by Avi Shlaim
The next morning, 1 March 1956, the king put on his uniform and drove to the office of the prime minister, followed by Land Rovers containing his escort of armed soldiers. Hussein slapped a handwritten piece of paper on the prime minister’s desk, ordering the dismissal of Glubb and the relieving of several other senior British officers of their command. ‘These are my wishes,’ he said, ‘and I want them executed at once.’ Samir Rifa’i was stunned, but he realized that things had moved so far that the king could not back down.10 Rifa’i summoned the cabinet at once and informed them of the royal edict. The ministers were equally stunned, but after some discussion they decided to carry out the king’s orders. Falah Madadhah, the minister of the interior, was instrumental in bringing his colleagues to the point of decision. He pointed out to them that the soldiers they saw outside had been sent by the king to ensure that they exiled Glubb. Rifa’i then summoned the British ambassador, Charles Duke, to break the news to him. Rifa’i apologetically explained to the ambassador that the cabinet had not been consulted and that the royal order was an ultimatum. Although Rifa’i obeyed, he distanced himself and the cabinet from the affair by telling the ambassador that the king seemed to be going mad.11
At two o’clock Rifa’i summoned Glubb himself and, somewhat apologetically, gave him his marching orders. Glubb did not question the legality of the royal order, only the undignified haste with which it was being carried out. Rifa’i asked Glubb to leave the country by four. Glubb replied, ‘No, sir, I have lived here for twenty-six years and I cannot leave at two hours’ notice.’ They compromised on seven o’clock the next morning. At the appointed hour Glubb was driven to the airport with full honours in the royal car but also under heavy armed guard. At the airport there was one of those curious scenes that abound in Britain’s imperial history. The lord chamberlain handed Glubb a small gift from the king: a photograph of Hussein with the hand-written dedication ‘With our acknowledgements of the good services and untiring exertion, and with our best wishes for His Excellency Glubb Pasha’. It was an old Harrow school custom to give farewell photographs to your parting friends, and Hussein’s good public-school manners had not deserted him in the crisis. At a deeper level, however, the deed was ‘a clang in the dirge for a dying empire.’12
Despite the early warnings, Glubb’s dismissal caught the British by surprise, and they moved very swiftly to try to reverse it. Anthony Eden was in a state of shock at the news and his reaction was almost hysterical. In the late afternoon of 1 March, at Eden’s instruction, Duke went to see the king to demand an explanation. The king began by telling the ambassador that his action did not affect Jordan’s long-standing friendship with Britain. Duke interjected that, on the contrary, it was a sharp blow to this friendship. The king replied that it would not prove so in the long run. He went on to complain about inadequate ammunition stocks, deficiencies in the assignment of officers in the legion and Glubb’s failure to help him fight the Egyptian propaganda attacks. He concluded by saying that he felt bound to do what he considered essential to preserve the honour of his kingdom.13
Eden was not satisfied with these explanations. They were no excuse, he thought, for suddenly dismissing Glubb like a pilfering servant. He therefore instructed Duke to see the king again as soon as possible in order to deliver a message: that his action was inexplicable to the British ministers, who had met that morning to discuss the events in Jordan, and a severe blow to the confidence on which the good relations between their countries had been based. The king was urged to take immediate action to remedy the situation.14 To Hussein the message sounded like a threat. At one o’clock in the morning Duke called the royal court and insisted on seeing the king, who had already gone to bed. The meeting took place in the small study of the Basman Palace. The atmosphere was demonstrably tense. Duke had in his hand a message from London. ‘I must advise you, sir,’ he said, ‘that Her Majesty’s Government feels that, unless you change your decision immediately on this matter, unless Glubb Pasha is permitted to continue his work here and we are given a chance to clear this whole matter up, the consequences could be very serious as far as you yourself, the monarchy’ – he hesitated – ‘and the whole future of Jordan is concerned.’
