In the meantime we invited the pope to come to Jordan and he accepted our invitation. He came in May 2009. On the afternoon of May 8, 2009, Rania and I flew by helicopter to Queen Alia International Airport to greet the pope. As we flew over Amman, we saw the streets below bedecked with both the yellow-and-white flag of the Vatican and the Jordanian flag. We landed just before the pope’s plane taxied up to the waiting red carpet. The honor guard, dressed in tan uniforms and wearing traditional red-and-white-checkered head scarves, stood at attention as the pope descended from the plane. I welcomed His Holiness to Jordan, endorsed his commitment to dispel the misconceptions and divisions that have harmed relations between Christians and Muslims, and expressed the hope that together we could expand the dialogue he had opened. The pope received a very warm welcome in Jordan, with tens of thousands of Jordanian citizens, Christians and Muslims alike, lining the streets in the hope of catching a glimpse of him.
Rania and I flew back home and prepared to receive His Holiness and his delegation that evening. Rania corralled the children and began to get them dressed. The girls, Salma and Iman, were well behaved, but Hussein and our younger son, Hashem, were more of a challenge. We have always brought them up to be “normal,” but this was one occasion when a bit more formality would have been welcome. We persuaded Hussein to wear a suit, but Hashem, four years old, would have none of it. Part of being a parent is knowing when to pick your battles, so we dressed Hashem in a blue-and-white shirt and tan pants and headed off to the reception.
In our conversation that evening I explained to the pope that while Jordan had severed its legislative and administrative ties with the West Bank in 1988, we had never renounced our moral and legal responsibility as custodians of the Muslim and Christian holy sites in East Jerusalem, including the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Al Aqsa Mosque. In fact, the Jordanian government still pays the salaries of the civil servants who administer those sites.
“Your Holiness,” I said, “we all hope and pray for peace. And nowhere do we hope for peace more than in Jerusalem, that city holy to three great religions.”
Two days later, on Sunday, May 10, Rania and I drove to the Baptism Site on Bethany beyond the Jordan, where we met the pope, who had just said mass for some fifty thousand Christians gathered in and around Amman stadium from Jordan and all over the Middle East, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and the West Bank. Sunday is the start of the workweek in Jordan, but in honor of the pontiff’s visit, all Christians were given the day off. Although it is not widely known in the West, we have in Jordan a small but thriving Christian community that is perhaps the oldest in the world. Its head—or, rather, the head of its largest denomination—is the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. His church is an Apostolic church, which means that it dates back to the first Christian community in the years of the Apostles, and he is the direct spiritual descendant of Saint James, the first bishop of Jerusalem, in Jesus Christ’s own lifetime. Christians constitute around 3 percent of our population, and they participate in all aspects of life. In fact, by law, around 8 percent of the members of our parliament are Christian.
The Baptism Site is Jordan’s most important Christian site. It is here on the East Bank of the River Jordan (“beyond the Jordan,” according to John 3:26) that John the Baptist baptized Jesus and where Jesus’s mission started and Christianity began. The “Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing” (John 1:28), is one of the most important holy Christian sites in the world, together with the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. We have preserved the site in its natural state as best we can, and at the same time have given land there for Christians to build churches. The site attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year and was visited by both Pope John Paul II in 2000 and Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. It is the most significant among many places in Jordan that are of relevance to Old and New Testament events, as well as events in subsequent Christian history. In Rihab, in northern Jordan, archaeologists have found the remains of a church that they believe may be one of the oldest in the world, dating back to the first century after Christ. There is the church in Madaba, with its important sixth-century Byzantine mosaic map of the Holy Land. And going back over three thousand years is Mount Nebo, a mountain north of Madaba that is the place where Moses saw the Promised Land and where his body was buried.
At around 5:30 p.m., Rania, Pope Benedict, some of our advisers, and I got into a large motorized buggy and rode down to the Baptism Site, where the pontiff blessed the foundation stones of two churches, one Latin, the other Greek Melkite.
Jordan’s religious tolerance and diversity come as a surprise to many in the West. I remember when in July 2005, Tom DeLay, a member of a movement called the Christian Zionists, who are strong supporters of the state of Israel and oppose the creation of a Palestinian state, visited Jordan as part of a trip to the Middle East. We met in my father’s old house in Amman, and DeLay, Republican majority leader in the U.S. Congress at that time, wasted no time in telling me what was on his mind. “I am very concerned about the treatment of Christians in Jordan,” he said. As it happened, a few of the Jordanians who were with me in the room were Christian, and they began to smile. Oblivious to this, DeLay grabbed my hand and said, “Do you believe in Jesus?” looking earnestly into my eyes. “I believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah,” I replied, freeing my hand from his grasp. In fact, all Muslims believe in Jesus as the Messiah and revere him as a Spirit of God and as the Word of God as well as a great prophet and messenger of God. “Listen,” I said, “if you’re worried about Christians in Jordan, you can ask around here—some of the people by my side in this room are Christian.” Then I told him how Jordan takes very seriously its responsibility of protecting Christian rights within Jordan, and also in Jerusalem. I am not certain that DeLay understood or accepted my assurances. I do know that his delegation included no Muslims. Just a few months after his visit to Jordan, DeLay, a vocal evangelical, was indicted by a grand jury in Texas on charges of money laundering and violating campaign finance laws. He subsequently resigned as House majority leader and later gave up his seat in Congress.
But the pope was well aware of Jordan’s diversity. His visit was a joyous time, and a celebration of Jordan’s religious tolerance. It came at a very good time, and the pope’s message of peace and spiritual reconciliation between Christians, Muslims, and Jews complemented our efforts in the political sphere to bring about a political reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. It was hard to miss the significance of the pope’s religious pilgrimage, which started in Jordan and ended in Jerusalem, by way of the West Bank. His visit helped inspire all of us who were searching for peace. And we needed that inspiration, for the path to peace had been riddled with potholes and perilous detours.
