Efraim Halevy joined the Mossad in 1961 and became Director of the organisation from 1998 to 2002. He subsequently spent a year as director of the National Security Council. He is generally considered to have played an essential role in the achievement of peace between Israel and Jordan in 1994. Below is a lightly edited transcript of Fathom’s conversation with him.
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Calev Ben-Dor: Let’s begin by setting the scene. The Declaration of Principles between Israel and the PLO (generally referred to as the Oslo Process) was signed in September 1993, and negotiations with Syria begin soon after. There had been an ongoing relationship between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan spanning decades, and several meetings in the 1980s to explore a potential warming of relations. The Gulf War had taken place in 1991, and the King of Jordan, King Hussein’s general siding with Sadaam Hussein of Iraq had left him and the kingdom increasingly isolated, most importantly from the American administration. Within more or less a year after the Israeli-PLO signing, there was a formal peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, something that you details in your book, Man in the Shadows. In that book, you begin that story of the peace agreement with Jordan with a meeting you had with Dennis Ross and the late Martin Indyk, and your Jordanian trip which had preceded and instigated it. What moves the late King Hussein to want to stop proceeding step by step and instead go for a comprehensive peace with Israel? And why are the Americans cautious?
Efraim Halevy: First of all, Hussein saw that things were moving. And it was not only negotiations between the United States and the Palestinians, but also with Syria. When the relationship with Syria was under way, and the Secretary of State Warren Christopher was conducting capital to capital meetings, at one time the question arose of whether the United States would be interested in allowing another process with Jordan to begin. At that time I was asked to meet with the two negotiators of the United States, Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross. I met them one evening at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem after a very rough time they had had with Rabin. After flying in from Damascus, they were exhausted. I told them that I thought that from my contacts with Hussein, he was ripe for an approach to get the animosity between Israel and Jordan to be tackled, and even ultimately to reach a peace treaty.
At that time, Indyk and Ross did not agree with what I was saying, but in the end they agreed that I should approach Hussein. There were two problems that had to be solved – one was the question of the future of Palestine and the question of what happens if we make a peace treaty with the Jordanians, what it means about various issues like the Temple Mount, but also a question of whether Hafez Assad in Syria would agree to have Jordan enter into peace negotiations. That was something which we had to explore in one way or another. When the Americans were en route back to United States, we were able to communicate to them that we had approached Hussein and he was interested. More than that, I thought that if we entered into a negotiation of one kind or another, we would be able to get a passive understanding from Syria that would allow Jordan to enter into a peace treaty with Israel.
Jack Omer-Jackaman: In those negotiations with the Americans, you were very often in the position of putting the Jordanian case. At one point, Ross even asked you whether you work for work in Israel or Jordan. Was that a strange position to be in?
EH: One time, after a long negotiation, King Hussein was able to get an invitation to visit Washington, and the relationship at that time between Washington and Amman was not very close. It was agreed that I would come to Washington, and because the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Itamar Rabinovich was away, I was to be the representative on behalf of Israel (and although I have great respect for him, I’m not sure that things would have gone as well as they did were he to have been there).
The discussions began with Hussein meeting the key people in Washington, and getting somewhat negative answers. He was not only seeking an improvement in the relationship between the two countries, but also military aspects, including aircraft and so forth. One time when I came to Ross, a day before Hussein was ultimately going to see President Clinton, and I told him that I thought it was important to meet the requirements of Hussein. And he said to me, ‘who are you representing, Amman or Israel?’ And I said, ‘I represent both.’
So, he thought it was a good joke, but also maybe a good way of pushing things forward. The result was that after receiving negative answers, it was possible to have a meeting between Hussein and President Clinton. They had lunch. And the main issue Clinton raised was the fact that civilian aircraft the Jordanians used were not American, but French – for him it was very important to get another client for American aircraft. And Hussein agreed to that, which put things in the right direction.
On our way back, we began discussing how to put forward the continuing negotiations with Jordan. And after travelling back on Hussein’s plane to London – he was holidaying there and flew me – I felt we were in a very important state of the negotiation.
By that time, Elyakim Rubinstein, who was the attorney general, was my companion in negotiations with Hussein, and we used to travel together to Amman. But once his role in the negotiations became public – after the ‘Madrid conference’ in Washington where they were negotiating with Syria – Hussein asked him not to come again [because he wanted things to remain secret] because [publicity] would be something that the Jordanians would not like to expose by virtue of having him continuing to be in the two roles, and that’s the way I became the key negotiator in the issues with Hussein.
