Lonely Aravah border crossing from Israel to Jordan. A 5 minute solo walk to a place a light year away.
I visited Jordan twice during this period, first on tourism/business then for business only, both times for 3 day periods.
It seems that Jordan has better relations with Israel than with the Palestinian Authority so you must cross either through Aravah near Eilat or Sheikh Hussein near Tiberias. As the Allenby Bridge is not an international crossing point since it’s in a place that isn’t Israel or a Palestinian state, you can’t get a visa at that border or at the Jordanian Embassy in Tel Aviv (until May 1995 as to the Embassy). This is inconvenient as Allenby is half an hour drive from Jerusalem (allow almost an hour with all the passport checks on the roads). Fortunately, you can reenter Israel through Allenby. And frequent travelers can apply for a 5 year multiple entry visa to enter via Allenby from a Jordanian embassy abroad, but not in Amman. I met with the director of the Interior Ministry who would only tell me he didn’t know of the visa and that he was confused with all the changes. The Interior Ministry is the last place to go to find out anything or to get anything (same in Israel). The UPI and Newsweek correspondents crossing the Bridge told me how. By the way, when I visited the second time, I was told by an official at the Jordanian embassy in Tel Aviv I could enter through the Bridge. I was turned back; the Jordanian border patrol has no ability to bend the rules; in Jordan rules are followed if and when they exist. Turns out they did change the rule February 1 and then cancelled the change two days later and didn’t tell anyone. At this point, all the border people there know me since I’ve been screwed with so much.
The root of the problem according to well placed travel industry sources is that King Hussein is trying to choke Jericho (read that “Arafat”) by making it miserable to cross there. Seems self-destructive to me since the only ones being affected are the foreign passport holders. His tourism and interior ministers have been in office for 20 years, were told all the time to maintain the status quo, and are slow to change with the new realities. Since the king trusts them, he either doesn’t know what’s going on or hasn’t found anyone he trusts to replace them.
The Allenby crossing which, sooner or later will exist in both directions, is one of the worst in the world. The Jordanians send a bus once an hour or so and you just sit on it until the driver decides it’s full enough. You could walk the distance but you can’t. Your passport is looked at about 5 times by people within eye distance of each other and on the Israeli side they go through everything with metal detectors and x-rays. Allow between 1-2 hours to cross. (If you’re Palestinian, it’s hell with strip searches and what not.) It’s almost worth it to drive north where it’s more pleasant, cheaper on the exit tax and much faster. The officials on the Israeli side advise the best time to cross Allenby from Israel is 8 am. Shared taxi is $9 to and from Abdo Taxi located just behind the main street across from Damascus Gate.
The second time I had to take a private taxi to the northern crossing from Allenby; one hour and $66 (figure close to 1:45 hours from Jerusalem). There are no shared taxis yet from Jerusalem to the northern crossing. Then an hour and a half to Amman for another $38 (but I shared so it was half that.) The first time I flew Arkia 50 minutes to Eilat ($80 — double for round trip; $40 youths under 29 if seats are available after 7pm the night before), spent some hours walking around there looking at the tremendous boom in hotels that has come up in 11 years. The place is filled with tourists even midweek and there’s plenty of things in the area to do. The airport
is right in the center of town, there is tourist information all around and you can check a bag at the central bus station.
I was curious to see the old Sonesta Hotel which I’d heard so much about, now the Hilton in Taba, and although the border is 5 minutes away, it takes a good 15 minutes to cross with stupid forms to fill out on the Egyptian side. This has basically killed the hotel and it ain’t worth seeing. The hotel may have been interesting 10 years ago but compared with the new hotels in Eilat, it’s nada. Eilat’s waiver of the 17 percent VAT makes it worthwhile to shop and competition among the hotels makes it very reasonable to eat good food. A rib steak at lunch at a top hotel is $12. Isrotel’s Royal Beach Hotel is gorgeous but quite expensive at over $200 a night. The area is naturally scenic and restful and very tourist-friendly.
Arrived at the Arava crossing point approximately 4:30 pm Monday January 23. Arava is a 10 minute bus ride from Eilat’s Central Station. I crossed the border alone in a few minutes. You walk down a lonely dirt path. If you cross in the morning, it takes over an hour. The bus tours from Eilat to Petra all take 2 days because of all the waits; to do Petra in a day it pays to stay the night in Aquaba or cross in the afternoon and go from the border there by taxi for the night. At the border, you buy a visa for $22.50 and pay Israel $16 ($27 at Allenby) to exit. I got into a taxi and rode around Aquaba looking for a hotel. There are several hotels next to each other along the water. I chose the Aquaba Hotel for $60 a night. That was medium; you could go for $100 a night or $30 a night in less desirable center city. This hotel is run by the Government, is on the water, and has nice cabins for rooms after the main house fills up. Also has a nightclub, restaurant and includes breakfast buffet. Perfectly adequate. Good heating, nice towels and clean spacious rooms. Besides, Eilat’s hotels are much more expensive, even if the food is about the same.
I made a mistake and skipped the $9 buffet the hotel was offering (not enough vegee food) and had fish at a nearby hotel seaside restaurant; the fish alone was $15. Jordan sticks tourists with 20% tax on rooms and food (except at the Government hotel I stayed at) and the tax makes up the difference with Eilat on the food. USA Direct Service pays; they charged me $15 to call Israel for one minute from my hotel phone. Aquaba has red oranges! No problem with the water anywhere I went in Jordan.
There’s no tourist information center at the border; no hotel reservation service in Israel; no Aquaba guide at the hotel; no details of group tours to Petra. At the northern border there was a tourist info center but it was closed when I arrived at late afternoon for what again was a crisp crossing. You have to find somebody who will arrange a private taxi to travel or go to an agency who will take a big commission. There is public transport but either you have to reserve it in advance or I just didn’t figure it out. The hotel staffs certainly don’t tell you how to do it. Aquaba is really quiet compared to Eilat; not much tourism there and not compelling to visit except that you can do Petra much more conveniently by doing so and Aquaba is a fairly pleasant place to relax. There are things to do in the area (ie: jeep tours in Wadi Ram) but the marketing isn’t as obvious as in Eilat. There is good hotel accommodation in Petra so one could cross in the afternoon and go there directly.
