Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril (9 page)

One of my fellow lieutenants, who had come up through the ranks, was dealing with a family crisis soon after I arrived. His brother had died. This fellow had a wife and eight children, and his brother also had a wife and eight children, so this one man suddenly had eighteen dependents to take care of on a meager officer’s wages. I gave him half of my salary for the whole time I was there—about a year. At the time the army maintained a high state of readiness—at any time a third of our units had to be ready to go on fifteen minutes’ notice for a possible war, which meant a lot of extra duty for our officers. I frequently pulled extra duty for him, allowing him to go home on weekends. Clearly, his burdens at home far exceeded mine. To this day I think of my men and their families whenever I focus on outreach programs for housing, health, and education.

Although my men may have been poor, they were rich in courage and fighting spirit. Many had little formal education but more than made up for it with street smarts and raw intelligence. At one point my unit was equipped with new Khalid/Shir I tanks, predecessors to the Challenger tanks from Britain. Boasting the latest in military technology, these fearsome vehicles were driven by a complex system of electronic wizardry. Yet in under a month my men were handling them as if they had been driving them for years.

Conditions were more basic than in the British army, but I liked our ways better. In the officers’ mess at the 13th/18th Royal Hussars we came down to dinner in a coat and tie and ate off a table that had been captured from Napoleon in the battle of Waterloo. In the Jordanian mess we ate food that was sometimes well past its expiration date off plastic tables and chairs, but the true essence of an army is not its formal trappings and fancy weapons. It is the ability of its men to face the prospect of death without flinching. And my men were the most courageous soldiers I had ever met.

The 40th Armoured Brigade was commonly referred to as “God’s Brigade,” a reference to its historical role in defending Jerusalem in 1967 and its record of fighting to the last. The first occasion was in 1967 when, heading to cut off the Jenin-Nablus axis, it encountered two Israeli brigades advancing from the northern coastal plain. In 1970, against heavy odds, it took on better-equipped Syrian troops advancing into Irbid to support Palestinian guerrillas (by the end of that engagement, my unit, the brigade’s 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, had only three tanks left, but it stopped the Syrian invasion). In 1973 it fought the Israelis in the Golan Heights, launching an offensive up the slopes of Tal El Harra, a 3,000-foot volcanic mountain. It came under heavy Israeli fire from both flanks and had to withdraw. A motivation for my men was to one day reclaim land lost in 1948 and 1967. From the banks of the Dead Sea, we could see the walls of Jerusalem. Though the Israeli armed forces were much better equipped than us, my men never feared the prospect of facing a heavily armed enemy.

We would go on maneuvers and exercises all across the country, and it was then that I began to appreciate the extraordinary beauty and diversity of Jordan. Jordan is a small country, but in one day you could go from the mountains and pine forests of Ajloun in the north, down through the Roman ruins at Jerash to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth. Continuing south along the historic King’s Highway, you pass the Crusader castles of Shobak and Kerak, the home of the French knight Raynald de Chatillon, who was beheaded by Salaheddin Al Ayyoubi (known in the West as Saladin) in the twelfth century. Stopping in Wadi Rum, one of the most beautiful desert valleys in the world, and at the ancient ruins of Petra, you would arrive at the beach resort town of Aqaba in the evening.

In the summer we sometimes went on exercises in the Jordan Valley, along the eastern bank of the river. To avoid the blazing heat and huge mosquitoes, we would get up at 4 a.m. and try to finish any strenuous tasks before the sun rose. The earth there is very fertile and reddish brown, and in the evening the setting sun glimmering off the rocks produces a range of brilliant red hues. Red has always been my favorite color: it is the color of the Hashemite flag, of the kouffiyeh, the traditional Jordanian headdress, and of the heart.

