Part 7 (2/2)

In my remarks I stressed the importance of building unbreakable links between America and the Middle East and spoke of my dreams for King's Academy. ”We want to bring the Deerfield model to the Middle East,” I explained, ”a coed boarding school where faculty and students are close, academic studies greatly encouraged, and life enriched with compet.i.tive sports, lively arts, and real community service.” To give our students the best chance of competing in the modern global economy, we decided that we would follow the American Advanced Placement curriculum, and all teaching would be in English. We would also offer cla.s.ses in cla.s.sical Arabic, grammar, and literature, as well as courses in Middle Eastern politics, religion, and society. I also wanted King's to be coeducational. Although Deerfield was single-s.e.x when I was there, it began admitting girls a few years later, in 1989. I knew that some in the region would object to the idea of educating young girls and boys together, but I was determined that our daughters should have the same opportunities as our sons.

In July 2006, I inducted Dr. Widmer as headmaster in a small ceremony, after which we all ate dinner together in the King's Academy dining hall, seated at round tables to facilitate discussion and interaction, following the Deerfield tradition. The construction team had done a fantastic job, and the 150-acre site contained over twenty buildings and extensive sports fields. There was a theater, a dining hall, a gymnasium, a library, boys' and girls' dorms, and a spiritual center. The adobe-walled, red-tiled buildings were st.u.r.dy and elegant. Now all we needed was people to fill them.

For the next year, Eric Widmer and his team worked tirelessly to hire faculty, many from the United States with boarding school backgrounds, supervise the construction, set up the admissions process, and receive applications for the first entering cla.s.s. They traveled across the Middle East, describing and explaining the idea of a coed boarding school, with instruction in English, to worried mothers and skeptical fathers. Because the idea of a boarding school-and a coeducational one at that-was so new to the region, some parents were wary. But many others saw the potential for their children's futures.

Setting up a new inst.i.tution from scratch is never easy, but Eric and his team pulled off miracles. They scoured the globe and put together a team of some of the finest teachers imaginable. They also managed to develop the curriculum and instill something less tangible: the ethos of the inst.i.tution. Deerfield has had more than two centuries to develop the ”Deerfield Way.” But at King's, Eric was creating new traditions as he went.

King's Academy opened on August 29, 2007. As bagpipers played, faculty and trustees gathered in a courtyard on the campus and said a few words to mark the beginning of the first term. There were 106 students in the entering cla.s.s, from Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, and several Arabian Gulf countries. There were also students from the United States and from as far afield as Taiwan. The sixty-six boys and forty girls were divided between the ninth and tenth grades, with both full-time boarders and day students, most of whom were commuting from Amman. The following year, over 150 new students arrived in August for the start of the new school year, bringing the total to over 250, still split 60 to 40 percent between boys and girls. Among the group were representatives of twenty-one nationalities, including new arrivals from Iraq and Afghanistan. And in August 2009, King's opened with 400 students from twenty-four countries.

Among the entering students was my eldest son, Hussein. Like all parents, we want the best education for our children, and I considered sending him overseas to be educated, as I had been. But as a parent, it was too hard to send my son away, and thankfully, there was now a local school where he could have an education rivaling the one I received in America.

Although it is never entirely possible in Jordan for members of the royal family to lead a normal life, Hussein has had to learn to make his bed and share a bathroom, and to wait on tables for other students. The first weekend he came back home, Rania, the other children, and I were all waiting eagerly to see him; we had missed not having him around the house. As soon as he got through the door, he said, ”Hi, I have homework to do, so I'll see you all later.” Hussein going to do his homework? That was a shocker.

One of my aims for the school was to have a diverse student body, representing not just different countries but also varied economic backgrounds. Some of my closest friends at Deerfield were there on scholars.h.i.+p, and I saw the value to the school and society of helping able young men and women rise as high as their talents would take them. We were able to offer almost half the students need-based financial aid. This enabled the school to accept the brightest students, regardless of their backgrounds. We decided that the top student in each of the twelve governorates of Jordan, plus the top student from the refugee camps, would be given a scholars.h.i.+p. I personally provided scholars.h.i.+ps at King's for some thirty students, known as King's Scholars, who were given a spending stipend, and took a particular interest in their development. Proving that poverty is no indicator of intelligence, in 2008 as much as 70 percent of the honor roll comprised children on scholars.h.i.+p. These are young men and women who are reaching the potential their extraordinary talents deserve.

