The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty (1994)

The Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty is the bilateral agreement, signed on 26 October 1994 at the Arava border crossing, that formally ended the state of war between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and established full diplomatic, security, and economic relations between them. It made Jordan the second Arab state, after Egypt in 1979, to sign a comprehensive peace with Israel, and it remains in force today, more than three decades later, even through the Second Intifada, the Gaza wars, and the war that followed October 7.

What it is

The treaty’s formal title is the Treaty of Peace Between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. It is a full peace treaty under international law, not a ceasefire or an armistice like the one Israel and Jordan had lived under since 1949. Its opening article states plainly: “Peace is hereby established between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.” The treaty runs to 30 articles plus annexes covering borders, water, and other technical matters, and it built on a prior document, the Washington Declaration, signed by the same leaders on 25 July 1994, which had already ended the formal state of belligerency and opened Jordanian airspace to Israeli civil aircraft.

Who signed it, and why

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordanian Prime Minister Abdul Salam al-Majali signed the treaty for their governments. US President Bill Clinton witnessed it, with Secretary of State Warren Christopher present, and King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli President Ezer Weizman attended the ceremony in the Arava valley near Eilat, where the two countries’ military bands played each other’s anthems before joining for “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The treaty came about because both governments had reasons to move. Jordan and Israel had fought each other in three wars, 1948, 1967, and the 1973 clashes on the eastern front, and Jordan lost the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967. King Hussein had explored peace privately for years, including a secret 1987 agreement with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir rejected. By 1994, the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO had already broken the taboo on Arab-Israeli negotiation, removing Jordan’s fear of being first, and King Hussein wanted a settled border and formal water rights rather than an unresolved frontier with a stronger neighbor. Both governments also shared a strategic interest in containing Iraq and, later, in managing the rise of Islamist movements on both sides of the river.

Where and when

The treaty was signed on 26 October 1994 at the Wadi Araba border crossing on the Israel-Jordan frontier, north of Eilat and Aqaba, and it entered into force on 10 November 1994 after ratification by both governments. The location was deliberately chosen on the border itself, a stretch of desert that the treaty’s own boundary article would formally fix.

Key provisions

Article 3 designates the border, based largely on the 1922 Mandate-era boundary, as “the permanent, secure and recognised international boundary between Israel and Jordan,” resolving decades of ambiguity along the line, including special arrangements for the Baqura and Zofar (Naharayim) areas where private Jewish-owned land had ended up on the Jordanian side after 1948 and was leased back to Israeli farmers. Article 4 commits both parties to refrain from “the threat or use of force” against each other and to cooperate against terrorism. Article 6 recognizes Jordan’s water rights in the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers and the Arava aquifer, a provision that mattered enormously to a water-scarce kingdom. Article 8 addresses refugees and displaced persons, calling for their situation to be resolved “in accordance with international law” through multilateral working groups and bilateral and quadripartite mechanisms involving Egypt and the Palestinians, deliberately leaving the substance for the still-unresolved final-status talks rather than settling it here. Article 9 states that “Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem,” the clause that underwrites the Hashemite custodianship of the Temple Mount’s al-Aqsa compound and the Waqf administration that continues there today.

What happened as a result, and its status today

The treaty produced full diplomatic relations, open borders for trade and tourism, joint water and agricultural projects, and decades of quiet security cooperation, including intelligence sharing that has repeatedly helped foil terror plots against both countries. It has never been abrogated. It survived the Second Intifada, repeated Gaza wars, and the collapse of Jordanian-Israeli public opinion; polling consistently shows a large majority of Jordanians opposed to the relationship even as their government maintains it, which is why analysts call it a “cold peace,” correct on security and diplomacy, thin on people-to-people warmth. Jordan recalled its ambassador at points of high tension and has periodically downgraded contact, but the treaty’s core commitments, the border, the security cooperation, and Jordan’s role at the holy sites, have held through every crisis since 1994, including the war that began on 7 October 2023.

The treaty is also routinely misused in propaganda. Article 8’s language on refugees is sometimes cited, out of context, as if Jordan agreed to resettle Palestinian refugees permanently inside Jordan or renounced any future right of return; in fact the article commits both governments only to work toward a resolution through international mechanisms and explicitly reserves the refugee question for later negotiation, the same posture the treaty’s contemporaries, UN Resolution 242 and Resolution 194, took toward final status. The treaty is also occasionally cited to claim Jordan formally renounced any West Bank claim only in 1994; in reality King Hussein had already legally and administratively disengaged from the West Bank in 1988, six years before this treaty, which addressed the Israel-Jordan border, not the West Bank’s status.

Yitzhak Rabin · The Oslo Accords (1993 to 1995) · UN Resolution 242 · UN Resolution 194 · The Six-Day War · The Abraham Accords (2020)