --> 00:11:59,380 Throughout the 1930, throughout much of the interwar period, paid him £500 a year for the option to exercise this lease. 82 00:11:59,650 --> 00:12:04,720 It never exercised the lease, but it continued to pay him for the option. 83 00:12:05,410 --> 00:12:14,680 And I wouldn't call this a bribe, but there were payments that were made to him from time to time, apart from the payment for the option on the lease. 84 00:12:15,070 --> 00:12:19,150 So money changed hands in this relationship. It wasn't just the dialogue. 85 00:12:26,140 --> 00:12:33,460 This friendly relationship continued with many ups and downs until the end of the Second World War. 86 00:12:34,120 --> 00:12:43,300 And after the war, the struggle for Palestine entered its most critical phase. 87 00:12:44,800 --> 00:12:48,790 After the Second World War, the British, the Israelis, 88 00:12:49,270 --> 00:12:58,870 the Zionists looked as hard as they could for one Arab ruler who would agree to the partition of Palestine. 89 00:12:59,680 --> 00:13:04,150 And there was only the Palestinians, of course, rejected partition outright, 90 00:13:05,950 --> 00:13:13,960 and there was only one Arab ruler who was prepared to consider the partition of Palestine with the Zionists, 91 00:13:14,260 --> 00:13:26,290 and that was Abdullah, and that was the basis for the dialogue across the battle lines in the aftermath of 1946. 92 00:13:27,430 --> 00:13:41,629 In 1945. Now this brings me to 1947, and here I will refer to my book, 93 00:13:41,630 --> 00:13:47,840 Collusion across the Jordan King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine, 94 00:13:48,860 --> 00:14:01,520 which deals in detail with this, the period from 1947 until the assassination of Abdullah by an Arab by a Palestinian nationalist in 1950. 95 00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:18,160 One. And the usual line up in most of the literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict during this period during the first half of the 20th century. 96 00:14:18,310 --> 00:14:28,450 The usual line up is that Israel on one side, the Palestinians, all the Arabs and all the Arab nationalists on the other side. 97 00:14:30,160 --> 00:14:38,080 My interpretation of this period is that the real lined up below the surface was Hashemite 98 00:14:38,080 --> 00:14:45,460 and Zionist on one side against Palestinian and Arab nationalist on the other side. 99 00:14:46,900 --> 00:14:50,770 And in the book I put forward two theses. 100 00:14:51,220 --> 00:14:55,000 The central thesis is that in 1947, 101 00:14:57,280 --> 00:15:04,060 the Zionist agency through Golda meir and King Abdullah had reached a tacit agreement 102 00:15:04,630 --> 00:15:11,350 to divide up Palestine between themselves at the expense of the Palestinians. 103 00:15:16,580 --> 00:15:34,730 The spirit of this understanding was that there would be a partition of Palestine by peaceful means and that the Jews would create this state. 104 00:15:35,120 --> 00:15:47,810 Abdullah would take over the Arab part of Palestine, and after the dust settled, they would sign a peace treaty and have normal relations. 105 00:15:48,200 --> 00:16:03,350 That was the understanding. The Zionists tried a few times to persuade Abdullah to write this down disagreement, and he declined. 106 00:16:03,830 --> 00:16:08,180 And he said to them, Trust is crucial. 107 00:16:08,660 --> 00:16:12,830 If there is trust, there is no need for a text, for a written agreement. 108 00:16:13,130 --> 00:16:17,090 And if there is no trust, a written agreement isn't going to help. 109 00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:38,130 Subsidiary thesis. So just to continue this tacit agreement laid the foundations for limited clashes 110 00:16:38,550 --> 00:16:45,540 during the 48 war and to continuing collaboration in the aftermath of of the war. 111 00:16:47,580 --> 00:16:58,200 The secondary subsidiary thesis is that Britain knew and approved of the collusion between the two sides. 112 00:17:00,030 --> 00:17:08,880 So Britain was, although the mandate was coming to its inglorious end, Britain was still very influential in regional politics. 113 00:17:12,780 --> 00:17:24,990 Now, as you know, there was a great debate between the old historians and the new Israeli historians, 114 00:17:25,410 --> 00:17:29,340 or revisionist Israeli historians of whom I am one. 115 00:17:29,700 --> 00:17:33,030 The other two were Ilan Papa and Benny Morris. 