Jordan: The King Takes On the Guerrillas

AS he fiddled with the dials on his short-wave set in Essex last week, a young British ham radio operator heard a familiar call signal from a Middle East station. "This is JY-one," the deep, British-accented voice could be heard over the crackle of the static. "Hussein on the mike." With that, the beleaguered King of Jordan proceeded to discuss the situation outside his well-fortified Al-Hummar Palace on the outskirts of Amman. "We get a bit of blasting here," said Hussein. "It is a sad time. But we are putting our house in order and soon it will be organized."

A bit of blasting was a mild way of describing the explosion that rocked the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan last week. Civil war was a more apt description of the battle that had erupted only hours before JY-one came on the air. Savage street battles raged in Amman between Hussein's army and the fedayeen ("men of sacrifice") of the Palestine guerrilla organizations. While the capital's 600,000 residents hid in terror, armored vehicles rumbled up and down the streets, swinging their turrets to counter small-arms fire from nearby buildings. Swiftly, the fighting spread from Amman to other parts of Jordan, centering particularly in towns to the north close to the Syrian border, where the guerrillas were able to put up their greatest resistance. Casualties were heavy. In the Six-Day War with Israel three years ago, Jordan suffered only 162 dead and wounded. Last week, after three days of intensive fighting, reports put the casualties at more than 5,000 in a nation of 2,200,000. Bodies lay in the streets and the Jordan Red Crescent reported that there were "hundreds of wounded dying in the streets or in the wreckage of their homes for lack of medical aid."

Widening Ripples

So sensitive is the Middle East's political seismograph that even as Arab leaders tried to contain the fighting in Jordan, the ripples created by the civil war continued to widen. The radical Baathist governments of Iraq and Syria gave unqualified vocal support to the guerrillas, defying Egypt's suggestion that they stay out of the dispute. "We will not spare one drop of blood to help," said Syrian President Noureddine Atassi. The U.S. and Israel hinted that they might intervene if the regimes in Baghdad and Damascus sent regular troops to reinforce the guerrillas. But at week's end Amman Radio reported that a Syrian armored brigade had crossed into Jordan with Soviet-built tanks. The radio added that Jordanian troops repulsed the invaders "with heavy losses."

The outbursts proved what Arab leaders have increasingly feared as the fedayeen grew from a handful to an army of 25,000 full-time fighters in Jordan alone: the movement is a greater threat to established Arab governments than it is to Israel. The guerrillas were also proving once again that they must be reckoned with in any Middle East peace settlement; only a week before, they had established the point beyond argument, defying Hussein and the world, with a multiple skyjacking. No Arab government can guarantee that a peace will be kept as long as the fedayeen, desperadoes with little to lose, cast such threatening shadows over the negotiating table.

The showdown in Jordan was all but inevitable. Since 1968, Hussein's successive Cabinets and the eleven guerrilla organizations that make up the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have rubbed each other like two jagged pieces of Jordanian limestone. The government resented the fact that the guerrillas had become so strong that they were practically the joint rulers of Jordan: they set their own laws of conduct, carried guns in spite of Jordanian prohibition, ruled the refugee camps and openly defied the King. The guerrillas resented the fact that Hussein's government did not show sufficient regard for the Palestinians, who make up 65% of Jordan's population. Three times since 1968, disagreements between sides have resulted in actual miniwars. Three months ago, 200 people were killed in three days of fighting.

The hostility intensified last month, as far as the guerrillas were concerned, when Hussein and Egypt's President Nasser agreed to a cease-fire with Israel. A new attempt on Hussein's life infuriated the army. Two weeks ago, any hope of reconciliation between the two sides was finally fractured when the guerrillas skyjacked three jet airliners and held as hostages 430 crewmen and passengers (TIME cover, Sept. 21). Most were finally let go by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, but 54 --38 Americans, two with dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship, and 16 Britons, West Germans and Swiss--were still being held at undisclosed hideaways at week's end. The hostages were in danger of getting caught in the battle, and a guerrilla spokesman would say nothing about their condition. "All we know," he said, "is that all are alive." The whole episode, said Hussein, was "the shame of the Arab nation."

