Lion of Jordan (14 page)

Another consequence of 1948 was that Palestinian refugees began to cross the armistice lines into what was now Israel. When the armistice agreements were signed, many Palestinians innocently believed that they would be allowed to go back to their homes. Even when their return was blocked by Israel, some persisted in their attempts to cross the lines. Israeli spokesmen claimed that Palestinian infiltration into its territory was aided and abetted by the Arab governments following the defeat of their regular armies on the battlefield; and that it was a form of undeclared guerrilla warfare designed to weaken and even destroy the infant Jewish state. Israel, on the other hand, was portrayed as the innocent victim of Arab provocations and aggression while its own policy of military reprisals was depicted as a legitimate form of self-defence.

In an important book entitled
Israel's Border Wars
Israeli historian Benny Morris has challenged this conventional view at three critical points: the character and causes of infiltration; the attitude of the Arab governments towards this phenomenon; and the motives and consequences of the Israeli response. On the basis of painstaking archival evidence, Morris has concluded that infiltration into Israel was a direct consequence of the displacement and dispossession of over 700,000 Palestinians in the course of the Palestine war and that the motives
behind it were largely economic and social, rather than political. Many of the infiltrators were Palestinian refugees whose reasons for crossing the border included looking for relatives, returning to their homes, recovering possessions, tending to their fields, collecting their crops and, occasionally, exacting revenge. Some were thieves and smugglers; some were involved in the hashish convoys; and some were nomadic Bedouins, more accustomed to grazing rights than to state borders. There were terrorist actions and politically motivated raids, such as those organized by Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the ex-Mufti, and financed by Saudi Arabia, but they did not amount to very much. In the period 1949–56 as a whole, 90 per cent or more of all infiltrations, in Morris's estimate, were motivated by economic and social concerns.
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Morris has also shown that the governments of the neighbouring Arab states were opposed to the cross-border forays into Israel for most of the period under discussion. Arab governments were caught on the horns of a dilemma: if they openly intervened to stop infiltration, they risked alienating their own passionately pro-Palestinian publics; if they were seen to condone infiltration, they risked clashes with the Israeli Army and the possible loss of more territory. Each government dealt with this problem in its own way and with varying degrees of success. Jordan had the longest and most complicated border with Israel, with the largest number of civilians on both sides. The upshot was numerous cases of infiltration and an increasingly brutal Israeli policy of military retaliation that took the form of ground raids against villages in the West Bank, beginning in January 1951.

One of the most serious problems that Hussein had to grapple with after ascending the throne was the tension and violence along Jordan's border with its aggressive western neighbour. Hussein inherited from his grandfather an attitude of moderation towards the Zionists, but he was also aware that the Palestinians blamed his grandfather for betraying their cause and that this was the reason given for his assassination. Hussein put up a spirited defence of his grandfather in a foreword he wrote for Abdullah's second autobiographical volume,
My Memoirs Completed: ‘Al Takmilah
'. He sharply contrasted his grandfather's realism with the lack of realism of his critics:

Let me set the record straight, clearly and categorically. No country in the world likes to be partitioned, and Palestine is no exception. King Abdullah… was, in
his innermost soul, as opposed to the alienation of any part of Palestine as anyone else. But to him, moral judgement and personal beliefs were an exercise in futility, unless backed by viable and adequate power, in the broad meaning of the term.

He had perceived the Zionist iceberg and its dimensions, while others had seen only its tip. He makes reference to it in the
Takmilah
. His tactics and strategy were therefore attuned to circumventing and minimizing the possible consequences of a head-on collision. Others saw only the tip, and their responses were over-confidence, inflexibility and outright complacency.
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This foreword, however, was written in 1978. It does not reflect any of the doubts and uncertainties that Hussein experienced on assuming responsibility for his country and its problems. In 1996, when I asked him what were his initial impressions and thoughts about Israel when he ascended the throne in 1953, he said:

My initial thoughts and impressions were ones of not knowing very much of what actually the Israelis and their leadership thought of or had in mind regarding the future of our region. At the same time it was a period of violence. There had apparently been from time to time some incursions over the long ceasefire line. We had the longest line, longer than all the Arab ceasefire lines with Israel put together. And Israel's responses were extremely severe, extremely devastating, with attacks on villages, on police posts and on civilians along the long ceasefire line. Obviously, I was not very happy with that and it caused us a great deal of difficulty in terms of the internal scene in Jordan.

Egypt's attitude towards us was another problem, especially given the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser as the leader of the Arab world. Jordan was placed in the position of the conspirator or the betrayer, and this was the perpetual thrust of the Egyptian propaganda machine. So that undermined even further the situation within Jordan itself. The Palestinians looked towards Egypt as the major power in the area and treated whatever was said there as the gospel truth. The Israeli raids worsened the situation in Jordan. They showed us as being incompetent and unable to defend our territory. And the Israeli attacks continued, although we had done everything that we could to prevent infiltration and to prevent access to Israel.