Basically, they reacted with a businessman’s enlightenment when I said that the USA essentially had two interests in the Middle East: stable oil prices and demand for American military hardware along with reliance on the USA. If that meant fueling a certain amount of instability by helping Israel, moderate Arabs and fundamentalists, depending on the season, so be it. And if giving Israel some free samples or “spend it in the US credits” on the military side would fuel demand for the Saudis to spend six times the amount, so be it. It’s not so much that the USA loves Israel.
Jordanians may or may not want to visit Israel; one thing keeping them away is the knowledge that it’s mucho expensive to go there. I was a bit surprised at the lack of interest among people in Aquaba to see what’s in Eilat five minutes away. They don’t really know how big Eilat has become, particularly considering the difference in tourism between the two places. Some of them have a Moslem problem with going to visit Israel. They watch Israel Television Arabic news and English films but combine what news they hear from Israel, Jordan and the rest to figure out the truth which they figure is somewhere in the middle. On satellite, they get all three Israel TV channels but many of them avoid the second channel which they feel is too pornographic. They don’t seem to listen to the Israel Radio, except maybe the Arabic service. Rich Jordanians really go for satellite television. These points are developed later.
You can do the basic tour in 2 hours. What you miss is what you’d see if you like to climb 1,000 steps in order to reach such things as a monastery on top of a mountain. The basic tour is enough for me as most of what you see are facades; to actually climb inside is to be disappointed unless you like standing in big empty dark chambers with tall ceilings of rose-colored rock. If they’d hang chandeliers there you could have some magnificent banquet halls.
A camera doesn’t do justice to Petra. You ride through some grand gorges and see Nabatean temples built into rocks. What’s there is small compared to what was there before an earthquake drove it underground many centuries ago. There’s some amphitheatres and wide open spaces with mountains and valleys. Every few seconds there’s something new to look at. It’s not too touristic yet; if you step over the edge of the mountain you will fall straight down! My guide, Mahdy al-Nawafleh, is a Beduin who is 29 but looks like 40. He majored in history and has been guiding for 5 years. Telephone 03.336.665 fax 336.666.
Nearby Petra is the town of Wadi Mousa. Mousa means Moses and is reportedly the place where Moses hit the rock. There’s a spring there. I ate lunch with my driver there. Pita, falafel, hummus, veges and salad came to 75 cents. Only cheap thing of the whole trip — of course I was off the tourist track. Might find better prices on souvenirs in town rather than at Petra. I bought a souvenir video for $19 after a bit of a discount. Big mistake; it was shot in the 1960’s and hardly shows off the sites. It also shows quite a bit of Israel as if it was Jordan, which it was at that time.
Two hour ride to Amman where 1.2 million of Jordan’s 4 million live; with nearby Zarka, half the total population is within a half hour’s drive. The last half of the drive is on an excellent highway. Picked up some Jordanian equivalent of Israeli “krembo” chocolate mousse/cookie snacks that had my cousin Yochi written all over them. Amman has doubled in population in 20 years and didn’t have a traffic light 20 years ago. Now it’s a nice modern city with wide streets, nice sidewalks and squares and a clean orderly feeling and kinda quiet in certain places.
Arrived in Amman about 4:30 and paid my driver $75. Could have done this far cheaper with public transportation but who is going to try to figure this out as long as time matters. Besides, the driver spent an hour in Amman with me as I found my way to a friend who gave me the cash to pay him (I had run out of cash and the bank machines don’t pay out on American cards) and then shuttled me to my hotel where I got the Jordanian courtesy rate ($60 includ. tax vs. $130) via the head of the maintenance department who was a friend of this friend.
Stayed at the Amra Hotel, a high level 4 star hotel part of the Intercontinental Chain in a pleasant residential neighborhood located further away from downtown but not at all inconvenient. Cable TV, Israel is a local channel, swimming pool and health club and shopping center attached to the hotel. I knew I was in another world when I heard from my room the mosque call people to prayer about 6:30. They pray 5 times a day, the first being about 4 am. I am told they get up to pray and go back to sleep. The second visit my hotel was right near a mosque at the Islamic College and it was a royal pain listening to “Allah Akbar” over the loudspeakers every morning at 4 am for 15 minutes. That hotel was the Shepherd located about 7 minutes walk from the 5-star Intercontinental. It has about 30 rooms (they gave me a suite upgrade gratis as they were about 75% empty and I was booked in by a business contact), charged me $45 a night with the taxes, and is much cheaper on the food and phone call bill (dinner and two days worth of local phone and faxes came out to almost $10). It’s close to many locally priced services and in a nice area. If you can live with a room that’s not terribly well heated and the 4 am prayer service, it offers friendly service and the other advantages I’ve mentioned. As far as location in a general sense, the issue is irrelevant as the city is large enough that you have to drive anywhere to get anywhere and a cab is never more than $2-3 if you drive 20-30 minutes cross town. Since you can’t build more than 6 stories high generally, there’s no place to expand to except cross town.
The entertainment continued in the lobby lounge with a famous singer who sings Lebanese music of a certain singer who is said to be hard to imitate. I had a late supper enjoying the $15 dinner buffet available in the coffee shop till 11. They have 3 buffets a day there. Plenty of food to eat.
I met some very interesting people in the lobby just as I had the previous night in Aquaba. Following are some people in the 20-30 age bracket hanging around. In Aquaba I met a French commodities inspector who had lived in the UK and Germany and so spoke perfect English. Then there was a Jordanian who was in commodities who had studied in a US university. He liked the US as a student but would rather raise a family in Jordan. Several others I spoke to felt similarly and reacted with surprise and sympathy when told that many American Jews who want to live in Israel feel that the crime, drugs, etc. of America is turning them off. In the Amra lobby there were two Dutch people representing a Swiss factory selling seeds. Also met a college student who was just hanging around the lobby. Born in Kuwait, grew up in Dubai and studying in Amman, he wants to do a masters degree in pharmacology in the US. He had been invited to the engagement party and had gotten bored. We returned to the party late night and spent 4 hours together on Thursday.