Jordanian Premier Abdel Moneim Rifai tried to paper over this latest controversy with an agreement stipulating that the guerrillas be allowed to operate openly in Amman and that the army stay outside the capital. When Hussein saw the agreement, he was aghast. The army was already close to mutiny as a result of the restrictions placed upon it in its dealings with the cocky, freewheeling fedayeen. At one inspection an armored commander flew a brassiere from the radio antenna of his tank. When Hussein asked why, the officer snapped: "We have all become women." At another inspection, army officers pulled off their kaffiyehs and threw the traditional Jordanian headdress to the ground at the King's feet. The skyjacking represented a final humiliation: army units had quickly ringed the three jets squatting in the desert outside Amman, but orders from the King pre vented them from doing anything more. Hussein knew that his soldiers, roughly half of them Bedouins with little use for the fedayeen, were bitterly resentful. "They are on the razor's edge," he told the French daily Le Figaro. "They've had enough. They are not accustomed to being so vilified, denigrated, provoked endlessly without being able to react. The situation cannot go on. Every day Jordan sinks a little deeper. There must be peace--or war."

Scathing Rebuke

In the past, Hussein scrupulously avoided a confrontation. More and more, critics accused him of wavering. Finally, the King decided to make a tough decision stick. He had little choice. If he did nothing, there was a real chance of an army mutiny. Rifai volunteered to resign as Premier because he was "tired." Instead, Hussein scathingly rebuked him and then fired him--along with the rest of his 17-member Cabinet. The King appointed a new Cabinet made up of eleven army officers and headed by Brigadier General Mohammed Daoud, 50, as Premier. More important, he dusted off a measure that was hurriedly enacted during the 1967 war with Israel and declared martial law. Hussein appointed Field Marshal Habes Majali, a 57-year-old Bedouin officer, as commander in chief of the army as well as military governor of Jordan.

Hussein's orders were terse. The new government was "to act immediately to undo hostile planning and restore matters as they should be." "Hostile forces," the King added, had "undermined national unity, shaken the armed forces, dynamited their military spirit and discipline, and created a state of despair." At Majali's command, the Jordanian army was soon moving tanks and artillery into Amman.

The guerrillas accepted the challenge. Yasser Arafat, leader of Al-Fatah, the biggest guerrilla group, and of the overall PLO command, had already summoned ambassadors from other Arab states and told them: "Will you kindly inform your governments that King Hussein, with mature consideration, has drawn up a detailed plan which is bound to end in a blood bath? I possess irrefutable proof that he intends to liquidate the Palestinian resistance." In Amman, Damascus and Baghdad, guerrilla radios suddenly began crackling with curiously coded messages. "The dinner is hot," said one. "Ghazi is marching to Haifa," said another. In plainer language, the fedayeen command advised its men to "keep your finger on the trigger until the fascist military rule has been removed." In Amman, shopkeepers, who have suffered through previous confrontations, shuttered their stores. Schools closed, offices emptied, and civilians huddled in the basements of limestone houses on Amman's seven hills. Telephone lines went dead. The airport waved off incoming flights and sent Royal Jordanian Airline's Caravelles out of the country.

The 54 skyjacking hostages were also moved for "safekeeping." Anxious to thwart any rescue attempts, the Popular Front split them up into groups of four or five and scattered them to different hiding places. Before the fighting broke out, most were believed to be in a sprawling Palestinian refugee center on the southern rim of the capital, called Amman New Camp. At the same camp the guerrillas are believed to be holding $650,000 in U.S. bills that Swissair last week admitted had been aboard its skyjacked plane. When the guerrillas found out about the money by reading the craft's loading sheet, they marched the plane's captain into the desert, held guns to his temples and forced him to tell them where it was.

Groping in the Dark

The outbreak of civil war in Jordan vastly complicated efforts to free the hostages from what the guerrillas assured the world was humane captivity. At the same time, the shooting increased the confusion surrounding the negotiations for their release. At one point the International Committee of the Red Cross broke off talks, demanding that the guerrillas provide "more precision as to who was speaking for whom." Once civil war broke out, contacts were broken off completely.

