Lion of Jordan (53 page)

At home Hussein had to contend with the rising power of the Palestinian resistance movement. Popular support for the movement's objective for ‘liberating' the whole of Palestine, combined with the lack of any tangible progress on the diplomatic front, had the effect of undermining the idea of a ‘peaceful solution'. The component parts of the resistance movement were in some disarray, but the trend was towards greater cohesion. Although the resistance movement had not established itself as a credible military force, it none the less brought about an upsurge in Palestinian self-confidence that made it more and more difficult to sell the alternative of a diplomatic solution. Most Jordanians and most Arabs had come round to the view that sooner or later they would have to fight Israel again. The election in February 1969 of Fatah leader Yasser Arafat as chairman of the PLO enhanced his standing and that of his organization in the Arab world. In April the Palestine Armed Struggle Command was set up with the purpose of coordinating paramilitary operations and overall strategy. Its progress was slow, but it included all the groups except the popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and its extremist offshoots. These extremist groups succeeded in embarrassing the fedayeen ‘establishment' by mounting operations that alienated international public opinion.
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The activities of both the establishment and the fringe groups became a burning issue in the dialogue across the battle lines.

Herzog met Rifa'i at the home of Dr Herbert in London on 23 April and recited a long list of recent cross-border raids in some of which, he alleged, the Jordanian Army was complicit. He then conveyed Meir's request for a meeting between her chief of staff and the king. Rifa'i, who looked very tense, asked Herzog whether this was the only message he had brought. Herzog replied that he understood from a cable Hussein had sent from Paris that he wanted the two of them to set up another high-level meeting. Rifa'i reacted angrily by reading a prepared statement, the gist of which was that there had been numerous meetings since the previous May and that His Majesty was shocked that nothing had
been achieved and that the Israelis had exploited the contacts to dissuade Jarring and the Americans from taking steps of their own. Rifa'i also warned that, if there was no progress on the political front, the security situation might deteriorate beyond their ability to control it. His Majesty had assumed a personal risk in formulating a six-point Arab peace plan and in getting Nasser to support it publicly. Israel had a first and last chance for true peace. If it responded, a new chapter would be opened, and Israel would be accepted as a sister state in the Middle East. On the other hand, if it chose to keep Arab territories, it would remain under siege until the Arabs decided to launch another round. Israel's military power enabled it to reject peace proposals but not to impose a settlement. Rifa'i concluded by reading a statement from Hussein that said he saw no point in continuing the high-level talks with Israeli leaders unless they declared that they were ready to implement the Security Council Resolution 242. Herzog, however, asked for another meeting with Hussein before the talks were suspended.
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Hussein visited Washington in April to launch his six-point peace plan. At a meeting with President Nixon he presented the plan as a joint Jordanian–Egyptian initiative. In a speech to the National Press Club the king emphasized that the joint plan was based on UN Resolution 242. He proposed an end to belligerency, and the acknowledgement of Israel's sovereignty, territorial integrity and right to live within secure and recognized borders. He also offered to guarantee Israel's freedom of navigation through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. In return he expected Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied in June 1967 in accordance with the Arab interpretation of Resolution 242. Both he and the Egyptian president, he said, were prepared to sign an agreement with the Israeli government that fell short of a formal peace treaty, if the resolution was implemented. Israeli spokespersons immediately rejected the six-point plan. They insisted on the signing of a contractual peace treaty incorporating secure and recognized borders before withdrawal could begin. They pointed out that 242 did not demand complete withdrawal. And they insisted on direct negotiations between themselves and the neighbouring Arab states, although 242 did not require direct negotiations.
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Hussein's patience with the Israelis was being stretched to breaking point. He met with Herzog on 25 April in Rifa'i's room in the Dorchester Hotel in London. It was a tense meeting. Hussein said that if no political
progress was achieved in the coming months, the clashes would escalate to the point where war would become inescapable. In response to a question, he said that the previous statement he had sent through Rifa'i referred to the suspension of the talks and not to breaking off contact. Since their last meeting the internal pressures on him had increased, and the situation along the border had deteriorated. In the Arab world he was under attack for striving for peace, while at the UN he heard that Israel was using the bilateral talks in order to prevent international action to deal with the dispute. Hussein wanted Israel to clarify its position regarding 242 before he would agree to another meeting. Herzog replied that he could not accept conditions for holding talks that were in their mutual interest but noted Hussein's desire to have a detailed clarification of Israel's stand at the next meeting. Hussein hoped to be presented with a clear and realistic stand rather than with a bargaining position. In his report on the meeting, Herzog commented that it was the first time that he had seen the king so deeply stressed.
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He paid a brief visit to Rifa'i two days later, and they set up another high-level meeting, in Aqaba Bay for 25 May.

