Unrest in the Desert

At 3 o'clock one morning last fortnight, a young Palestinian Arab employed as a senior translator by the Arabian-American Oil Company in Dhahran, was awakened by a Saudi Arabian cop. "Here's the list," softly murmured the Saudi cop, handing over a bit of paper with 72 names scrawled upon it. The translator knew what was expected of him: to check off a new batch of "undesirable" Palestinian Arabs on Aramco's staff, slated for arrest and deportation by royal decree.

Sleepily he moved his finger down the list. Three quarters of the way down the list he was jolted fast awake. It was his own name. Despite the fact that he was a senior member of Aramco's Arab staff, earning the phenomenal Arab salary of $150 a week, and considered himself a pal of the local police chief, the translator was bundled off to jail. Three days later, he and 36 other Palestinian Arabs were deported to Beirut without a hearing.

In the past three weeks, 173 Palestinian Arabs have been quietly deported from Saudi Arabia -- 121 of them Aramco employees -- and U.S. oilmen cannot get an official explanation. The unofficial explanation is that King Saud is taking capricious revenge on Hashimites (a rival Arab dynasty that gets on reasonably well with Palestinians). Hashimite Iraq recently signed a defense treaty with NATO partner Turkey, thereby splitting up the neutral Arab bloc for the first time. King Saud, one of 40 sons of the late great Lion of the Desert Ibn Saud, has not yet proven himself as lionhearted as his father, and reportedly lives in fear that his enemies may kill him. A recent visitor to his heavily guarded palace heard him say: "I can trust nobody. I cannot trust those closest to me."

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