One afternoon I thought I would try out some of the new tactics I had learned at the armor school at Bovington, so we went out on an exercise. I had been taught how to perform a “fighting withdrawal”; that is, how to withdraw gradually when you are being attacked by a superior army, inflicting casualties as you retreat. After I had reconnoitered the first position with my noncommissioned officers (NCOs), we reconvened to discuss our approach to the battle. I said, “Right, let’s go to the second position.” One of my NCOs looked at me and said, “Sir, there’s no need for a second position. This is where we are going to fight and die if necessary. We are not going to retreat!” I was impressed by his courage but a little startled by his tactics. He had been trained in the old school, where retreat meant dishonor. This fighting spirit had served Jordan well in 1948, when we preserved Arab control over East Jerusalem and the West Bank; in 1968, when we beat back an Israeli incursion at the battle of Karameh; and in 1970, when our army pushed back a Syrian invasion from the north. But with the increased firepower of modern weaponry, and the devastating combination of air strikes and longrange artillery, holding the line could be suicide.

I was determined to make my men more effective by supplementing their fierce courage with some tactical cunning. If we moved a few positions farther back, I argued, following standard NATO doctrine, we could kill more of the enemy as we retreated. The men looked at me quizzically and went into a huddle. Finally they emerged and said that killing the enemy was more important than holding the line; they agreed to retreat to the next position. That was my introduction to the fighting spirit of the Jordanian soldier. Nothing at Sandhurst had prepared me for this eagerness to die fighting. My men’s passion reflected the temperament common in the dangerous neighborhood in which we lived. At that time, Jordan was still in a state of cold war with Israel, and although the shooting had stopped, we had to be ready to face a threat from our nuclear-armed neighbor at a moment’s notice.

 

In March 1984, Queen Elizabeth II came to Jordan on a state visit. Security was extremely tight, as two days before the queen’s arrival terrorists had set off a bomb at a hotel in Amman. My father asked me to serve as military equerry (a sort of aide-de-camp) to the queen and her husband, Prince Philip. It was an honor, and particularly exciting as I had fairly recently graduated from Sandhurst and served in the British army. Due to the security concerns, my father also asked me to be the queen’s personal bodyguard. I went to Special Forces to receive extra training. As the day approached I asked my father: if somebody fires at me I’ll fire back, but how far do you want me to go?

“If somebody fires at the queen,” he said, “you will put yourself in the way. And if it means losing your life to protect our guest, you bloody well do it. Otherwise I’ll shoot you myself!” I knew he was choosing his words for effect, but for my father, duty and honor came first, even before his own family.

I stayed by the queen’s side for the duration of her five-day visit, and, thankfully, was not required to take a bullet for her. Although he could at times sound tough, my father and I bonded over our shared passion for the military. We enjoyed watching old movies together and often swapped notes on the latest military equipment produced in different countries and whether we should use it. It seemed that my military career earned me a newfound respect in my father’s eyes as, slowly, he began to ask me to undertake extra duties and responsibilities.

Since the time of my great-grandfather, King Abdullah I, and the Arab Legion, the Jordanian army has been one of the best-trained, most disciplined, and most professional armies in the Middle East. But I was determined to make our army one of the best in the world. “Don’t compare us to other armies in the region,” I would argue, “compare us to NATO.” To achieve this, I knew that we had to modernize. Although my soldiers were talented and courageous, they were being let down by a system that at times failed to provide advanced equipment. I learned to cope with what we had, to be resourceful, and to find innovative solutions. I would beg, borrow, or steal to get my men the equipment and supplies they needed.

Like all young men, I was impatient for change. But frustration mounted as I saw how far some of the most senior officers would go in defending the status quo.

I
was relaxing at my army base in Qatraneh one evening when the phone rang. My father asked me to come to Amman to see him immediately. I drove to meet him, wondering why he had to see me so late at night, and arrived around ten o’clock.

Pulling me to one side, my father told me he intended to go to Aqaba tomorrow night. From there, he would take a boat to meet with the Israelis to press them to agree to a solution that would end their occupation of the land they had seized in 1967 and bring peace to the region. “I want you to be my driver and bodyguard,” he told me. Although Jordan shared a lengthy border with Israel, it was very foreign territory for us. To enter Israel would be like a West Berliner sneaking over the wall for a visit to East Berlin during the height of the cold war. I said it would be an honor to be at his side. He told me to meet him at the airport the next morning. Heading home, I felt excited, but also nervous. I was a captain in the army, and escorting my father on a secret mission into enemy territory was a weighty assignment. For the first time I would not just be an observer of Arab-Israeli history—I would play a small part in it myself.