Inside the school, the students are treated equally: in the honored Deerfield tradition they take turns waiting tables in the dining hall and are required to wear the same uniform of blazer, tie, and slacks. But outside the school walls, many enjoyed opportunities that those there on scholars.h.i.+ps did not. With this in mind, I organized a camping trip for the thirty scholars.h.i.+p students whom I had personally sponsored. I took them to Wadi Rum, a series of ma.s.sive dry river valleys that run for some eighty miles through the desert near Aqaba.

One of Jordan's best-known natural features, Wadi Rum was described by T.E. Lawrence as ”vast and echoing and G.o.d-like.” The tallest rock walls rise some thousand feet above the desert, and above them is Jabal Rum, at over five thousand feet the second highest mountain in Jordan. We flew low over the rock formations and headed for the campsite deep in the heart of a ma.s.sive valley.

We had set up a camp with tents and brought in all-terrain vehicles, various games, and a shooting range. As the sun set, the students gathered around fires and we cooked lamb in the traditional manner, burying it in the desert sand, lighting a wood fire above the buried meat, and roasting it slowly. After dinner I sat cross-legged in the sand and all thirty students gathered around the fire. Among them was a Kurdish girl from Iraq, an orphaned girl from Afghanistan, a Pakistani girl, and Jordanian students from all over the country. We sat by the fire and talked for three hours, in Arabic and in English. The students asked me questions on every topic imaginable, from what it is like to be a king to Middle Eastern politics. I told each of them that I would help them with college and, for those students not from Jordan, said that I hoped afterward that they would use their new knowledge to help their countries. They promised enthusiastically that they would. I barely had a chance to take a bite of the dinner. The conversation and the sophistication and focus of these kids were electrifying. I turned to Gig, who had accompanied me on the trip, and said, ”I don't care what it takes, just find me more of these kids. The investment in them will come back to Jordan and the region a hundredfold.”

Finally, everyone went to bed. The next morning we were up at dawn, and again I spent many hours talking and debating with the students. The enthusiasm, dedication, and pa.s.sion for learning these young people showed were remarkable. In the course of my duties as king, I meet many inspirational people, but that camping trip with King's Academy students was the highlight of my year.

In June 2010, I was full of pride as I handed out graduation certificates to the eighty-four students of King's first cla.s.s of seniors. All of them were going on to university. Fourteen would be pursuing their education at some of the best schools in the Middle East, ten would be attending universities in the UK, and nine would be studying in Canada. A full forty-four graduates had enrolled in American universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and Georgetown.

I know that every one of them will be well equipped to go out into the world and do remarkable things. I can only hope that they built the same strong bonds of friends.h.i.+p as I did at Deerfield, and that the seeds planted there in the desert will blossom into a new generation of leaders who will spread the message of hard work, intellectual curiosity, and tolerance throughout the region.

Sadly, one of my scholars was not among the graduating cla.s.s. Ahmad Tarawneh was a young man from Kerak, who had never studied in English before. He was one of the best students in his cla.s.s and was planning to apply to a top university in the West to study engineering, until he died in a tragic car accident only two months before his graduation. I felt as if I had lost one of my own sons.

We remembered Ahmad at the graduation ceremony. My fellow Deerfield cla.s.smates had offered King's a trophy to be presented as the King Abdullah II Award to the student who most embodies King's guiding principles of respect, love of learning, responsibility, an integrated life, and global citizens.h.i.+p. The award was given posthumously to Ahmad.

The school remains one of my proudest achievements. The copyright for the English-language edition of this book has been transferred to King's Academy and the proceeds from the sale of the book will support its scholars.h.i.+p fund for needy students.

PART IV.

Chapter 17.

Jerusalem at the Heart of Conflict On May 17, 1999, as I was about to embark on my first visit to the United States as king, Israelis went to the polls. Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the peace process had stalled badly, and we all hoped that a new Israeli leader would bring new momentum. The previous year in Was.h.i.+ngton, Netanyahu and Arafat had signed what was intended to be a framework to advance the peace process, the Wye River Memorandum. Supported by my ailing father in the last months of his life, the Wye Accords, which provided for further Israeli withdrawals, in stages, from the West Bank, seemed to represent a breakthrough. But seven months later, after completing only one of the three stages of withdrawal, Netanyahu was stalling, twisting, and turning, and any further progress based on Wye was essentially halted. In Jordan and across the Arab world, we hoped that a change of prime minister might revive the peace efforts.