So this was the atmosphere in which I lived my first years, plus the loss of my grandfather, which was another factor. I knew that he had tried his best for peace and that he had not achieved it. But I did not have any details. When I assumed responsibility, I looked for papers to do with my grandfather's reign, but unfortunately no documents were found. So I didn't have any idea as to what exactly
had happened. But gradually there was more and more of a feeling that, for whatever reason, we had a neighbour, a people who were close to us historically, whom circumstances in the world had forced into our region. The dilemma was how to avoid mutual destruction and how to find a way of living together once again and not to continue to pay the high price, which was not fair on either side. That was in fact what went on in my mind at that time, apart from thoughts on how to strengthen my country.
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Hussein's chief military adviser, Glubb Pasha, had been doing everything in his power to curb infiltration into Israel, to eschew violence and to cooperate with the Israeli authorities in maintaining security along the common border. Glubb's constant refrain to anyone who would listen was that the Arab Legion was doing its level best to maintain a peaceful border with Israel. Israel's response was that the Jordanian authorities were aiding and abetting border violations, and that they alone must be held responsible for the progressive breakdown of the armistice regime. These charges were contradicted not simply by Glubb's declarations but by the constructive and cooperative attitude displayed by all the Jordanian representatives within the Jordanian–Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission (MAC) in dealing with the problems that kept cropping up. The Mixed Armistice Commission was established after the conclusion of the armistice agreement in 1949. It consisted of Jordanian and Israeli military representatives and a UN chairman whose task was to deal with all aspects of border security.

Secret Jordanian military documents captured by the Israeli Army during the June War of 1967 have proved conclusively that Glubb's version of Jordanian policy was correct and that the Israeli version was utterly false. They reveal strenuous efforts on the part of the Jordanian civilian and military authorities in general and on the part of Glubb in particular to prevent civilians from crossing the line. For example, a document of 2 July 1952 shows that Glubb attended a meeting with district commanders that was devoted to the problem of infiltration. He estimated that if they adopted strict measures they should be able to prevent 85 per cent of the incidents from taking place. He urged them to make greater efforts, show more vigilance and monitor more closely the behaviour of the police chiefs in their district. Glubb gave three reasons for this policy. First and foremost, curbing infiltration was necessary for Jordan's sake, not for Israel's sake. Second, the Jews gained

much more from confiscation in the Arab areas than the infiltrators gained from stealing from the Jewish area. Third, there was real fear of revenge being exacted by Jewish units inside Jordan.
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This document and numerous others like it demonstrate beyond any doubt the high priority given to the border problem at the highest levels of the Jordanian government and armed forces.

The Israeli policy of military retaliation against West Bank villages continued despite all the messages and signals coming from the Jordanian side. The largest and most notorious of these raids was directed against the village of Qibya on the night of 14–15 October 1953. The attack followed the murder of an Israeli mother and her two children by infiltrators who had crossed the armistice line near Qibya. At the meeting of the MAC on 15 October the Jordanian representative denounced the murder, promised full cooperation in tracking down the perpetrators and conveyed Glubb's request to Israel to refrain from retaliation. The request was ignored and swift retribution followed.

The attack on Qibya was carried out by Unit 101, a small commando unit designed to give a sharp edge to the policy of reprisals and com-mandedby an unusually aggressive, ambitious and devious young major, Ariel (‘Arik') Sharon. On this, as on many subsequent occasions, Sharon exceeded his orders. The village was reduced to a pile of rubble: 45 houses were blown up, the village school was destroyed and 69 civilians, two thirds of whom were women and children, were killed. Sharon and his men claimed that they believed all the inhabitants had run away and that they had no idea that anyone was hiding inside the houses. The UN observer who inspected the scene reached a different conclusion: ‘One story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them.'
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Glubb was appalled to learn that the Israeli soldiers had fired at anyone who attempted to leave their house and that they threw incendiary bombs as well before withdrawing.
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The principal perpetrator of the massacre, however, remained unrepentant. Sharon was well pleased with his handiwork. He thought the operation did a power of good to IDF morale, and in his memoirs he claimed that David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister and minister of defence, even congratulated him on this operation. Ben-Gurion, according to Sharon, said to him that what mattered was not what was said
about Qibya around the world but its impact in their region: ‘This is going to give us the possibility of living here.'
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Not all Israelis shared Ben-Gurion's positive verdict on the murdering of innocent civilians in their sleep. In some quarters in the IDF Sharon became known as ‘the murderer of Qibya'.

At a cabinet meeting on 18 October, Moshe Sharett, the foreign minister, who had been horrified by the scale and brutality of the operation, proposed an official statement expressing regret about the action and its consequences. Ben-Gurion was against admitting that the IDF had carried out the action and proposed issuing a statement to say that it was the irate Israeli villagers who had taken the law into their own hands. The majority of the ministers supported Ben-Gurion, and it was decided that he should draft the statement. In a radio broadcast the following day Ben-Gurion gave the official version. He denied any IDF involvement; he placed responsibility for the action on the villagers, who were said to have been provoked beyond endurance; and he expressed the government's regret that innocent people had been killed.
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This was to be one of Ben-Gurion's most blatant lies for what he saw as the good of his country.

The massacre unleashed a storm of international protest against Israel. Sending regular armed forces across an international border, without the intention of triggering a full-scale war, was a tactic that at the time distinguished Israel from all other countries; no other state acted in this way. Disturbing though this was, the world was even more shocked by the fact that soldiers murdered civilians in cold blood. The Israeli claim that the infiltrators were sponsored by the Arab Legion was utterly baseless. When in January 1954 Arye Eilan, an official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, asked Yehoshafat Harkabi, the deputy director of military intelligence, for some clear documentary proof of the Arab Legion's complicity, Harkabi answered that ‘no proof could be given because no proof existed.' Harkabi added that, having personally made a detailed study of the subject, he had arrived at the conclusion that ‘Jordanians and especially the Legion were doing their best to prevent infiltration, which was a natural, decentralized and sporadic movement.' To this plainly stated message Eilan reacted by insisting that, whatever the truth of the matter, as Israel's leaders had repeatedly gone on record asserting Jordanian official complicity, Israeli spokesmen could not but continue to press the same point. As he put it, ‘if Jordanian complicity
is a lie, we have to keep on lying. If there are no proofs, we have to fabricate them.'
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Israeli brutality was thus fully matched by Israeli mendacity.