I have decided to tell this personal story because it offers a glimpse of the huge risks my father would take for peace. With his passing, I feel it is important to describe how dedicated he was to bringing about a regional peace that would ensure an Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories, especially Jerusalem, which had a special place in his heart. He believed that peace was a right for all peoples of the region, Arabs and Israelis. You make peace with your enemies, not your friends, he would say. Nothing good would come of refusing to engage them. My father met many times with Israelis to discuss proposals, but he always held to the idea of full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as the basis of a solution. Jordan shared a 375-mile border with Israel and he felt discussions were needed to prevent war. We had already experienced one disaster in 1967 and needed to avoid another. One of my father’s greatest virtues was that he was trusted and admired by everyone, even by those who disagreed with him. He was far too well-mannered to point out that many of the Arab leaders who criticized him publicly for engaging Israel were asking him in private to intercede on their behalf.

My father and I flew from Amman south to Aqaba, accompanied by the prime minister, Zaid Rifai, and by Sharif (later Prince) Zeid bin Shaker, the chief of the Royal Court. The plan was to take a clandestine nighttime trip in a small fishing boat across the Gulf of Aqaba into Israel. When we reached Aqaba we found our boat and waited for nightfall. Around 9 p.m. the four of us boarded the thirty-three-foot fishing boat and sailed out of the harbor. We headed for the border, then crossed into Israeli waters. Proceeding cautiously, we flashed a light from the bow of the boat and saw a light flash back. Out of the darkness came a small dinghy with Efraim Halevy, a member of the Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, onboard. Halevy, a British-born lawyer who would go on to head the Mossad, was not much for conversation that night, and beckoned for us to follow him. We began to pull in closer to Israel. A location for the meeting had been agreed, but the dinghy changed course. Sharif Zeid was very concerned. “This is not what we agreed on,” he said. My father motioned for me to come with him to the top of the boat. When we were out of hearing, he said, “Well, what do you think?”

As a young man on his first secret mission, I urged my father to go ahead. He looked at me and smiled. We went back to the others and my father told Sharif Zeid, “It’s okay, we’re going to do this.”

We went all the way to the Israeli city of Eilat, a short distance from Aqaba, and anchored in front of a naval hangar, some 325 yards from shore. My father, Zaid Rifai, and Sharif Zeid boarded the Israeli dinghy and went ashore, and I was left alone to guard the boat.

I turned off all the lights and scanned the beach with my binoculars, looking for Israeli soldiers. Everything seemed quiet. I saw a campfire and a couple of hippies sitting next to it, playing the guitar. I caught a glimpse of a glowing cigarette butt next to the hangar and focused on it with the binoculars. It was an Israeli sniper, watching me. I had no means of communicating with my father and realized how isolated I was, sitting alone on a fishing boat outside an Israeli port. So I took my hand grenades and rigged them up along the side of the boat with a pulley system. One pull of the string would set the whole lot off.

It must have been ten o’clock at night when we arrived, and hours went by while I waited for my father and the others to return. At one point I thought, “In about five hours, the sun will come up. I’m all alone on a boat in an Israeli harbor, loaded to the gills with guns and grenades, and nobody knows I’m here. If my father doesn’t come back, what will I do?” Fortunately, I did not have to storm the beaches single-handedly or return to Jordan and explain how I had managed to misplace the king. Shortly before sunrise my father came back via that same small dinghy, and we all sailed back to Aqaba. Although my father never spoke of what had taken place that night, meetings such as this one laid the groundwork for the peace treaty that would eventually be signed between Jordan and Israel.

 

Over the years I progressed through the ranks, occasionally leaving Jordan for brief periods of training, then returning to the army. One memorable trip was a six-month company commander training course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in the United States in 1985 to study armor strategy and tactics. Although we were closing the gap with the NATO armies, we still had a ways to go, particularly in obtaining the most advanced military equipment. One afternoon I was pulling on my kit when a colonel in the Israeli army who was attending the same course walked up next to me. Seeing the patch on my shoulder, he said, “40th Armoured Brigade, eh? You Jordanians are tough.” He was obviously referring to the strong fight the brigade had put up against the Israeli army in the 1967 war.