The message from Eden angered Hussein because Glubb had been an employee of the Jordanian government, not of the British government, and in dismissing him he had merely exercised his constitutional prerogative, as Glubb himself was the first to acknowledge. Hussein therefore rejected Duke’s threat robustly and vehemently. In his memoirs he recorded his reaction: ‘I know my country, and I know my responsibilities. I am going to carry out what I believe to be right in the best way I can.’ Duke did not respond, so Hussein added, ‘I believe, Mr Duke, that what I have done is for the good of my country and I am not going to alter my decision, regardless of any consequences. I would rather lose my life than change my mind. The monarchy belongs to the people, I belong to this country, and I know that I am doing this for the best, come what may.’15
In the days that followed, Hussein and his officials repeatedly stressed to Duke that their policy remained unchanged and that they did not wish to mar the close and friendly relations between Jordan and Britain. They argued that Glubb’s removal and the Arabization of the army did not constitute a departure from this policy. Hussein continued to view Britain as an ally and a true friend of Jordan.16
Public opinion in Britain was exercised not over the Jordanian decision but only over the manner of Glubb’s dismissal. Public anger about what was seen as the shabby treatment of him was magnified by the romantic aura that surrounded him as a latter-day Lawrence of Arabia. Glubb himself, to his credit, took a more detached view of the whole affair. During a visit to Chequers, Glubb was the voice of tolerant realism. He advised Eden to make allowance for the young king, to be patient with Jordan and to do what he could to mend the damage to the relations between the two countries.17 Sir Alec Kirkbride, another old Jordan hand, begged his colleagues in the Foreign Office not to overreact. In the end these counsels prevailed; the policy-makers in London swallowed their pride and took no punitive action. The British officers on secondment to the Arab Legion were withdrawn, but those, like Glubb, under contract to the Jordanian government were allowed to stay. The Anglo-Jordanian treaty remained in force, as did the British subsidy of about £12 million per year. Hussein’s successful defiance of Britain’s rulers enhanced his reputation as the Lion of Jordan.
Although the immediate crisis over ‘L’affaire Glubb’ subsided, it inevitably had longer-term repercussions. Eden was convinced, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that Nasser had engineered the whole affair. For him Glubb’s dismissal amounted to a resounding British diplomatic defeat at the hands of the Egyptian leader. Anthony Nutting, the minister of state for foreign affairs, later wrote that 1 March 1956 was the day Eden fatally resolved that ‘the Egyptian dictator’ had to be toppled – that otherwise he would destroy Britain’s position in the Middle East and his own position as the prime minister.18 Glubb’s dismissal may thus have had the unintended consequence of launching the paranoid British leader on the road that led to the Suez war eight months later.
In fact, Nasser knew nothing about the dismissal of Glubb until the Englishman left the country. The British foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, was visiting Cairo and Dr Mahmud Fawzi, the Egyptian foreign minister, hosted a dinner for him on 1 March. At the dinner President Nasser made some critical comments about Glubb, giving him as an example of the conservative forces in the Middle East who were out of touch with the progressive elements there. Lloyd was due to have a second meeting with Nasser at his home at nine o’clock the next morning. Just as Lloyd’s car was drawing up in front of the house, Mohamed Heikal, Nasser’s friend and confidant, called to report that Glubb had been fired. At first Nasser thought that Heikal was joking. It never occurred to him that the sacking was done on King Hussein’s initiative. He assumed it had been a British move and that the timing was chosen as a gesture of goo
dwill to coincide with Lloyd’s visit to Cairo. The subject came up at the beginning of the meeting and Nasser remarked, ‘It’s good isn’t it?’ Lloyd went red in the face and demanded to know what was good about it. Nasser replied in all innocence that it showed that Britain at last understood that out-of-date figures like Glubb could no longer serve a useful purpose in the area. The look on his interlocutor’s face made it clear to Nasser that they were talking at cross-purposes. After Lloyd left, Heikal called again. This time Nasser was laughing. ‘It’s absurd,’ he said. ‘He thinks that we engineered the Glubb business, that we knew about it before the dinner started and that it was done deliberately to humiliate him.’19