116 00:17:33,900 --> 00:17:39,780 Benny Morris has been to the extreme right, and he's changed his views very radically. 117 00:17:39,780 --> 00:17:46,410 So only two new historians left. That's Ilan, Pappy and myself. 118 00:17:47,010 --> 00:17:53,310 And the many bones of contention in the debate between the old historians and the new historians. 119 00:17:53,610 --> 00:18:01,740 But the one that is relevant here is what was Britain's policy in the twilight of the mandate over Palestine. 120 00:18:02,310 --> 00:18:10,650 The old historians say Britain's aim was to prevent the birth of a Jewish state, which was envisaged in the U.N. partition resolution. 121 00:18:11,760 --> 00:18:15,630 We say no. Britain accepted a Jewish state. 122 00:18:16,080 --> 00:18:19,890 Its aim was to abort the birth of a Palestinian state, 123 00:18:20,310 --> 00:18:33,120 and it achieved that aim in cooperation with Abdullah and the pioneer who was Ilan Pappy, who who wrote a thesis, Dphil thesis. 124 00:18:33,390 --> 00:18:43,050 He was a student of the Middle East centre. He was a dphil thesis on Britain, the Arab-Israeli conflict, 1948 to 1951. 125 00:18:43,620 --> 00:18:51,720 I was his external examiner. I was a training at the time and all I learnt much more from him that he ever, 126 00:18:51,960 --> 00:19:03,240 he ever learned from me and all the ideas of the new history in their thesis in one form or another. 127 00:19:03,660 --> 00:19:13,860 But the most radical, most arresting thesis was that Britain's aim in 1940 748, 128 00:19:14,580 --> 00:19:29,040 was to help Abdullah Annexe the Arab part of Palestine and do away with the Palestinian state in British eyes. 129 00:19:29,910 --> 00:19:33,990 A Palestinian state was not synonymous with a mufti state. 130 00:19:34,530 --> 00:19:38,070 The mufti was a renegade who had thrown his lot with Hitler. 131 00:19:39,600 --> 00:19:50,340 So hostility to the Mufti and to a Palestinian state was a constant factor in British policy throughout this period. 132 00:19:52,080 --> 00:20:02,010 Britain gave Abdullah a nod and a wink that once the mandate expired to send his army into Palestine, 133 00:20:02,190 --> 00:20:10,140 but only into the parts allocated to the Palestinian state by the U.N. resolution. 134 00:20:11,130 --> 00:20:20,910 But Abdullah was warned not to tangle with the Jews and not to invade any area that was allocated to the Jews. 135 00:20:25,150 --> 00:20:29,380 When it came to the crunch. 136 00:20:33,670 --> 00:20:46,480 At the end of the mandate. Golda meir had a second meeting with Abdullah on the 11th of May 1948, four days before the expiry of the mandate. 137 00:20:47,350 --> 00:20:52,200 And this time, Abdullah said he didn't deny that there'd been an agreement and understanding. 138 00:20:52,210 --> 00:20:54,400 He said he was no longer a free man. 139 00:20:55,090 --> 00:21:04,390 He was one of five the Arab countries prepared to invade Palestine and he couldn't stand back because he would be denounced as a traitor. 140 00:21:04,750 --> 00:21:14,200 So he didn't completely betray the understanding and he didn't fulfil the spirit of the original agreement. 141 00:21:14,410 --> 00:21:23,290 It was he was somewhere in between. And during the war he did his best to avoid a head on clash between the two sides. 142 00:21:23,620 --> 00:21:32,440 And for the most part, with very minor exceptions, the Arab Legion respected the border, the borders of the Jewish state. 143 00:21:32,800 --> 00:21:44,230 Most of the clashes between the Hagana, the Israeli army and the Arab Legion were in and around Jerusalem, on which there hadn't been an agreement. 144 00:21:53,320 --> 00:22:01,330 Most people thought that my book most Jordanians thought that my book was an attack on King Abdullah. 145 00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:11,230 In fact, I tried to explain what happened in this very complicated year, 1948. 146 00:22:11,950 --> 00:22:21,670 And he comes out from my research as the only Arab leader who had a realistic assessment of the military balance of power. 147 00:22:22,120 --> 00:22:29,110 Who knew that the Arabs had no chance of defeating the Zionist on the battlefields and that Britain 148 00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:37,930 and America and the international community wouldn't allow a defeat of of the new state of Israel. 