Tension Below the Surface

MIDDLE EAST

Outwardly, Jordan's frontier with Israel seemed calm enough. Gunfire along the border had died away. In Jordan's frontier towns of Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah, old men puffed their snake-stemmed hookahs outside coffeehouses, and traffic beeped its way back to normal. But beneath the surface, tensions were tight. "The whole place," said one of King Hussein's former Cabinet ministers, "is ready to blow."

Hussein's refusal to arm Jordan's Palestinian refugees against another attack by Israel had merely spurred the flow of contraband weapons that have been filtering quietly into refugee camps on both sides of the Jordan River. Jordanian troops uncovered one huge arms cache in Hebron and, after a blazing gunfight that left one policeman dead, intercepted another truckload of weapons heading into Nablus. At an anti-Hussein demonstration in Damascus, Syrian Chief of State Noureddin Attassi promised Jordanians all the weapons they needed--not to fight Israel, but to overthrow Hussein. "Today," Attassi roared, "Jordan will be liberated and tomorrow Palestine."

At an emergency meeting in Cairo, the Arab League's Defense Council once again demanded that Hussein bolster his border defenses with troops from neighboring Arab countries; and once again, the little King refused, realizing that such troops would be a potential fifth column that could bring down his throne. That was small consolation to the angry, anxious Palestinian refugees who live close to the frontier with Israel. They demand protection from Israeli attack, and they do not care who supplies it. If the King will not, many of them are in a mood to turn to another ruler who will.

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