The five governments involved in the negotiating--the U.S., Britain, West Germany, Switzerland and Israel--also added to the confusion. The West Germans once again contemplated trading unilaterally for the release of two citizens by freeing three Arabs imprisoned by Bonn. British Foreign Minister Alec Douglas-Home, anxious to speed up deliberations, interrupted Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban's private visit to England to press for a promise to release more Arab prisoners. The Israelis agreed, among other things, to give up the two Algerian intelligence agents they had been holding. For its part, the U.S., which had dispatched Sixth Fleet ships with 1,500 battle-ready Marines to the Eastern Mediterranean when the planes were skyjacked, added more ships to the task force. Most notably, the helicopter carrier Guam, with combat Marines aboard, sailed from Norfolk naval base to join the fleet.

The Marines' assignment, if events warranted, was to helicopter ashore in Jordan to rescue the 40 members of the U.S. embassy in Amman and any of 350 U.S. citizens living in Jordan, or other foreigners who cared to leave. There was also the possibility, albeit a remote one, of liberating some of the 54 airline hostages. Washington Special Action Group, a crisis committee of State, Defense and intelligence chiefs headed by Henry Kissinger, met twice to draw up contingency plans.

The ostentatious movement of ships and Marines had another purpose. Even as Israeli Premier Golda Meir arrived in the U.S. for conferences with President Nixon (see following story), the Administration was carefully leaking muted warnings of U.S. intervention. The warnings were chiefly designed to dissuade any invasion by Israel, whose paratroopers were already on the alert to jump into Jordan if Iraqi or Syrian troops came to the aid of the guerrillas. However, an Israeli invasion would undoubtedly be met by some sort of Egyptian response.

As the battle developed. Hussein appeared to be faring well without help from the outside--though a helicopter stood by at Al-Hummar Palace just in case, ready to lift him to exile (probably in Iran). At 4:05 on a quiet morning in Amman, barely 24 hours after martial law was imposed, an artillery round shattered the predawn quiet. It was the tocsin for a barrage of fire from both sides, mostly in the dark at shapeless targets.

The fighting grew fiercer as the sun rose, however. From whitewashed houses and the ramshackle huts of refugee camps, guerrillas fired on tanks and armored vehicles moving into Amman. Anything that moved in the capital was raked by vicious crossfire. Stranded in the Jordan Inter-Continental Hotel, guests watched as an armored vehicle raced down the street outside and laced a nearby building with 75-mm. shells. "Amman is on fire," reported a guerrilla radio communique. The city looked it; a column of thick black smoke from burning petroleum tanks hung in the generally clear and sunlit sky.

Offer to Brothers

The battle between army and guerrillas was not an even one. In addition to 25,000 regulars, the fedayeen could muster 25,000 ragtag militia. Against this sizable but largely undisciplined unit stood the King's 56,000-man force, the best-drilled and most efficient army in the Arab world. Originally trained by Britain's Sir John Bagot Glubb, the army's three armored and nine infantry brigades are equipped with 300 Patton and Centurion tanks, 270 armored and scout cars and 350 armored personnel carriers. Though trained to fight in desert or rural situations, the troops proved adept at street fighting. Gradually, their advantage began to show. By nightfall of the first day, much of Amman was reported in army hands and the battle swirled around the refugee camps where the guerrillas had the edge.

With the army enjoying the upper hand in Amman but still plagued by snipers, Field Marshal Majali called for a cease-fire so that "our brothers, the fedayeen, can join us." The offer had underlying purposes. For one, Amman's population is largely Palestinian; rather than root out the guerrillas, a process that would have cost countless civilian lives, the army preferred to wait them out. The cease-fire could give Majali a chance to shift more of his forces from Amman to the north, where guerrillas from Syria and Lebanon were slipping over the border to join the fight. The guerrillas rejected Majali's call. Arafat declared "revolutionary control" over the region and ordered his forces to fall back on a triangle marked by the towns of Irbid, Mafrak and Zerka.

In the countryside, the situation was cloudy. The guerrillas made some gains: at Ramtha, on the Syrian border, the army wanted to cut the Damascus-Amman highway to sever fedayeen supply routes. At week's end the fedayeen still held the road. But ammunition shortages bothered the beleaguered guerrillas. "Use your rockets only against tanks," was the repeated message from the fedayeen radio in Amman.

In an effort to stop the fighting, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser dispatched his chief of staff, Lieut. General Mohammed Ahmed Sadek, to arrange a truce. Sadek was unsuccessful.