A former chief of staff of the Israeli army and Israel's most decorated officer, Ehud Barak was riding high in the polls. He had been in the Special Forces, and when he left the army and went into politics, he took on the challenge of peacemaking. Barak won a landslide electoral victory. The results were announced as I was meeting with President Clinton in the White House. We were both optimistic that he would succeed where Netanyahu had failed and take bold action to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In April 2000, I went to Israel for my first official visit. I had been scheduled to go two months earlier but postponed the trip when Israel arbitrarily struck targets in southern Lebanon. My delegation went by boat from Aqaba to Eilat, where we were met by Barak, who led us on a tour of a fishery and then took us for a working lunch at a local hotel. We discussed the final status talks that, under the Sharm El Sheikh Accord of September 1999, were to lead to a comprehensive agreement. I told Barak that if he wanted relations to improve between Israel and Jordan, he would have to make substantial progress with the Palestinians.

As the Clinton administration neared the end of its term, the Israeli prime minister was seriously engaged in efforts to create an atmosphere that would enable Israelis and Palestinians to develop a lasting peace. The summer of 2000 was a period of intense diplomatic activity surrounding the peace process. In May, Ehud Barak withdrew Israel's forces from southern Lebanon, which they had occupied for almost two decades. But the withdrawal was not complete; Israel maintained its hold on the area of Shebaa Farms and a few other small Lebanese territories. Had Israeli troops withdrawn completely from Lebanon, we might not have seen further conflict later on. The decision to stop just one step short of total withdrawal was an unfortunate and costly hedge.

In a nod to the famous negotiations between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin at Camp David in 1978, President Clinton invited Barak and Arafat to a summit at Camp David in July. The aim was to accelerate progress on the peace talks, which were faltering, and to strive to reach a final agreement. Shortly before they left for America, I met separately with each leader.

I reminded both men of how hard my father had worked with President Clinton and how much he had sacrificed to move the peace process forward. Clinton had decided to go for the great prize. He wanted to cut out the remaining intermediary steps in Israel's phased withdrawal from the West Bank and to hammer out terms that both Israelis and Palestinians could accept for the creation of a Palestinian state. I told them that we should not miss this historic opportunity.

As Arafat and Barak headed to Camp David on July 11, they carried with them the hopes of all the peoples of the region for a peaceful settlement to a conflict that has defined our part of the world for more than sixty years. Unfortunately, those hopes were not realized. Over fourteen days of negotiations at Camp David, the two sides came closer than they ever have, before or since, to a lasting peace. But they could not take the final step. Of the four final status issues that they addressed, Jerusalem and the status of Palestinian refugees were the most difficult and contentious.

Barak presented a package that represented an advance on any previous Israeli proposal, but for the Palestinian negotiators it fell short. Under his proposals, Israel would permanently retain over 10 percent of the West Bank and would control a further 10 percent for a period of twenty years. The return of refugees was treated in the context of a family reunification program and excluded the issue of the Palestinian right of return (the right of Palestinians who were evicted or fled in 1948 and 1967 to return to their homes). On the critical issue of Jerusalem, the Palestinians were offered only administrative authority over the holy sites in the Old City, far less than the full sovereignty that they sought over East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians wanted a breakthrough, but Arafat felt he could not sign an agreement that would sacrifice the rights of over five million Palestinian refugees and give Israel control over East Jerusalem.

Although Barak and Arafat showed great courage, the finger-pointing started almost immediately after that. In the end their negotiations broke down and the summit ended in failure on July 25. In subsequent months Palestinian frustrations would grow, as the Israelis' interest in coming to terms with the Palestinians waned. Ehud Barak would soon be up for election again, and his willingness to give back territories in the West Bank was not well received by the Israeli public. Then Ariel Sharon lit a match that would set the region ablaze. In a sense it was to be expected that Jerusalem would be the flashpoint for the incident that triggered a second Palestinian uprising and finally dashed the hopes of peace.

Jerusalem has always had a special place in the Arab heart. It is a city holy to the three great monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and in part because of this it has often been the cause of conflict. It has been conquered many times in its history. Some of its occupiers brought great bloodshed. But Islam came to the city with great dignity.

