User:John Z/drafts/Draft Agreement between Israel and Jordan
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Draft Agreement between Israel and Jordan
February 24, 1950
A special agreement will be signed, pursuant to the Armistice Agreement, bound to the latter and reinforcing it. The agreement will include the following principles:
(1) Non-aggression for a period of 5 years.
(2) Maintenance of the existing armistice borders and a search for acceptable solutions for the abolishment of areas of no-man's-land by their division, wherever possible, between both parties.
(3) In order to reach a comprehensive agreement between the two parties, Special Joint Committees will be appointed to study and discuss each of these fundamental issues. These will include territorial and economic problems as well as other issues to be included in the agreement, with a view to replacing the temporary lines and arrangements comprised in the Armistice Agreements by permanent lines and arrangements, including Jerusalem and the question of a porta and access to the sea for Jordan, under her full sovereignty.
(4) Measures are to be taken by both sides to safeguard the Holy Places and to ensure freedom of prayer and access, while eliminating the possibility of military disputes between the parties over these sites, and providing the U.N. authorities with satisfactory guarantees in this matter.
(5) One of the first tasks to be imposed on one of the Committees mentioned in Paragraph 3, will be to devise arrangements for payment of monetary compensation to owners of property in Jerusalem without affecting the territorial settlement in the city of Jerusalem referred to in Paragraph 3.
(6) Measures are to be taken to grant to Jordan a free zone in the port of Haifa in order to implement the principle of commercial cooperation between the two parties for the duration of the agreement.
(7) Measures are to be discussed to settle matters pertaining to Arab property in Israel territory by allowing the owners of such property either to enter Israel themselves or to send their representatives in order to sell such property or to deal with it as they see fit. And this is in order that they will have the right, if such solutions prove difficult to implement, to authorize the parties to the agreements to resolve the difficulties. This would also apply to Jewish property in Jordanian territory.
(8) The Special Committe will discuss measures to facilitate Israeli access to the institutions on Mt. Scopus and Arab access to Bethlehem, in accordance with Article 8 of the Armistice Agreement.
Addenda to this agreement will be drawn up to determine ways and means of implementing the above resolutions.
R[euven] S[hiloah] M[oshe] D[ayan] F[awzi al-] M[ulqi] S[amir al-] R[ifa'i]
Source: Israel State Archives, Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel.
p.209-210, Appendix 1
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You're right, it doesn't seem to make much sense. The first sentence seems to belong in the previous paragraph, and I think the second shouldn't have a however. I'll look around for the S&Y book on my shelves (I promise to find it in a year). The second sentence doesn't seem to really belong as it doesn't seem to concern the camps directly.
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I noticed some things you recently wrote in the Palestine or British Mandate article relevant to the "First Partition of Palestine" of 1921 . I thought you might be interested that, as far as I can tell, the whole thing is nothing but an amazingly successful fabrication due to Jabotinsky. I admire great lies and great liars, but once in a while they should be called to account. :-) Been meaning to write something up about it for a year or so, but never got around to it, and haven't been here at Wikipedia for 6 months.. One thing that the AMEU and Pipes cites say that there is no doubt about - that TransJordan was an original part of the Palestine Mandate - something which is stated everywhere - but never with documentation - is simply false. To the contrary the relevant but obscure documents state that from the inception of the Mandate's civil administration in mid 1920, the eastern boundary was the Jordan River. What happened at the Cairo Conference of 1921 was that Churchill decided to recognize Abdullah's pre-existing presence there and add TransJordan to the Mandate under Abdullah, not split it off. Before that, it had the same status that Palestine proper did under the OETA - occupied territory. In particular, at no time whatsoever, then, before, or after, did the British state that the Balfour Declaration applied there. The story is told very clearly in Bernard Wasserstein's recent very valuable book Israelis and Palestinians: Why do they fight? .p.100 or so.. Stein's Balfour Declaration also quotes documents stipulating this border. Have some other references with amusing things like the shortlived National Government of Moab in [Kerak] under Kirkbride, through which Britain exerted its control in this brief 8 month period, but not the time to write anything now. Thought it might be wise to see if I could convince or interest someone else about this before, also. John Z 06:46, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
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The British had, in the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, previously promised the Hashemite family lordship over most land in the region in return for their support in the Great Arab Revolt during World War I. In 1920 at the Conference of San Remo, Italy, the League of Nations mandate over Palestine was assigned to Britain, with borders which were to ""be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" later. From the beginning of the civil administration of the mandate under Herbert Samuel in July, 1920, its eastern border was provisionally set at the Jordan River, in order to not prejudice this decision. In March 1921 at the Cairo Conference, Winston Churchill decided to recognize the rule of Emir Abdullah over Transjordan and to add this territory to the mandate. Article 25 was added to the draft of the mandate, which allowed this region to be exempted from the application of the provisions relating to the Jewish National Home.
