Tone v. Substance

Banking heavily on his friendship with the West and his reputation as a reasonable Arab, Jordan's King Hussein went to the U.S. last week on a delicate mission. Speaking for both himself and his latter-day ally, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Hussein sought U.S. support for softening Israel's hardening terms for peace. He went at the job with vigor. Seemingly popping up everywhere, the King dashed from TV stations to speakers' platforms to conferences. He appeared on Face the Nation, delivered a major address at Georgetown University, had lunch at Washington's National Press Club, talked with President Johnson, Dean Rusk, Ambassador Goldberg and Walt Rostow. Everywhere he went, he told his listeners that the Arabs had seen the error of their ways. They may have been unrealistic in the past, said Hussein, but they had undergone "a very vast and tremendous change."

The trouble was that Hussein's tone was more convincing than his words. Aside from an early--and never repeated--statement that Nasser might be willing to let Israeli ships use the Suez Canal "under certain conditions," Hussein said little that he had not been saying for months. The Arabs were willing to recognize Israel's right to exist, but not necessarily to recognize Israel. They wanted a "just and lasting peace" but not a formal peace treaty. And before any settlement could even be considered, Israel must withdraw its troops from occupied Arab lands. At one point, the King even seemed to harden the Arab line: before the Arabs accepted Israel as a peaceful neighbor, he told his Georgetown audience, the land would have to be "de-Zionized"--renounce its status as a Jewish state.

To Avert Disaster. There is a good possibility that Hussein was offering considerably more in private than he appeared to be in public. High-placed Arabs in both Egypt and Jordan have been leaking reports that the Arabs are indeed willing to negotiate face to face with Israel, to sign a formal peace treaty and even to concede such land as the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Whatever Hussein brought with him, there was no question of the urgency with which he brought it. The war left Jordan in deep trouble, and Hussein badly needs to find a way out before the trouble turns to disaster.

With winter coming on, Jordan is almost frantically concerned about the 200,000 West Bank refugees who are crowded into makeshift tent camps throughout the country. Most of the camps have been moved from the frigid desert plateau that surrounds Amman (where the temperature at night dips as low as 15DEGF) to the Jordan River Valley, which is 1,000 ft. below sea level and 30DEG warmer than the plateau. The valley itself is a treacherous campsite, prone to flash floods and violent sand storms; at one camp last month, a sandstorm shredded more than 600 tents to ribbons, leaving 3,000 refugees without shelter. Many of the tents, moreover, are Sears Roebuck's "Ted Williams" models, donated by the U.S. but designed for weekend summer camping.

Food is no problem: thanks to abundant crops and heavy donations from other Arab countries, Jordan now has enough basic foodstuffs to supply all the camps for more than a year. However, not all the refugees live in the camps. In the chaos of their first desperate days of flight, thousands found their own shelter as best they could. Hundreds of them still sleep on the sidewalks of Amman, and hundreds of others live in vacant cellars or shallow holes gouged out of the city's rocky hillsides. "We don't know where many of them are," says Reconstruction and Development Minister Hazem Nusseibeh. "If we don't make contact soon, many of them will die during the winter."

No Plans. Jordan's economy is in a state of suspended animation. Tourism is dead; without the Old City of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Jordan is lucky to attract a dozen tourists a week. The loss of the West Bank deprived the nation of a quarter of its farmland, more than half its production of vegetables, olives and fruit, 30% of its wheat, 48% of its industry and nearly half of its 2.1 million people, including many of its wealthiest taxpayers. Unemployment, swelled by the flood of refugees, has soared to 35% and is still climbing; factories, unable to sell their goods, are cutting back production and laying off workers.

The government still has a solid hard currency reserve of $300 million and has been promised $112 million a year to rebuild its economy by oil-rich Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Libya. So far, there are no plans for rebuilding. "There will be no major development of this economy until our territory is returned," says Minister Nusseibeh. "How can we plan intelligently when we don't know how big Jordan will be?" All of Jordan is thus at a standstill, waiting and hoping that some sort of political settlement can be reached with Israel for the return of the West Bank, in whole or in part.

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