CBD: We should add that, at this point, you are the number two in the Mossad. So I assume that your identity is not known in Israel, you are just a ‘letter’?
Yes, that is correct. And it also means that after a month it was decided that Hussein would come to Washington and sign the declaration together with the United States, called the Washington Declaration. I was the person who sat in Amman and wrote the wording of the Washington Declaration. It was sent to Rabin, alone, nobody else. And, at the last minute of the draft, Hussein added a chapter dealing with Jerusalem and the role of Hussein in Jerusalem. I told Hussein that I had no authority to negotiate about Jerusalem. He said that if Jerusalem were not included, he would not continue with the negotiations. So I came back and gave it to Rabin, and I thought Rabin would, more or less, throw me out of the room. But he put the documents aside, and he said, ‘okay, thank you. I’ll be in touch with you in a day or two.’ A bit later he called me in, and he had consulted a figure whose name has not been revealed to this very day, and the wording that Israel offered Jordan on Jerusalem was substantially what the King had requested in his wording.
All this was put in place, and although the negotiation on the peace treaty had not yet begun in full, it was agreed a month later that there would be an event in Washington, and we would take the document that I had drafted and that had been approved by Hussein and Rabin and it would be brought to President Clinton to approve.
I was no longer a public figure at that time, and Foreign Minister Peres was not a part of the negotiation – although he at one time visited Hussein and negotiated himself and made an agreement with him which ended up a very bad deal. I boarded the aircraft the day before Rabin was going to arrive in Washington and some of the press saw me on the plane, but didn’t know why I was there. The following day, Rabin came to Washington and the Americans wanted to get the text of the ‘Washington Declaration’. So to get the text of the Declaration, it was necessary to make sure that the Jordanians were in line with us on this. Peres wanted to add his wording, which the Jordanians could not accept. And Prince Hassan, who was the person who was negotiating on behalf of the king, also wouldn’t accept.
There was a reception that evening between the delegations, and the Israeli Ambassador wanted to see the text, and I was not allowed to provide it to him. We all came to the ambassador’s residence. As we left the room of the Ambassador’s Residence – to go to a meeting with the Americans to give them the agreed document with the Jordanians – Rabin, because he wanted to make a point, said [to the press] ‘if you think that I’m the person who’s been negotiating the person you see walking out of the door here [meaning Halevy], he’s the person who’s been doing all the negotiations.’ So the following day, I was on the front page of all the papers, which was to some extent embarrassing, and meant that I would have to leave the Mossad.
When the Washington Declaration was announced on the lawn of the White House, I was sitting in the second or third row, and when the wording on Jerusalem – which was unacceptable to Peres and he didn’t know about it – was read out, the director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was a friend of mine, turned to me and said, ‘how dare you make such an agreement on a document like this. This is not what we agreed on.’ I said, ‘I agreed with whom?’ And he realised that he’d be in trouble [to admit that Israel was discussing Jerusalem with the Palestinians, as that hadn’t been made public]. He responded, ‘an agreement with Yasser Arafat about Jerusalem.’ And I said ‘Well, I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you, but, we have an agreement with the United States concerning the role of the Hashemites on the Temple Mount, which was the key element from their point of view, concerning what Hussein wanted, which was to be the guardian of the Temple Mount all of Islam. And we were able to provide him with that.’
CBD: Connected to that is something which I don’t think enough people talk about – the enmity and rivalry between the Jordanians and Palestinians, especially when it comes to Jerusalem. How did this play out, and to what extent do you think these tensions over the future of the Holy City still exist?
EH: I think that from the point of view of King Abdullah, who I knew quite well, if he were to ‘give up’ the idea of Jordan being the major representative of the Islamic world in Jerusalem, he would not be able to live with this and it would cause very serious problems with Amman.
JOJ: Viewers might not have a sense of just quite how much these things depend on personal relationships and trust. Can you share some examples of this in the Israeli-Jordanian case, and perhaps reflect on how that compared to the Israeli-Palestinian situation in the 1990s?
