Lion of Jordan (62 page)

In the personal life of Hussein 1972 was noteworthy for the breakdown of his marriage to his second wife, Princess Muna. Hussein had embarked on this marriage a decade earlier despite opposition from the British ambassador and his own advisers. It was a source of much happiness in its early years and had produced two sons and two daughters. How and why it broke down is not known because both sides maintained a dignified silence. Recurrent rumours of Hussein's marital infidelity were at least one likely source of strain. In any case, Hussein fell in love with another woman, and it was he who decided to dissolve the marriage.

The woman who swept Hussein off his feet was Alia Toukan, who came from a prominent Palestinian family from Nablus. Alia was born in Cairo in 1948 to Baha Uddin Toukan, the Jordanian ambassador to Egypt. Young Hussein was a frequent visitor who stayed with the Toukans during school holidays and on his way to and from Victoria College in Alexandria. Alia was one year old when they first met, and he used to play with her. Baha Uddin Toukan subsequently served as Jordan's ambassador to Ankara, London and the United Nations in New York, where Alia did an MA in Business and Public Relations at Hunter College. She was a beautiful and sophisticated young woman with an appreciation of the arts and a social conscience, very interested in human rights and the welfare of the poor. She was also lively and outward-going, and communicated easily with people from all walks of life. Her ambition was to become an ambassador for her country. When Hussein met her again she was working for Royal Jordanian Airlines, and he was very taken with her. It was he who asked her to oversee the International Water Ski Festival in Aqaba. Their romance flourished, and they got married in Amman on 24 December 1972, when he was thirty-seven and she was twenty-four. The title she assumed was Queen Alia Al-Hussein. Alia was a popular queen not least on account of her Palestinian background. She seemed to embody her husband's vision of one united Jordanian–Palestinian family.

All diplomatic activity to resolve the Arab–Israeli conflict was suspended in the second half of 1972. Israel had no real interest in negotiating with any of its Arab neighbours; the principal aim of its policy was to preserve the territorial status quo on all fronts and make no concessions for the sake of peace. Underlying this was the assumption that the present state of affairs could be perpetuated indefinitely because Israel's military power would deter the Arabs from going to war. Egypt, as the largest and most powerful of the Arab states, was the main target of the Israeli strategy of attrition. The essence of this strategy was to let President Sadat ‘sweat it out', with his range of alternatives narrowing all the time, eventually, it was supposed, driving him to settle the conflict on Israel's terms. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who replaced William Rogers as secretary of state, abandoned the effort to mediate between the Arab states and Israel. They adopted the Israeli belief that the stalemate in the Middle East served American as well as Israeli interests and that it worked against the Soviet Union and her Arab allies. With tacit American backing, Israel was free to pursue the policy that could fairly be described as ‘destination deadlock'.

In relation to Jordan too Israel's leaders displayed no diplomatic flexibility and no interest in a peace agreement. Under the influence of Moshe Dayan, the Labour-led government continued to consolidate its military control over the West Bank and to build more and more settlements in the Jordan Valley. Practical cooperation with the Jordanian authorities continued over a wide range of practical issues, including agriculture, the management of water resources, trade, taxation, banking, electricity, the provision of medical services and the repatriation of refugees. Paradoxically, what Simha Dinitz described as the state of de facto peace enjoyed by Israel reduced the incentive to strive for a formal,
or
de jure
, peace: functional cooperation between Jordan and Israel contributed to the diplomatic stalemate in the Middle East.
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Hussein was convinced that if this was not broken, the result would be instability, turbulence and, eventually, war. In early February 1973 he arrived in Washington to share his forebodings with President Nixon and other senior American policy-makers. Kissinger describes the king's predicament with insight and sympathy:

Hussein repeated his willingness to make peace with Israel. But despite secret contacts he faced an impasse. Hussein symbolized the fate of Arab moderates. He was caught between his inability to sustain a war with Israel and his unwillingness to make a common cause with the radicals. He was prepared for a diplomatic solution, even a generous one, but Israel saw no incentive for negotiations as long as Hussein stood alone. Any return of conquered territories seemed to it less secure than the status quo. And the West Bank with its historic legacy would unleash violent domestic controversy in Israel – the National Religious Party, without which the governing coalition could not rule, was adamantly opposed to the return of
any
part of the West Bank.

