Lion of Jordan (35 page)

One of the manifestations of Hussein's growing confidence and independence was his involvement in a direct dialogue with Israeli officials in the aftermath of the April 1963 crisis. On the face of it, this was a curious thing to do. The two countries had been officially at war since 1948. Hatred of Israel was the one sentiment that united nearly all Arabs, regardless of their country, class or political affiliation. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 involved an egregious injustice to the Palestinians. The bulk of the three quarters of a million dispossessed Palestinian refugees lived in Jordan and harboured a deep sense of grievance against the Jewish state and hopes of liberating their homeland. In Arab eyes Israel was a usurper state with no legitimacy and no right to exist. Contact with Israel was considered a taboo, perhaps the greatest taboo in Arab political culture. King Abdullah of Jordan had paid with his life for breaking this taboo: he was assassinated by a Palestinian nationalist. Now Hussein was poised to follow in his grandfather's footsteps despite all the dangers involved. Why, then, did King Hussein engage in direct talks with Israeli officials?

Hussein's reply to this question was that his purpose throughout the 1960s was to see if there was any way to resolve the dispute with Israel peacefully. He felt that if he was to be in a position of responsibility, next door to Israel, he had to know what he was dealing with. He had to explore, to find out what the thinking was on the other side. There was no future in war and there was no future in further suffering for the people on either side. So he had to break that barrier and begin a dialogue, whether it led anywhere immediately or not. He believed it was important to have it direct and first-hand and not to let other players manipulate the conflict. ‘And by chance I had a very, very good friend who looked after my health in London, Dr Herbert, and gradually through conversations we came to this subject. He was a man who really
believed in peace in our region and wished to see it happen. So I think he raised the possibility of some contact and I said “fine”. That is how it started. Trying to explore, trying to find out what the other side of this issue was like. What was the face of it?'
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On the Israeli side the desire to establish direct contact with the ruler of Jordan went back a long way. They had the same friend in London. Hussein's doctor and personal friend, Emanuel Herbert, was a Jew from Russia and an ardent Zionist. He had a private clinic in 21 Devonshire Place, near Harley Street. Dr Herbert was an eminent physician who specialized in heart conditions and counted many foreign dignitaries, including the king of Sweden, among his patients. The British came to trust the Jewish doctor, and, after consultation with the counter-intelligence agency MI5, the Foreign Office recommended him to Hussein as the best man to be his London physician. The king raised no objection, even when he was informed that Dr Herbert was not just a Jew but a supporter of Israel. The British assured the king that Dr Herbert's other speciality was discretion.
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Dr Herbert was also engaged as the doctor of the Jordanian Embassy in London. At the embassy his Jewish provenance was no bar to the development of very close and warm relationships. As well as attending to the staff of the embassy, Dr Herbert looked after the Jordanian royal family. His royal patients included King Talal, Sharif Nasser, Queen Zain, her middle son, Muhammad, who had inherited his father's mental instability, and her youngest son, Hassan who was attending school at Harrow.

Officials at the Israeli Embassy in London began to cultivate Dr Herbert assiduously as a channel of communications with the Jordanian royal family from 1960 onwards. The files of the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem bulge with detailed reports on every contact and conversation with Dr Herbert and records of extensive internal discussions on how to make the most of the opening he offered. From these documents it can be seen that the Israelis regarded Dr Herbert as a loyal, highly intelligent and subtle man and that they had complete confidence in him. They accordingly treated him as a valued go-between and were careful to avoid the impression that they wanted to use him to spy on his Jordanian patients. Dr Herbert felt loyalty to both parties and was only too happy to do anything he could to facilitate a dialogue between them.

