West Bank Funds, Services Will Stop : Jordan’s Harsh Measures Seen as Blow to 850,000 Arab Inhabitants

AMMAN, Jordan —  The kingdom of Jordan, implementing a decision by King Hussein to sever its ties to the West Bank, will cut off all funds and relinquish all responsibility for government services in the Israeli-occupied territories, senior Jordanian sources said Monday.

The decision, disclosed one day after Hussein announced he was ceding Jordan’s claims to the West Bank to the Palestine Liberation Organization, was expected to deal a severe economic blow to the territory’s 850,000 Arab inhabitants.

It also came as a major surprise to Amman-based diplomats, who had expected Hussein to at least limit Jordan’s initial disengagement from the West Bank to largely symbolic measures.

But Jordanian officials emphasized that Hussein, who is said to be deeply angered by a wave of PLO-inspired anti-Jordanian sentiment on the West Bank, was determined to respond with more than “empty gestures.”

Formal Announcement

The new move, which one Jordanian official said would be formally announced in a few days, includes a decision to stop paying salaries and stipends to the more than 18,000 Arab civil servants and teachers in the West Bank that Jordan has on its payroll.

“The salaries will be terminated, of course, and this will be announced sometime during the next week,” this official said.

Other measures expected to have a significant impact on the economic and social structure of the West Bank also will be enacted over the coming weeks, the official indicated. He declined to be specific, but rumors are rife that the government will not renew the Jordanian passports that West Bank Arabs carry.

There is also speculation about an imminent Cabinet reshuffling in Amman, in which a number of senior Palestinian officials are expected to lose their posts.

“It will be a complete divorce of this kingdom from the West Bank,” another official said. “We will no longer be responsible for any of the services in the West Bank. The West Bank is Palestine. The East Bank is Jordan.”

The PLO, whose leadership was meeting in Iraq when the Jordanian decision was announced, withheld comment. However, Chairman Yasser Arafat called an emergency meeting of his central council to discuss the Jordanian move, which is seen as posing a severe challenge to the PLO at a time when it is trying to organize financial support for the intifada, the eight-month Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

According to officials here, Arafat was expected to cancel a visit he had been planning to make to Jordan later this week.

However, reports from the Iraqi capital said a senior PLO delegation would probably be sent to Amman within the next day or two to confer with Jordanian officials.

Renouncing his claim to the West Bank in a televised address Sunday night, Hussein asserted that he was bowing to an Arab consensus that had come to view Jordan’s close relationship to the West Bank as “an obstacle to the liberation of occupied Palestinian land” and a challenge to the PLO’s authority there. Jordan, the king contended, was merely bending to the PLO’s own “wishes” by severing its “legal and administrative links” to the West Bank.

But the almost acid sarcasm with which Jordanian officials have been repeating this rationale to reporters over the past few days underscores the fact that the king has presented the PLO with a challenge it can hardly hope to meet.

There is, for instance, almost no hope that the PLO will be able to make up for the estimated $100 million per year that Jordan pumps into the West Bank. Even assuming it can come up with the money, there is even less chance that it will be able to pass it along, for Israel is not likely to let the PLO assume the civil responsibilities Jordan is relinquishing.

For these reasons, diplomats here are still convinced that Hussein is not really renouncing his claim to the West Bank. Rather, they see the king’s moves in the context of a tactical power play meant to force the PLO to come to terms with him.

‘Can’t Fill Jordan’s Shoes’

“It is also meant to remind the Palestinians on the West Bank of Jordan’s contribution to their welfare and therefore its importance,” one diplomat said. “The message is that not even the PLO can fill Jordan’s shoes in the West Bank.”

Other diplomats noted that Jordan reacted similarly in 1974, when an Arab summit meeting in Morocco voted to recognize the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.”

This time, the catalyst was an Arab summit in Algiers last June that agreed, over Jordan’s protests, to funnel all funds for the intifada through the PLO. “The decisions taken in Algiers made us look at things in a different light,” conceded a senior Jordanian official.

“We felt that Jordan might be obstructing or delaying the achievement of Palestinian goals, so we decided to withdraw,” he said.

However, the official maintained that Hussein was not merely re-enacting the Rabat scenario. He said this time the king has gone much further and has taken steps that will be harder to reverse.

Among the decisions already announced by Jordan are the cancellation of a $1.3-billion development plan for the occupied territories and the dissolution of the lower house of Parliament, where half the members had represented the West Bank.

The decision to terminate salaries paid to Palestinians in the occupied territories will not affect some 5,300 retirees who worked for the Jordanian civil administration before 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the Six-Day War, a senior source said.

“They will continue to receive their full pensions. They spent over 20 years with the Jordanian administration, and that is their right,” he said.

However, some 7,000 municipal employees and 11,000 teachers who receive monthly stipends from Jordan will be affected, the official added.