Draft Agreement between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 24 February 1950

A special agreement will be signed, pursuant to the Armistice Agreement, bound to the latter and reinforcing it. The agreement will include the following principles:

(1) Non-aggression for a period of 5 years.

(2) Maintenance of the existing armistice borders and a search for acceptable solutions for the abolishment [sic.] of of areas of no-man's-land by their division, wherever possible, between both parties.

(3) In order to reach a comprehensive agreement between the two parties, Special Joint Committees will be appointed to study and discuss each of the fundamental issues. These will include territorial and economic problems as well as other issues to be included in the agreement, with a view to replacing the temporary lines and arrangements comprised in the Armistice Agreement by permanent lines and arrangements, including Jerusalem and the question of a port and access to the sea for Jordan, under her full sovereignty.

(4) Measures are to be taken by both sides to safeguard the Holy Places and to ensure freedom of prayer and access, while eliminating the possibility of military disputes between the parties over those sites, and providing the U.N. authorities with satisfactory guarantees in this matter.

(5) One of the first tasks to be imposed on one of the Committees mentioned in Paragraph 3 will be to devise arrangements for payment of monetary compensation to owners of property in Jerusalem without affecting the territorial settlement in Jerusalem referred to in Paragraph 3.

(6) Measures are to be taken to grant to Jordan a free zone in the port of Haifa in order to implement the principle of commercial cooperation between the two parties for the duration of this agreement.

(7) Measures are to be discussed to settle matters pertaining to Arab property in Israel territory by allowing the owners of such property either to enter Israel themselves or to send their representatives in order to sell such property or to deal with it as they see fit. And this is in order that they will have the right, if such solutions prove difficult to implement, to authorize the parties to the agreement to resolve the difficulties. This would apply also to Jewish property in Jordanian territory.

(8) The Special Committee will discuss measures to facilitate Israeli access to the institutions on Mount Scopus and Arab access to Bethlehem, in accordance with Article 8 of the Armistice Agreement.

     Addenda to this agreement will be drawn up to determine ways and means of implementing the above resolutions.

Intitaled:

R[euven] S[hiloah]

M[oshe] D[ayan]

F[awzi al-]M[ulki]

S[amir al-] R[ifai]

SOURCES: Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, vol.5, 1950, ed. Yehoshua Freundlich. Jerusalem: Israel State Archives, 1988, 140 [doc.105], English translation in Companion Volume, p.74; and Adam Garfinkle, Israel and Jordan in the Shadow of War: Functional Ties and Futile Diplomacy in a Small Place, New York: St. Martin’s, 1992, Appendix C, 197–98.