JORDANIAN-ISRAELI PEACE TREATY

Signed on 26 October 1994 by Jordan's King Hussein and Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin at a ceremony on the Israel-Jordan border, attended by U.S. president Bill Clinton. This treaty, the second signed by the Jewish state with an Arab country, put an official end to the state of war existing between Israel and Jordan since 1948.

The principal elements of the accord were an agreement to fix the international border at the 1922 Mandate frontier between Palestine and Transjordan, with minor adjustments; an agreement regarding Jordan River water sharing; an agreement that Palestinian refugees in Jordan would be settled in that country (for which purpose Jordan would receive American aid); an agreement that the Muslim holy sites of Jerusalem would be controlled and maintained by Jordan; and an agreement regarding cross-border trade and economic exchanges. A salient feature of these agreements, to which the Palestinians were not a party, was that in each case the claims of the Palestinians were ignored. The Jordanians had undermined their claims to a share of Jordan River water, to custodianship of the holy sites, and above all to the refugees' right of return. These points were to have been part of the negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians that were to have taken place under the terms of the Oslo Accords and subsequent Declaration of Principles that had been signed the previous year. The Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty was condemned by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and other Palestinian organizations, by Syria, and by Lebanon, and it was extremely unpopular with ordinary Palestinians and other Arabs as well.

SEE ALSO Hussein ibn Talal;Oslo Accords;Rabin, Yitzhak.