Easier Lies the Hashemite Head

The title was perhaps a little selfconscious, for so princely an author. Still, when Jordan's bantam King Hussein decided to write his 1962 autobiography, he was remarkably prescient in borrowing Shakespeare's line, "Uneasy Lies the Head." Half of Hussein's kingdom was to fall to Israel after the 1967 war; Palestinian assassins regularly took potshots at him; other Arab rulers virtually ostracized him after Hussein expelled Palestinian fedayeen from his country in 1970. On top of everything else, Jordan's economy weakened as prices for phosphate, the kingdom's principal resource, dropped.

But much has changed for Hussein and his Hashemite kingdom since those days. Though the Israelis continue to occupy Jordan's West Bank, there is encouraging movement toward a peace settlement and the possibility, with Hussein's cooperation, of the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians realize that they probably could not survive as a nation without close administrative ties to Jordan, perhaps as an autonomous member of the federation that Hussein once suggested (see box). For one thing, in addition to 700,000 Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza, another 1 million live in Jordan itself. Only the poorest, it is predicted, would leave their refugee camps to move to the new state. As a result, instead of taking shots at Hussein, the P.L.O. leadership now wants to open a dialogue with the King on possible political and economic connections, or "linkages," between Jordan and a future Palestinian state.

Home in Humiliation. Meanwhile the King has regained his former standing with the major Arab countries. Scarcely two years ago, Arab leaders assembled for a summit meeting in Rabat and agreed that the Palestinians, rather than Hussein, should henceforth be responsible for the future of the West Bank and Gaza. Yasser Arafat, chairman of the P.L.O., journeyed from Rabat to New York to be lionized by the U.N. General Assembly. Hussein went home in humiliation.

Now the positions have suddenly been reversed. Arafat is in difficulty because his Palestinian forces became too deeply involved in Lebanon's civil war --and on the losing side. Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are privately pressuring the P.L.O. to end the fight against Israel and to accept the West Bank-Gaza state. Hussein figures prominently in these arguments. Last month he was in Aswan at Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's invitation to discuss the proposed linkage with the Palestinians, and before that in Damascus for similar talks with President Hafez Assad. Says one political observer in Amman: "The moderates want Hussein to 'leash' the West Bank to keep it from becoming too radical or too dangerous. They don't want to go through the agonizing process of negotiating Israeli withdrawal only to have a militant Palestinian regime make trouble and wreck the peace."

To Hussein's delight, the change in his political fortunes has been matched by an upswing in Jordan's economy. That turnabout is the result of the rise in prices for Middle East oil. This is ironic, since Jordan itself has no petroleum; the biggest gushers are to be found in the Scotch that pours across the bar of the Intercontinental Hotel at $3 per shot. Oil money flows in as loans and grants from Arab neighbors, investments, and $400 million a year in remittances from 200,000 Jordanian nationals in the oil countries.

Hussein's spirits are now so blithe that the King even talks about a broader federation with Syria and any Arab state interested in "greater cohesion, greater stability and greater progress." That old Arab dream has never really worked in practice. But this year, as the amazingly durable Hussein marks his silver jubilee, his head at least lies easier.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.