From Hussein’s personal and from Jordan’s national point of view, the removal of Glubb and of his senior aides was a masterly political stroke. The risks were enormous, including the possible downfall of the house of Hashem. But so was the prize for success. The ousting of the British officers powerfully boosted Hussein’s popularity, and it gave his people a new sense of pride, a feeling that their army was now an Arab army that received its orders from its supreme Arab commander. As the American ambassador to Amman noted, ‘The action has gone far toward removing Jordan’s defensive position and inferiority complex vis-à-vis the Arab states. King is now hero and no longer puppet.’20 The 21-year-old king had taken on the British Empire and won. The outburst of popular enthusiasm that followed was without precedent in the history of the Hashemite monarchy. In the words of one eyewitness, ‘From the drama of Glubb’s dismissal King Hussein scored a brief brilliant triumph. The populace flocked to him. During three days [of] public celebration his hilltop palace in Amman was thronged about with joyful delegations from every corner of the land. The applause was tumultuous, delirious.’21 The crowds, ‘responsive to each breath of the political breeze, suddenly became passionately royalist’.22
But the surge of popularity was less important than the fact of gaining control of the Arab Legion, identifying it as a national army and thus refuting the opposition charges against it.23 Major-General Radi Innab, an elderly career officer, was immediately appointed by Hussein as chief of staff. Ali Abu Nuwar was promoted in one step from lieutenant-colonel to major-general, and, on 24 May, he took over from Radi Innab as chief of staff. The army’s name was changed from the Arab Legion, a British designation, to the Jordanian Arab Army. Hussein had displayed great courage in securing control over the army, and, in so doing, also secured the loyalty and support of the nationalist Jordanian officers, which was to prove crucial for the survival of the Hashemite monarchy in the next two turbulent decades. In this respect he was much more far-sighted than his mother, who continued to regard the British as the guardians of the throne against the rising tide of Arab nationalism. But the move that brought Hussein so much popularity at home and in the Arab world also exposed him to danger from those who aided him in his move against Glubb.
For a while Hussein continued to bask in the after-glow of his successful coup. But the sudden departure of the British officers left a political, military and administrative vacuum that could not be filled easily. In his attempt to remedy this, Hussein had to experiment and inevitably he made some mistakes. The coup enhanced not only his self-confidence but also his innate propensity for taking risks. If before the fall of the British proconsul Hussein had suffered from lack of confidence, after the liberation he may have suffered from over-confidence. Hussein was basically an impetuous and unpredictable character, given to mood swings that sometimes translated into erratic behaviour and inconsistent policies. He was not a strategist who first charted a long-term course and then pursued it steadily and systematically; he tended to wait upon events, to rely on his intuition and sharp political instincts, and to make decisions on the hoof. There was also something of the gambler in him. Consequently his conduct of both domestic and foreign policy over the following year was not always consistent or coherent.
The main trend in Jordanian affairs in 1956 was the movement away from the influence of Britain and the progressive alignment with the views and policies of Egypt and Syria. This manifested itself in domestic politics as well as in external relations but especially in military affairs. It was sustained by the popular desire – fostered by Egyptian propaganda and example – to be free of Western influence; the ambitions of the nationalist officers eager for high command; and the aspiration of Hussein to cut a figure on the Arab stage. But the persistent deadlock over Palestine was perhaps the greatest single factor. On the one hand, Nasser’s acquisition of arms from the Soviet bloc had enabled him to pose as the standard-bearer in the prospective reconquest of the ‘usurped homeland’ and won over the Jordanian public to his side. On the other, the treaty with Britain was viewed by the Jordanian public as an anachronism because it gave them no protection against Israeli raids along the frontier and impeded any design for aggressive action.24
Jordan’s continuing economic dependence on Britain inevitably restricted its freedom of action in foreign affairs. The most immediate problem was the British subsidy to the Arab Legion, which everyone expected would now be withdrawn. On 12 March, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia volunteered to replace the British subsidy for ten years. Hussein knew that the offer was made with the aim of supplanting British influence, and he had his doubts about the reliability of his new allies. So he countered by accepting their offer only as an addition to the British subsidy. There were conflicting pressures at work. The British and the Americans encouraged Hussein to seek closer ties with Iraq. The nationalist officers encouraged him to move towards closer economic and military unity with Egypt and Syria. Hussein tried to prevent Jordan from being torn between the two blocs by a series of visits to Arab capitals. In his travels abroad, he enjoyed a warmer welcome in Cairo and Damascus than he did in Baghdad. The difficulty lay in translating promises into cash and summit communiqués into concrete action.
