Lion of Jordan (30 page)

British anxieties were allayed to some extent by the American promise of moral, financial and logistical support for the operation to stabilize Jordan. Britain and America were united in their aim to contain the revolution in Iraq, aid their allies and prevent a chain reaction from unfolding in the region. With the American rebuke over Suez still ringing in their ears, Macmillan and his foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, were extremely nervous about going it alone and took great pains to coordinate all their moves with their senior partner. They continued to argue for an American military escort for the British forces that were about to be dispatched to Jordan. But the Americans preferred to concentrate on Lebanon and to leave it to Britain to rescue Jordan; the day after the coup in Baghdad, 1,500 American marines landed on the beaches of Beirut in response to President Camille Chamoun's appeal for help under the Eisenhower Doctrine. All that Eisenhower could offer Lloyd was a promise that ‘we would of course not permit the British to get into a jam there.' As a token of its commitment and a symbolic show of force, America sent military aircraft to sweep over northern Jordan and the West Bank.
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‘Operation Fortitude' was launched early in the morning on 17 July from the British base in Cyprus. The task force was commanded by Brigadier Tom Pearson and consisted of two battalions of the Parachute Regiment, one light regiment of Royal Artillery and six Hunter fighters of 28 Squadron RAF. Pearson's mission was to secure the airfield in Amman and to protect King Hussein, the palace, the government and the main government installations. He was also charged with ensuring the protection of British and other friendly nationals. The wider political purpose of the task force was to stabilize the existing regime in Jordan and to deny the country ‘for a time' to the United Arab Republic.
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The task force's problems began before it arrived at its destination. Whitehall had asked Israel for permission to fly over its airspace, but no reply had been received. As time was of the essence, the task force left
without clearance. As soon as it reached Israel's airspace, however, it was ordered to land immediately because it had no permission for overflight. The group, led by Pearson, made a dash for the Jordanian border, but some of the RAF planes returned to Cyprus. Under strong American pressure, Israel relented and allowed Britain as well as America to fly over its territory.

Israel's behaviour in Jordan's hour of need was erratic and unhelpful, partly as a result of internal political divisions.
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The survival of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan was regarded by most of the political establishment as essential to Israel's security. In times of crisis, however, Israel always reserved its freedom of action, which in practical terms meant capturing the West Bank if the kingdom disintegrated. On this occasion Israeli intelligence did not rate highly Hussein's chances of survival against the challenge he faced from radical Arab nationalism. On the day of the Iraqi revolution, the chief of staff submitted a proposal for the capture of Hebron and the hills north of Jerusalem.
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David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister, was torn between the desire to help his eastern neighbour against his opponents and the temptation to exploit his weakness in order to encroach on his territory. Ben-Gurion also hoped to exploit the Western powers' temporary dependence on Israel's goodwill in order to extract far-reaching concessions from them. More specifically, he wanted arms supply, an American security guarantee and Israeli participation as an equal partner in Western plans for the defence of the Middle East.

This was a ludicrously high price to demand for the privilege of using Israel's airspace. The Americans thought that Ben-Gurion had ideas above his station and politely put him in his place. John Foster Dulles bitterly resented the constant pressure that the Israelis brought to bear on him throughout the long crisis. In his public utterances he was careful not to show his true feelings. But in private Anglo-American exchanges he called Israel ‘this millstone round our necks'.
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The British were equally resentful and even more resistant to Ben-Gurion's proposal for partnership on a footing of equality. To Evelyn Shuckburgh of the Foreign Office it seemed that if they went along with this proposal, ‘we should simply be adding another heavy link to the chain hanging round our neck which started with the Balfour Declaration and has been steadily drowning us ever since.'
