it is their responsibility to do all that they can to take advantage of this gathering, this
historic gathering, and what it symbolizes and what it promises.
No one should assume that the opportunity before us to make peace will remain
if we fail to seize the moment. Ironically, this is an opportunity born of war, the
destruction of past wars, the fear of future wars. The time has come to put an end to
war, the time has come to choose peace.
Speaking for the American people, I want to reaffirm that the United States is
prepared to facilitate the search for peace, to be a catalyst, as we’ve been in the past
and as we’ve been very recently. We seek only one thing, and this we seek not for
ourselves, but for the peoples of the area and particularly the children: That this and
future generations of the Middle East may know the meaning and blessing of peace.
We have seen too many generations of children whose haunted eyes show only
fear, too many funerals for their brothers and sisters, the mothers and fathers who died
too soon, too much hatred, too little love. And if we cannot summon the courage to
lay down the past for ourselves, let us resolve to do it for the children.
SOURCE:John Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project. University of California, Santa
Barbara, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=20163.Jordanian-Israeli Peace
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
Among Israel’s Arab neighbors, Jordan has been one of the least belligerent toward it.
In the decades after Israel’s founding in 1948, however, Jordan’s King Abdallah and
his grandson King Hussein rested uneasily on their thrones and were reluctant to get
too far in front of their Arab colleagues. A major consideration for both men was the
large proportion of the Jordanian population that consisted of Palestinian Arabs who
had left or had been driven from their homes in Palestine, from Israel after its decla-
ration, and from the West Bank as a result of the wars fought in the region after 1948
(Founding of the State of Israel, p. 67).
In the decades after ascending the throne in 1953, King Hussein held numerous
secret meetings with senior Israeli officials, including prime ministers. He, however,
remained reluctant to be seen as too cozy with the Israelis and refused to sign a for-
mal peace agreement with them until other Arab leaders had taken the first step. This
step came in 1978–1979, when Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat negotiated the
Camp David agreements and then a formal peace treaty with Israel. Even then Hus-
sein felt insecure because the Arab League then expelled Egypt, and Islamist extrem-
ists assassinated Sadat in 1981 (see Camp David Peace Process, p. 118).
142 ARABS AND ISRAELIS