This time the meeting took place neither on an Israeli ship nor on Hussein's but on Coral Island. It started at eight in the evening, to enable the Israelis to leave Eilat under the cover of darkness. The conversation concluded with a decision that Eban would prepare a memorandum of principles for a peace settlement and that the advisers would meet again in June or July to take matters forward. Whereas in London Hussein had been very tense, on the island he seemed more relaxed and confident.
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Royal confidence was gradually eroded over the summer as a result of the escalation of the border war between the fedayeen and Israel. Paradoxically but unsurprisingly, the effort of the Jordanian government to assert control over the various fedayeen groups only drove them closer together. The border war took the form of guerrilla hit-and-run raids; Israeli shelling of fedayeen bases and Jordanian Army positions that gave them cover; heavy artillery battles in the Jordan Valley; and guerrilla incursions in the area of the Dead Sea and Eilat. On one occasion there was an exchange of fire near the king's house in Aqaba. Under the leadership of defence minister Moshe Dayan, the IDF pursued an aggressive policy of retaliation that did not spare civilians, cities like Irbid and Salt, or regular army units suspected of extending active or passive support to the fedayeen. In Jordan the fedayeen were widely
seen as brave freedom-fighters. In Israel they were seen as terrorists pure and simple, and dealt with as such.

A particularly vulnerable civilian target was the East Ghor Canal, which carried water from the Yarmouk River in the north of Jordan. It was literally the lifeline of that part of the Jordan Valley that was still cultivated and populated despite the border war. On 23 May an Israeli patrol destroyed a section of the canal. Repeated Jordanian efforts to repair the damage were frustrated until the Israelis received private assurances that serious new measures would be taken to prevent fedayeen attacks on the kibbutzim across the river. The publicity given by the Israelis to these private assurances made effective enforcement politically impossible. A period of calm lasted long enough to enable essential repairs to be made. But the canal was breached by the IDF a second time in August and a third time in December.
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Dayan was the chief advocate of holding the East Ghor Canal hostage to effective Jordanian policing of the irregular forces on their territory. If the policy failed to achieve its declared objective, Dayan advocated raising the threshold of pain. He was reluctant to accept any political constraints on military action, his policy being to meet force with much greater force. It was simply the latest version of the policy he had followed as chief of staff in the 1950s. Within the cabinet this met with only mild opposition and he could usually rely on the support of the hawkish prime minister. At a cabinet meeting on 11 August a proposal to put the East Ghor Canal out of action again was agreed with no votes against and only one abstention. The only real debate was whether to use the army or the air force to do so.
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The harder Israel struck at the fedayeen, the more popular the latter became in Jordan, and the greater was the threat they posed to the Hashemite regime. Hussein understood that the Palestinian resistance movement was eroding his power base. There was increasingly loud criticism of the royal family for their extravagances and for surrounding themselves with sycophants who kept them in ignorance of the true state of the nation.
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Hussein reacted to the challenge by moving further away from the Palestinians rather than towards them. He seemed tempted to abandon the policy of associating Palestinians with his regime and to fall back on xenophobic East Bankers. He embarked on a major reorganization of the army structure and command, appointing a group of officers with unsavoury past histories, described by one British defence
attaché as ‘the Mafia', to senior posts. ‘As he looked wistfully around at the possibilities of withdrawal into his Transjordanian shell he began the formation of a private army outside the normal chain of military command, responsible for his own protection as well as for use in case of need in an internal security role; and an atmosphere of “good old Transjordan” prevailed at a series of light-hearted cricket matches between the Court and the British community.'