When Hussein returned to Washington on 27 February, Kissinger briefed him on the latest Egyptian proposals for resolving the conflict. Hussein's reaction revealed the depth of his distrust for Sadat. Kissinger thus had indications of two separate approaches from two Arab leaders whose mutual suspicions kept them from combining. Sadat was using the Palestinians to gain a veto over Jordanian actions, while Hussein invoked American fears of Soviet intransigence to slow down a separate peace between Egypt and Israel.
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Alone among Arab leaders at that time, Hussein was prepared to be specific about peace terms. At his second meeting with Kissinger he handed him a paper that spelled out the elements he had described at the first: ‘Jordan would negotiate directly with Israel over the West Bank. There would be some border changes provided the Gaza Strip was given in return. If Jordanian sovereignty was restored, there could be Israeli outposts along the Jordan River or even Israeli settlements, provided they were isolated enclaves on Jordanian territory; he could not agree to the annexation of the Jordan Valley by Israel. Wryly the King said that all these proposals had already been made directly to Israel and been rejected. What was needed was an American proposal, not another Jordanian one.' The paper in fact represented an improvement
on Hussein's previous offer to the Israelis. At the secret meeting with Moshe Dayan on 29 June 1972, Hussein had ruled out Israeli bases and settlements on Jordanian territory, whereas the paper to Kissinger allowed for enclaves. The next visitor to Washington was Golda Meir. At a meeting with Nixon on 1 March 1973, she proclaimed that ‘we have never had it so good' and insisted that the stalemate was safe because the Arabs had no military option. The Americans accepted her argument and stepped up their economic and military aid to Israel.
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No American proposal followed Hussein's visit, and his conversations with Kissinger led nowhere.