If Hussein were to defeat the guerrillas, what would his victory do to the power balance of the Middle East?

For the near term, the guerrillas would be in bad shape. Not until December, perhaps, would they be able to resume a full schedule of raids against the Israelis, and by that time the winter rains would limit operations. They might hinder, perhaps by more skyjacks or other diversions, whatever peace arrangements United Nations Negotiator Gunnar Jarring may be able to work out with Egypt, Jordan and Israel before their temporary truce expires on Nov. 5.

Over the longer range, the outlook for the Palestine Liberation Organization is less gloomy. No Arab doubts that the guerrillas will remain a formidable political force. In the six years since they first began operations against Israel, they have grown to the point where they can only be temporarily subdued but not eliminated.

The seeds of the guerrilla movement were planted in 1948, when Israel was created out of ancient Palestine. Only some 160,000 Arabs out of nearly 1,000,000 elected to remain in the new Jewish state; 500,000 stayed in the Gaza Strip, held by Egypt, and on the West Bank of the Jordan River, taken over by Jordan. Another 700,000 Palestinians were dispersed as refugees; most ended up in 54 refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, where they remained, forgotten by the world and deliberately abandoned by Arab nations, who found them useful propaganda pawns in the vocal war against Israel.

From these camps, where the residents grew increasingly gray with despair, most of the first guerrillas were recruited. Studying the tactics of the Algerians against the French and even of the Jewish terrorists against the British in the pre-independence days of the mandate, Al-Fatah in 1964 launched its first raid--on a small Israeli pumping station. After that, Arafat's growing group carried out a raid a week to gain experience and with each raid slowly won more support. The Six-Day War in 1967, a debacle for Arab governments, was a boon for the guerrillas. It provided them with thousands of weapons discarded by fleeing Arab soldiers; a grim race went on to see how much of the ordnance the guerrillas could grab before Israeli salvage squads reached it. The war also displaced more Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank and bred frustration and resentment among Arabs toward their disgraced armies. At the same time, the war convinced the displaced Palestinians that other Arabs would never accomplish anything for them; the new nationalism provided more recruits than Arafat could easily handle. In March 1968, the guerrillas got another lift. When Israeli forces attacked the fedayeen stronghold at Karameh in Jordan, the guerrillas staged a creditable defense. They discovered that they could at least stand up against regular forces. Today the Palestinians have a new, bold self-image. "Cruel events since '67 have taught us one thing," says Nabeel Shaath, a Palestinian who lectures in economics at the American University in Beirut. "The only way to get the world to notice us is to speak and act as Palestinians."

Warring Ideologies

The guerrillas can thus survive, but to prosper they may have to change. Like many revolutionary movements, their central command is being devoured by warring ideologies.

Politically, the early fedayeen were relatively moderate and undivided. Inevitably, however, as the guerrillas grew more numerous and more prosperous, schisms began to appear. Syria barred the Palestinian guerrillas and organized its own fedayeen, known as Al-Saiqa (the thunderbolt), with "retired" army officers at their head. Iraq did the same with a smaller organization known as the Arab Liberation Front.

The most disruptive influence on the guerrilla movement was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, organized in Beirut by a Palestine-born Christian physician named George Habash. Habash s P.F.L.P. has recently become the fastest-growing guerrilla organization because of the group's well-executed and widely publicized raids on airlines, culminating in the quadruple skyjack two weeks ago. Among Arabs, Habash is equally notable for having made ideology a paramount concern among the fedayeen for the first time. Rooted in Marxist dogma strongly tinctured with Maoism, the P.F.L.P. wants not only to attack Israel but also to topple what it considers backward, corrupt and conservative Arab governments. "We do not want peace," Habash told the West German magazine Stern recently. "Peace would be the end of all our hopes. We shall sabotage any peace negotiations in the future." Nor would Habash mind, he said, if the Middle East crisis triggered World War III. "If this should be the only possibility to destroy Israel, Zionism and Arab reactionism, then we wish for it. The entire world except us has something to lose."

Habash's intensely doctrinaire movement has spawned several offshoots. Two splinter groups, the Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command, are more rabidly Maoist than Habash is; both have seats on Arafat's central committee. They and similar splinters badly disrupt the coordination of the group and sap the effectiveness of the guerrilla movement.