149 00:22:38,260 --> 00:22:42,430 So he tried to find a way round it to avoid a head on clash. 150 00:22:51,480 --> 00:22:58,620 The publication of my book in 1988 caused the panic in the royal court in Jordan, in Amman. 151 00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:06,719 Prince Hassan, who was then Crown Prince, read the book and he panicked because he saw my name. 152 00:23:06,720 --> 00:23:07,740 It's a Jewish name, 153 00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:19,980 and he thought it was part of a right wing Zionist Zionist plot to prepare to delegitimize the Hashemite and to prepare the ground for Israel. 154 00:23:20,130 --> 00:23:30,600 So for Jordan is Palestine. And the book was banned in Jordan then, and it is still banned in Jordan today. 155 00:23:33,630 --> 00:23:43,170 The book was also criticised by a number of Israeli historians, most prominently by Avraham Sela. 156 00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:47,940 The basic argument was that there was no collusion across the Jordan. 157 00:23:48,540 --> 00:23:52,440 That there was a UN partition resolution. The Jews accepted it. 158 00:23:52,680 --> 00:23:55,200 The Palestinians and all the Arabs rejected it. 159 00:23:55,500 --> 00:24:04,980 So it's the Palestinians who had the chance of a state who blew it and went to war to nullify partition. 160 00:24:05,250 --> 00:24:11,670 So Israel is not to be blamed for depriving them of a state. 161 00:24:12,060 --> 00:24:27,270 That's the main argument against me. And I reply to my Israeli critics in an article in 1995 called The Debate about 1948. 162 00:24:28,660 --> 00:24:33,090 It was published in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 163 00:24:33,540 --> 00:24:38,340 and I deal with all the main points of contention between the old and the new historians, 164 00:24:38,580 --> 00:24:47,280 and particularly in the section about Arab War aims in which I discuss all of this in reply to my Israeli critics. 165 00:24:48,960 --> 00:25:00,600 This debate isn't over. A recent Ph.D. student at the Middle East Centre, Graham Javan, wrote a book thesis and then a book on Britain, 166 00:25:00,930 --> 00:25:10,630 the Arab Legion in Jordan, in which he has a chapter dealing with the collusion thesis of in 1948. 167 00:25:10,650 --> 00:25:12,060 So the debate continues. 168 00:25:13,740 --> 00:25:24,090 I now want to come to the end of the 1948 war and to address another issue, contentious issue between the old and the new historians. 169 00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:37,230 And the question is, why was there no political settlement for three decades after the guns fell silent? 170 00:25:38,640 --> 00:25:47,790 And the old historian's answer to this question in two words is Arab intransigence. 171 00:25:49,130 --> 00:25:53,920 And my own opinion is that the Arabs were not intransigent. 172 00:25:53,930 --> 00:25:57,230 The Arab rulers were not intransigent. They were pragmatic. 173 00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:05,500 Every Arab ruler. King Farouk of Egypt. 174 00:26:05,950 --> 00:26:11,260 King Abdullah of Jordan. And Hosni Zain, the ruler of Syria. 175 00:26:11,590 --> 00:26:21,760 They're all ready to negotiate with Israel. Each ruler had his terms, but Israel was intransigent in these negotiations. 176 00:26:29,970 --> 00:26:37,620 And after the end of the war. The the dialogue across the battle lines resumed. 177 00:26:38,490 --> 00:26:43,230 There were many, many meetings between King Abdullah and various Israeli leaders. 178 00:26:44,070 --> 00:26:52,350 They made steady progress. They even had a draft peace treaty which was initialled but never signed. 179 00:26:53,400 --> 00:27:00,300 And, you know, Abdullah, literally, until his dying day, continued this dialogue. 180 00:27:01,290 --> 00:27:05,400 So you cannot you cannot say that he was intransigent. 181 00:27:06,660 --> 00:27:12,090 And one of the people Israelis I interviewed was Moshe Sassoon. 182 00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:21,480 Whose father was Eliyahu Sassoon, who started and conducted the dialogue with Abdullah over many years. 