FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 1957. The Crisis in Jordan

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28261, 26 April 1957, Page 10

FRIDAY, APRIL 26, 1957. The Crisis in Jordan

Events in Jordan have become a little clearer in the last few daj's, but unfortunately the clearer view is not reassuring. Everything that has happened emphasises the inherent weakness of Jordan because of the artificiality of its structure. Jordan was an afterthought to the Allies’ programme of Statemaking from the Middle East territories of the Turkish Empire after the 1914-18 war. A long story of intrigue, negotiation, and revolt ended with the establishment in 1923 of an Arab State east of the Jordan. Until 1949, the State of Transjordan remained virtually a small, paternal, desert emirate. The inhabitants, largely Bedouin tribes and settled people descended from desert tribes, learned slowly to give loyalty to their ruler. After the Palestine fighting, Transjordan was suddenly expanded by the accession of a part of central Palestine under the IsraeliTransjordan armistice agreement; subsequently this territory west of the Jordan was incorporated in a new Kingdom of Jordan. To the population of 400,000 were suddenly added more than twice that number of Palestinians, some 500,000 of whom were classified by the United Nations as refugees. The problems of Jordan multiplied. Never a viable State, Jordan became more dependent upon outside aid. The Palestinians, most of them more socially and politically sophisticated than the original Transjordanians, greatly swelled the urban populations and assumed a leading part in the politics of the country. They introduced to Jordan political life the town mobs, which have so often dominated politics in other Middle East countries. The West Bank itself was riddled with the former henchmen of Haj Amin al-Hussaini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem. From the first, this potential fifth column wks supported by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. These countries had always opposed the West Bank’s union with Jordan, and for a time supported in Cairo the so-called “ Gaza Government ”, centred on the house of Hussaini, which hoped to establish on the West Bank a separate Palestinian State. Thus, since its formation

the Kingdom of Jordan -has been under constant threat from within and without; it was an artificial creation that was born to trouble.

But artificial as it may be, Jordan is a State which the Western world desperately wants to keep in being, because it believes that peace rests on the continued independence of Jordan. Until last year British guarantees and subsidies protected Jordan. Now Jordan has little protection against either internal or external threats. The power of the State to maintain internal discipline is being sorely tested. Apparently King Hussein has been driven, after dangerous conflict with Jordan’s parliamentary leaders, to gov erning through the army. The loyalty of the army itself has been tested during the present crisis; after some purging it is now an instrument on which King Hussein believes he can rely. Even so, it is by no means certain that the army could retain control if the Palestinian mobs took the bit between their teeth. Other Arab States are competing for influence in Jordan; whether they will go further and seek territory is an anxious question. Further con-/ flicts could all too easily be provoked by clashes among Jordan’s neighbours. The present position of the young King Hussein is pitiable. His kingdom cannot survive without a protector. When he dismissed General Glubb from command of his Arab Legion last year, King Hussein made a fateful choice—between the West and Arab nationalism. Instead of retaining remote Britain as his country’s protector, King Hussein preferred to trust his country to three contiguous allies—Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, Two of these “ protectors ” King Hussein has found unsatisfactory; Egypt and Syria have been accused of fomenting and financing trouble in Jordan. With a desperation that measures the gravity of his country’s position, King Hussein is turning again to the Western camp, this time not to Britain but to the United States. Sooner than anyone expected, the sponsors of the Eisenhower doctrine are being invited to meet their first test.