On Oct. 26, 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty in a ceremony attended by President Bill Clinton.
After securing a peace treaty with the Palestinian Liberation Organization in September 1993, Israel next sought peace negotiations with Jordan. The two nations reached an agreement in July 1994 to end the “state of belligerency” between them that had existed since Israel’s founding in 1948. Each side pledged to seek peace after “generations of hostility, blood and tears and in the wake of years of pain and wars.”
Continued peace talks led to the Oct. 26 treaty, in which the two countries pledged to respect each other’s sovereignty, settled borders, and addressed numerous other issues, including water supply. Jordan became just the second Arab country to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, following Egypt in 1979.
As the Oct. 27 New York Times reported, the treaty was viewed as a very promising development in the Arab-Israeli conflict: “With Israel also having agreed to the start of Palestinian self-rule in parts of the occupied territories, it is now closer than ever to a long-held goal of coming to terms with all of its immediate Arab neighbors.”
Although no other Arab state has yet agreed to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, Israel and Jordan have continued to maintain generally peaceful relations since the 1994 treaty.
