by Avi Shlaim
The resistance movement was not a monolithic body, however, but a collection of different and divided guerrilla organizations loosely gathered under the umbrella of the PLO. And the PLO itself was not an independent actor but a microcosm of Arab politics, representing the different ideological trends as well as the interests of the states who supported the different factions within it. Fatah was the largest group, and its leader, Yasser Arafat, was also the chairman of the PLO. As well as being the largest, Fatah was also the most moderate and mainstream of all the guerrilla groups. Its core ideology was one of non-intervention in the internal affairs of the Arab states. Its leadership was accordingly reluctant to take a public stand against the regime in Jordan. The precept of non-intervention, however, was not observed by the more radical guerrilla organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), led by Dr George Habash, or by the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PDFLP), led by Nayef Hawatmeh. Nor was it observed by the more marginal but no less radical Al-Saiqa (‘the storm’), which was a wing of the Syrian Ba’th Party, or the Arab Liberation Front, which was a wing of the Iraqi Ba’th Party. Hussein was seen by all these groups as ‘a reactionary’, ‘a puppet of Western imperialism’ and ‘a Zionist tool’; a confrontation with him was therefore regarded not only as desirable but as ideologically necessary.3 By the beginning of 1970 Habash and Hawatmeh were openly calling for the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy and its replacement by a revolutionary regime. They wanted to transform Amman into an Arab Hanoi and proclaimed that the road to Tel Aviv passed through it.
Growing power and prestige were accompanied by growing arrogance, insolence and heavy-handedness. The fedayeen, regardless of what group they belonged to, were overbearing: ‘They drove noisily around Amman in jeeps with loaded weapons, like an army of occupation; they extorted financial contributions from individuals, sometimes foreigners, in their homes and in public places; they disregarded routine traffic regulations, failed to register and license their vehicles, and refused to stop at army checkpoints; they boasted about their role of destiny against Israel and belittled the worth of the army. Their very presence in Amman, far from the battlefield, seemed like a challenge to the regime.’4
The arrogance and the indiscipline of the fedayeen placed Hussein in an acute dilemma. If he used force to crush them, he would alienate his Palestinian subjects and the Arab world. Yet if he failed to act against them, he would forfeit the respect of his Jordanian subjects and, even more seriously, that of the army, the mainstay of his regime. The dilemma was not eased by pressure from the army to confront the fedayeen challenge to the regime head-on. In February 1970 Hussein went to Cairo to see Nasser and won his support, or at least his acquiescence, in a tougher policy in dealing with the fedayeen. Nasser was prepared to use his influence with the fedayeen to get them to reduce their pressure on the regime, provided Hussein restrained his army from openly clashing with them.5 Immediately after Hussein’s return from Cairo, the Jordanian government issued new regulations that required the fedayeen to carry identity cards and to license their cars like everybody else. The new regulations also prohibited the carrying of arms in public, the storing of ammunition in towns, and the holding of unlawful meetings and demonstrations. The fedayeen reacted sharply and violently to this, and forced Hussein to climb down and ‘freeze’ the new regulations. He also yielded to fedayeen pressure by dismissing the hardline minister of the interior, Major-General Muhammad Rasul al-Kilani.
Western newspapers now started to carry stories saying that Hussein might abdicate soon, as he was gradually losing control over his kingdom. These reports, however, were based more on rumour than on fact. Far from thinking about abdication, Hussein was preparing for the next round, which he regarded as inescapable. His concessions to the fedayeen were a tactical move designed to gain time, rather than an admission of defeat. It was reculer pour mieux sauter. Moreover, in line with his perennial policy of balancing, he began to mobilize external support to help him in his battle against his internal opponents. The two countries he turned to were the United States and Israel. Both had their drawbacks as allies. News that the ruler of Jordan was turning to America and Israel for help against fellow Arabs would have provided powerful ammunition to his enemies and enabled them to drive home the charges that he was ‘a puppet of Western imperialism’ and a ‘Zionist tool’. But he had no other options. On 17 February the US deputy chief of mission in Tel Aviv, Owen Zurhellen, conveyed an urgent message from Hussein to Foreign Minister Abba Eban. In this message the king put three questions:
1. Does Israel agree to avoid taking advantage of the opportunity of Hussein having to thin down his forces on the border to deal with subversive elements at home?