183 00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:32,430 But when he was appointed minister to Turkey, Musharraf, the foreign minister, appointed his son, was a young diplomat, 184 00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:43,290 Moshe Sassoon, to to continue the dialogue because he knew how important the personal contact was for Arab leaders. 185 00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:52,140 And Morrison told me that at his first meeting with Abdullah, he was a very young man. 186 00:27:52,170 --> 00:27:59,070 He said to him, You know, Your Majesty, I want to ask you a question which may be out of place. 187 00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:04,950 And Abdullah put his hand on his. And he said to him, Ask my son, ask. 188 00:28:05,250 --> 00:28:08,100 And he said to him, Why do you want to make peace with us? 189 00:28:08,430 --> 00:28:14,910 And Abdullah said, It's not because I have become a Zionist, but because if we don't make peace, 190 00:28:15,330 --> 00:28:20,760 there would be another war and another war and another war and another war. 191 00:28:20,970 --> 00:28:24,060 He repeated it four times and we will lose. 192 00:28:24,300 --> 00:28:29,520 That's why I want to make peace with you. 193 00:28:33,310 --> 00:28:36,880 I now want to move on. 194 00:28:41,060 --> 00:28:50,480 To the second part of this history, to the reign of King Hussein, which began in 1953. 195 00:28:51,980 --> 00:28:55,520 So I wrote a biography of King Hussein. 196 00:28:56,300 --> 00:28:59,720 But my main interest is the Arab-Israeli conflict. 197 00:28:59,930 --> 00:29:04,520 That's how I ended up writing this biography. 198 00:29:05,450 --> 00:29:15,440 And what I wanted to dispel in the iron wall and in the biography of King Hussein was the myth of Arab intransigence. 199 00:29:16,040 --> 00:29:27,020 And Hussein was a very good candidate. In order to help me to provide ammunition for dispelling this myth of Arab intransigence. 200 00:29:27,740 --> 00:29:42,890 King Hussein essentially was a peacemaker. He spent most of his career trying to find a way to live, to coexist peacefully with Israel in. 201 00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:51,860 The sources for. Sorry. 202 00:29:52,230 --> 00:29:58,710 Go back a minute. The book is a comprehensive biography of King Hussein political biography. 203 00:29:58,950 --> 00:30:05,840 But my real interest and the only original contribution is about King Hussein's relations. 204 00:30:05,850 --> 00:30:16,730 In secret meetings with Israeli officials from 1963 until the peace treaty was signed in 1994. 205 00:30:20,610 --> 00:30:25,379 It's every student of the Arab-Israeli conflict knows there is a huge asymmetry 206 00:30:25,380 --> 00:30:32,850 of sources between the Israeli sources that are available and the Arab sources. 207 00:30:32,850 --> 00:30:37,650 The Israeli sort of sources are much, much greater. 208 00:30:38,130 --> 00:30:43,260 And Israel has a 30 year rule for reviewing and declassifying official documents. 209 00:30:43,590 --> 00:30:46,500 And these are the sources that I use in all my books. 210 00:30:48,990 --> 00:30:55,440 But the fact that there is an asymmetry of sources doesn't mean we can't write about the Arab-Israeli conflict. 211 00:30:56,130 --> 00:30:59,130 We have to write on the basis of the sources that are available. 212 00:30:59,610 --> 00:31:09,270 And as I have always said to Ph.D. students of mine who reached a dead end in their research, don't give up. 213 00:31:09,930 --> 00:31:13,140 It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. 214 00:31:14,190 --> 00:31:20,580 So that was my guiding light. And there is no archive at all in Jordan. 215 00:31:21,300 --> 00:31:26,100 Arab countries all have a national archive where they keep the records in Jordan. 216 00:31:26,250 --> 00:31:31,290 There isn't even a national archive. Only the Royal Court has its own documents. 217 00:31:34,020 --> 00:31:43,860 So I conducted about 80 interviews with Jordanian officials, and recently I deposited my papers in the Middle East Centre Archive, 218 00:31:44,220 --> 00:31:52,890 including a whole pile of the transcripts of these 80 or so interviews and letters and so on. 219 00:31:54,000 --> 00:32:00,510 But I did have a really good source for this book, and that is the Charles File. 220 00:32:01,110 --> 00:32:09,570 The Israeli official who started and conducted the secret negotiations with King Hussein was Dr. Yaakov Hertzog, 221 00:32:10,170 --> 00:32:17,880 who was the son of the chief rabbi of Ireland, a very, very learned man, a very serious diplomat. 