As the fedayeen fragmented, fought among themselves and began menacing the governments of Jordan and Lebanon in particular, Arab rulers began to squirm. Hussein once declared, "We are all fedayeen," but he finally mustered his army to chastise the movement. Egypt's Nasser in other days hailed the fedayeen as "the vanguard of the Arab revolution." Now, worried that the guerrillas' romantic image may be undercutting his own, Nasser ventures fewer and fewer encouraging words.

Monitoring the civil war in Jordan last week, Cairo radio was unusually severe: "Egypt will not allow a Palestine maverick group to jeopardize the peace-seeking efforts of the Arabs." Moscow, too, scolded the guerrillas and warned Syria and Iraq, both Peking-leaning regimes, to keep hands off. As far as Jordan is concerned, the Soviets presumably would prefer even a monarchy to guerrillas who might wind up in Peking's corner.

The withdrawal of Nasser's support will not wither the fedayeen. Despite differences and setbacks, the guerrillas will continue as a potent force in the Middle East--an intruding hand capable of ruining any settlement. Ultimately, as even Hussein knows, the only way to defuse this threat is not by force of arms but by fulfilling the fundamental fedayeen demand for a Palestinian homeland.

Ideally the Palestinians, who are generally the best educated and most cultured of all Arabs, would like to turn the clock back to the days before the Balfour Declaration pledged the creation of a Jewish homeland. They would reconstitute the old Palestine, which includes the present Israel, the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip. They would bar "Zionists" but would allow native-born Jews to live with them in a nonreligious society. By "native-born Jews," however, some Palestinians mean those born in the area before Israel came into being in 1948; that would amount to a small fraction of Israel's 2,800,000 people.

Artificial Creation

After the P.F.L.P. two weeks ago engineered its multiple skyjacking, hostages aboard the planes were given literature and lectures by the guerrillas, setting forth the Palestinian positions. Many of the hostages came away more sympathetic than when they started. "They think the idea of one nation with one religion is prejudiced, and they were kicked out of their homes," said Catherine Holz, 15, of New York as she reached the safety of Cyprus. "They gave us some pamphlets. People said it was propaganda, but I believe that some of it was true."

Many Western students of the Middle East believe that the surest way to secure peace is to establish a Palestinian state. Most often the West Bank of the Jordan, captured by the Israelis during the 1967 war, is suggested as a possible site. In recent months, however, Middle East experts in both the U.S. and Israel have been thinking more and more seriously about a different alternative for a Palestinian state. Why not, they suggest, convert prewar Jordan into such a state?

The proposal is so far only fancy, but persuasive arguments for it can be mustered. The Palestinians who make up nearly two-thirds of Jordan's population are not particularly devoted to either the country as it now exists or to the Hashemite dynasty. Moreover, Jordan is an artificial creation to begin with.

Hussein could bring peace to the Middle East, so goes the argument, by abdicating in favor of a popular government. The fedayeen would then have the joy--and the sobering responsibility --of a country of their own. It would not be exactly the country most of them want. Undoubtedly, hostility toward Israel would remain intense. But eventually the Palestinians might recognize the finality of the Jewish state and conclude a general peace.

Unstable as Water

The argument has obvious flaws. With former fedayeen at its helm, Jordan might march against Israel before the advocates of peace have a chance to prevail. Further, there would almost certainly be a savage internal dogfight as the leaders of rival factions struggled for paramountcy--and the battle would be complicated by the presence of Jordan's Bedouins, who make up 35% of the population and despise the fedayeen. The greatest immediate flaw, of course, is that Jordan's young King--as long as his shaky throne lasts--will have no intention of handing his kingdom over to his adversaries.

More than any of the Arab peoples, the fedayeen fit the description set forth by T. E. Lawrence in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom more than 40 years ago: "They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail." Will the guerrillas also ultimately prevail? In one way they already have, for the world will never again be able to ignore them, as they smolder in their refugee camps, without attempting to find at least some rational solution for their plight. In another way, they cannot prevail without first achieving a measure of stability and substituting a sense of modern reality for their fanatical insistence on the destruction of Israel.

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