This last person, Imad, I called on before my second visit. Since he lives in a new 3 bedroom apartment in an area with a shortage of phone lines, I had to schedule my phone call with his friend who lives 20 minutes away by car and has a phone. We agreed by phone to meet in front of a school at 9 pm on the day I was to arrive. When I got frustrated at the Allenby Bridge, it was only the knowledge that Imad would be standing there on a cold night and that there was no way to call it off by phone that caused me to go north to the other crossing. The guy who I shared a taxi with from that border took me to his house to meet his family. He is a Jordanian travel agent with 20 years in the hotel business who just started his own company and had just been in Israel for the first time to develop contacts. Even though he had seen Israel on TV almost every day, he was shocked at what he saw but still felt that Amman was nicer than Tel Aviv; he didn’t like the tall buildings and traffic jams. We snacked on apricot nectar (popular for breaking the Ramahdan fast), tea and coffee (everyone there expects you to drink tea or coffee at every meeting or encounter) and some pastries which they break the fast on and he then took me to the schoolyard to meet Imad who showed up just past 9.
I stayed at Imad’s house (had to get even after paying for that cab ride) which was nicely furnished and looked like anyone else’s house (new GE fridge, Sony audio/visual, family pictures, regular furniture, and American music and videos) except that he has a Koran at his bedside, the heating system wasn’t in yet so we chilled out for the night and he doesn’t use or like toilet paper. Seems they clean themselves with water like European ladies; if you consider what toilet paper for a family of ten costs over a year they may be on to something. I also noticed that at every place or home I ate there were no napkins unless you asked for one (and then you sometimes got a kleenex instead). They don’t seem to mind sticky fingers. As long as I’m on the point of etiquette, the Jordanians are similar to Israelis in the way they curl up their fingers and wag them at you for “patience, please” and say “Ya-La” (“Go!”) a lot. Some other similarities too in grunts and gestures but too hard to describe.
Wednesday morning started out by driving with someone who has taking his son to work at an airline office in downtown. The son, about 25 years old, asked me twice if I was Jewish. I didn’t hide this from anybody and didn’t have any problems. As you’ll see, I didn’t avoid any subjects either. His father said his son had never seen anyone Jewish before. I said to make sure we have dinner together so he could ask the 50,000 questions he wanted to ask the first Jew he’d ever see. I don’t recommend skullcaps or Hebrew; they nervously equate these things with ideology. Basically they don’t mind the religion you’re born with as long as you don’t flaunt it and make them nervous in front of their friends whose reactions to you they aren’t yet sure of. The second trip I had a meeting with a 25 year old who also told me I was the first Jew he had ever met who wasn’t holding a gun. I spent a bit of time explaining things to people I’d met. Some popular questions: What’s the meaning (and subtleties) of skullcap culture? What’s the business of kosher and shabbat? Don’t think they don’t know nothing about Israel; they told me they all watch the Simpsons from Israel TV Wednesdays at 7:30 and root for Macabee Tel Aviv’s basketball team; seems they like the tall dunking Yugoslav and Black American who play for them and consider the team to be good.
Downtown is quite busy but orderly and clean. You get traffic during the day but it moves. Streets are wider than Israel, drivers are more courteous and people cross with the lights. Best price shopping is here. A mosque is right at dead center. There are some royal palaces nearby but these are hidden and not worth the drive-by. A Palestinian refugee camp is also nearby and is akin to a city ghetto in the old European sense. I visited Hanna’s office which looked like any office in any office building. Located in the Jabal Amman area of East Amman, it is an older middle to upper class mixed zoning neighborhood a few minutes from downtown. I asked why the King’s and his wife’s and daughter’s pictures are in every office, restaurant and car — was it fear or affection? Both, he said. Never hurts to look loyal if you’re visited by an official and people really like looking at the king’s daughter. Actually, people there really do like the king and appear to like his brother Hassan who is to take over when he dies. More on this later.
We drove around looking at the various neighborhoods and visited his nephew David who heads up Jordan’s leading real estate company founded in 1950 and which sold the Americans the land for its embassy. Notes of the real estate conversation are appended hereto.
The Abdoun district is in Western Amman and represents tremendous wealth as well as the outskirts of development in a rapidly expanding city which has outgrown its Eastern banks in much the same way Jerusalem is expanding naturally toward the East. (When I pointed this out to them, they responded that they never thought of it this way and agreed that whomever would tell the Jordanians that they had to freeze their Western Amman building or forget about peace would be told to go to hell.)
In Abdoun there are magnificent villas and shopping areas to service them. People don’t seem to have big back yards with grass as they feel land is expensive and that such a yard is a waste. They tend to either build big houses just for themselves or 3 or 4 story houses and put their kids (even if married) onto the other floors so they will live nearby. They like beautiful doors, glass, arches and tend to put glass doors a few feet in front of the main doors, maybe so that people won’t have to wait in the cold.
What they don’t do is put up big walls, guard dogs and big security systems although some have video cameras to screen visitors, and alarms with or without hookup to central station. Swimming pools are popular and hardly anywhere did I see laundry sticking out of windows. This lack of concern for security is important; most of the country is dirt poor and only a few miles away. If these elites aren’t worried about their mansions, I am more likely to feel safe as a tourist and investor. Basically, the country is pretty happy because things are getting better all around. There are poor Moslems that are more fanatical but they don’t appear to be a threat. Outside the elite of the country, much of the population is not too keen yet as to the peace.