222 00:32:18,330 --> 00:32:28,770 He started the secret meetings with King Hussein in London, and he continued them until Golda meir became prime minister and she sidelined him. 223 00:32:29,130 --> 00:32:41,430 He is too moderate for her. And these documents are still classified in the Israeli state archive, although more than 30 years have gone by. 224 00:32:42,420 --> 00:32:52,410 But I was lucky enough to meet Shira Hertzog, the daughter of Yaakov Hertzog, and she photocopied for me the whole of the Charles File. 225 00:32:53,370 --> 00:33:02,820 Charles was the code that the Israelis held for who say they never wrote his name down in any of the communications, hence the name for Charles File. 226 00:33:03,510 --> 00:33:15,480 And all the talks were in English, and Hertzog wrote very detailed reports on every meeting. 227 00:33:17,010 --> 00:33:21,600 Sometimes five, sometimes ten, sometimes 15 pages. 228 00:33:22,500 --> 00:33:31,140 And this was the main source that I used in reconstructing all the secret meetings between King Hussein and the Israelis. 229 00:33:31,950 --> 00:33:38,520 I'm going to skip. Sorry, but I. 230 00:33:42,070 --> 00:33:48,460 I interviewed King Hussein in 1996, and he has in his house in Ascot. 231 00:33:49,300 --> 00:34:01,270 I recorded the interview. It lasted 2 hours, and in it we covered the whole of his reign on the theme of relations with Israel. 232 00:34:02,560 --> 00:34:04,210 And after he died, 233 00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:15,550 they published an edited version of this interview in the New York Review of Books under the heading His Royal Highness King Hussein in Israel. 234 00:34:18,250 --> 00:34:28,630 And. The whole interview was about his relations with Israel. 235 00:34:29,470 --> 00:34:43,240 And the first question I asked him was, why did he initiate the secret meetings with the Israelis in 1963? 236 00:34:43,570 --> 00:34:50,560 And his reply was roughly as follows The Jews were in armies. 237 00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:55,270 We didn't want them here. History put them here. 238 00:34:55,870 --> 00:35:02,590 And I is a person in a position of authority. 239 00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:12,940 Felt that I didn't want it second hand. I wanted to meet with the Israelis face to face to see what was the problem, 240 00:35:13,420 --> 00:35:22,060 to see what what they were about, and to try and figure out a peaceful way out of this conflict. 241 00:35:23,240 --> 00:35:28,430 And he said, by chance, I had a friend who looked after my health here. 242 00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:42,360 He was referring to Dr. Emanuel Herbert, who was a Jew and a Zionist, and he was his personal physician in London. 243 00:35:43,170 --> 00:35:48,600 And Hussein said to me, and he offered the possibility of a meeting. 244 00:35:49,140 --> 00:36:02,270 And I said, Fine. And that's how it started. And all the meetings took place in the heart of the home of Dr. Herbert in St John's Wood. 245 00:36:04,950 --> 00:36:32,830 And. One point that I want to make about King Hussein is that he had a very sensitive understanding and sympathy for Jewish suffering, 246 00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:42,970 unlike a lot of Arab rulers. He knew about Jewish suffering. 247 00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:51,160 He knew about the Holocaust. He took that into account in all his dealings with Israelis and his son, the present king, 248 00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:57,070 some of his generals, they all said to me, the king was an educated his majesty was an educator. 249 00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:03,730 And he always used to tell us, when you deal with the Jews, bear in mind that they suffered a lot. 250 00:37:04,060 --> 00:37:14,320 Bear in mind that they that they went through the Holocaust and this they are bound to be obsessed with security. 251 00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:24,490 So when you deal with them, take that into account. So that was his approach in dealing with the Israelis. 