Throughout the day of June 5, 1967, the Israeli air force attacked our bases in Amman and Mafraq, destroying our landing fields and our fleet of Hawker Hunter aircraft. For the next two days Jordanian forces fought bravely to defend the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but, outmanned and outgunned, and with no air cover, they were overwhelmed by the Israelis. The Royal Jordanian Air Force also did an amazing job considering its limited resources and the superiority of Israeli airpower, shooting down eight Israeli planes and launching two attacks on central Israeli cities. It was the only Arab air force that downed Israeli planes during this war.
Pressing on, the Israeli armed forces, commanded by Yitzhak Rabin, attempted to seize control of the whole of the West Bank. Determined to be on the front line, my father headed down to the Jordan Valley to be with his men. When he got there, a terrible sight awaited him, which he later described: “Roads clogged with trucks, jeeps, and all kinds of vehicles twisted, disemboweled, dented, still smoking, giving off that particular smell of metal and paint burned by exploding bombs—a stink that only powder can make.”
Throughout the evening of June 5 and into the next day our soldiers and tank drivers, including the 40th Armoured Brigade in which I would later serve as a young soldier, showed great courage, but they were helpless under the bombardment of Israeli fighters. Most of their tanks were destroyed by Israeli bombs. My father later described the battle, saying, “That night was hell. It was clear as day. The sky and the earth glowed with the light of the rockets and the constant explosions of the bombs pouring from Israeli planes.”
The war was disastrous for Jordan and for other Arab states. When the fighting stopped on June 10, Israel had taken the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Much of the territory it seized in 1967 is still illegally occupied by Israel today. Some two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand Palestinians crossed to the East Bank of the River Jordan, increasing the total number of Palestinian refugees in Jordan to around three-quarters of a million. The Jordanian Armed Forces were devastated. Seven hundred were killed and some six thousand wounded, and we lost all of our air force and most of our tanks. Following the end of the war, Jordan’s weakened armed forces underwent a vigorous program of restructuring and retraining, assisted by a Pakistani advisory mission headed by Brigadier Zia-ul-Haq, who later became president of Pakistan.
Seizing the West Bank was in no way necessary if Israel simply intended to respond to a perceived threat from Egypt. But Israeli leaders wanted defense in depth, as they put it, so when the chance arose to acquire more territory, they took it. And once they had it, they were determined to hang on to it.
The consequences of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem continue to resonate across the region and the world to this day. The loss of Jerusalem was particularly painful to my father. My family belongs to the Prophet Mohammad’s branch of the Quraish tribe and directly descends from the Prophet through the male line of his elder grandson, Al Hasan. (“Hashem” was actually the great-grandfather of the Prophet; hence the family name, “Hashemites.”) From AD 965 until 1925 the Hashemites ruled the Hijaz in western Arabia and served as the guardians of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, making us the second-oldest ruling dynasty in the world after the Japanese imperial family. As the head of the Hashemite family, responsible for safeguarding Jerusalem, my father was devastated by his inability to protect Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa Mosque, one of the three holiest sites in Islam, from the encroaching Israeli army.
As soon as the war ended, the negotiations for peace began. The Arab Summit in Khartoum in late August, though famous for its “three nos”—no to peace, no to recognition of Israel, and no to negotiation with Israel—had in fact provided a framework for the pursuit of diplomacy. Talks in November continued at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, home of the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, who hosted private meetings between the Israeli, Egyptian, and Jordanian delegations. A former justice of the Supreme Court, the ambassador was a prominent supporter of Israel and as such was viewed with suspicion by my father and the Egyptians. Their suspicion turned out to be justified.
According to notes from one of my father’s close advisers who was involved in the discussions, Goldberg sent an oral message to my father that if the Arabs would accept a UN Security Council resolution, the United States would push for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, and that any changes to the prewar borders would be “minor, reciprocal border rectifications.” Goldberg indicated that the Israelis were onboard. My father flew to Cairo and discussed the proposal with Nasser, who asked him to support the resolution.
In early November my father returned to New York to meet with the UN secretary-general, U Thant, and to confer with the other Arab delegations in the run-up to the next Security Council meeting. He met with President Johnson at the White House on November 8; then, after spending ten days in the United States, he left for Europe. The final result of the negotiations, UN Resolution 242, was adopted by the UN Security Council in a unanimous vote on November 22, 1967. The resolution called for Israel’s withdrawal from territories (the Arabic text called for withdrawal from “the” territories, while the English text spoke only of territories) it had occupied in exchange for peace, thereby launching the land-for-peace formula that would underpin Jordan’s future foreign policy. The resolution’s preamble stressed the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force and said:[T]he fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:(i) Withdrawal of Israeli Armed Forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.
The resolution also made clear the necessity of achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem. Over forty years later, UN Security Resolution 242, which Jordan played an important role in formulating, is still the primary reference point for building a lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
For most of the Arab world the conflict was over, but for those of us living in Jordan the troubles were just beginning. Another storm was brewing, only this time, rather than involving an external enemy, it would set brother against brother.
