Jordanian King Hussein`s declaration that he is ditching Yasser Arafat as a partner in the search for a Middle East peace has left West Bank Palestinians indignant, depressed and fearful of internecine violence.
Hussein`s speech, broadcast over Jordanian television Wednesday night and closely monitored by Palestinians here, jolted the West Bank after a year of hope.
Long-standing divisions between Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization had been muted by the February, 1985, agreement between Hussein and Arafat to work together toward peace. Now those divisions are resurfacing with Hussein`s scrapping of the agreement.
”No Palestinian leader will accept an alternative to the PLO,” said Mustafa Natsche, the deposed mayor of Hebron, a hotbed of Palestinian nationalist sentiment in the West Bank.
Significantly, most other West Bank leaders refused to comment on Hussein`s speech, and the few who agreed to be interviewed asked that their names not be used. Many spoke of confusion and distress in the wake of the king`s address and a sense of another opportunity for peace evaporating.
There were also fears that the king`s speech would ignite a round of PLO violence in the West Bank as Arafat`s lieutenants sought to discourage any moves to fall behind the king and strove to maintain the PLO`s dominant position against rival Palestinian groups.
Natsche called Arafat`s demand that the United States recognize the Palestinian right to self-detetmination ”a just condition” for the PLO`s agreement to acknowledge Israel`s existence and thereby enter into peace talks.
His sentiments were echoed by other pro-PLO leaders and ordinary residents, who rejected Hussein`s bid to appeal over Arafat`s head to West Bank Palestinians for negotiations without the PLO leader. One prominent Palestinian called Hussein`s speech ”a slap in Arafat`s face.”
In a clear attempt to calm the atmosphere, an East Jerusalem newspaper editor, Hannah Siniora, chosen last year as a member of a proposed joint Jordanian-Palestinian peace delegation, said Hussein`s speech represented no more than a ”temporary break” in the PLO dialogue with the king. He predicted that contacts would resume after the PLO leadership finished current consultations.
”I believe the February, 1985, agreement will still govern future relationships between Jordan and the Palestinians,” he said.
But Bethlehem`s pro-Jordanian mayor, Elias Freij, said the king`s speech gave West Bank Palestinians, under Israeli occupation for nearly 19 years, an alternative to creeping Israeli annexation and the PLO`s failure to enter into negotiations.
”In the absence of any negotiations, what is the future for the people of the West Bank?” Freij asked. ”(Hussein) has asked these questions very clearly. Now we have to think it over and make up our minds between reality and slogans.”
Meanwhile, signs of a power struggle between pro-PLO elements and radical Palestinian rejectionists emerged as leaflets appeared in the West Bank towns of Ramallah and El Bira. The leaflets warned residents not to comply with an Israeli plan to hand over civil authority to local residents.
Palestinian sources said the leaflets represented the beginning of a rejectionist drive to wrest the West Bank`s shadowy political leadership away from Arafat.