If you go to the edge of Abdoun and look around, there is nothing. Abdoun was nothing a few years ago. Nearby areas such as the Garden of Roses Street and Swefieh were also non-existent several years ago but have turned into thriving residential and commercial districts. Smart land speculators will buy in the periphery. All new construction is first class and looks of Belgian quality; eateries have marble floors extending to the sidewalks and granite lining expensive windows and doors. A scoop of premium ice cream was 35 cents. 3 expensive pastries from a patisserie came to about $2. You can get nice hot rolls on the street for next to nothing. No doubt that the expensive areas are of higher standard than Israel. You also have your hummus and falafel houses within Amman where you can eat dinner for 75 cents. One intriguing point about small restaurants: the concept of family seating. This means that only families and single women can sit in them. Single guys or guys with gals can’t sit down except in a section reserved for them when it exists. It’s a Moslem country and they don’t want fraternization in public. This means on my second trip my friend and I out for the evening ate our ice cream in the car. Jordan attracts Gulf Arabs who enjoy its relative freedom but there is no comparison between nightlife in Amman with that of Israel. For starters, you don’t have real pedestrian districts there like Ben Yehudah Street or Dizengoff, just some streets with a few restaurants, bars and clubs.
There are a few massive supermarkets in Amman run by Safeway (two floors open 24 hours a day; the bottom is food and a Little Caesar’s Pizza shop, and the top is like a mini K Mart) but most people shop in small neighborhood groceries. The only thing I couldn’t find was cream cheese. (Second time I found it in a grocery with a friend and the French product was excellent. You wouldn’t guess from the way it was packaged that it was cream cheese. Think of a bar of Philadelphia coming in 6 square slices.) Some things are more expensive than Israel or the USA, some things are cheaper. Four AA batteries are about $1.50; a big box of Kelloggs corn flakes is about $7; a cake mix is about $1.50; a container of Head and Shoulders is roughly comparable to the USA. Basically, not cheap but reasonable.
Gasoline is $1.50 a gallon and cars are more expensive than in the USA. In neighboring Israel it’s $2.40 and in Iraq it’s about 5 cents. Electronics are about 3 times as expensive as the USA. Remember that a starting lawyer makes about $200 a week or so and that’s a better than average salary. A student or young professional pays about $70 a month in rent and so can live within his means given the above prices in Jordan. Although a car is necessary for Jordanians as Amman is spread around and municipal bus service is not so good, taxis are cheap. From the hotel I paid $2 to get to Safeway; from Safeway I paid about 75 cents to get back to the hotel and even a bit further (I caught it on the street and he ran the meter instead of me asking the doorman for the cab). Actually, when I didn’t have Dinars and instead offered him a $2 bill which was actually thrice the amount, he refused to take any money saying I was a guest. Same thing at the bakery which gave me a discount. Imagine that happening in Israel. Actually, the bakery goods were going to Israel where I was to be hosted that night by a friend. I decided not to tell the bakery where the goods were going (maybe I’d lose the discount).
In the afternoon, I linked up with Luis who drove me around different areas of Amman and took me to his house for lunch. I had to skip the home-grown rabbit but ate the other home-made vegee food. Jordanians I met expressed strong preference for fresh food but eat take out once or twice a week. Wives particularly want Thursday nights off; pizza delivery just started, otherwise there’s Chinese, Arabic, etc. They enjoy a 2 hour lunch break but otherwise eat pretty much the same kinds of foods Americans eat. Pizza Hut and KFC are widely available. They want more American franchise restaurants such as Fuddruckers and Bennigans. While on the subject of food: my second trip fell during the month of Ramahdan. This means everything opens late and closes early for naps and people aren’t totally on the ball for a full month. Quite a few people profess to fast but cheat. The ones who do can’t wait to eat at 5 pm. The restaurants are closed all day. Christians eat privately so as not to irritate the Moslems around them and I was surprised to find out that the two religions get along unusually well in Jordan. At one meeting, I offered Israeli “Pesek Z’man” candy bars (my favorite) to break the fast: they enjoyed them immensely. They were shocked when I told them the Pesek Z’man commercial currently on TV was shot in Petra. TV that month shows special entertainment programs at night and people go out late after eating a big meal. Had I stayed an extra day I would have attended such a breakfast at the Jordanian university with Imad. One attraction of such public meals is that guys get to meet girls there. Usually, if singles have a meal at home and they’re Moslem, it’s either all guys or all girls. Moslem guys can cook, says Imad. Syrian TV puts out a program about medieval Arabs at Ramahdan that is very romantic and colorful and people are glued to their sets to watch it. Although people figure Syria is dark and dreary since it is not democratic, I am told by Jordanians and foreigners crossing the bridge that it’s got beautiful shuks, good buys and good nightclubs. Jordanian guys go there for girls they can’t get at home although the depressed Iraqi economy is increasing the Iraqi market share in this regard.
They will soon have cellular service by Motorola; meanwhile, the new sections of Amman presently wait 2-3 years for phone lines. Many families and businesses are without one. Cellular service will cost about 25 cents per minute and well over $1,500 before you get to make the first call. In anticipation of this service, the Jordanians are looking at the borders for people carrying phones more than anything else; if you bring one in, hide it on your body. The phones work in Amman off the Israeli system. People are buying phone lines to hold for appreciation. The phone company is being privatized but it will be several years in the doing.
Every Jordanian Palestinian I met in any context was dressed like a European; in business they wear jacket, tie and sweater; at night I saw jeans as well. They prefer Western music. The other Arabs wear headdresses. They were prompt; returned all phone calls, and did whatever they said they would do. They were courteous and not pushy. In Amman, you can buy very nice clothes made in Europe at very good prices; storekeepers are happy to bargain in certain contexts but Jordanians do not normally bargain when they go shopping. A cashmere/wool jacket from Italy can be had for under $200; Bally’s shoes are on sale; a nice suit made in Syria is available for $75 and you can have custom made shirts, suits and the like made up from fine fabrics at Hong Kong or better prices within 2-3 days. Fine china is also available. Could be a surprise source.