The majority of the approximately 750,000 people in this multi-ethnic region were Arabic-speaking Muslims, including a Bedouin population (estimated at 103,331 at the time of the 1922 census [1] and concentrated in the Beersheba area and the region south and east of it), as well as Jews (who comprised some 11% of the total) and smaller groups of Druze, Syrians, Sudanese, Circassians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Hejazi Arabs.
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"The process by which Palestine's borders were established after World War I has been the object of another exercise in historical mythmaking (see map 8). It is commonly stated that in 1921-2 Britain partitioned Palestine and lopped off TransJordan, thus reducing the area to which the Balfour Declaration applied to only 22% of its original extent. . . [Wasserstein then criticizes the Palestinians' "copycat tendency of the 2 nationalisms."]
Was Palestine partitioned in 1921-2? The text of the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 refers to Palestine but nowhere defines its limits. When Britain occupied the country in the course of the following 11 months, she established a military occupation regime for the whole of the Levant, under overall British control, and divided it, like Gaul, into 3 parts: Occupied Enemy Territory (OETA) North, the former sanjaks of Beirut, covering much of what is today Lebanon, was placed under French military rule; OETA East, consisting of the districts of Damascus and Hauran, corresponding more or less to modern Syria, was placed under an Arab administration headed by the Emir Faisal, and OETA South, the former sanjaks of Acre and Nablus and the independent sanjak of Jerusalem, roughly what became British Mandatory Palestine, was placed under direct British military rule.
Until 1923 when an Anglo-French convention settled the northern borders of Palestine and a conclusive peace treaty was signed with Turkey, the question of the future northern and eastern boundaries of the country and the Jewish National Home remained open. (The Egypt-Palestine border had been agreed before the First World War.) At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Zionists pressed hard for the inclusion in Palesine of the sources of the River Jordan in southern Lebanon. They also urged that the eastern border of the country be set east of the river so as to include a 25 - mile wide strip of the territory in Transjordan. The most forceful exponent of the Zionist proposal was the future British High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, at that time working closely with the Zionist Organization. In a letter to the Foreign Office in June 1919, Samuel stressed that ' for the maintenance of a population in Palestine numerous enough to support the structure of a modern state, the fertile territory east of the Jordan proposed to be included with in the boundaries is also essential' 4 The Zionists received some influential support. Balfour, for example, wrote:
"In determining the Palestine frontier, the main thing to keep in mind is to make a Zionist policy possible by giving the fullest scope to economic development in Palestine. Thus the Northern frontier should give to Palestine a full command of the water power which geographically belongs to Palestine and not to Syria; whilke the Eastern frontier should be so drawn as to give the widest scope to agricultural development on the left bank of the Jordan, consisten with leaving the Hedjaz railway [ which ran north -south about 30 miles east of hte Jordan] completely in Arab possession." 5
Yet in spite of this powerful advocacy, no decision on the issue was taken at that stage. In April 1920, when the San Remo conference assigned the mandate for Palestine to Great Britain, the question of the borders was raised in discussions among the members of the Supreme Council ( consisting of delegates of the USA, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan) The British and French debated the matter acrimoniously. The British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, referred delegates to ' the ablest book on Palestine which had ever been written' , George Adam Smith's Historical Geography of the Holy Land. In a telegram to the Foreign Office, summarizing the conclusion of the conference, the Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, stated: ' The boundaries will not be defined in the Peace Treaty, but are to be determined at a later date by the principal Allied Powers.'6 When Samuel set up the civil mandatory government in mid-1920 he was explicitly instructed by Curzon that his jurisdiction did not include Transjordan. Following the French occupation of Damascus in July 1920, the French , acting in accordance with their wartime agreements with Britain, refrained from extending their rule south into Transjordan. That autumn, Emir Faisal's brother, Abdullah, led a band of armed men north from the H into Transjordan and threatened to attack Syria and vindicate the Hashemites' right to overlordship there. Samuel seized the opportunity to press the case for British control. He succeeded. In March 1921, the Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, visited the Middle East and endorsed an arrangement whereby Transjordan would be added to the Palestine Mandate with Abdullah as its Emir and with the condition that the Jewish National Home provisions of the Palestine Mandate would not apply there.