Chapter 3
Dark Clouds over Amman
In the aftermath of the 1967 war some three hundred thousand refugees from the West Bank poured into Jordan. Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian who had lived in Egypt before moving to Kuwait in 1957, where he cofounded the Fatah movement before relocating to Syria in the early 1960s, also moved to Jordan in the aftermath of the war. Fatah, along with a number of armed Palestinian factions loosely gathered under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), began to call for armed resistance against Israel. Fatah and other Palestinian guerrillas, known as the fedayeen, recruited disaffected young men from the refugee camps and began launching attacks across the Jordan River against Israeli forces.
The following year, the Israeli army decided to hit back. In the early hours of the morning of March 21, 1968, expecting an easy victory, Israel sent two armored brigades across the River Jordan. Their plan was to strike at the refugee camp at Karameh, twenty miles west of Amman, where some of these Palestinian fedayeen were based, and then to continue on toward the capital. The Jordanian army, which was still recovering from the 1967 war, engaged the Israeli forces in fierce fighting and inflicted heavy enough losses on them that in a few hours they started screaming for a cease-fire. My father insisted that there would be no cease-fire until the last Israeli soldier withdrew from Karameh. Fifteen hours after the attack, the Israeli invading troops completed their withdrawal in tattered regiments. In the battle of Karam
eh, the Israelis suffered their first defeat by an Arab army. Although the fedayeen took part in the fighting, the victory was achieved by the army. But Arafat and his guerrillas were quick to claim the credit. They soon came to believe in their own rhetoric and to flex their muscles, so much so that the fedayeen, as an armed movement, began to represent a challenge to the country. They threatened security, broke laws, and sought to establish a state within the state.
During the 1950s and early 1960s Jordan was tremendously vulnerable to regional political upheavals. This was the age of Arab nationalism. Revolutionary Nasserites in Egypt and the secular Baathists who took over Syria and Iraq were then very popular. They had grand visions of Arab unity, and their aspirations for geopolitical dominance extended to Jordan. Between the time my father was eighteen, when he became king, and thirty, when I was three years old, there were eighteen documented assassination attempts against him, including two by traitors inside the Royal Court. The assassins were working for Gamal Abdel Nasser and his United Arab Republic, a three-year union between Egypt and Syria (1958-61). The UAR was allied with the Soviet Union. My father was an ally of the West, and by killing him Nasser and the Soviet Union hoped to create instability in Jordan and to push the country into their orbit.
The first inside job involved acid. My father, who was in his midtwenties at the time, suffered from sinus problems, so he would regularly use saline solution in nose drops. Somebody with access to his personal bathroom switched the saline solution for hydrochloric acid. By accident, one of the containers fell into the sink. When the enamel began to steam and crack under the powerful acid, my father realized that he had narrowly escaped a very painful death.
The second assassination attempt involved poison. My father noticed that dead cats began to litter the palace grounds. When his staff investigated this curious development, they found that an assistant chef in the palace kitchen had been hired to kill him. The chef, a good cook but a poor poisoner, had been practicing his art on the unfortunate cats, trying to judge the correct dose.
Partly because of the high probability that one of these assassins might eventually succeed, and in order to protect the monarchy, my father decided in 1965 to remove the title of crown prince from me when I was just three years old. He designated his brother Prince Hassan, who was then eighteen, as his successor instead. Although I was oblivious to the change at the time, it was one of the best things he ever did for me, as it allowed me to lead a relatively normal life. One of the few traces of my brief time as heir apparent is a set of stamps with my image as a three-year-old. But I did not need formal titles to enjoy my childhood.
My father had a silver Mercedes-Benz 300SL gull-wing roadster, which he had raced in hill climbs in Lebanon in the 1950s. I loved the way the doors lifted upward like something out of a movie. He was really into fast cars and was always racing around on a motorcycle, in a car—or by helicopter. In those days we did not have the wide array of TV channels that we have today—in fact, there were only two hours of TV a day in Jordan, so we had to make much of our own entertainment. In calmer moments my father, mother, and I would sometimes drive out north. Since my father’s 300SL was only a two-seater, I would sit on his lap. Speeding along on desert roads, he would beep the horn to keep the beat as we sang “Popeye the Sailor Man,” the theme song to one of my favorite shows. At dusk we often stopped for a picnic next to a wheat field. The soldiers guarding us would go into the field, pick heads of wheat, and roast the kernels on leaves over a wood fire. Ever since then, I have loved the smell of roasting wheat.
Every boy at some level thinks his father is a king. I knew my father was special, and I understood he was a leader, although I did not really comprehend what he did all day. But I cherished those moments we spent together. My parents tried their best to let my brother Feisal and me experience normal lives as children. They would bring us to a small farm down in the Jordan Valley on Fridays, along with friends and their children. Another family activity we enjoyed was target practice. We had a shooting range at the bottom of the garden, and my father, my mother, Feisal, and I would take turns firing at targets.