The complacency and conceit that Meir displayed in Washington also coloured her attitude to Jordan. She and Hussein met secretly on Israeli territory on 9 May 1973, at a time when there were clashes between the Lebanese Army and the PLO forces in southern Lebanon; there were also early signs that Egypt and Syria were preparing for military action against Israel. Hussein sent warnings to Washington that the Egyptian and Syrian military preparations were too realistic to be considered manoeuvres.
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At the meeting the king asked the prime minister to stop Israeli planes flying over Jordan on their return from surveillance missions in Syria. Meir flatly rejected the request. Syrian threats to attack Israel, she said, made it impossible to accede to the king's request. Another meeting took place on 6 August, which dealt mainly with economic issues such as Israeli encouragement for foreign investment in Jordan, Jordanian–Israeli cooperation in exploiting the mineral resources of the Dead Sea, measures to relieve the housing shortage in Amman and agricultural development in the Jordan Valley. A peace settlement was no longer on the agenda for the top-level bilateral meetings.
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Israel's diplomatic intransigence and Arab threats of war placed Hussein in an awkward position. He did not want to repeat the mistake he had made in 1967 of allowing other Arab leaders to drag Jordan into a war with Israel for which Jordan had been completely unprepared. To do so it was necessary to communicate with the leaders of the other confrontation states, but both Egypt and Syria had broken off diplomatic relations with Jordan: Egypt over the United Arab Kingdom plan and Syria over Black September. So in early December 1972 Hussein sent Zaid Rifa'i on a secret mission to Cairo to meet with Sadat. The meeting lasted six hours, and Sadat was very frank. He told Rifa'i, ‘I know I am not Tarzan. I realize my limitations. I am not good at blitzkrieg. The
Israelis are good at blitzkrieg. I will fight a war of political reactivation and not of military liberation. I will wage a limited war: cross the canal, secure a bridgehead and stop. Then I will ask the Security Council to call for a ceasefire. This strategy will ensure my victory in the battle, cut my losses and reactivate the peace process.' Rifa'i pointed out to his host the risks involved in this strategy, but Sadat was not convinced. On the other hand, Sadat welcomed Rifa'i's suggestion that the king visit him in Cairo. At first Sadat stipulated conditions for the meeting but later dropped them and invited Hussein to join him and President Asad of Syria for a three-day summit in Cairo, beginning 10 September 1973.
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The main items on the agenda of the Cairo summit were to settle the differences between the three countries, to coordinate their military–political strategy and to re-establish diplomatic relations. Hussein conceded that if Israel refused to withdraw from the occupied territories, the Arabs would only be left with the option of liberating them by military means. But he stressed that war required careful preparation and the support of the oil-producing states. Sadat's comment was that the confrontation states alone had the responsibility for liberating their own territories. He then dropped the subject of war and raised the subject of the PLO, hinting that Jordan would have to take back the Palestinian guerrillas as the price for restoring diplomatic relations. Hussein refused point blank and threatened to leave Cairo. Sadat backed down and agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations with Jordan immediately; Asad pretended he needed to consult his colleagues and a few days later Syria announced the re-establishment of formal relations with Jordan. The summit thus looked like a triumph for the king: ‘War was discussed as a possible option but only after proper preparation. For the time being Jordan would be expected to play a purely defensive role and deter an Israeli attack on the rear of Syrian forces through Jordan. Relations were re-established with Jordan and the king did not give in to Sadat's conditions.'
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What Hussein did not know at the time was that during his stay in Cairo, Sadat and Asad held a secret meeting to put the final touches on a joint war plan. What Asad did not know was that Sadat had his own separate war plan. After the war, Asad told Zaid Rifa'i that Sadat had double-crossed him. The two leaders agreed to wage war to liberate their occupied territories, but Sadat planned only a limited war to reactivate the political process. In accordance with the joint plan, the
Syrian Army would go into battle to liberate the whole of the Golan Heights. Sadat's war aim, however, was much more limited. Instead of keeping up his attack against the Israeli Army in Sinai and advancing to the Giddi and Mitla Passes, he crossed the canal and stopped. This, Asad complained, enabled Israel to concentrate all its might against Syria.
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What is reasonably clear about this generally murky summit is that Sadat and Asad did not divulge to Hussein their war plan. Support for Hussein's assertion that he was not told at the summit of the plan to go to war comes from an unexpected source: Abu Iyad (Salah Khalaf), the PLO leader. Abu Iyad wrote in his memoirs that he, Yasser Arafat and Faruk Qaddumi heard from Sadat about the imminent war on 9 September, whereas Hussein, who arrived in Cairo the following day, was told nothing: Sadat informed the PLO leaders that he had no intention of breathing a word to Hussein. The main purpose of the summit, said Sadat, was to restore normal relations with Jordan in order to create suitable conditions on the ‘Eastern Front' during the coming hostilities.
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Hussein's next secret meeting was with Meir in Tel Aviv on 25 September 1973. Less than two weeks later, on 6 October, Egypt and Syria launched their carefully coordinated attack against the Israeli Army in Sinai and in the Golan Heights. In Israel this war became known as the Yom Kippur War because it started on the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar; in the Arab world it is usually referred to as Operation Bader or the Ramadan War; and the most commonly used name is the October War. The proximity between the three dates gave rise to suspicions in Arab quarters that Hussein went to meet with the Israeli leader to give her advance warning of the imminent Egyptian–Syrian attack. These allegations make the meeting of 25 September more controversial than any of Hussein's numerous other meetings with Israeli leaders. Hussein routinely denied the rumours about these meetings, but, if pressed, he could have argued that direct contact was necessary for the defence of his country and that he never conceded a single inch of Arab territory to Israel. On the other hand, if Hussein disclosed to the Israelis secret Arab war plans, he would have been a traitor to the Arab cause. Hence Hussein's anger at the tendentious Israeli leaks from this particular meeting and the lengths to which he went to rebut the specific Arab allegations of duplicity and betrayal.
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Special care is therefore called for in analysing the meeting that preceded the October War.