252 00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:36,670 The one departure from this peaceful dialogue was the June 1967 war. 253 00:37:37,820 --> 00:37:44,260 I'm not going to go into details about why it happened. 254 00:37:44,770 --> 00:37:58,570 But joining the Arabs, joining Egypt in the attack, not the attack, joining the Arabs in the war against Israel was the mistake of his life. 255 00:37:59,140 --> 00:38:02,770 And he paid the price for that mistake. 256 00:38:03,130 --> 00:38:17,740 He lost the West Bank in Jerusalem, the jewel in the crown, and the dialogue that continued after the June six, 1967, war. 257 00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:26,560 It was a very intensive dialogue, very frequent meetings with an ever growing range of Israeli leaders. 258 00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:29,890 But nothing happened. Nothing happened. 259 00:38:30,310 --> 00:38:33,370 The Israelis were stringing Hussein along. 260 00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:37,270 Another meeting and another meeting. And another meeting. 261 00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:46,630 And from day one, he offered them total peace for total withdrawal, and they would not agree to it. 262 00:38:46,960 --> 00:38:56,410 And they kept coming up with various offers, like their long plan, that he would get back 60% or 70% of the West Bank, but not Jerusalem. 263 00:38:56,770 --> 00:39:01,030 And it was all unacceptable. So nothing happened in these meetings. 264 00:39:01,570 --> 00:39:06,220 And the question is, why did. Why didn't Hussein call it a day? 265 00:39:06,250 --> 00:39:14,500 Why did he continue? And the answer to that is that he was afraid that if he fell out with the Israelis, 266 00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:22,210 they will topple him and they will capture the east bank of the Jordan as well, or more likely, 267 00:39:22,720 --> 00:39:28,810 they will topple the monarchy and enable the PLO to take over the East Bank of Jordan 268 00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:37,540 and turn the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan into the the the the Palestine Republic. 269 00:39:37,780 --> 00:39:45,520 So it was fear. It was because in order to defend his kingdom, that he continued the dialogue. 270 00:39:52,140 --> 00:39:53,430 I have to skip a lot. 271 00:39:55,140 --> 00:40:20,040 And I would like to come to another landmark in 1988, when King Hussein broke off the legal and administrative links between Jordan and the West Bank. 272 00:40:23,790 --> 00:40:30,990 One of his advisers told me that reading collusion across the Jordan, which came out in May 1988, 273 00:40:31,290 --> 00:40:38,730 influenced his decision at the end of July to cut his losses on the West Bank. 274 00:40:39,630 --> 00:40:48,810 So I asked him politely whether my book had influence on him, and he said, yes, you had the right reading, but he didn't elaborate. 275 00:40:49,140 --> 00:40:56,910 Secondly, I can only guess that he read the book and he realised that his granddad had 276 00:40:56,910 --> 00:41:02,280 tried his upmost and couldn't reach an overall agreement with the Israelis. 277 00:41:02,730 --> 00:41:10,170 He had been trying for 20 years and he didn't get anywhere with the Israelis. 278 00:41:10,170 --> 00:41:18,330 So he decided to cut the links and to say to the Palestinian, to the PLO, I've tried and failed. 279 00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:25,560 You take over, you represent the Palestinians, see if you do any better and they haven't done any better. 280 00:41:30,900 --> 00:41:37,830 The big change in Jordanian Israeli relations came after the election of Itzhak Rabin in 1992, 281 00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:44,700 and Hussein didn't trust Peres because Paris was a politician. 282 00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:49,740 Hussein trusted Rabin because Rabin was a military man. 283 00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:51,330 A word was the word. 284 00:41:52,470 --> 00:42:06,570 And because they often put themselves in each other's shoes and they formed a really close working relationship and Rabin sidelined. 