PART VI
Chapter 24
The End of an Era
I
sraeli prime minister Ariel Sharon had been in office for three years by the time we first met. His policies in the West Bank and Gaza had created so much tension in the region that it had been politically almost impossible for us to meet earlier. But in early 2004 I invited Sharon to Jordan in an effort to break the stalemate in the peace process. He flew into Amman by helicopter, landing at the headquarters of the General Intelligence Department.
A man with a fearsome reputation, Sharon had served in the Haganah, the Jewish underground resistance that fought Palestinians and later became part of the Hebrew Resistance Movement against the British. He led Israeli Special Forces Unit 101, conducting clandestine raids against Arab targets, and was involved in the attack on Qibya in 1953, when scores of Palestinian civilians were killed. Sharon was infamous across the region for allowing the massacre of some eight hundred Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. No Arab will ever be able to forget the searing images of the slaughtered mothers and children of Sabra and Shatila.
Extremists will always criticize me for meeting with Israeli leaders, especially those with a history of violence like Sharon, who to most Arabs is a mass murderer and a war criminal. But leaders do not have the luxury of choosing their counterparts. I do not get to choose the Israeli prime minister. Only the Israeli people can do that. But I can choose how Jordan behaves toward its neighbors and decide how to build upon my father’s legacy of peace. Although there might be some emotional satisfaction in refusing to meet Sharon, it would be short-lived and self-defeating.
We had invited Sharon to Jordan because we felt it was essential to somehow reboot the peace process. I had strongly objected to many of his actions and policies, and I hoped to persuade him that the only way to ensure lasting security for Israel was to forge a peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. My father had interacted with Sharon when he was a minister in the Netanyahu government in the late 1990s and had passed along an insight into his character. He had told me that if Sharon committed himself to something, he would stick to it. He was a man who kept his word.
Although I did not know Sharon personally, I had benefited from the respect he held for my father, and for Jordan. As I sat opposite him in a meeting room at GID headquarters, I told him that my father had said he was a man who would keep his word. So that was how I wanted to begin the relationship, I said.
Sharon seemed shy and somewhat reserved and kept looking down as he spoke. “I care about the security of Israel,” he said, “but I also care about the safety and security of Jordan.”
I knew that the true national interest of Jordan, and of Israel, would be served only by reaching peace between Israel and the Palestinians. I tried to convince him of this, but by the end of the meeting, after a lengthy discussion of Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories and the need to take effective steps to create an environment conducive to the resumption of serious peace negotiations, I was quite certain that Sharon did not share my view.
Our next encounter, on March 19, was a secret meeting at his ranch in the Negev Desert. By inviting me to his personal farm, where his wife was buried, Sharon was sending me the message that he was a friend to Jordan and hoped to put old hostilities behind us. Times were very tense. The construction by Israel of the wall dividing the West Bank had begun, and the belief in the region was that the Bush administration wanted to bring about “regime change” in the Palestinian Authority and had little interest in getting the parties back to the negotiating table. All the while, Israel was building more illegal settlements in the West Bank and consolidating its hold on the Occupied Territories. The settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem stood at around 265,000 at the time the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. The number had risen to about 365,000 in 2000, and to over 400,000 in 2003. This growth was a reflection of the fact that Israel never stopped building new settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a politically incendiary move. The building of new settlements was alarming not just because they were eating away at land that should belong to the future Palestinian state, but also because it was a clear indication that Israel was not committed to a two-state solution.
We had gone to Sharon’s ranch to discuss his recent proposal to pull Israeli troops out of the Gaza Strip and some parts of the West Bank. I told him that any such move should be coordinated with the Palestinian leadership and the Egyptians, and that it should be the beginning of a comprehensive Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territory. It should not simply be a unilateral withdrawal by Israeli forces so as to transfer Israeli settlers from Gaza to other locations in the West Bank. I felt as though we were making some progress in building a working relationship that could ultimately help push the peace efforts forward. But in my neighborhood, appearances can be deceptive.
One of the problems with the Israeli government is that everything leaks. Although our meeting was supposed to be secret, a confidence-building measure that would allow us to discuss ways of moving toward a settlement with the Palestinians, news of the trip was leaked to the Israeli press. Shortly afterward the Israelis assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the head of Hamas, with a Cobra gunship as he was leaving a mosque in Gaza. Nine innocent people were killed along with the blind, wheelchair-bound Yassin. The assassination of a quadriplegic in his seventies seemed heartless even by Israeli standards. I was infuriated by the murder of Yassin and knew it would open up another cycle of violence. But I was also furious because the operation had taken place so soon after my visit. The next month the Israelis assassinated Yassin’s successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, sparking renewed violence in the West Bank and Gaza. The Americans did not condemn either assassination and vetoed a UN resolution doing so.
Israelis often, whether on purpose or not, seem to schedule important diplomatic meetings a few days before conducting controversial operations. One recent example was the meeting between Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert in December 2008, a few days before the Gaza war started. Erdogan was furious. He felt the Israeli government was trying to create the impression that he had given his tacit consent to the Gaza attack.
The assassination of Sheikh Yassin was emblematic of the morass of Middle East conflict: one side acts rashly and the other overreacts in return. The path to peace is littered with roadside bombs. The only law that is followed is one whose logic leads to unintended consequences. After the Israelis assassinated Rantisi, Hamas had to find another leader. Who did they turn to? None other than Jordan’s former guest, Khaled Meshaal.