In the seventh century, the forces of the Muslim Caliph, who was then based in Mecca, laid siege to Jerusalem, which was under the control of the Byzantine Empire. When the city finally surrendered, Caliph Omar bin al-Khattab entered on foot, accompanied by his servant and a single camel, in recognition of Jerusalem's status as a city of peace. He was invited by the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, to pray in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, but he refused, fearing that if he did Muslims would turn the church into a mosque. Instead, he went to visit Al Aqsa, then in ruins, from which the Prophet Mohammad had alighted into the heavens on the night of Ascension. Omar ordered a mosque to be built over this site, and signed a treaty that guaranteed Christians protection and the right of wors.h.i.+p. The Pact of Omar, as quoted by Abdul Latif Tibawi in his book Jerusalem: Its Place in Islam and Arab History Jerusalem: Its Place in Islam and Arab History, reads: In the Name of G.o.d, the Compa.s.sionate, the Merciful, this is what the slave of G.o.d, Umar, bin al-Khattab, the Amir of the believers, has offered the people of Aelia (Jerusalem), of security granting them protection of their selves, their money, their churches, their children, their lowly and their innocent, and the remainder of their people. Their churches are not to be taken, nor are they to be destroyed, nor are they to be degraded or belittled, neither are their crosses or their money, and they are not to be forced to change their religion, nor is any one of them to be harmed.

Not all rulers of Jerusalem have been quite so compa.s.sionate. In the late eleventh century, Pope Urban II called for the recapture of Jerusalem. Knights and their followers gathered from all over Europe and marched toward the Holy Land, in what came to be known as the First Crusade. In 1099, when Jerusalem finally fell, the Crusaders entered the city and slaughtered thousands of its Jewish, Muslim, and Orthodox Christian defenders, including many Muslims who had taken shelter in the Al Aqsa Mosque.

The Crusaders didn't last long and were kicked out of Jerusalem less than a hundred years later. After that, the city remained in Muslim hands for more than seven hundred years. When the Ottoman Turks were pushed out, after World War I, responsibility for the city fell upon my family, the Hashemites, and the people of Jerusalem p.r.o.nounced their allegiance to my great-great-grandfather, Al Hussein bin Ali. In 1948 Jordanian forces under my great-grandfather, King Abdullah I, managed to protect the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from the new state of Israel. Later, in 1950, the West Bank became part of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan under the Act of Union in accordance with the declaration of the Jericho Conference. One year later, my great-grandfather was a.s.sa.s.sinated on a visit to Jerusalem, with my father standing next to him. When my father became king, he inherited both the Hashemite family's responsibility as guardians of the holy city of Jerusalem and his great-grandfather's legacy of a unified West Bank. My father was emotionally attached to Jerusalem for religious and family reasons. He did his utmost to fulfill his responsibility as guardian and protector of the city and its holy shrines. Even after the Israelis seized East Jerusalem in 1967, Moshe Dayan, the Israeli defense minister, agreed that the holy sites should continue to be administered by the Jordanian government, through a religious trust called the waqf.

It is difficult to overstate Jerusalem's significance to Muslims. Chapter Seventeen of the Holy Quran describes the miracle of Isra and Miraj, when the angel Gabriel took the Prophet Mohammad from Mecca to Jerusalem. The Foundation Stone, housed under the Dome of the Rock, marks the place from which the Prophet ascended to the heavens on that night to be shown the signs of G.o.d. There he met the prophets who had come before him, led them in prayer, and was returned to Mecca.

In the early days of Islam, all Muslims faced Jerusalem when they prayed. In time, the Prophet Mohammad was instructed by G.o.d to s.h.i.+ft the direction to Mecca. The Prophet Mohammad proclaimed that religious pilgrimages should be restricted to the mosques in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, and that a prayer in Jerusalem was worth hundreds elsewhere. The area around Al Aqsa Mosque that includes the Dome of the Rock came to be known as Al Haram Al Sharif, or n.o.ble Sanctuary.

In Arabic, we call Jerusalem Al Quds, ”The Holy One.” The city's loss to Israel in 1967 shocked Arabs and Muslims around the world. The anger and sadness over the occupation of Jerusalem by Israel was expressed in angry demonstrations as well as poetic and artistic expressions. The famous Lebanese singer Fairouz captured the hearts of millions of Arabs when she mourned the loss of the ”flower of cities” in a song that continues to mesmerize audiences today. For Arabs, Jerusalem is also a symbol of the Arab nationalist uprising led by my great-great-grandfather Sharif Hussein.

