Hussein I

King of Jordan (r. 1952-1999)

• Born: November 14, 1935
• Birthplace: Amman, Transjordan (now Jordan)
• Died: February 7, 1999
• Place of death: Amman, Jordan

Holding power longer than any other world leader, Hussein I maintained the autonomy of Jordan, contributed to Arab unity, and served as a stabilizing force in the Middle East.

Early Life

Hussein I (hew-SAYN) of Jordan is considered a direct descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad and the head of the “first family” of Islam, the Hashemites. The eldest of four children born to Crown Prince Talal and Princess Zein, he was born in Amman, the capital of Transjordan (now Jordan). At that time, Jordan was a poor, feudal, Bedouin state, mostly desert, and even the royal family lived frugally. Hussein grew up in a five-room house in Amman, where, by his own account, he learned to mend his clothes and even sold his bicycle at one point to help with family finances.

Hussein’s father suffered from mental illness, and his grandfather, King Abdullah, took a special interest in young Hussein’s upbringing and exerted a significant influence on his character. Under his grandfather’s supervision, Hussein was reared as an Arab prince and educated in both English and Arabic. At age five, he was enrolled in kindergarten in Amman, where he also attended the Islamic College. At age eight, he was sent to Victoria College in Alexandria, Egypt.

The Hashemites had played a key role in ending the Ottoman rule over the Arab states. As his reward, Abdullah was recognized by the British as emir of Transjordan, created as an adjunct of the British Mandate in Palestine in 1921, and received a British subsidy to maintain security and establish a central government over the Bedouin tribes. In 1946, Abdullah established the independent Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, with continued support and collaboration from the British. When the termination of the British Mandate in Palestine on May 14, 1948, resulted in the creation of Israel and the Arab-Israeli War, King Abdullah took control of areas of eastern Palestine on the West Bank of the Jordan River and was proclaimed king of United Transjordan and Palestine (or the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) in December, 1948.

Hussein frequently accompanied his grandfather on his official duties. In July, 1951, on a trip to Jerusalem, King Abdullah was assassinated by a Palestinian extremist at Al-Aqsa Mosque (the Mosque of the Rock), and Hussein narrowly escaped death himself when he tried to capture the assassin and a medal on his uniform deflected a bullet. Witnessing his grandfather’s murder and the panic that ensued among his loyal followers made a profound impression on the young prince. His firsthand experience with political assassination and the unreliability of the king’s followers taught Hussein the risks of political life at an early age and instilled in him a determination to live purposefully and to be ready for death whenever it comes.

Crown Prince Talal, who had been receiving treatment in a mental hospital in Switzerland, was crowned king in September. Hussein, now crown prince, was sent to complete his studies at Harrow in England, where his cousin, Faisal II, heir to Iraq’s throne, was also a student. When Talal suffered a relapse and was asked to step down from the throne in August, 1952, Hussein was declared king three months before his seventeenth birthday. He took a six-month accelerated course at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England, while the regency council exercised control of Jordan until his eighteenth birthday.

Life’s Work

Hussein was crowned king of Jordan on May 2, 1953. His strong autocratic rule, strength of character, and personal charisma make it difficult to extricate his personal history from the history of the state of Jordan. Despite his youth and lack of political experience, he was able to survive multiple internal and international challenges during the economic and political instability of the early years of his reign. His commitment to Arab nationalism, his desire for peace in the Middle East, his search for a solution to the Palestinian problem, and his democratic ideals were not always compatible with consistent political decisions.

Jordan’s incorporation of the West Bank under King Abdullah resulted in a sudden increase in population that strained the small country’s resources. Some 750,000 Palestinians, including an influx of more than 500,000 refugees from Israeli-occupied Palestine, outnumbered the Jordanians almost two to one. Although Jordan was the only Arab state to grant the Palestinians citizenship and participation in parliamentary and municipal elections, they were bitter and resentful. They resented Jordan’s financial dependence on Great Britain, British influence on the Jordanian government and armed forces, and the parliament’s token participation in government.