My relationship with Rabin began when he was ambassador in Washington, and I was the Mossad representative in Washington from 1970-74. He left Washington in March / April 1973, a few months before the Yom Kippur War. But the relationship between us in Washington was a very close one. Due to the necessity of secrecy, all the communications between Prime Minister Golda Meir and Rabin were exchanged through my channel of communication to Mossad. We were very close and became, I would like to say, close friends. And this also had a result that when he became prime minister, and I was deputy head of the Tevel unit within the Mossad which deals with relationships Mossad has with various countries all over the world, he entrusted me with special tasks. The relationship between Rabin and myself was therefore something which I always treasured. But when it came to the negotiations on the peace treaty, he was able to determine what would be the final wording and nobody else. I think he thought it would be a necessity not to renege on an official agreement between him and Hussein. By that time, Hussein’s illness became more pronounced and this was a period of time in which I used to meet him very, very often in Europe or at home and, unfortunately, I saw him gradually withering away. And when he died, I was one of five official representatives of Israel to the funeral.
Hussein was a man for whom I had enormous respect, a person who understood very well the problems of the day to day. Amongst other things he was a pilot. He very much liked to be clothed in the uniform of the Jordanian Air Force. And he was a man true to his word, with whom I have a stream of letters, in which he wrote to me very warmly. And he reached the point where he used to sign them, ‘I am your brother, Hussein.’ These are the kind of things I think that are part of what I take with me as I advance in life, and some of the most poignant experiences I’ve had were with the Jordanian monarchy, including with King Abdullah. So the small little aspects of how you build relationships and how you nurture them and how you in the end realise that these are relationships which are genuine and not just for the sake of doing things the right way. Relationships are not one way tracks. A genuine relationship does not only have to serve you, but also the other person with whom you have it. That I think is no less important than anything else.
I was actually with King Abdullah when Sadaam Hussein was defeated, and we sat together in the room of one of the leading figures in Jordan and watched how the large statue of Saddam Hussein in the centre of Baghdad was brought down.
CBD: Can you share what King Abdullah is thinking when the statue of Saddam Hussein is coming down?
EH: I think he realised that Sadaam Hussein was a very nasty piece of work. And he was not very troubled by the fact that he was brought down. But over the years, we developed relationships with King Hussein and with Abdullah, and the fact of the matter is that when the Iranians tried to use Jordanian air space to attack Israel [in April and October 2024], some of the key missiles that were launched from Iran towards Israel were brought down by the Jordanians. I think they made a major contribution to the defence of Israel in many ways. Not that we want to be too prominent about this, but also because we want to preserve the relationship which we have with Jordan. We have a common border and this is something which is key to security – the longest border Israel has with any country is with Jordan, and the Jordan river is not a very effective river these days, it can be easily crossed. With all due respect, the importance of Jordan, is maybe not sufficiently, appreciated by the powers that be in Jerusalem these days.
CBD: When discussing the peace treaty with Jordan, and the various sensitive topics that needed to be overcome, you later raise the question of the importance of individuals. You write, ‘Did the final outcome prove that history always marches on, regardless of the momentary weaknesses of the figures, that strut its stage or, as I am led to believe, that often history is the victim of the drawbacks of human nature.’ 30 years on, what are your current thoughts on this?
EH: If you look at history closely, Israeli prime ministers have always felt a very deep and serious necessity to have a relationship with the president for the United States. And I think that not all of the presidents of United States were of the same [level of] friendship with Israel, but most were friends of Israel. And I think it’s important to preserve the friendship as we see these days with President Trump. But one has to be invest in this, and I think that these days, the way the relationship between the White House and Jerusalem has been handled is not ideal.
We currently have a problem concerning our status in the region and internationally. There was a very unfortunate derogatory statement by the Prime Minister about China [PM Netanyahu said that Israel would have to do several things “to break loose from this siege that is organised by a few states”, and included China and Qatar]. China today is a very important power, which also has a growing presence in the Middle East, and China has its interests in the Middle East, and has agreements with key countries in the region, and has a presence in Djibouti, alongside many other countries – Italy, France, Britain, Germany, Canada. The Chinese now have one of their biggest bases in the Middle East. And it has a quay for warships, including aircraft carriers, and it also has a very deep presence there. So China is a very important country for us as well. And it was unfortunate to make a statement about China yesterday, and I should imagine that the prime minister of Israel may even regret having said what he said. But since I know the prime minister quite well – I don’t have a relationship with him today but in the past I served him well in serving a relationship with Hussein over many years, and after that with King Abdullah – I don’t want to say something derogatory about the prime minister.
