Former confidante of Jordan’s King Hussein calls for non-violent end to Israel-Gaza war

Mustafa Hamarneh tells The National that people on both sides who want to co-exist could create a 'paradigm shift'

History professor Mostafa Hamarneh, member of the Jordanian Senate, and former confidante of the late King Hussein, at his home south of Amman. Khaled Yacoub Oweis / The National

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Arabs and Jews and all those who believe in coexistence must start working together to create a “paradigm shift" that alters a balance of power needed to end the Israel-Palestine conflict, Jordan senator Mustafa Hamarneh has said.

The only way to save the region from the current “mess” is a bottom-up effort to amend the support Israel still has in western countries, Dr Hamarneh, a top social sciences researcher and confidante of King Hussein, said in an interview at his villa near Amman on Thursday. A victory for the Democrats in the US presidential elections in November "would help build alliances in support of the Palestinians", he said.

Global public opinion has changed since that start of the Israel-Gaza war and a “re-evaluation of the Zionist narrative” in the United States, especially among US Jews, could help end the conflict peacefully, he said.

Dr Hamarneh is one of very few Jordanians still advocating engagement with Israelis. But the history professor is also a realist, cautioning that such non-violent coalition could take decades to become politically effective. While some Arab leftists and Israeli marxists "played with these ideas in the 1970s and 1980s", they remained non-starters, he said.

"The only people who are ready for this today are the Palestinians," Dr Hamarneh said. "And because of who they are and what they've been going through, they can lead this process."

When Dr Hamarneh helped King Hussein prepare for Jordan’s participation in the 1991 Madrid Conference, it was difficult to imagine that Israel's leadership could turn more right wing. The first Palestinian uprising was continuing as the meeting for a Middle East settlement convened in the Spanish capital. Israel’s prime minister, the Likud leader Yitzhak Shamir, participated because of pressure by US President George H.W Bush.

Washington wanted long-term stability in the region after a US-led coalition expelled Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait in the Gulf War.

In 1992, Labour leader Yitzhak Rabin replaced Mr Shamir as prime minister. The two men had a long military and political career, but Mr Rabin grew more receptive to peace. He concluded the interim 1993 Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat, and a peace treaty with Jordan a year later. Both agreements were a result of the Madrid process, although Oslo was negotiated in secret.

“Israel did produce peacemakers back then", compared to the current government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of "only murderers and killers", pursuing the Gaza war, Dr Hamarneh said.

Violence must stop

While the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement needs to be strengthened, as part of pressure on Israel to halt its use of violence, the Palestinian armed struggle would also need to stop to attract Israelis to the alliance, Dr Hamarneh said. After he advised King Hussein on the strategy for Madrid, Dr Hamarneh became head of the Centre of Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, a position he held for 15 years.

After Mr Netanyahu formed his first government in the second half of the 1990s, most members of “the pro-peace camp in Jordan literally went underground", Dr Hamarneh said. "They could not defend their position vis-a-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict within the policies implemented by Netanyahu", who accelerated settlement expansion and land seizures.

Mr Netanyahu's ascendancy as the dominant political figure in Israel has tarnished the reputation of Israel as a whole, although the country is not monolithic, he said.

"If anybody today in Amman or Cairo invites Illan Pappe or Gideon Levy or Amira Hass, we'll be subjected to tremendous pressure and accusations of being zionists or imperialist lackeys," he said, referring to Mr Pappe, an Israeli historian whose 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians was translated to Arabic, and journalists Mr Levy and Ms Hass, who reported extensively on Palestinian plight.

“On the other hand, the Zionists used the bombings [by Hamas and other militant groups] as a further testament that the Arabs and the Palestinians don't want peace, but annihilation, which was not the case,” Dr Hamarneh said, cautioning that members of the traditional Left in Israel had also become wary of peace after the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, which killed 1,200 civilians.

The death toll from the Israeli invasion of Gaza stands at 42,000, according to health officials in the Hamas-ruled territory.

Dr Hamarneh, who has degrees in economics and history, and has taught in Washington, spoke in a straightforward voice. Opinion polls and data collection he conducted over 15 years at the Centre of Strategic Studies have become a rare independent barometer of conditions in the country.

In 2000, permanent status talks stipulated by the Oslo deal failed, following an impasse after deadlock between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barack, then the Israeli prime minister. The second Palestinian uprising erupted in the same year and no progress has been made since.

“We need to move forward now, and all those people who share the same values of living in peace together need to form alliances to implement this vision,” Dr Hamarneh said. "Ultimately we will definitely be on the right side of history. Our message is a human, nonviolent and not rooted in any bigoted ideologies."