Jordan’s desire for accommodation and peace with Israel, given its extended border with that country, contrasted dangerously with the demands for all-out war from the other Arab states. Left-wing Middle Eastern extremists, led by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, fanned the fires of Palestinian resentment and labeled Hussein “a tool of the West.” Confronting the first urban unrest and agitation in Jordan, Hussein yielded to demands for political liberalization and relaxed restrictions on the press, measures that temporarily enhanced his popularity but unfortunately only served to increase the turmoil.

When the British insisted in 1955 that Jordan join the Baghdad Pact, part of a general Middle East defense system against the Soviet Union, riots followed. The king dissolved parliament, and the Arab Legion (the Jordanian armed forces), commanded by an Englishman, John Bagot Glubb, had to suppress the mobs. Hussein announced his unwillingness to join either the Baghdad Pact or the Egyptian-Syrian-Saudi Arabian Bloc, but the demands for a scapegoat on whom to blame the disturbances resulted in his dismissal of Glubb in March, 1956; one of Glubb’s replacements was Lieutenant Colonel Ali Abu Nuwar, the leader of the movement to eliminate foreign influence in Jordan. Relations between Britain and Jordan cooled. In October, 1956, Hussein agreed to join the Unified Arab Command (UAC), a mutual defense pact, and in January, 1957, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia agreed to provide Jordan with financial support, replacing the British subsidy. The 1948 Anglo-Jordanian treaty was terminated in March, 1957; Britain’s involvement in the Israeli attack of Egypt, October, 1956, made Hussein’s break with Britain inevitable. By September, 1957, the last British troops had left Jordan.

Meanwhile, the Jordanian elections of October, 1956, led to a coalition government under Suleyman an-Nabulsi, the leader of the National Socialists. The king, aware of an-Nabulsi’s Soviet leanings, demanded his resignation, suppressed all political parties, and imposed martial law. An attempted coup, allegedly instigated by Nuwar, head of the armed forces, followed; the king escaped being overthrown only through a courageous appeal to loyal Bedouin troops. Nuwar, together with leaders of the coalition, was exiled.

Egypt and Syria, now firmly aligned with the Communist bloc, had not fulfilled their financial commitments to Jordan, and their relations with Jordan worsened when Hussein accepted American aid. In February, 1958, they merged to form the United Arab Republic (UAR). In response, Hussein and his cousin, King Faisal II of Iraq, formed a federation between their two countries. That summer, Faisal and his family were massacred in a coup and Hussein narrowly escaped a military takeover by Nasser supporters. The armies of Iraq, Syria, and Israel threatened Jordan, and only the arrival of British troops, in response to Hussein’s appeal, averted the collapse of his kingdom.

During the next two years, Hussein enjoyed relative peace and the financial support of the United States. He took a firm stand against communism but in August, 1959, renewed diplomatic relations with the UAR (broken off in July, 1958), in spite of frequent incidents on the Syrian border. In 1960, Prime Minister Hazza al-Majali, labeled “an imperialist agent” by Egyptian and Syrian sympathizers, was murdered. After his death, there were several attempts on the king’s life, a succession of prime ministers, and cycles of repression, relaxation, and riots.

Relations with Israel were tense. Major issues included the future of the refugees, Israel’s plan to divert the Jordan waters, and the future of Jerusalem. At the Second Arab Summit in August, 1964, Hussein mended relations with Nasser, recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and agreed to the creation of a unified Arab military command. From the summer of 1965, however, border raids by the PLO increased, and in July, 1966, Hussein banned the organization in an attempt to stop Israeli counterattacks. A massive Israeli reprisal raid in November, 1966, led to violent demonstrations in Jordan. Worsening relations with Syria resulted in border clashes and calls by Syria and the PLO for Jordanians to revolt against Hussein.

Jordan boycotted the next meeting of the Arab Defense Council. Yet, concerned about an imminent war with Israel, Hussein signed a defense agreement with Egypt and joined forces in the June, 1967, Six-Day War . The war was disastrous for Jordan. It cost Hussein his entire air force, fifteen thousand troops, and all Jordanian territory on the West Bank, including the old city of Jerusalem. Refugees poured into the East Bank. Realizing that Jordan would bear the brunt of any war with Israel, Hussein helped to draft the United Nations’ resolution calling on Israel to give up occupied territory in exchange for Arab recognition (“land for peace”) following the war.

