Amman, Jordon -- TWO OF MY old Israeli friends just visited Jordan. They came, as do most Israeli tourists, not across the still-occupied West Bank but across the Wadi Aravah crossing in the desert south where Israel directly abuts Jordan (no potentially angry Palestinians around). They visited the glorious ancient pink city of Petra and then drove with a group to this increasingly lovely city on the hills.
"It was wonderful," said the husband, a noted journalist. "They still warned us not to walk around Amman at night alone, but, aside from that, we felt amazingly at home." Both husband and wife, liberal Israelis, had buoyant looks of "Is this really possible?" their faces as they related their experience.
It is true that most Israeli tourist groups have Jordanian guards with them. It is true that the economic activity between the two countries has, so far, amounted only to a mere 20 tons of tomatoes. It is true that many Jordanians complain that this new peace is cold, not warm.
But it is also true that it is in this new peace that one can see how it can be worked out elsewhere.
The peace agreement made between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein last July was the result of 48 years of conflict, including two major wars and several minor conflicts between the two countries. The Palestinians within Israel or under Israeli occupation in general could not travel to Jordan. Now, all that has changed -- and in unexpected ways.
Indeed, the Palestinians of Jordan or "East Bankers," who constitute fully 60 percent of King Hussein's kingdom, are already the biggest commercial contacts and potential investors for the Israelis. They make up 90 percent of the Jordanians who are already contacting for business matters the temporary Israeli Embassy here on the sixth floor of the Forte Grande Hotel. And more than 60 percent of the Israeli tourists who have visited Jordan since July have been Israeli Arabs, who for decades could not cross over to Jordan.
Quite outside of Yasser Arafat's "Palestinian Authority," centered the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians are in these other ways reweaving the patterns of their cultural life that has been so unraveled since their expulsion from Israel in the wars of 1948 and 1967 and afterward.
Meanwhile, other fabrics are also being gradually rewoven, most important by King Hussein himself.
Only this winter, there has been diplomatic foray after foray to bring the king and Jordan back into the Arab camp after his siding with Iraq and Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. (Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met with the king recently for the first time since the war, for instance.) Indeed, repeated over and over in the entire area are the words: "The Gulf War finally is over."
It is well known and accepted now that, when Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait, the king went with him only out of desperation. The Palestinians in Jordan (60 percent of the country, remember) were heading toward Islamic fundamentalism, and many journalists and professionals had been bought off by Saddam Hussein with cars and with houses. The king stood to lose his entire kingdom, and so he did whatever needed to be done.
And today? The numbers of the Islamicists in the parliament (which the king created, to give the people more of a voice) have fallen to 17 out of 80 in the influential lower house. The aftermath of the war in 1991 and '92, then the peace accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and now the peace between Israel and Jordan, all diminished the passions of the extremists.
In short, the king outplayed the extremists -- and outlasted them. Today, he never sees Saddam Hussein; the country is peaceful and prosperous (a good 5 percent to 6 percent growth rate a year, for instance); and Jordan is planning ahead for as many as 500,000 new tourists a year as a result of the peace treaty (it has roughly 100,000 now).
The next steps to consolidate the peace are to work out the stages of cooperation and collaboration (particularly economic) with both Israel and the PLO. As always, the king is doing this incrementally. PLO chief Yasser Arafat was here in January, and some practical steps were taken (the Jordanians were saying at that time, "No more hugs," a comment on the vapid, empty old meetings of the past, where everybody hugged -- but did nothing).
So, the peace here, while one hears and reads relatively little about it, is playing out well. The king sees the peace as his "gift to Jordan" -- and often says so. (Since he is the 39th line of succession after the Prophet Mohammed, that does cut ice here.)
Perhaps one Jordanian editor characterized best this odd time in the Middle East by noting that, "With Israel, we put the roof on first; now we're trying to build the foundation. With the Palestinians, we have the foundation; now we are trying to build the roof."
Georgie Anne Geyer is a syndicated columnist.