He thinks Assad is crazy for sitting on the fence and that Jordan made peace with Israel to pressure Assad. He thinks Israel is just plain impractical and therefore idiotically standing on ceremony for not allowing the Palestinians to meet people in East Jerusalem’s Orient House. He says Israel’s right wing is raising the Jerusalem issue to stir up trouble more so than the Palestinians are doing. He also says that troops must be withdrawn for free elections to take place. The experience in Arab countries is that people don’t feel free to vote when troops are watching; in Jordan whenever there is an election all the troops are sent to barracks and only the police are on the streets.
He expressed the general impression I got in Jordan as far as a Palestinian state being a threat to Jordan. Palestinians make up 90% of the Jordanian business community. They are making a ton of money and know that if they controlled the government, they would fight amongst themselves just as the Palestinians are doing on the West Bank. Basically, they don’t want to ruin a good thing by importing Palestinian rule to the East Bank of the Jordan. They’re quite happy with Hashemite rule, thank you. On the other hand, they feel that free movement of people between Jordan and the West Bank within a confederation will help West Bankers achieve normal lives and business and perhaps make them more reasonable to Israel’s taste in the future.
Given that Israel is moving away from the concept of free movement and toward the idea of total separation between peoples, it seems unlikely that the peace Israel wants will be good for business from the Palestinian point of view. As another example, I held a discussion with a lawyer who mentioned that he was looking forward to the peace since he has a lot of family in the West Bank and has never really had the chance to get to know them. He’s proud of the educated intelligentsia the Palestinian diaspora has produced and fully expects to be treated as an intelligent person when he travels there. The odds are he’ll be treated lousily when he does visit and he will be bitter. Think about it; I, an American, went through 2 roadblocks on the way to the airport in East Jerusalem and crossing borders in the Taba/Eilat/Aquaba tourism district was a pain. Hardly like moving around in the Argentina/Brazil/Paraguay border area tourism district where you could move freely without passports, visas and nonsense.
I expressed the opinion that Assad has about 6 months to get the Golan back because the lousy Israeli economy combined with the terror is making a change of government more likely this year. Luis answered that if Israel doesn’t make peace, the Arab world will return to being hostile, and that even if it takes 20 years for Israel to dry up, so be it. Many of the Jordanians I spoke to believe that Israel wouldn’t last a year if America didn’t keep propping it up, especially since many of the Jews that live there won’t stay if they can’t live comfortably. On the second trip I advised them the Israeli response to this is that the Jordanians can stand on their heads but that they need the peace (read that “cash” and business) as much as the Israelis do and can’t afford to sacrifice this just for the Palestinians in the West Bank. They agreed with this response.
The English press here (the daily Times and weekly Star) are more subtle and sophisticated in their opinion and analysis columns than I expected. For instance, an article complained about terrorism stating that it was embarrassing Arabs and making them look like savages. “Have we stooped so low that this is how Palestinians have to act?” Another article accused the other Arabs of ulterior motives in making a fuss over Jordan’s claim to the holy mosques of Jerusalem. It said that Jordan wasn’t trying to claim anything for itself but that others were making it look as if it was to make trouble. Not enough attention is being paid to the press coming out of Jordan. It’s not just a bunch of anti-Zionist vitriol.
Elias heard I was going out with Hanna’s son for the evening so he called me up to tell me he would be picking me up in 10 minutes to bring me over to his house to meet his wife and kids. We went to his three story house with private elevator to have a drink. Although the Christians always offer drinks, everybody I met seemed to enthusiastically approve of the fact that I don’t drink coffee or alcohol or smoke, things that are very popular over there except of course as to drinking by Moslems.
So Hanna’s son and daughter and I headed out to Quiz Night held weekly at the Intercontinental Hotel. Hosted by the British Consulate, teams try to answer questions and the ones with the most right at the end of the year win a prize. It’s all in English and several hundred show up. They hoped I could help. I barely got 2 out of 10. Tough questions such as: What’s colder — minus 40 centigrade or fahrenheit? Which 3 ministers did Hosni Mubarak bring with him to Jordan? What’s the capitol of North Dakota?
An interesting question which I enjoyed hearing in front of a large audience: Why did Jordan lose the convention of the International Bar Association? Because Israeli lawyers were disinvited. Evidently, the Jordanian Bar hasn’t yet repealed its bylaw prohibiting contact with Israeli lawyers. Such was told to me by a 21 year old lawyer clerking for Amman’s chief lawyer in the top law firm of 12 attorneys. Seems there’s only 50 lawyers that do real corporate work though there’s 4,500 lawyers in Jordan. And there’s only 2 tax lawyers as nobody really cares about avoiding taxes which altogether (meaning income and hidden taxes) amount to 35 cents on the dollar. In Israel, it’s about 60 to 70 cents on the dollar. At present there’s no sales tax in Jordan but the IMF is forcing Jordan to adopt one. Every business hires an auditor to prepare the tax returns; if you get past the tough auditor you don’t worry about the Government. The real tax bite in Jordan comes in the purchase of anything remotely considered a luxury good; a VCR officially runs $4,000; on the black market it’s $1,500.
The lawyer, Ayman, is the youngest person ever to graduate George Washington University Law School in D.C. with an LLM at 21 as law is a B.A. degree in Jordan. He had some good Jewish professors and friends and likes to discuss Holmes’ judicial opinions and wrote some interesting theses on maritime law and the peace treaty with Israel. He is Moslem and says there can’t be peace without Jerusalem. On the other hand, he didn’t really know the importance of Jerusalem or the Wailing Wall to the Jews and didn’t know that contrary to an agreement, the Jordanians didn’t let the Jews pray there from 1948 to 1967. Once screwed, the Jews don’t want to let it happen again, I said. Particularly since if you take away the Wall, there’s no Medina or Al-Aksa (numbers 2 and 3 points for the Moslems) to turn to in the alternative. The point resonated.