The PLO, supported by Syria, increased its presence within Jordan (a “state within a state”), threatening Jordan’s internal security. Bloody confrontations between guerrilla organizations and the official government increased between 1968 and 1970. Finally, in September, 1970 (“Black September”), after an assassination attempt on King Hussein and the hijacking of four Western airliners, Hussein drove the guerrillas from Amman. By August, 1971, the last of the PLO had been ousted from Jordan.

In 1972, again trying to resolve the Palestinian problem, Hussein proposed a United Arab Kingdom, a federation of autonomous Jordanian and Palestinian regions, united under the king and a federal council of ministers. Other Arab states criticized the plan and Hussein’s handling of the PLO problem, and he was not apprised of Egypt and Syria’s plans for the fourth Arab-Israeli War in October, 1973. Therefore, Jordan’s involvement in the war was limited, although Hussein received credit from the other Arab states for going to Syria’s assistance.

In another move to regain political standing in the Arab world, Hussein agreed to the 1974 Arab Summit resolution, which recognized the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, thereby virtually abandoning his claim to the West Bank. In 1978, he denounced the Camp David Accords that led to a peace treaty between Egypt (by then under Anwar el-Sadat) and Israel. Enjoying improved relations with the Arab states, in November, 1978, he received pledges of renewed support from oil-rich countries at the Baghdad Summit Conference.

By 1982, the United States was supporting the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank in confederation with Jordan, but Hussein met with repeated failures in his attempts to persuade the PLO to support a joint Jordanian-Palestinian negotiating team. Hussein maintained that he would not negotiate a separate peace. He called for an international conference to be attended by all concerned parties, including the PLO, requiring Israel to accept the principle of “land for peace” and giving the Palestinians the right to self-determination regarding the proposed confederation. His proposal was temporarily supported by Yasir Arafat, head of the PLO, but it did not gain the support of the Arab states or Israel.

Meanwhile, Hussein attempted to create a Palestinian constituency on the West Bank and introduced in 1986 a five-year development plan for the region. In December, 1987, following the Amman Summit, which agreed to support an international peace conference if the PLO was recognized as “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people,” there was a spontaneous uprising (known as the Intifada) on the West Bank, despite brutal security measures by Israel. At the Extraordinary Arab Summit called in Algiers in June, 1988, in support of the uprising, Hussein denied any ambition to rule the West Bank, and, on July 28, 1988, he severed Jordan’s legal and administrative ties with the West Bank, dissolving the Jordanian House of Representatives, where the West Bank occupied thirty of sixty seats; laying off about twenty thousand teachers and public servants; and terminating the West Bank Development Plan. This move placed the responsibility for peace negotiations and the administration of the West Bank squarely on the PLO and Israel. While persevering in his efforts to support any movement toward peace in the Middle East, Hussein devoted more time to internal affairs, responding to serious problems in the economy and a call for political reform. The first elections in Jordan in more than twenty years were held in November, 1989.

The 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War forced Hussein to choose between allies. While his relationship with the United States cooled when he expressed support for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, relations with the Palestinians and with his own people were improved. By 1994 he had cultivated good diplomatic ties with both the West and the Arab nations, signing a formal peace treaty with Israel that awarded him custodianship of the Muslim holy sites in East Jerusalem. Frequently operating as a moderating influence in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, his contribution to stability in the Middle East cannot be underestimated.

In 1998, Hussein traveled to the United States for cancer treatments. When he returned briefly to Jordan in early 1999, he altered Jordan’s political future by announcing that his younger brother Hassan was no longer the heir to the throne. He returned to the United States for further treatment, leaving his eldest son and new heir, Prince Abdullah, in charge of the country. Within weeks, on February 7, 1999, Hussein died.

