The King's Vacation

As the last of the British paratroopers flew out of Jordan, young King Hussein prepared to depart too--for a European vacation. As he did so, neighboring Middle East governments tensed like pointers around the edges of King Hussein's sandy little Jordanian preserve.

Iraq's Prime Minister Abdul Karim Kassem abruptly summoned his military attache from Cairo for emergency consultations. The Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram accused the Israelis of mobilizing and massing troops on the Jordanian frontier, and Cairo's Al Gumhuria. which never seems to get its history straight, added: "Once more we'll fight, and again we'll win."

Sly Balloon. Cairo's talk of mobilization was "pure imagination," said the Israelis. Yet they plainly took great interest in Jordan's unsettled condition. Arab leaders, to a man, suspect that Israel longs to expand to the Jordan River, thus absorbing most of the old Palestine, encompassing all of Jerusalem, and gaining a more defensible eastern frontier. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion confided to an English newspaperman that if there was to be any change in Jordan's status, Israel would like to see the west bank of the Jordan River demilitarized and guarded by U.N. troops. In the course of a Knesset debate last week, Ben-Gurion would only add: "All President Nasser knows and needs to know about Israel is that we are opposed to any entry of foreign troops into Jordan." Next day his Mapai Party newspaper Davar floated a sly balloon: "Who knows whether Nasser is not prepared to submit to Israel's entry into Jordan up to the west bank of the Jordan River as a price for his own entry into Amman and the final liquidation of the Hashemite dynasty?"

Indispensable Man. In the midst of such predatory baying and growling. King Hussein went blithely ahead with his plans to fly off in his own de Havilland Dove via Kuwait. Teheran and Istanbul to Rome, where he will pick up a car to drive to Switzerland. His brother. Crown Prince Mohammed, flew to Switzerland from Amman two weeks ago; his mother, daughter and sister and other brother are already there--leaving not one member of his immediate family in Jordan, and all affairs of his kingdom in the hands of a regency council of honorable nonentities.

Yet by common consent, the force of young Hussein's courageous personality has been what chiefly held Jordan together. The overwhelming majority of his subjects are former Palestinians, many of them refugees, without any devotion to Hussein. Increasingly, the King has excluded the more literate but less trustworthy Palestinians from key posts in the army, depending instead upon tribal loyalties of the Bedouins in eastern Jordan. Only martial law upholds the government, only the army's loyalty sustains the throne, only U.S. aid poured in at the rate of $50 million a year keeps the economy going. Since Hussein threw out a pro-Nasser Cabinet 18 months ago, and even more so since the Iraqis murdered his Hashemite cousin King Feisal last July. Hussein has been isolated in the Arab world.

Wild Harvest. In the crowded souks of Arab Jerusalem, over the endless small cups of thick coffee, there were two explanations of Hussein's "vacation": that he had decided that it was hopeless to keep up the struggle and would go into exile; that he genuinely felt that order was now sufficiently restored so that he could risk absenting himself for a while. The optimists hold that Nasser is reluctant to take over Jordan because he would then be burdened by half a million Palestine refugees as well as by the economic load now borne by the U.S. They point out that Nasser recently shut down the "Jordan People's Radio." which from neighboring Syria used to shriek daily for Hussein's assassination. But the revolution in neighboring Iraq showed that those who rise in Nasser's flame often act in ways he may not have intended: a man who sows trouble so indiscriminately reaps some wild harvests.

As the day of the King's departure drew near, the U.S. formally called upon both Nasser and Ben-Gurion to make no rash moves.

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