Eliahu Elath, the Israeli ambassador to London, asked Dr Herbert to
convey a message to King Hussein. It said that Israel viewed with admiration Hussein's firm stand against Nasser in the struggle to defend the independence of his country and that as long as he persisted in this stand he had nothing to fear from the Israeli side. Dr Herbert did not get a chance to convey the message directly, but did so through the queen's younger brother. He had struck up a friendship with Sharif Nasser who was by now a brigadier in the Jordanian Army, and one of the subjects they discussed, after the medical examination, was the relationship between Jordan and Israel. Sharif Nasser said that as a member of a Hijazi family he harboured no hostility towards Israel and that this was in fact the position of the entire royal family. Had it not been for the two dictators, Nasser and Qasim, it would have been possible to reach a settlement with Israel. Given the current situation and Palestinian opinion within Jordan, no one dared say this in public. But Sharif Nasser was optimistic about the future. Dr Herbert told Sharif Nasser that he had been asked to convey a message to King Hussein, but that he had not yet had the chance to see him. Sharif Nasser heard the message from Israel and promised that Herbert would meet Hussein on the king's next visit to London.
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The Israelis encouraged Dr Herbert to make contact with Queen Zain during her visit to London in September 1960. He understood what they were after and promised to try to arrange a private meeting with her when she came to see him in his clinic. But after her visit he told the Israelis that he had nothing of interest to report. As usual, the queen was accompanied by her personal physician, Dr Shawkat Aziz as-Sati, with whom she conversed in Turkish, and Herbert did not find a convenient opportunity for a proper conversation with her. In her entourage he found considerable anxiety about Nasser's intrigues, but he did not detect any willingness to move closer to Israel as a result. The queen herself was troubled by the rumours of plots to assassinate her. Although the meeting bore no fruit, the Israelis were once again impressed by Herbert's shrewdness and unqualified willingness to help.
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A month later Hussein visited London; he stayed at Claridges, and Dr Herbert received an invitation to have tea with him there. It was a social call with no particular medical purpose. Hussein was extremely friendly and invited his Jewish doctor to visit him in Jordan. Herbert asked the king whether he received the message he had sent him through his uncle. The king replied that indeed he had and added, ‘I very much appreciate
the message and am grateful for it. It was very important for us that during difficult times we had nothing to fear from this side. Over the years a growing confidence has been established which has quietened the border. One day it will be possible through the UN to reach an honourable agreement. Now that contact has been established, we can look forward with increasing confidence to the future.' Dr Herbert recalled that the king mentioned the United Nations twice as a party in reaching a peace settlement. Although the king did not mention Israel by name, he clearly had it in mind and, what is more, he treated his doctor as the representative of the other side.
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The Israelis were therefore justified in concluding from this private conversation that the king regarded Herbert not just as a doctor and a friend but as a trusted emissary. They went further in thinking that, given the sensitivity of contact with Israel, the king was more likely to put his trust in Dr Herbert than even in any of his closest advisers. In any case, they felt that at long last they had succeeded in establishing a permanent channel of communication with the king.
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Hussein visited London again in December 1961 and saw Dr Herbert five or six times for various medical check-ups. Hussein was said to be as healthy as an ox but tired and rather tense. Dr Sati, the family doctor, accompanied Hussein on all of these visits, so there was no opportunity for confidential conversations.
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Not that the elderly Jordanian physician would have been surprised by the admixture of medicine with covert contacts with the Jews. He himself had been King Abdullah's doctor as well as his most trusted emissary in the secret diplomacy that he conducted with his neighbours across the Jordan River in the crucial phase of the struggle for Palestine. Unlike some of King Abdullah's other aides, who had a personal axe to grind, Dr Sati had enjoyed Abdullah's absolute confidence and was entrusted by him to carry out the most sensitive of missions. It was Dr Sati who was usually sent to Jerusalem to convey the king's letters or verbal messages to the officials of the Jewish Agency, who knew that the doctor would not try to inject his personal views and preferences in the process of liaising between the two sides and that any money they handed to him would be faithfully delivered to the right destination.
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The patient efforts of the Israelis to make direct contact with Hussein through his Jewish doctor eventually paid off. Following an incident on the border with Jordan, the Israelis asked Dr Herbert to arrange a
meeting for them with Queen Zain, who was staying in London at the time, so they could give her a message for her son. Zain replied, ‘Why do you want to meet with me? His Majesty is in London and he is ready to meet an authorized representative sent to him by the prime minister of Israel.'
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Levi Eshkol was the prime minister at that time, having recently replaced David Ben-Gurion. Eshkol was a more reasonable and down-to-earth person than his predecessor, and more moderate in his approach to the Arab–Israeli conflict. Whereas Ben-Gurion was a proponent of retaliation, Eshkol was a proponent of negotiation, of practical solutions to practical problems, of dialogue and accommodation. Eshkol's foreign minister was Golda Meir, a participant in the secret contacts with King Abdullah and a not so secret admirer of Abdullah's grandson. During the 1958 crisis in Jordan, Meir told the British foreign secretary, Selwyn Lloyd, ‘We all pray three times a day for King Hussein's safety and success.'
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She and Eshkol favoured the continuation of the status quo in Jordan and regarded the survival of the Hashemite monarchy in Amman as essential to Israel's security.
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For the delicate mission of meeting with Hussein, they chose the best qualified person in the Israeli diplomatic service.

