King Hussein pays `first visit to Palestine'

KING HUSSEIN of Jordan yesterday paid his first visit to the West Bank since Israel captured the territory from the kingdom during the 1967 war.

He described it as his "first visit to Palestine", reasserting previous declarations that he no longer considered the tiny town and the West Bank part of his kingdom.

The king made this visit at the invitation of the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mr Yasser Arafat, and was received with the pomp and circumstance befitting the visit of the Hashemite monarch to the authority's headquarters at Jericho.

It was also the first visit of an Arab ruler to the Palestinian self-rule enclaves and was meant, in the view of Jordan's Information Minister, Mr Marwan Muasher, to be "a very strong show of support for Mr Arafat" at a time when the peace process has stalled because of the refusal of the Likud government to implement agreements signed by Israel under the previous Labour administration.

The visit symbolised a definitive end to the Hashemite connection with the West Bank, begun at Jericho in 1949 when the Palestinians, defeated and driven into exile by Israel, asked the king's grandfather to absorb the West Bank into his kingdom.

It signified reconciliation between the king and the Palestinian leader, who have long been antagonists due to the Hashemite-Palestinian civil war in Jordan in 1970-71 and, more recently, because of Mr Arafat's secret peace deal with Israel.

In 1988, when asked what sort of political solution they preferred, only 3 per cent of the Palestinians of the West Bank opted for a return to Jordanian rule. This vote of no-confidence led the king to renounce the West Bank and prompted the PLO to declare Palestinian independence in November 1988.

Consequently, by speaking of "Palestine" and accepting the hospitality of Mr Arafat, the king once again told Israel's rightwingers that he was not prepared to act as a substitute for the Palestinian Authority and resume control over the West Bank in a condominium with Israel.

By meeting the Palestinian leader and co-ordinating policy the king signified that he had joined Mr Arafat and the Egyptian President, Mr Hosni Mubarak, in a tripartite alliance of Israel's dissatisfied partners in peace.

The king, who had a warm personal partnership with Israel's Labour leaders and had concluded a defence pact with Israel, was driven to take this drastic step by his own subjects who have grown increasingly critical of his toleration of Israeli procrastination over the expansion of Palestinian self-rule.

Indeed, 38 virtually all loyalists and opposition of Jordan's political parties demanded he terminate relations with the Jewish state.