2. Can Israel agree to avoid responding to provocations by the terrorists, who will try to carry out attacks while Jordanian forces are being thinned down, with the purpose of drawing Israel into retaliatory actions?
3. Can Hussein count on Israeli forces to assist him should the forces of neighbouring countries come to the aid of the Palestinian terrorists while he tries to knock them out?
Eban was not surprised that Hussein chose to convey these questions via Washington, even though he had the means of asking the questions and receiving the answers directly. Eban realized that Hussein sought not only an Israeli promise but also an American guarantee. In the cabinet debate regarding the reply, Defence Minister Moshe Dayan had the greatest reservations about helping their embattled neighbour. He did not want to help, and he did not believe that Hussein would be able to hold out. But there was a majority in the cabinet in favour of a positive response. Accordingly, the message that the Americans were asked to convey to the king went as follows:
1. Israel will not take advantage of the thinning down of forces on the Jordanian border to attack Jordan.
2. In case of terrorist provocations on the Jordanian border, Israel will respond vigorously.
3. Israel is willing to discuss the question of assisting Jordan, should the need arise.6
The February incident set the pattern for the next seven months, during which ‘the mainstream of events, diverted only briefly now and then by side currents, eddies and minor obstructions, moved inexorably towards September and civil war.’7 One of the eddies resulted from fedayeen attacks on Israel and Israeli retaliation against Jordan. A rocket attack on Beit Shean was followed, on 3 June, by Israeli air and artillery attacks on Irbid, in which seven civilians and one soldier were killed and twenty-six civilians wounded. On the same day the Jordanian Army shelled Tiberias for the first time since 1948. Having ordered the shelling, Hussein recognized that this was a dangerous new cycle of violence that had to be stopped somewhere. He therefore approached the Israelis through the US Embassy in Amman to suggest that if they would give him a period without retaliation, he would take strong measures against the fedayeen. The message said: ‘Jordanian Government was doing everything it could to prevent fedayeen rocket attacks on Israel. King deeply regretted rocket attacks. Jordan Army under orders to shoot to kill any fedayeen attempting to fire rockets and fedayeen leaders had been told again evening of June 3 that violators would be shot on sight.’ The Americans believed that the Jordanians had no wish to escalate further, but they wanted to see this chapter closed. Irbid, however, was the key point, and if it were shelled again, or if Israel renewed her assaults on civilians, the Jordanians might feel they had to retaliate again. In view of these indications, the Americans urged the Israeli government to give a breathing space to permit further discussions in an attempt to call a halt to rising violence and to restore the ceasefire.8 The Israelis decided to give the king what he wanted. It was true that Hussein had made similar protestations in the past about controlling the fedayeen, but the strength of his language on this occasion impressed them. Nor did they place any time limit on the truce. The important thing was to see if he could make his intentions effective.9
Difficulties assailed Hussein from
all directions. While straining to prevent the fedayeen from provoking Israel, he also had to restrain the army from settling scores with them. After the IDF had driven the fedayeen out of the Jordan Valley, they moved into the cities and instituted what can only be described as a reign of terror. Army bases were located outside the cities, but many of the serving soldiers had their families in urban areas. Their patience was strained beyond endurance by the lawlessness of the fedayeen, by the liberties they took in a country that was not theirs and by their mistreatment of civilians. Increasingly, army commanders began to take the law into their own hands. By the early summer it became apparent that, if Hussein did not act, the military would rebel against him because they could not take any more humiliation from the fedayeen. After one incident, a tank battalion moved from the valley to Amman with no orders to do so and it took Sharif Zaid bin Shaker, the commander of the Third Armoured Division, and the king to stop its onslaught on the perpetrators. Hussein and Shaker drove out and intercepted the tanks. Shaker stood on the road in front of them and ordered the commander to return back to base. When the commander refused, Shaker said he was ordering him in the name of the king. The commander said to Shaker, ‘If you don’t get out of the way, I’ll run you over.’ Hussein then came out of the car and repeated the order. The commander obeyed reluctantly. The incident showed that the army was desperate to confront the fedayeen and put them in their place. It could no longer tolerate the abuse and humiliation heaped on Jordan by its Palestinian guests.10