285 00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:17,730 Shimon Peres was the foreign minister, and he himself and his team conducted the negotiations with Jordan that led to the peace treaty. 286 00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:24,540 And this relationship with Rabin was extremely helpful to King Hussein. 287 00:42:25,500 --> 00:42:28,890 Like all Arab rulers and like the Shah, 288 00:42:30,420 --> 00:42:41,340 he was very impressed with the influence that Israel and the Jews and Israel's friends in Washington had over American foreign policy. 289 00:42:42,240 --> 00:42:49,890 And these Rabin and his team helped Hussein with the American with the Clinton administration. 290 00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:59,040 They helped they persuaded Clinton to write off the national debt of Jordan in the lead up to the peace treaty. 291 00:42:59,820 --> 00:43:07,950 The negotiations were concluded with and I asked KING and they led to a peace treaty. 292 00:43:08,310 --> 00:43:12,540 I asked King Hussein, was he happy with the peace treaty? 293 00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:24,870 And he said yes. He was that he and Rabin had an understanding reach an understanding on all the important issues. 294 00:43:25,290 --> 00:43:32,880 And it was a balanced. That was the word he used. It was a balanced treaty which serve the interests of both sides. 295 00:43:33,270 --> 00:43:40,080 So for Hussein, the peace treaty with Israel was mission accomplished. 296 00:43:41,100 --> 00:43:45,630 And things went well until the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. 297 00:43:46,740 --> 00:43:55,140 King Hussein went to the funeral in Jerusalem, and he made a funeral oration, which was very moving. 298 00:43:55,860 --> 00:44:07,770 And after the funeral, he went back to the King David Hotel, and he stood on the terrace looking at the magnificent landscape. 299 00:44:08,430 --> 00:44:20,700 And a woman journalist, an Arab journalist who was quite friendly with him, went up to him and he was crying and he was 30, smoking very nervously. 300 00:44:21,360 --> 00:44:25,860 And she said to him, you know, what's the matter? 301 00:44:26,430 --> 00:44:31,080 And he said, I've come here to bury a friend. 302 00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:36,030 And I have a feeling that today we have buried the peace. 303 00:44:37,620 --> 00:44:40,830 And these were prophetic words. 304 00:44:42,660 --> 00:44:46,530 I've exhausted my 40 minutes. I can stop here. 305 00:44:46,560 --> 00:44:52,410 No, please, go on. Really? Yes. Okay. Well, I'll try to be brief. 306 00:44:59,540 --> 00:45:14,330 Netanyahu won the election against Paris in 1996, and he had his first term as prime minister from 1986 to 1999. 307 00:45:15,530 --> 00:45:29,900 Netanyahu never liked the Oslo Treaty, so it isn't surprising that as soon as he got into power, he set about dismantling the Oslo peace agreements. 308 00:45:32,180 --> 00:45:41,360 And he succeeded. He completely arrested and froze and in many ways reversed the Oslo peace process. 309 00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:46,670 That's understandable, given his ideology and his political position. 310 00:45:47,630 --> 00:45:58,340 What is not so easily understandable is why did it destroy the foundations that his predecessors had built for peace with Jordan? 311 00:45:59,750 --> 00:46:07,570 I do not have an answer to that. And it's a question that the king puzzled over, and he didn't have an answer. 312 00:46:08,680 --> 00:46:18,430 And when I interviewed him in December 1996, in that when we got towards the end of the interview. 313 00:46:19,550 --> 00:46:26,450 He started pouring his heart to me about Netanyahu and he said to me, 314 00:46:27,350 --> 00:46:34,250 This man is ruining everything that I've worked for all my life and that Rabin worked for. 315 00:46:34,550 --> 00:46:39,140 We did it not for our sake. We did it for the sake of our two people. 316 00:46:40,190 --> 00:46:43,310 And this man is ruining everything. 317 00:46:43,940 --> 00:46:47,210 I don't know what to do. Do you have any advice for me? 318 00:46:48,050 --> 00:46:51,920 And I didn't have any advice for him. 319 00:46:53,360 --> 00:47:07,220 But worse was to come. In 1997, the national affair, when the Mossad made an attempt, abortive attempt to assassinate Khalid Mashaal, 320 00:47:07,910 --> 00:47:14,390 the mid-level Hamas official was a Jordanian citizen in Amman. 