At home Hussein began to experiment with liberal ideas but his ultimate intentions were surrounded by uncertainty. At the end of May he got rid of Samir Rifa’i and replaced him with Said al-Mufti, who was described by the British ambassador as ‘a bibulous nonentity whose chief attribute was a desire to avoid responsibility and who was thus well fitted to occupy the role of non-governing Prime Minister for which he had been cast by the King’. The king made the decision to dissolve parliament and hold free elections in the autumn on his own. After only a month in office Mufti was replaced by Ibrahim Hashem, ‘an elderly and enfeebled gentleman, who considered his only function to be to act strictly as a caretaker for the period of four months until the elections’. During the interregnum, however, it was not at all clear that elections would be held. Many believed that the king might opt to suspend the constitution and establish an authoritarian regime with the support of the army rather than risk the emergence of an extremist parliament.25
During the summer attention shifted from domestic affairs to the rising tension along the border with Israel and to Britain’s dispute with Egypt over the Suez Canal. Nasser’s nationalization of the canal on 26 July sent shock waves throughout the Arab world. Hussein sent a telegram of congratulations to Nasser. Public opinion in Jordan overwhelmingly identified with Nasser in his struggle against the West, and opposition groups declared their strong support for his move. Nasser articulated the widely shared grievances against Britain and France, and inspired a sense of Arab pride and a feeling of popular participation in the campaign against their former colonial overlords. Given the intensity with which his people reacted to the crisis, Hussein had no choice but to join in the general Arab applause for Nasser. Whether Hussein liked it or not, the canal crisis thus ended up by providing a powerful boost to the domestic opposition parties in the lead-up to the general elections.
So did the rapidly deteriorating security situation along the border between Jordan and Israel. The renewed tension was caused by Palestinian refugees who went on murder and sabotage missions into Israel. Glubb’s departure marked a turning point in this res
pect. Although Glubb had had a strict and unswerving policy of doing everything possible to stop Palestinian infiltration across the armistice line, his successors were much more tolerant of infringements of the 1949 armistice agreement. According to an Israeli intelligence report, Egypt and Syria began to sponsor guerrilla activities from Jordan’s territory in the autumn of 1955. These were clandestine because their organizers saw them not just as a means of hurting Israel but also as a way of destabilizing the Jordanian regime. In April 1956, after the departure of Glubb, the Jordanian authorities began to play a part in organizing these groups of irregulars, known as fedayeen, or ‘self-sacrificers’, for terrorist attacks on Israel. The army assisted a group of about seventy fedayeen who had arrived from the Gaza Strip and also formed its own groups of irregulars along the border with Israel.26
The Israeli authorities insisted that Jordan was responsible for all hostile acts emanating from its territory, regardless of whether they were committed by regular or irregular forces. They used these acts to justify military reprisals on an ever-growing scale. Three separate attacks were launched by the IDF against Jordanian police stations in September, leaving 55 dead in their wake. On 10 October, in retaliation for the murder of two farmers, the IDF mounted a massive attack, with artillery and tanks, on the police station in Qalqilyah. The operation, which was commanded by Ariel Sharon, raised the level of casualties to a new height: 18 Israelis were killed and 68 wounded; 88 Jordanians were killed and 15 wounded. It was the most serious clash between Israel and the Arabs since the First Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and the end result of the Israeli policy of ‘an eye for an eyelash’.