By the second trip, Ayman had checked out my story about King Hussein warning Golda and Dayan in 1973 of the Arab surprise attack and said he was royally disillusioned with the Arab world that was no longer denying these events. “You find out that for 20 years the Likud was talking to the PLO, the King was committing virtual treason by coordinating with the Israelis, and everyone was essentially dealing behind everyone else’s back. The whole thing is a joke — it’s real bullshit.” Ayman’s father used to be a high PLO official (Arafat’s assistant) when they lived in Libya during the 70’s. Even though it’s still forbidden to have contacts with Israeli lawyers (news of the law’s rescission reached me after departure), he asked me to send him a list of top Israeli law firms and contacts. He says he doesn’t care if his firm (the top firm in Jordan) isn’t ready to do business with Israel and the law forbids it; he doesn’t want to be left behind and figures the law is so anti the peace treaty the Jordanians signed that it would be struck down if challenged. Don’t get the idea that he’s not without strong Palestinian sentiments; he’s just trying to deal pragmatically with reality even though he sees that the Palestinians in the West Bank will be the only real losers out of the whole regional peace process, to be discussed later.
That conversation occurred in the lobby of the Intercontinental as we munched on the special Ramadan coffee & cake menu as we did dessert at 9 pm. Ayman and I were joined by his friend Muhammed who is locally educated and therefore not making too much money. He wants out of Jordan. I met several young people who are dying to go to the USA for a better economic future and was asked by several people during my trip for immigration advice.
Ayman chose to return to Jordan where although he makes one fifteenth of what he’d make in the USA today, he has a life and the chance to really succeed as a big fish in a small pond. Since he can take on his own clients, his boss is limited by law to 3 foreign retainers (the excess of which he must pass along), and he gets commissions for contracts he writes up, he figures he’ll be making a fortune within a number of years. Besides, he’s already going to court every day.
I met on the second trip with similar 25 year old people who go to work in black turtlenecks and slick Greenwich Village looking suits and moussed up hair and who spice their Arabic with Englishisms (although I heard a lot of Englishisms such as “OK” and “bye” during my trips). Granted, there are plenty locally bred university graduates that can’t find work or get paid peanuts (like $100 a week to start, maybe $7,000 a year after it gets good working for the bank). But if you have foreign education and experience, you can get into real positions real fast. One guy I met is 24. He graduated high school in Kuwait at 15 (they finish young there), went to University of Delaware and then worked at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York for 5 years. Now he plays the stock markets all day and half the night for the Arab Jordanian Investment Bank and for the bank’s clients worldwide. He is regularly quoted in Reuters reports that give economic news and analysis on Jordan. Highly pragmatic, he noted to me privately that Jordan and Israel were coordinating their economies so that people wouldn’t try to get a better deal across the border. He said he wanted to say that to Reuters that day but decided he’d better not.
Another guy is 34, a Palestinian West Banker and American citizen, who returned after living in the USA and consulting in D.C. for several years. He is partner in a consulting and investment banking firm in Jordan; they just handled the deal to build the Sheraton Hotel and he produced a 250 page study for Chemical Bank on foreign investment in Jordan. It’s a lively market in that new issues on the Jordanian exchanges have been way oversubscribed; it appears that Jordan doesn’t suffer from a lack of internal capital but rather from the ability to be taken seriously. You get the feeling there’s a nice mafia of twenty-somethings being given wide latitude by their elders who know that progress is good but don’t quite know how to handle it themselves. There is a built in cautiousness among the older people; “it needs negotiation, feasibility, bla bla bla” is used to push off an idea that is new because it is new even if they know they like the idea — they just can’t bring themselves to say yes right away. Part of the problem is that to do anything there is the belief (probably well founded) that you need many people to approve of it within the government and have to watch whose toes are being stepped on by a new business enterprise. In any event, either the country will be doing well or will be bankrupt within 5 years with this new generation on the loose.
End of second full day the first trip around, I was returned to my hotel where I had a midnight grilled cheese and french fries from room service; came to almost $6. I had been hosted by so many people that I hadn’t had a chance to spend a dime all day or have five minutes to eat since lunch. Second trip around, I had 2 hours to myself to eat one evening in between all the events and had a break from 3 nights of hummus with some cooked mixed veges, grilled cheese, french fries and fresh OJ. Ate in the hotel after walking around and not wanting to just eat pizza — bill came to a more reasonable $6 with tax and tip.
We visited the Housing Bank shopping center which adjoins the Plaza Hotel which is one of the 5 star properties in center city. The Israeli Embassy is inside this hotel but will soon move into an Abdoun villa. The shops are very nice but downtown shopping is 25% cheaper. I didn’t find an equivalent to the Jerusalem Canion shopping mall or a real American style mall or a big department store.
We spent some time walking around the nearby neighborhood and then grabbing some lunch, ice cream and pastry at another neighborhood and then finally hailing a taxi to take me to the border. The private taxi was $30 for the 40 minute ride once you reach the highway to exit the city (allow an hour from the downtown depot); (hint: catch a shared taxi at the central taxi/bus depot downtown; it cost me $12 with tip for the ride solo — would have been a fraction of this had there been other passengers; this gives you an idea of what it should cost to get to Amman from the Bridge if you don’t take the bus that runs from the Bridge to town). Very impressive highway with some beautiful views; there are no signs directing you to Allenby (there called the King Hussein) Bridge. Crossing at 3 pm took a quarter of an hour and again I crossed alone; second time around the crossing was a pain and took close to an hour even at 2 pm so it’s run of the luck. Pay $6 to exit Jordan, $2 to take the bus across the bridge and entry to Israel is free. A bunch of Malaysians were at passport control. The official said there’s a lot of them visiting Israel these days.
Once in Israel after my first trip, there were no shared taxis at 4pm to take me to Jerusalem. So I had to board an Arab bus to Jericho (nothing like the nice Israeli buses), get off at the army checkpoint, wait a half hour for no bus to come, have a soldier hitch me a ride to an intersection outside Jerusalem, get into a taxi that went to someplace else and that finally took me to where I was going. Generally, the whole commute is about 3 hours. Had I taken a private taxi from the Bridge it would have cost about $30-35. Had I taken a shared taxi, it would be $9. Had I taken public transportation in Jordan, each trip (ie: Aquaba to Petra, Petra to Amman, Amman to the Bridge) would have been in the neighborhood of $1-3. Only problem was that while in Jordan I was on a tight schedule and didn’t really know where I was going so I didn’t want to play around and, as I said, I was walking around without money most of the time I would have needed to use it.
