With prayers, 10,000 brightly colored balloons and a 21-gun salute, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty Wednesday to end 46 years of war and launch the Middle East into a new era of hope.
The signing by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan climaxed an extravagant ceremony attended by President Clinton, who told the audience that peace between Jordan and Israel "is no longer a mirage."Clinton wiped his eyes as a stiff, dusty wind whipped his face when he added his signature to the treaty as a witness.
Clinton, King Hussein of Jordan and Rabin stood side by side as anthems played and cannons roared to open the ceremony.
"God willing there will be no more deaths, no more misery, no more suspicion, no more fear, no more uncertainty," the 58-year-old Hussein said.
Rabin, the 72-year-old former general who fought two wars against Jordan, spoke directly to Israeli and Jordanian mothers giving birth on the historic day.
"The peace that was born today gives us all hope that the children born today will never know war between us and their mothers will know no sorrow," Rabin said. "Shalom, salaam, peace."
Clinton led an array of foreign dignitaries who came to the desert ceremony in a show of international solidarity against Arab hard-liners who oppose the treaty.
Twice in the hour before the signing, guerrillas in Lebanon fired rockets and mortars into northern Israel in an apparent act of disapproval.
"The forces of terror will try to hold you back," Clinton said at the ceremony. "We cannot, we must not, we will not let them succeed," he declared to applause from the 5,000 invited guests.
Borrowing from the book of Matthew, Clinton said, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall inherit the earth."
The peacemakers and their witnesses gathered on a newly as-phal-ted plaza on a former minefield straddling the border: Israeli generals in combat fatigues mixing with Jordanians in red-and-white keffiyeh headdress; diplomats in ties and farmers in open-necked shirts; and ordinary people invited because they lost loved ones in the wars.
As they waited for the ceremony to start, the leaders presented a tableau of harmony: stoop-shouldered President Ezer Weizman of Israel, a former fighter pilot, chatting with Hussein's brother Hassan; Hussein, a descendant of the prophet Mohammed, shaking hands with Rabin, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants.
In a tribute to Washington's role as peace broker, military bands from both countries came together in a joint rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." The signing plaza was a blaze of flags and a banner proclaiming peace in Arabic, Hebrew and English. The program included readings from the Old Testament and Koran by Jordanian and Israeli clergy, a minute's silence for the war dead and a reading of Psalms by a bereaved Israeli father.
In a finishing flourish, some 10,000 balloons representing the flag colors of the three nations were released into the desert sky.
Clinton came to the desert border from Cairo, Egypt, where he had met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and pressed him on "the absolute necessity" to combat Islamic militants in the territory he controls. The president said he was satisfied with Arafat's "very clear, unambiguous response."
The Israel-Jordan treaty, Israel's only one with an Arab state after peace was signed with Egypt in 1979, follows two decades of virtual non-belligerency. Talks with a more bitter enemy, Syria, are stalled over President Hafez Assad's demand that Israel return all of the strategic Golan Heights.
The Palestinians, who won autonomy in the Gaza Strip and Jericho five months ago, also want more: full statehood in the West Bank and Gaza, which Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization are to begin discussing in 1996.
In remarks prepared for delivery to the Jordanian Parliament later Wednesday, Clinton said peacemakers must work hard to combat terrorism.
"These forces of reaction feed on disillusionment, poverty and despair. They stoke the fires of violence and seek to destroy the progress of peace. To them I say, you will not succeed," he said. "You are the past, not the future."
When Clinton speaks to the Israeli Knesset on Thursday, he will make the point that Israel has never lived in greater peace in its history than it does today.