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The most notable change was the appointment in June of Sharif Nasser bin Jamil as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Sharif Nasser was controversial because of his forceful personality and ostentatious lifestyle. He liked hunting, riding and fast cars, women, drinking and gambling. Hussein's uncle appeared to outsiders to be one of his closest advisers, friends and supporters. But his notorious illegal traffic in arms and drugs placed a strain on his relationship with Hussein. An ultraconservative monarchist who was entirely dependent on the king's favour, he was also one of the regime's strongest bulwarks and was known to maintain an extensive intelligence network within the army. Even those officers who hated him and all he represented acknowledged respect for him as a soldier and leader of men. Nevertheless, his image was poor; he was feared and hated by Palestinians throughout the kingdom and especially on the West Bank. In foreign policy Sharif Nasser was pro-Western, anti-Communist and anti his Egyptian namesake. He had not forgiven the Iraqis for overthrowing the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq in 1958, and he remained an implacable opponent of any republican regime in Baghdad.
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What is less well known is that beneath the surface Hussein had serious misgivings about his Iraqi-born maternal uncle. One member of the family described Sharif Nasser as a very destructive influence and as Hussein's
bête noire
. According to this source, Sharif Nasser was a good tactical field commander at battalion or brigade level but a disaster at HQ or as commander-in-chief. He interfered in everything. One problem was that Sharif Nasser had a warehouse full of weapons in his house in the Ghor. He always tried to have his own feudal enclave, as if the laws of Jordan did not apply to him. He also had his own entourage of royal guards. Many times Hussein had to surround his uncle's house with armoured cars from a loyal regiment to bring him to heel. On one occasion the problem nearly got out of hand. The army was going to seize the arms warehouse, and Sharif Nasser's guards resisted. But before
it turned into a shoot-out, Hussein intervened personally to defuse the crisis. Sharif Nasser was a member of Hussein's family, so the king could not throw him out; he could only try to contain him.
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The two qualities that probably recommended Sharif Nasser to Hussein as commander-in-chief of the armed forces in 1969 were his unswerving loyalty to the regime and his rabidly anti-Palestinian sentiments. His brief was to bring the Palestinian guerrilla groups under control and to prevent their attacks on Israel.

Hussein's mood changed perceptibly during the summer. In the past he had frequently referred to the need for visible progress within a matter of a few months at the outside if the chance of peaceful settlement was not to be lost and extremists were not to gain control of the situation. Now he seemed to adjust his mind to the thought that quick progress was simply not possible and that Jordan would have to face a long period of stalemate.
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The secret meetings between Rifa'i and Herzog continued but led nowhere. One meeting took place in London on 26 July and another on 17 September. Herzog used these meetings to give the Jordanians a pat on the back for the renewed efforts they had made to rein in the fedayeen and to urge them to intensify these efforts and to coordinate them more closely with Israel's military commanders. Yet a written paper with Israel's principles for a peace treaty that had been promised did not materialize, and the excuse given, rather illogically, was the persistence of fedayeen attacks. Rifa'i said that they had been waiting in vain for this paper since May. Israel's position on Jerusalem was particularly perplexing. On the one hand it said that the Jerusalem question was open to negotiations and on the other it persisted in presenting the world with faits accomplis. Its record was such that everyone in Jordan had become a pessimist regarding Israel's interest in a peace settlement.
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