Fortunately in Jordan, as long as you deal with elites or walk around in central locations, most people speak English and the signs are bilingual. Everyone I called over the phone at government offices or wherever spoke either some or good English. English is definitely a second language there for elites but don’t count taxi drivers among them.
All in all, an excellent trip for 72 hours though the expenditure together with the travel to Eilat ran almost $700 (second time around I was on business but more experienced and at a cheaper hotel closer to cheaper food or home hospitality for a night so the 4 days came to one-third the cost, even with that $70 taxi ride in Israel to the border. Also, on that second trip I was too busy to spend money; in 2 and a half business days I met with 12 people on 16 matters; I had substantial contact with about 25 people in all over the 3 day visit). Still a bit of a challenge for the independent tourist but the charm will be gone when the place becomes touristic. Bilingualism there amid clean water and friendly natives go a long way toward helping the tourist. Petra is worth the trip and Jerash, which I didn’t see, is supposed to be worthy. Amman is not a sightseeing destination but it has other charms such as good shopping which I have mentioned and which will definitely serve as an alternative to a European stopover.
Expenditures would have been higher had I not been hosted so much and lodged at the Jordanian rate. I might have saved some money on carfare but I would have paid it back in extra days of travel. I have never enjoyed such hospitality as was extended to me by my Jordanian friends as well as the people I met during my stay. I was impressed by the sites, the boom in quality construction going on all over the place, the feeling of freedom and optimism felt by the people I met both in business and political contexts, and the impression that one could do business in Jordan. Jordanians exhibit class and honor and live in a clean and orderly place. Having been recently in Russia and Israel, two places that are in vogue as to business, I must say that Jordan beats out both of them in quite a few of these areas.
In reality, there won’t be much business from Israel that will profit Jordanians. They probably won’t like many Israelis they meet. The Israelis are rougher, slicker and will walk around with their cellular telephones looking like they want to do everything in one day and to take advantage of the stupid Jordanians that can’t be trusted. Except that the Jordanians aren’t stupid and aren’t going to take kindly to being grabbed by the fly-by-night opportunistic Israelis. I commented that I believe the Jordanians will benefit from the rest of the world taking Jordan more seriously now that it will appear to be a more stable country no longer in a state of war with Israel. The first trip the above was my impression; the second trip I heard from Jordanians the fear they have of massive Israeli factories and marketers making mincemeat out of the Arab world. They figure that Israelis look down on them and will try to take advantage and to grab. They know Israel is strong; they respect the “clever” Jew (I heard that word used a lot) for making money, being thrifty and for building up a strong state against the odds. They don’t believe that the average Jew likes to kill people. On the other hand, they find Jews to be cheap. A president of a major travel agency said he strongly dislikes working with Jewish tourists as they are always demanding the world and never want to pay for it. If a Jew is “dirty” it’s usually in a monetary sense. They don’t take kindly to tourists bringing in their own food and taking hotel towels. The bellman at the Shepherd happily said he had just had a group of 40 Orthodox Jews and they didn’t take a thing; he added that the Israeli tour guide searched them all as they came off the elevator.
Of course, when they hear about kashrut it makes them think twice about the brown-bagging. There’s also the idea of “who knows what will happen tomorrow” that drives Israelis but doesn’t drive Arabs the same way. The Jordanian’s first reaction to the concept is that if the Jews don’t know what will happen tomorrow, that must mean they feel weak. But, as I explained and they later agreed, it’s more complex. For example, the Jew will come to Amman and deal in the short term for now because he isn’t convinced the peace will last. 99% of Israelis know someone who either died or was wounded in uniform or as a civilian and the daily news of conflict in the region is not just statistical but personal. Kids in high school see their friends die in the army and wonder if they’ll be next. Everyone in Israel wore gas masks during the Gulf War. So of course they drive like crazy, aren’t looking to buy real estate in Amman just yet and tend to grab what they can since they don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
In contrast, the Jordanians I spoke to said that fewer than 5 out of 100 know anyone in the army who got hurt or died. Terrorism is not an issue in Jordan which is very safe. Open opposition to the King and not following the rules in Jordan are not just in the cards — not in a place where the King’s smiling countenance is EVERYWHERE. So time passes more casually. The Palestinians have a sense of time but in a longer span — say decades; the Hashemites I ran into have virtually no sense of time and couldn’t care less if you come in and visit Jordan or not or do business there or not. The King is moving unusually quick to solidify the new concept of peace; people over 40 say “We need time to adjust; we’re trying; time will solve all complications. Just give us a chance to come around to all this.”
Prince Hassan would be crazy to kill the golden goose by doing anything to stifle the Palestinians. Of course, that never stopped regimes from eradicating their brand of cosmopolitans among them, the Jews. This shared history of outsidership and of being despised among the nations — a sort of kinship among enemies (the emphasis on education and working hard to get ahead and then making money which draws the jealousy of the society around them) — is felt by Palestinians more so than Jews; the Palestinians know about them and the Jews; the Jews don’t know about the Palestinians. Think about it; I shared a taxi with a man who left Egypt and his family on his own to go to university in Amman because a Palestinian couldn’t get into an Egyptian university in the mid 1970’s. The guy working in the bank was thrown out of Kuwait along with his family after the Gulf War.
