The King's Comeback

In a white station wagon, trailed by a dozen Jeeps loaded with gun-slung Arabs and a cavalcade of cars packed with politicians and journalists, Jordan's 23-year-old King Hussein sped westward one day last week from his hot, dusty capital of Amman. On the approach to the Palestinian hills the summer's last harvesters winnowed the wheat by throwing forkfuls in the air as in Old Testament times. As the caravan passed, they chanted in unison: "Welcome, Hussein, welcome, our King." In Nablus, traditional center of opposition to the crown, 4,000 citizens jammed the square to roar: "Long live Hussein." Longest and loudest ovation of the day was at Tulkarm, right on the Israeli border, where the welcomers all but mobbed the King. As the convoy sped off in the dusk, a palace official jubilantly summed up: "The most successful tour His Majesty has ever made."

In contrast with the low level of his prestige during the troubled days of 1958 (when he was more respected abroad than at home), the young King's comeback was spectacular. Ironically, he owes much of his new popularity to the fact that he has established friendlier relations with his old adversary, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who remains the hero of Arab nationalism, even if the enthusiasm of Jordanians for direct union with Egypt has waned. The border between Syria and Jordan, closed for weeks by Nasser's United Arab Republic, was ordered reopened by Cairo, and last week Hussein announced: "Diplomatic relations with the U.A.R. will be resumed." The recent disorders in neighboring Iraq have also roused respect for the King among Jordanians who used to discount his attacks on Communism as mere please-the-Yanks propaganda.

But having proved his courage in crisis, the King still finds his efforts to achieve stability in Jordan blocked by the Palestinian refugees, that disgruntled one-third of the nation upon which foreign and domestic demagogues play. Any real effort to improve living conditions in Jordan, such as the recent Hammarskjold irrigation schemes, runs afoul of the refugees' suspicion that it is a plot to divert them from their right to recover their lost homeland in Israel. Last week, standing slim, straight and small in his field marshal's uniform on the balcony at Tulkarm, Hussein could see the broad, fertile fields of Israel half a mile away, fields once worked by Arabs. The crowds below were shouting: "King Hussein, our leader, our leader." But mingled in their shouts was the fiercer cry: "Give us back our homes, give us back our homes."

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