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If Western support was damaging to Hussein's standing in the Arab
world, Israeli support was even more so. But the combination of external and internal challenges that he faced left him little choice. Jordan was under siege, its supply lines were severed by its enemies, and serious food and fuel shortages were beginning to develop. Hussein was grateful for Britain's help and for Israel's part in facilitating it. The situation in Jordan was becoming more ominous by the day, as he recalled many years later: ‘Suddenly, we found ourselves isolated; our oil tankers were caught up in Iraq and couldn't come through. The Syrian border was closed. Nasser straddled both Syria and Egypt. The Saudis would not permit overflights or the supply of food… So we were totally cut off and we needed oil and there was only one way: to fly it across Israel into Jordan. We did not have any direct negotiations over that. The British and Americans did and we certainly appreciated it.'
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In his memoirs Hussein recorded with some bitterness that every gallon of fuel had to be flown over the skies of Israel: ‘Where an Arab nation refused, an enemy agreed.'
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Saudi Arabia's refusal to help Jordan was a particularly bitter blow. Jordan's position was precarious because without oil it could not survive. The Americans responded instantly to Hussein's desperate appeal for help with the offer to fly oil in tanker aircraft from the Gulf across Saudi Arabia to Jordan. The first consignment went through, but at this critical juncture the Saudis changed their minds. This about-turn reflected an internal shift in the balance of power between King Saud and his brother Faisal, who favoured an accommodation with Nasser. Hussein called King Saud and asked him to explain the hostile stand against Jordan. Saud replied lamely that there was nothing he could do because the government had already met and taken this decision. Turning to his chief of the royal court and others who had been listening, Hussein said bitterly, ‘This is probably the first time in history that any government has ever taken any decision in Saudi Arabia, or for that matter, even met!'
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For the Hashemites in Jordan this was a very trying time. As Hussein's nephew, Talal bin Muhammad, noted, ‘For us, the Iraqi revolution was the low watermark. We were totally vulnerable. We were completely encircled: Syria and Iraq to the north, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Egypt further afield. Britain had to fly over Israel with our fuel supplies, which was humiliating for us because our so-called Arab brothers would not give us the oil. Our obituary was in the paper every week in anticipation.
But through sheer guts a young man was able to pull it off.'
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The young man was, of course, King Hussein. The grief he felt at the loss of his cousin Faisal seared itself in his mind. Hussein and Faisal had been the best of friends; they were born the same year, and were at Harrow together; their fathers were first cousins and best friends; their mothers were sisters; and they became kings on the same day. Prince Talal once asked his uncle what was the most difficult experience that he had gone through in his life. There were so many things Hussein could have said: the assassination of King Abdullah, the June War and the loss of Jerusalem, the death of his wife Alia in a helicopter crash. But Hussein answered that the worst thing was the loss of his cousin Faisal and the manner in which he and his whole family were murdered. This was the thing that grieved him the most in his lifetime. Hussein told Talal that Faisal was too gentle a person for a country like Iraq, and he reserved most of his anger for Abd al-Ilah. Hussein ‘held Abd al-Ilah entirely responsible for the mishandling of the situation in 1958. He hated him with a passion; he saw him as an oppressor and a bully.'
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Hussein did not speak much about this period because it was too painful. Nor did he allow himself to wallow in self-pity. The British ambassador, at his first interview with the king and his prime minister on the morning of 18 July, found them in a mood of dour resolution. ‘After all,' said the king, ‘one can only die once.'
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The death of his cousin was a shattering blow for Hussein but outwardly he struggled to remain calm and composed. In his predicament he convened a press conference on 19 July to tell his countrymen and the world at large where he stood. James Morris, who was at the press conference, gave the following description of Hussein:

He walked into the conference room of his palace closely surrounded by officers, officials, policemen, security guards, walking quickly and tensely to the head of the table. His face was lined and tired, and moisture glistened in the corners of his eyes. The ministers and officers grouped themselves behind his chair (and who could tell, looking at their dark-eyed meditative faces, which of them was loyal, and which had a subversive pay-packet in his office drawer?). The old Prime Minister, hatchet-faced, sat beside him. The King cleared his throat huskily. ‘I have now had confirmation', he said slowly, ‘of the murder of my cousin, brother and childhood playmate, King Feisal of Iraq, and all his royal family.' He paused, his eyes filling, his lip trembling, a muscle working rhythmically in
the side of his jaw, and then he said it again, in identical words, but with a voice that was awkwardly thickening. ‘I have now received confirmation of the murder of my cousin, brother and childhood playmate, King Feisal of Iraq, and all his royal family.' And raising his head from his notes, Hussein added in his strange formal English: ‘They are only the last in a caravan of martyrs.'