Hussein thus had his work cut out for him. As he recalled,
We had thousands of incidents of breaking the law, of attacking people. It was a very unruly state of affairs in the country and I continued to try. I went to Egypt. I called in the Arabs to help in any way they could – particularly as some of them were sponsoring some of these movements in one form or another – but without much success, and towards the end I felt I was losing control. In the last six months leading up to the crisis the army began to rebel. I had to spend most of my time running to those units that had left their positions and were going to the capital, or to some other part of Jordan, to sort out people who were attacking their families or attacking their soldiers on leave. I think that the gamble was probably the army would fracture along Palestinian–Jordanian lines. That never happened, thank God.11
On 7 June fighting broke out between the army and the fedayeen in Zarqa. Hussein himself was the target of two assassination attempts. On 9 June some fedayeen opened fire on the government’s intelligence headquarters in Amman, and Hussein insisted on rushing to the scene. His motorcade came under heavy machine-gun fire, and one of his guards was killed. News of the ambush of the king was hardly out when the crack Bedouin units of the army took matters into their own hands. Al-Wahdat and Al-Husseini, the large refugee camps on the outskirts of Amman, were shelled, and heavy fighting between the army and the fedayeen continued for three days.12 Rifa’i went to the US Embassy and reported that an attempt had been made on the life of his ‘boss’, but that he escaped unharmed. Rifa’i said that the situation was getting very serious, and that the king would have to pull back some of his troops from the border areas. Hussein requested that the Americans relay this information to the Israelis and urge them to exercise maximum forbearance in the event of incidents on the border.13 The Israelis replied that if Hussein wanted to withdraw his forces, particularly tanks, from the front, he could do so with impunity as far as they were concerned.14
The Israelis followed closely the events unfolding on the other side of the border. Major-General Aharon Yariv, the director of Military Intelligence, gave the IDF General Staff a full report on the fighting. According to this, Hussein had brought in reinforcements for the battle in Amman. In Amman there were 1,500–2,000 Fatah fighters armed with Katyusha rockets and some mortars. Although the army had superior forces and firepower, Yariv thought it moved too slowly and that the king recoiled, as on previous occasions, from using the capacity available to him because he did not want a massacre on his hands, especially one of civilians. Hussein’s advisers were said to be divided. Some urged him to go forward and finish the job, while others warned him that it could be accomplished only at the cost of several thousand casualties, which was unacceptable. Hussein drew back, and the outcome was inconclusive. The toll of the fighting was 250–300 dead and about 700 wounded, some of them non-combatants.15
After three days of fighting Hussein and Arafat announced the terms of a ceasefire and urged their followers to return to their normal lives. The main features of the ceasefire were an agreement by both sides to return to their bases and a commitment to release the prisoners they held. The PFLP, however, refused to abide by the ceasefire. It held sixty-eight foreign hostages in two hotels in Amman and threatened to blow up the buildings unless prominent army officers, including Sharif Nasser bin Jamil and Sharif Zaid bin Shaker, were dismissed and the Special Forces unit of paratroopers was disbanded. Fear of losing ground in public opinion to the PFLP led Arafat to associate himself with these demands. Hussein yielded to the combined pressure and dismissed his uncle and his cousin. The British ambassador remarked that the departure of Sharif Nasser bin Jamil was ‘a purgation which brought relief to many other than the fedayeen’.16 Only after its demands had been met did the PFLP release the