Jordan’s West Bank Plan Faltering : Only $20 Million in Aid Raised Toward $1-Billion Goal

AMMAN, Jordan — The Jordanian government has come up embarrassingly short in its effort to finance an ambitious development plan for the Israeli-occupied West Bank area.

Jordan’s failure to raise adequate funding for the proposed $1-billion program is also raising doubts about King Hussein’s ability to offset the influence of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the West Bank area, one of the basic goals of the development plan.

The program was designed as part of a package of cooperative ventures to “improve the quality of life” for the 600,000 Palestinians on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Although Jordan minimized its contacts with the Jewish state, much of the plan had been cleared in advance with Israel.

Other cooperation included the opening of a Jordanian commercial bank branch in the occupied territories and the appointment of Palestinian mayors to replace Israeli military governors in four West Bank towns.

Started at $1.3 Billion

The five-year development plan, which was formally proposed last July with $1.3 billion in projects for the West Bank, has so far attracted less than $20 million in pledges from foreign governments.

The largest donor is the United States, which has given $4.5 million and has approved $7 million more. Britain is giving $375,000 a year, and other European governments have offered similarly small amounts, mostly in the form of direct assistance to voluntary groups on the West Bank.

The Jordanians, who scaled back the plan to $1 billion at the time of a fund-raising conference last November, have been forced to contribute $30 million from their own budget to keep the development plan afloat.

Significantly, the Jordanians have received no money at all from the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, despite a major fund-raising campaign by King Hussein and other officials.

The Arab reluctance to contribute prompted an icy retort from the Jordanian minister of occupied territories, Marwan Dudin, who said, “I hope that colleagues in the Arab League and the PLO and those who are politically mature would realize that the Jordanian way is the only one that is left and the sole pragmatic approach that will hopefully end up with our keeping an identity that is basically Arab Muslim.”

Ambivalent Arab Attitude

Two recent developments illustrate the ambivalent Arab attitude toward the five-year development plan:

--Rather than anger the PLO by financing the plan, Saudi Arabia gave $9 million to a joint Jordanian-PLO fund that was established by the Arab League in 1978 to aid the West Bank but which has been virtually defunct for three years due to lack of funds.

--Kuwait made a $5-million direct grant to improve West Bank universities despite Jordan’s appeal that the funds be spent through Jordanian institutions on the West Bank.

The Saudi donation was especially galling to Jordan because the gift required the Jordanians to call a session of the joint Jordanian-Palestinian committee that oversees the money.

The PLO delegate is Khalil Wazir, also known as Abu Jihad, who was expelled from Jordan last July after 25 PLO offices were closed in the wake of King Hussein’s break with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat early last year.

Name Banned From Papers

Wazir returned to Jordan on Feb. 14, but the incensed Jordanian government banned the publication of his name or photo. Feelings were running so high that when Wazir’s name appeared in a newspaper, the offending editor was removed from his post.

According to Western diplomats, Jordan made what one described as a “major miscalculation” in drafting the development plan in such a way that the PLO was seen as a target.

“What government would want to offend the PLO in taking part in such a plan?” a European diplomat here asked. “The Jordanians took a tough stand--’Go through us or no one’--and the result was that they got no one. It was mishandled here.”

The antagonism with the PLO dates back to last February, when King Hussein gave up efforts to work out a peace agreement with Arafat after the PLO chairman refused to publicly accept U.N. Security Council resolutions implicitly guaranteeing Israel’s right to exist.

PLO More Popular

After initial hesitation, the PLO condemned Jordan’s efforts on the West Bank as consorting with the enemy. The guerrilla organization was heartened by opinion polls showing the PLO to be far more popular than Hussein on the West Bank despite the promises of large-scale financial assistance from Amman.

Soon after the development conference last November, the Jordanian government sent out a circular advising potential donors that “so-called direct aid,” or the assistance that is given directly by countries to projects in the West Bank, would no longer be allowed.

But following the failure of donors to come forward with contributions, this hard-line position has been reversed, according to Western aid officials. Now countries such as France plan to increase direct aid, while allowing Jordan to say it is acting as a conduit for such aid, a face-saving device for both countries.

Jordanian officials have carefully referred to the assistance program as a “plan,” suggesting that it is still in the drafting stage. But they have given no indications so far of what projects will be jettisoned because of limited funds.

‘Wishful Thinking’

“The Jordanians will end up with around $40 million, which is not an insignificant amount,” one diplomat said. “They can still do things with that. The (original goal) figure was wishful thinking all along.”

Jordanian officials have expressed concern in recent days that promises of support given by Israeli officials under Prime Minister Shimon Peres may find less support under Yitzhak Shamir, who replaced Peres as prime minister.

A West European official said a recent tour of the West Bank by a European Communities team found the Israelis, especially those responsible for West Bank rule, hostile to efforts to increase Palestinian trade with the West.