Yaacov Herzog (1921–72) was a highly sophisticated, cultured and sensitive man with a profound faith in Israel's destiny. He was the son of the Chief Rabbi of Ireland and the brother of Chaim Herzog, the director of military intelligence and later president of the State of Israel. Yaacov, who was born in Dublin, settled in Palestine in 1939. He graduated in law from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and obtained a doctorate in international relations from the University of Ottawa. Following in his father's footsteps, he was also ordained as a rabbi and became a considerable Talmudic scholar. As ambassador to Canada he achieved fame by challenging Professor Arnold Toynbee, the eminent historian, to a public debate at McGill University. From 1963 to 1965 he was deputy director general of the Foreign Ministry. Herzog was a practising Jew, very cautious by nature, but with a taste for secret diplomacy and sensitive missions. It was he who established the secret channel to Hussein, and it was he who maintained it almost without a break until 1970. Herzog and Hussein had very little in common except for their admiration for the British way of life, yet they established a relationship based on trust and mutual respect. Apart from all his intellectual talents, Herzog was a meticulous, even fastidious, civil servant
who compiled an extraordinarily detailed record of all his contacts and conversations with Hussein and his advisers.
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On 24 September 1963 Herzog went straight from the airport to the secret meeting at Dr Herbert's elegant house in Langford Place, St John's Wood. When he entered the room, Hussein rose from his chair and stretched out his hand. Herzog bowed to him, shook his hand, and expressed his appreciation that he had agreed to see him. Dr Herbert stayed with his guests until the end of the meeting after Hussein indicated that he had no objection. Herzog opened the conversation by saying that he was privileged to be the special emissary of the prime minister and foreign minister of the State of Israel and that he brought with him a message of esteem and goodwill. They and indeed the entire people of Israel viewed with sympathy and admiration King Hussein's statesmanship, leadership, and personal courage. While the public posture of their relationship might be touched by the wounds of history, deep down Israelis were aware of the common destiny that bound the two peoples together in their struggle for survival. They were convinced that cooperation between them enshrined a key for stability and progress for the Middle East as a whole. As Herzog spoke in this grandiloquent manner, Hussein alternated between smiles and signs of nervousness. He offered Herzog a cigarette and insisted on lighting it with his lighter.

Herzog proceeded to give a survey of the situation in the Middle East, touching on many of the different conflicts in the area. Hussein broke in with a broad smile and gave his response. With clear signs of nervousness and weighing his words very carefully, he said that he was pleased that Herzog had come to see him. For years he had been endeavouring to build up his country and it was not an easy task because his people had suffered much; there were diverse elements, and he was constantly under pressure from his enemies. He did not want war, as he realized that war would solve nothing. All he sought was to develop a better life for his people. He understood that his people had to recognize and accept Israel as a fact. He admitted that in the past he had been very extremist, but he wanted the Israelis to understand that his family had suffered tragedy. He hoped that a solution would come about, and he was prepared to work towards this goal.