hostages. Not long after the departure of the commander-in-chief came the resignation of the equally corrupt prime minister nicknamed ‘10 percent Talhouni’ and his government. Talhouni was replaced by Abdul Mun’im Rifa’i, an honest man acceptable to both sides but a rather weak politician. He was the brother of Samir and the uncle of Zaid Rifa’i. Six of the ministers in the new government were ardent Palestinian nationalists. On the military side too the new chief of staff, Manshoor Haditha, came from a moderate wing of the army that leaned towards compromise. Haditha had good relations with Yasser Arafat. He was in favour of opening a second front in the War of Attrition against Israel and of cooperation with the fedayeen. According to Israeli intelligence, his influence within the army was considerable, as two out of the three divisional commanders were his close friends.17
There can be little doubt that Hussein emerged from the crisis with his power and authority gravely weakened. He had opted for compromise and coexistence with the Palestinian resistance movement, but this involved a change of policy as well as personnel on his part. The sacrifice of his uncle and his cousin was particularly painful because, like himself, they were pillars of the establishment and symbols of Hashemite rule in Jordan. Dr Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s national security adviser, had privately encouraged Hussein to crack down on the fedayeen.18 In his memoirs Kissinger wrote that ‘By the summer of 1970 the young, able, and courageous King was in grave peril. The guerrillas, resentful of his efforts to promote a political settlement with Israel, increasingly challenged his army.’ For his favouritism towards the young king, Kissinger gave the following reasons: ‘Hussein had always advocated moderation, resisted the radical tide, and avoided fashionable antiWestern slogans. He was in difficulty because of his reluctance to permit the guerrillas free rein. His collapse would radicalize the entire Middle East. Israel would not acquiesce in the establishment of guerrilla bases all along its Jordanian frontier. Another Middle East war would be extremely likely. Thus, Jordan, in my view, was a test of our capacity to control events in the region. Nixon shared this perception.’19 During the crisis Kissinger began to make plans both for the evacuation of American civilians from Jordan and for other unspecified contingencies. The signs were not hopeful. A report to the president drafted by Harold Saunders, one of Kissinger’s staff, in early July abounded with ominous phrases: ‘The authority and prestige of the Hashemite regime will continue to decline. The international credibility of Jordan will be further compromised… Greater fedayeen freedom of action will inevitably result in more serious breaches of the ceasefire in the Jordan Valley… Hussein faces an uncertain political future.’20
June 1970 was one of the low points of Hash
emite rule in Jordan. Most foreign observers, including American diplomats based in Amman, thought that events had favoured the Palestinian guerrilla organizations and that it was only a matter of time before Hashemite rule was swept away. Some members of the royal family were also beginning to wonder how much longer they could hold out against the advancing tide. One of them was Sharif Nasser, who came to the conclusion that there was no future for the Hashemite family in Jordan. So he went to his nephew and told him that they should consider leaving.21 Those who knew Sharif Nasser would hardly have believed that he could advise quitting without a fight. In the army he was renowned for courage rather than cowardice.22
Sharif Nasser was a very forceful man, but Hussein rejected his advice on this occasion, just as he had during the crisis of April 1957. For Sharif Nasser abdication and exile were an option, but for his nephew they were not. Not only was Sharif Nasser ten years older than Hussein but the formative experiences in his life were very different. He came from the branch of the Hashemite family that had been driven out of Baghdad in 1958. For them living in exile was almost a normal state of affairs.23 Hussein, on the other hand, was born in Jordan, grew up there and never suffered from any sense of being an outsider. His passionate identification with the country and its people was further reinforced by a strong sense that, as a Hashemite, it was his duty to rule and to lead from the front. He was absolutely determined to stand his ground and defend his dynasty. Abdication to him looked like an easy option, tantamount to cowardice and treason.24
