To Join or Not to Join

Last week another Arab nation prepared to join the new anti-Communist Baghdad pact, but not without the kind of scuffling in the streets that so often passes for soul-searching in the Middle East. The prospective new member is the poor desert state of Jordan, which is under the wing (but not the thumb) of Great Britain.

Britain sent its top soldier, General Sir Gerald Templer, to Jordan with a tempting proposition: if Jordan would join the Baghdad pact, with Turkey. Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. Britain would boost its aid program (currently $24 million a year), replace the present Anglo-Jordanian treaty with a new one more favorable to Jordan, and increase the size and armored strength of Jordan's British-trained Arab Legion, whose 20,000 men are the best Arab troops in the Middle East.

Templer's diplomacy worked well enough to win over some of Jordan's leaders, including 20-year-old (Harrow, '51-'52) King Hussein. Last week Premier Said el Mufti and four Cabinet members who opposed the pact resigned, and the King promptly appointed a new Cabinet headed by a young (36) lawyer, Hazza el Majali. The new government was ready to accept Templer's package proposals, but first it had to survive a tough test of its authority, mainly among the country's half million destitute Arab refugees from Israel, who are easily inflamed to violence.

The way to stir up such mobs is to identify the Baghdad pact with the West, to identify the West with Israel, and then to stir up hatred of Israel.

Serious trouble erupted next day throughout the nation after the noon prayers in the mosques. Worshipers came storming forth, crying epithets against the Baghdad pact and the U.S., attacked emergency patrols of the Arab Legion with sticks and stones. A tight censorship closed down over the capital city of Amman, but some details got out. In the Arab half of Jerusalem, the U.S. consulate was surrounded and stoned, while the wives and children of the U.S. staff huddled in the safest place in the buildings: the stonewalled lavatories. At week's end El Maja-li's new government was still in control, but at least 40 people had been killed, some 300 arrested, and mobs were still milling in the streets.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.