Middle East Goodbye to All That

For weeks, King Hussein agonized over his decision. He ordered up secret studies to assess the consequences, but still he hesitated. Finally, in mid- July, he made up his mind. Even the few remaining skeptics in his Cabinet had become convinced that action must be taken. As a courtesy, Hussein advised Washington several days in advance that an announcement would be forthcoming.

Then at 8 p.m. on a Sunday evening, Hussein, sitting beneath a portrait of Sharif Hussein, his great-grandfather, went on Jordanian television. Calmly he informed his 3.6 million countrymen that in response to the wishes of both the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Arab states, he was "dismantling the legal and administrative links" between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The announcement struck like an earth tremor, disrupting the status quo in the West Bank and scrambling the assumptions that have underlain talk of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. In Baghdad P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat met late into the night with his advisers; he then imposed a blackout on all official comment and called a meeting of the 451-member Palestine National Council, the P.L.O.'s top decision-making body, later this month to take measure of the King's maneuver. In Jerusalem officials at first brushed off Hussein's announcement, but the Knesset scheduled a special session to discuss the matter. In Washington some officials expressed the belief that Hussein's move killed the already faint hopes for a regional peace plan outlined by Secretary of State George Shultz earlier this year. Others suggested that the King's action might ultimately achieve quite the opposite, namely, produce momentum for a settlement. State Department Spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley captured the confusion by saying, "No jumping to conclusions -- not even inching to conclusions."

In the days after his speech, Hussein maintained a calculated silence, never explaining precisely how far he plans to go toward severing ties with the 800,000 Palestinians who live in the West Bank. Initial speculation centered on the possibility that the King intended to relinquish Jordan's historical / connection to the West Bank, an area that Amman formally ruled from 1950 until 1967, when Israel seized the territory during the Six-Day War. But Hussein insisted in his speech that he was not abandoning the Palestinian cause. His more likely aim: to lay down a challenge to the P.L.O., which has long demanded total control of the West Bank. Should the P.L.O. fail to administrate effectively or to progress toward peace, Hussein in no way foreclosed a future role for Jordan. "It's the put-up-or-shut-up approach," said a Western diplomat in Amman.