My father always retained a special place in his heart for Jerusalem. He sold his house in London in the early 1990s so that he could repair the gold covering on the Dome of the Rock. I am proud, too, of the work done by Jordanian engineers and craftsmen in constructing and installing in Al Aqsa Mosque in 2007 a replica of the Salaheddin Minbar, a decorated pulpit from which imams have delivered their sermons for centuries. The minbar was burned down in 1969 when a radical Zionist planted a firebomb in the mosque.

I take very seriously my responsibility to preserve the Arab ident.i.ty of Jerusalem and protect its holy sites. But Jerusalem's ident.i.ty is being threatened by Israeli unilateral measures, which aim to drive Muslims and Christians out of the city. Jerusalem is a tinderbox that could ignite the whole region and inflame pa.s.sions around the globe. We have repeatedly warned Israelis that terrible consequences will come from their actions in Jerusalem, which include excavation works that threaten Muslim and Christian holy sites, the building of settlements, and the demolition of Palestinians' houses, in addition to trying to push Muslim and Christian Jerusalemites out of the city. In every meeting with Israeli officials I warn that Jerusalem is a critically sensitive issue. Unilateral and illegal actions can only deepen the conflict and inflict more suffering on the Palestinians and the Israelis alike. But nothing seems to stop Israeli governments from taking these actions that risk derailing Israel's relations with Jordan and destroying all of our efforts to seek a lasting regional peace.

Sharon, the leader of Likud, did just that when, in September 2000, he announced his plans to visit Al Haram Al Sharif. Jews call this area the Temple Mount. They believe that the First and Second Temples were built on that site, and some hold that the Temple Mount will be the site of the Third Temple, whose construction will herald the coming of the Messiah. But some Israeli zealots do not want to wait any longer for the coming of the Messiah. A radical group that calls itself the Temple Mount Faithful, led by an Israeli officer, Gershon Salomon, has called for the demolition of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock and their removal to Mecca, so that the Third Temple can be erected in their place.

Many Muslims saw Sharon's planned visit as evidence that the ideas of the Temple Mount Faithful had entered mainstream Israeli politics. Arafat argued that he should not be allowed to enter the holy complex. Sharon ignored the protests, and on September 28, 2000, he entered Al Haram Al Sharif compound with a group of Likud members. Protected by around one thousand Israeli riot police and in disregard of the sensitivities of Muslims worldwide, he walked across the site as an angry group of Palestinians protested this incursion into one of Islam's holiest sites.

The next day the Palestinians' reaction to Sharon's provocation escalated. In violent clashes at least four Palestinians were killed and over two hundred wounded by the Israeli forces. After that, the situation quickly spiraled out of control. The violent demonstrations spread from East Jerusalem across the West Bank and Gaza. On September 30, at the Netzarim Junction in Gaza, an incident occurred that horrified the world. A carpenter, Jamal Dura, and his twelve-year-old son Mohammed were caught up in a violent clash between Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli army. Trying in vain to take shelter behind a wall, they were showered with bullets. This gruesome scene was filmed and millions watched in shock as Jamal vainly tried to protect his son, who was killed in his arms. Across the Muslim world this image came to symbolize the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In five further days of violence, around fifty Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded. Three Israelis died in the clashes.

The violence sparked by Sharon's visit triggered what came to be known as the Al Aqsa intifada. I condemned Sharon's provocation and argued that the only way to stop the violence was to get back to the negotiating table and to reach an agreement that fulfilled the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to statehood on their national soil, with East Jerusalem as their capital. But Sharon had his own approach.

Some lower-level Israeli-Palestinian talks continued during the fall, but no one put much stock in them. In a final push before leaving office in December 2000, Clinton offered some proposals, which became known as the Clinton Parameters, to address the outstanding issues of settlements, Jerusalem, and refugees.

Clinton proposed an end to the conflict on the basis of a solution that would give 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians, with a land swap of 1 to 3 percent. Four-fifths of Israeli settlers would be in the land kept by Israel. He also proposed that territorial arrangements such as permanent safe pa.s.sage between the West Bank and Gaza be part of the deal. The parameters further stated that Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would take place over three years, during which international forces would be gradually introduced.

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