321 00:47:16,650 --> 00:47:27,840 And the background was that since the peace treaty, there was very close strategic and intelligence cooperation between the two sides. 322 00:47:28,350 --> 00:47:35,370 And the king represented Jordan in these regular meetings of security cooperation with the Israelis. 323 00:47:36,600 --> 00:47:45,300 And in 1997, the king said, I have a very important proposal for you from Hamas. 324 00:47:45,900 --> 00:47:52,860 Hamas proposed a long term ceasefire, a long term ceasefire. 325 00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:58,470 And I put all my weight behind this proposal. 326 00:47:58,680 --> 00:48:11,280 It's a serious proposal. And I want you to take this proposal and give it to the prime minister, to Netanyahu, without any delay. 327 00:48:13,860 --> 00:48:21,870 And two days later, the Mossad agents tried to assassinate Khalid Mashaal. 328 00:48:23,370 --> 00:48:32,340 And this was like spitting in the face of the king and his reading, 329 00:48:32,520 --> 00:48:39,990 his interpretation of this and I know this from Ali Shukri, who was his private secretary. 330 00:48:40,860 --> 00:48:49,200 And I became I interviewed him about six, 16 times, and I got a lot of the information from him. 331 00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:57,420 And he said the King interpretation interpreted that the assassination attempt 332 00:48:59,610 --> 00:49:05,460 is a message from Netanyahu that he doesn't want to resolve the conflict, 333 00:49:05,790 --> 00:49:16,770 he doesn't want a ceasefire, and he's not prepared to confine the conflict with Hamas to Israel in the occupied territories. 334 00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:30,090 He wants to extend it to Jordan, and he suspected that this was part of a plot to topple the monarchy and implement the right wing agenda. 335 00:49:30,270 --> 00:49:38,670 The Jordan is Palestine to topple the monarchy so that the PLO could take over the East Bank. 336 00:49:40,860 --> 00:49:50,400 So. Hussein called Clinton. 337 00:49:53,050 --> 00:50:00,400 Marshall was in hospital. He was dying. Hussein said to Clinton, This is what has happened. 338 00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:08,380 If Marshall dies, I'm going to convene a press conference and I'm going to renounce the peace treaty. 339 00:50:09,370 --> 00:50:14,570 And Clinton said to him, This man is impossible, but let me have a try. 340 00:50:14,590 --> 00:50:24,640 I'll speak to him. And Clinton spoke to Netanyahu and persuaded him to send a team and medical team with the antidote to the poison. 341 00:50:24,880 --> 00:50:40,660 And Marshall survived. But that was the end of any possibility of friendship or cooperation between the two countries. 342 00:50:42,160 --> 00:50:49,640 And King Hussein wrote a three page letter in the aftermath to Netanyahu. 343 00:50:50,170 --> 00:50:54,670 And Ali Shukri gave me this letter. He wrote it himself. 344 00:50:56,710 --> 00:51:02,200 And in it he surveys the relationship, all these efforts and all. 345 00:51:02,770 --> 00:51:12,760 And he blames Netanyahu for sabotaging all his efforts and causing a lot of damage to both countries. 346 00:51:14,050 --> 00:51:23,530 So I'll stop there. And just a few concluding remarks about your Jordanian perspective on Israel. 347 00:51:24,250 --> 00:51:33,940 The hallmarks of the Jordanian approach to Israel is pragmatism, moderation and the search for peaceful coexistence. 348 00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:44,680 The Israeli response, I would say, summarises intransigence, diplomatic intransigence and the arrogance of power. 349 00:51:46,480 --> 00:52:00,070 That's why I knew there was no future after the peace treaty of a real peace, a genuine peace, which is what the King wanted. 350 00:52:00,340 --> 00:52:06,250 But I would add one last remark that not everything is Israel's fault. 351 00:52:06,790 --> 00:52:18,999 It's a complicated set of relationships. And the Jordanians, like the Palestinians, had the misfortune of having Israel as their opponent because, 352 00:52:19,000 --> 00:52:29,440 as Edward Said said, in relation to the Palestinians, Israel is the most morally complex opponent that anyone could have. 353 00:52:29,770 --> 00:52:30,280 Thank you.