For Jews, these are just not issues these days. Jewish lawyers do not endure strip searches (which they find humiliating) if and when they finally get to visit their grandparents in the West Bank; forget about it if they want to visit a relative living in Israel proper. Like the guy said to me a few pages back, every Jew he’d ever seen before he met me had been holding a gun. The guy continued, even when I visit the West Bank I talk to other Arabs who tell me that I’m not one of them; it seems the West Bankers are jealous of the East Bankers as they live richer more comfortable lives. They were shocked when I told them that American Jews and Israelis also have little in common. They figured it was of nature that all Jews are buddy buddy. One Arab said to me “The Jews in business: if one falls, the others, even his competitors, won’t let him die. They will help him maintain some dignity. Not like us Arabs that rejoice in it.” Another said to me: “My friend is the ambassador to Israel. The Israelis are bastards in negotiations and stand on ceremony (ie: the meetings at Orient House). But if you’re pleasant with them, they always give in. If Arafat and the West Bank Palestinians could only be pleasant instead of arrogant with their demands, they could get things.”
The point of these vignettes: personal encounters help exchange information to break down misconceptions. The more the peace promotes this kind of interchange, the better I think it will stick despite the politics. On the second trip in Amman among the elites, I got the distinct impression that people I met with were hoping for invitations to visit Israel and that I would introduce them to more Israelis. The Israeli Foreign Ministry says this is now possible within limits.
Essentially, the “peace” is “redeployment of forces to more efficient positions.” The next war will be with Egypt which (a) has not solved any problems which it hoped to solve in 17 years of peace, except for rebuilding its air force; (b) is unhappy seeing Israel driving Middle East diplomacy; and (c) cannot tolerate Israel’s nuclear monopoly although it can’t afford to compete. Egypt may be irrational in sending a million men to the front as a sort of population and dissent control but it has gone to war before for precisely such reasons. Syria can’t afford to go to war; in two weeks they will lose all their GNP and foreign currency reserves. Since this peace based on cynicism and anticipation of future war won’t satisfy Egypt or the Palestinians, the issue as to Jordan is whether they will tolerate such a peace or will have no choice but to do so from an economic imperative. In any event, all the parties know that, for the first time, any cost of future war will have to be borne mostly by the parties themselves and that none of them can afford it.
While Jordanians think the King has overcome his cancer, the Israelis aren’t convinced. Israelis (business leaders and strategists) fear that Crown Prince Hassan won’t last as King and want to wait a few years before investing long-term in Jordan; Palestinians fear he doesn’t like them and will treat them worse than they are presently treated. Hassan, educated but aloof, is trying lately to assuage fears by becoming more personable and addressing their concerns. However, they say they don’t even think of trying to overthrow him; Israelis say that no matter what Palestinians say they won’t be able to resist the temptation to try and, being 70% of the country, maybe they’ll succeed. Clearly, the cosmopolitan almost European Palestinians look down on the native Hashemites as fools that sit around reading newspapers, talking on the phone and drinking coffee except that they are needed as business partners in order to open doors to the government.
The Beduin, who are considered to be really dumb but who ruthlessly keep order in the country and equate the King with God, are not as enamored of Hassan either but are expected to support him. I was told by a 4 year Army officer that when Palestinians at the university started chanting slogans against the King, within a half hour they brought in the Beduin who shot and killed ten students, took over the campus for 2 weeks and gave everyone hell. Calculators were confiscated and students holding them were told (even when they appealed to officers) they were carrying espionage material (the Beduin don’t know what they are) and jailed for 2 weeks without hearing. A girl slapped a Beduin in the face as he came into her brother’s apartment; he picked her up, climbed six flights of stairs and threw her out the window.
How to make sense of this conflicting gibberish, much of which is in peoples’ heads? The root of the challenge of the peace is mutual suspicion based on lack of contact of a positive nature. Israelis and Arabs don’t trust each other. Israelis say: the Arabs just tell you what you want to hear. They talk a lot and do nothing. They will invite you into their house and stab you after you leave.” With this conclusion, I can’t believe anything I hear.
I got the impression across the board of elites — Palestinians and Jordanians, ages 8 through 80, Christians and Moslems — that I was talking to reasonable and sophisticated people more or less on the same wavelength (usually depending on age). I got the impression that West Bankers might in time become more reasonable once they, like their East Bank brethren, had something to lose, because Palestinians by nature are really more cosmopolitan than the native Arabs around them. Israelis, particularly natives and Sefardis, tell you that’s Western naivete at work. “We lived with them for 50 years; you don’t know the neighborhood.” True, but most of these people don’t know any of these people personally and don’t speak Arabic. When they do see them, it’s in a military context.
You’d think the up and coming generation of Sefardi Israelis would have more in common with the Arabs than the European stock that runs the country. But after my experiences, it’s clear that the Sefardis’ experience with Arabs leads them to utterly mistrust them while the cosmopolitan Ashkenazis mix better with the Palestinians. Rabin and Peres may be racing not only against time but a generation and cultural gap as well as they look at the next generation of Israelis coming to power.
I don’t know; I spoke to people who have e-mail addresses on Internet, watch MTV and the Simpsons, eat at Pizza Hut, walk around with NBA-logoed basketball caps, and play the same games such as soccer, basketball and tae kwon doe. I’ve had more interesting conversations with guys my age in Jordan than similarly aged co-religionists in Jerusalem or the Upper West Side where the conversations are limited to Jewish geography or “Is God Merciful?” Having travelled for business in countries such as Israel, Jamaica and Russia, I compare Jordan favorably when it comes to follow-through and professionalism and the general feeling that you say X and the other person understands you.
In political conversations, I drew a distinction between presenting my own views and presenting information that would inform them of what Israelis of various stripes think and say. The distinctions were expressly made and confirmed and I have no doubt they understood and appreciated the differences. I made it clear that we were meeting to exchange information, not to score points although in fact I have very little argument with anything I heard. I was told several times that it was appreciated that I was not sugar-coating my analysis and presentations as to controversial issues, that all subjects should be discussed and that long term relationships would best be served by honestly putting all the cards on the table.
Do I take what I heard in what I thus think were candid conversations with a grain of salt? Or am I, the unemotionally involved American lawyer, able to see more clearly than the Israelis who tell me otherwise? Reporters I talked to feel they are being talked to candidly. I thought so too. But they add that if you feel confused, you’re on the right track. C’est la vie.