My mother grew up in an army family. Her father, a British officer, had fought in World War II and after that in Malaya, and had taught her to shoot as a young girl. She was an excellent shot. When she was a teenager her father was posted to Jordan, and she met my father at a diplomatic reception. She was just nineteen at the time, and he was twenty-five. He was entranced by her beauty and charm and would invite her to the palace from time to time to watch a movie with his mother and family. My mother reciprocated by inviting him to her parents’ house, where he was served cakes and strong English tea. They discovered a shared interest in motor sports, and got to know each other better on trips to the Amman Go-Kart Club, where my father taught her to drive. Soon she was competing in the ladies’ races. About a year after they first met, my father proposed and, too overcome to speak, she simply nodded her assent. Born Antoinette Gardiner, my mother converted to Islam before the wedding, became a Jordanian citizen, and took the name Muna Al Hussein.
Two days before the wedding they were discussing my mother’s future role in the royal family when she said, “Does it sound ridiculous if I say that I don’t really want the title of queen?” Delighted that she was marrying for love rather than a title, my father gladly assented, and they were wed on May 25, 1961, in a simple ceremony at Zahran Palace in Amman. After the wedding my mother became Princess Muna, and the next year, I arrived.
Amman in 1968 was not the safest of cities. Yasser Arafat and his guerrilla fighters were launching attacks from Jordanian territory into Israel, and the Israeli army retaliated periodically, striking targets inside Jordan. Apart from Israeli bombs, there were various Egyptians and Syrians with nefarious designs: Soviet-sponsored communist agitators and hired assassins determined to destabilize moderate governments like ours. Amman became a gathering place for all types of radicals, from the German Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Japanese Red Army to the Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal, many of them attracted by Jordan’s proximity to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the possibility of striking at Israel. With the Jordanian army patrolling the borders, the guerrillas and radicals took over parts of the city. They established roadblocks and brought whole neighborhoods under their control. I remember when we drove down from our house into Amman at night in my mother’s old white Mercedes, we had to cover the headlights lest roving guerrillas open fire. My mother never left the house without a Kalashnikov in the passenger seat and a small Colt revolver in the glove box.
The situation in Jordan was especially dispiriting because the country had welcomed Yasser Arafat and his men with open arms after the 1967 war and had allowed the PLO to enjoy freedom of movement. But Arafat failed to repay this generosity. His forces started to undermine the state. They levied taxes and ignored the laws. Many guerrilla groups under the PLO acted with impunity. If they were hungry, guerrilla fighters would break into a house while the owner was at work and force his wife to cook lunch for them at gunpoint. They would kidnap people for ransom, kill people at random, confiscate cars, occupy homes, and attack hotels, hoping to take foreign nationals hostage.
I was six years old at the time and my parents decided to send me out of the country to escape the mounting violence and chaos inside Jordan. Since my father had gone to Harrow, England was a natural choice. I still remember arriving in the evening at St. Edmund’s School, a large country house in Surrey set in extensive grounds. Driving from Heathrow Airport through the green fields and tightly packed hedgerows, I felt a long way from the dusty desert roads of Jordan.
Although the teachers were friendly and welcoming, I was not happy at St. Edmund’s. Part of my dislike was due to leaving my parents at such a young age and part of it was due to the language. Arabic is my first language, and since we had a Swiss nanny I spoke a fair amount of French at home. English was the weakest of the three languages I grew up speaking. And yet befo
re too long I had mastered English and picked up a British accent that has stayed with me. A year and a half later my brother Feisal joined me, but we were not going to stay in England for long.
Tensions had been growing between my father and the guerrilla forces. As Arafat stepped up his efforts to seize control of Jordan, his men began to turn their attention to its king.
In September 1970, as my father headed into Amman accompanied by Zaid Rifai, the stately Harvard-educated chief of the Royal Court, and Sharif Nasser bin Jamil, a heavy, barrel-chested man who at that time was chief of staff of the Jordanian army, he was stopped at a crossroads by a roadblock. When one of his men got out to move the roadblock, guerrillas who had been hiding in the hills opened fire with a variety of weapons, including a Russian-made Dushka heavy machine gun. The soldier trying to remove the barricade was killed, and my father saw the bullets coming closer, hitting the ground like hail. Everybody piled out and began to return fire. My father shouted, “Shame on them!”—which may seem like an odd thing to say when you are being attacked, but he had a strong sense of personal honor and believed that his assailants were nothing more than cowardly bandits. Zaid Rifai and Sharif Nasser pleaded with him to take shelter in a nearby ditch. When the attackers saw my father take cover, they swung the heavy machine gun around to target him. Zaid Rifai and the commander of the Royal Guard dove to protect him, colliding in midair, and both fell on top of him. My father felt his back buckle under the weight.
Once they had beaten back the attackers, my father and his men jumped back into their cars. My father was in the front seat when he realized his beret had fallen off and was lying in the dirt. He was so furious about being ambushed that he got out and, with bullets flying, strode over to pick it up. He placed it on his head, then calmly got back into his car and drove off. As they headed back to our house in Hummar he turned to Zaid Rifai and said, “Next time, I’ll take my chances with the fedayeen. You two did more damage than they did!” From that point on, he often complained of a bad back.
Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril Page 4