Palestine, therefore, was not partitioned in 1921-22. Transjordan was not excised but, on the contrary, added on to the mandatory area. Zionism was barred from seeking to expand there but the Balfour Declaration had never previously applied to the area east of the Jordan. Why is this important? Because the myth of Palestine's 'first partition' has become part of the [illegible in my copy] of 'Greater Israel' and of the ideology of Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionist movement. Long after the establishment of Israel, the Revisionists' heirs, the Herut party ( the core element in what became the Likud) led by Menachem Begin, still dreamed of a Jewish state that would include Transjordan. Their catchphrase was ' The Jordan has 2 banks, one of them is ours and the other too!' Most Revisionists conveniently forgot that their ideological hero, Jabotinsky, had as a member of the Zionist Executive, endorsed the arrangements in 1922 that explicitly prohibited Jewish settlement in Transjordan. More recently advocates of Israeli annexation of the West Bank have asserted that the proper home of the Palestinian Arabs is in Transjordan: hence the slogan 'Jordan is Palestine.'
The creation of Transjordan, then, has nothing to do with partition, properly understood, save for the purposes of some propagandists
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Appendix 4
Secret Ageement Reached by King Husseing and Israel's Foreign Minister Shimon Peres in London
April 11, 1987
Secret / Most Sensitive
(Accord between the Government of Jordan, which has confirmed it to the United States, and the Foreign Minister of Israel, ad referendum to the Government of Israel. Parts "A" and "B", which when they become public upon agreement of the parties will be treated as U.S. proposals to which Jordan and Israel have agreed. Part "C" is to be treated, in great confidentiality, as committments to the U.S. from the Government of Jordan to be transmitted to the Government of Israel.)
A Three-Part Understanding Between Jordan and Israel
A. Invitation by UN Secretary General
B. Resolutions of the International Conference
C. The Modalities Agreed Upon by Jordan-Israel
A. The Secretary-General will issue invitations to the five permanent members of the Security Council and the Parties involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to negotiate a peaceful settlement based on Resolutions 242 and 338 with the objects of bringing a comprehensive peace to the area, security to its states and to respond to the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.
B. The Participants in the Conference agree that the purpose of the negotiations is the peaceful solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict based on Resolutions 242 and 338 and a peaceful solution of the Palestinian problem in all its aspects. The Conference invites the Parties to form geographical bilateral committees to negotiate mutual issues.
C. Jordan and Israel have agreed tha: (I) the International Conference will not impose any solution or veto and Agreement arrived at between the Parties; (II) the negotiations will be conducted in bilateral committees directly; (III) the Palestinian issue will be dealt with in the committee of the Jordanian-Palestinian and Israeli delegations; (IV) the Palestinians' representatives will be included in the Jordanian-Palestinian delegation; (V) participation in the Conference will be based on the Parties' acceptance of Resolutions 242 and 338 and the renunciation of violence and terrorism; (VI) each committee will negotiate independently; (VII) other issues will be decided by mutual agreement between Jordan and Israel.
The above understanding is subject to approval of the respective Governments of Israel and Jordan. The text of this paper will be shown and suggested to the U.S.A.
11/4/87 London
p.214
. . . "
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KH convene Aug 29, 1967
Hussein, however, felt he had a little bit of space to pursue a negotiated solution. Visiting London after the Arab summit, he tried to persuade his British friends that all was not lost for Middele East moderates. Prime Minister Harold Wilson reviewed the Khartoum declaration with despair.
The king said it was merely a matter of transaltiona and interpretation. Negating the possibility of diplomatic recognition did not mean there could be no "recognition in principle." As for refusing to consider "peace," the king pointed out to the British that Khartoum had said "no" to the Arabic word sulha, which would suggest a complete settlement and reconciliation, but did not reject salaam, which would be an official state of peace - that is, the absence of war. He said there was still no choice but to pursue the narrower salaam with Israel, and insisted that saying no to peace was not the final word. Wilson, still unconvinced, suggested sarcastically thazt the Arabs might mean peace with "no kissing."9
9. Snow Hussein, p. 198-199
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on 1950 agreement. 42-43
FOur days later, however, the king felt compelled to cancel the agreement in principle. His senior aides, includign Rifai, suddenly were opposed to negotiations with Israel.
p.53
Bengurion said " Jordan has no right to exist and should be partitioned. Eastern Transjordan should be ceded to Iraq, which would offer to accept and resettle the Arab refugees. The territory to the West of the Jordan should be made and autonomous region of Israel." (Sevres 56) 31
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