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‘A caravan of martyrs' was how the embattled king, looking back over five decades of struggle and violence, saw the progress of his family. ‘On one level of analysis they were the mere satellites of an alien empire, waxing and waning with its fortunes. On another they represented a last stand of authority – religious, social, moral, political – against the advancing forces of disorder. On yet a third they were the mercenaries of a retreating civilization, posted on the walls to do or die. Their tragedy was their aloneness… They were kings in an age of republicanism; Arabs in a century of Arab impotence; Anglophiles in the last days of British supremacy; Moslems among agnostics; traditionalists amid constant change.'
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Four days after this sad press conference, further details reached the palace of the horrors that had been committed in Baghdad against the supporters of the royal family during the revolution. Two Jordanian ministers, Ibrahim Hashem and Suleiman Toukan, had also been butchered by the blood-thirsty Baghdad mob. Hussein and Rifa'i were badly shaken by the reports of these atrocities. Outside the British Embassy, the virtually unanimous view of foreign observers in Amman was that the monarchy had no chance of surviving. Most Jordanians too thought that their monarchy was doomed. ‘This was the period', wrote Charles Johnston, ‘when the airlift droned gloomily overhead; when, for lack of anything more encouraging, the Hashemite radio went on broadcasting pipe music all day long; when the anterooms of the Palace (normally the best club in Amman, full of cheerful coffee-drinking place-seekers) were deserted except for a few lugubrious tribal sheikhs.' One day Johnston found Samir Rifa'i grey-faced in his office, looking at a photograph of an obscenely mutilated body dangling from a balcony. ‘Abd al-Ilah,' he said.
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Johnston was one of the very few foreign observers who believed that with a bit of luck and support from the West, Hussein would be able to carry on. Johnston's estimate of the importance of Jordan's survival went further than the thinking in London. But the basic difference was
that the British Embassy in Amman believed that Jordan would survive the emergency, whereas the Americans were sure that it would not. In spite of these different estimates, Anglo-American cooperation in Jordan remained excellent. President Eisenhower's advisers were all for supporting Hussein, even though they doubted his chances. On two occasions during the crisis the Americans made plans for the evacuation of Hussein and his family from Jordan. On 17 July the Sixth Fleet was ordered to prepare two passenger planes with appropriate air cover to pick up Hussein and fly him to safety. In mid August, when the situation seemed perilous again, Hussein made arrangements with American and British officials to fly him, his family and his retainers to Europe.
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Israel's leaders tried to keep as close as possible to the Americans during the crisis. Towards the end of August, Ben-Gurion sent two very senior officials to a secret meeting with John Foster Dulles at the residence of the American ambassador in London. One was Abba Eban, Israel's ambassador to the United States, and the other was Reuven Shiloah, a former head of the Mossad. They told Dulles that if it was not possible to maintain the status quo in Jordan, Ben-Gurion's thinking was that the West Bank belonged to the land mass of Palestine. The tentative idea he advanced was a union between the eastern part of Jordan and Iraq, and between the western part of Jordan and Israel with the West Bank turned into some kind of an autonomous unit. Dulles pointed out that most of the population of the West Bank were Palestinians who were highly emotional on the question of Israel. Eban and Shiloah did not press this idea but urged America to do everything possible to maintain the status quo in the area and to encourage wider cooperation among the anti-Nasser governments towards this end.
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