Secret 1993 Peres-Hussein Meeting Revealed 33 Years Later

Newly released documents revealed details of a secret 1993 meeting between then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Jordan’s King Hussein. The talks helped lay the groundwork for the peace treaty signed the following year.

The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation released the documents on Tuesday, marking the 10th anniversary of Peres’s death. Among them are excerpts from the minutes of the November 1993 meeting, which took place at King Hussein’s palace in Amman under strict secrecy.

According to the documents, officials took steps to prevent Peres from being identified during the visit, including altering his appearance.

The meeting followed a message sent to the Jordanian royal palace on October 26, 1993, saying Hussein wanted to meet Peres. According to the documents, the king viewed Peres as a creative political thinker. He was willing to meet secretly as part of preliminary efforts to advance an agreement with Israel.

During the talks, Hussein spoke about his sense of urgency and his desire to use the time available to him to push toward peace.

“Perhaps I have only a year or two left; I will put everything on the line,” Hussein said, according to the released minutes.

Peres presented ideas for regional economic cooperation that could support a future peace agreement, including shared infrastructure, transportation, aviation and other regional projects.

Hussein said he wanted younger generations to live with security and peace. At the same time, he warned that the leaders could not afford to lose momentum.

Peres proposed preparing an informal document summarizing the issues discussed and the understandings reached so he could present them to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He emphasized that he and Rabin were working together and shared the same goal of advancing peace.

The documents also show Hussein reflecting on the assassination of his grandfather, King Abdullah I, in 1951 and speaking about the legacy he hoped to leave behind.

“Our generation must make difficult decisions before we disappear, and all of this for our children,” Hussein said.

According to the Peres Center, Hussein and Peres initialed a memorandum of understanding that night.

Less than a year later, on October 26, 1994, Israel and Jordan signed their peace treaty in the Arava, with Rabin, Peres and Hussein playing central roles in the process.

The 1993 meeting was not the first secret contact between Peres and Hussein. The two had also negotiated the 1987 London Agreement, an earlier attempt to advance an Israeli-Jordanian peace process that ultimately failed.