Significance

Hussein I was thrust onto the stage of world politics at the age of eighteen, when he came to the throne of Jordan, which occupies an important strategic position in the Middle East. His political longevity he survived numerous assassination attempts, attempted coups, and four Arab-Israeli wars is accredited to his undeniable courage and strength of character. He enjoyed an immense popularity within his own country and was respected throughout the world. Although he maintained the real authority in Jordan until his death, he was committed to democratic ideals, and his anticommunist, moderate stance set him at odds with other Arab states during most of Jordan’s turbulent political history.

Hussein committed to preserving the state of Jordan and the Hashemite throne. His vision literally shaped the destiny of the nation. Although by the late 1980’s the economy was burdened by foreign debt and a growing trade deficit (the result of the failure of some Arab states to give the financial assistance they pledged), Hussein had brought about impressive economic progress in the country. Illiteracy markedly declined, electrical power supplies were developed, irrigation projects multiplied, agricultural production increased, new roads were built, a national airline was created, and tourism increased during his reign. This progress is all the more remarkable considering that Jordan is a small state, poor in natural resources and dependent on foreign aid.

Hussein’s policies were dictated by his commitment to Arab nationalism and, in part, by his desire not to alienate the Palestinians, who represent a considerable threat to political stability in Jordan. While attempting to integrate the Palestinians and to forge a national consciousness among the people of both the East and West Banks, he affirmed the Palestinians’ rights to self-determination and to their own homeland. Many world leaders have come and gone during Hussein’s reign. He was one of the foremost spokespersons for peace in the Middle East, respected worldwide for his statesmanship and integrity.

Bibliography

Bailey, Clinton. Jordan’s Palestinian Challenge 1948-1983: A Political History. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984. Bailey focuses on the problems that the Palestinian nationalists have posed for the Hashemite monarchy since 1984 and concludes that Hussein’s policies were dictated, for the most part, by his desire not to alienate the Palestinian majority in his country.

Bligh, Alexander. The Political Legacy of King Hussein. Portland, Oreg.: Sussex Academic Press, 2002. A tribute to Hussein’s personal legacy and his political policies.

Hussein, King of Jordan. Uneasy Lies the Head: The Autobiography of His Majesty King Hussein I of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. London: Heinemann, 1962. Hussein begins by recounting the details of his grandfather’s assassination, then discusses his early life, including his school days of Harrow and Sandhurst, and devotes most of the volume to the turbulent years following his inauguration as king. His account of the many attempts on his life is presented against a political context in which communism and Zionism are regarded as the chief obstacles to peace and to Arab nationalism.

Hussein, King of Jordan, with Vick Vance and Pierre Laver. My “War” with Israel. Translated by June P. Wilson and Walter B. Michaels. London: Peter Owen, 1969. The book includes conversations with Hussein and the king’s radio broadcasts and speeches. Hussein reveals his attitudes toward Israel and the Palestinians and provides his account of the events preceding, during, and following the war of June, 1967.

Lunt, James. Hussein of Jordan: A Political Biography. London: Macmillan, 1989. A comprehensive, well-documented biography of Hussein, Lunt’s book reflects the author’s long experience in Jordan and his personal knowledge of the king. Lunt provides a sympathetic, though not uncritical, view of the Arab character and Jordanian history. A scholarly biography is augmented by an extensive bibliography.

Moritz, Charles, ed. Current Biography Yearbook. New York: H. W. Wilson, 1986. The entry on Hussein in this rather general series is very helpful in offering introductory biographical information and an assessment of Hussein’s career to 1986.

Mutawi, Samir A. Jordan in the 1967 War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. An account by an Arab journalist of the 1967 war with Israel, “the most shattering event in recent Arab history.” The book discusses the causes of the war, exploring the motives behind King Hussein’s decision to enter the war, inter-Arab rivalries, the events of the war itself, and Jordan’s position in the postwar period. Extensive bibliography.

Noor, Queen. Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life. New York: Miramax Books, 2003. American-born Queen Noor married Hussein in 1978. In this memoir, she describes their life together, describing his personality and his efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.

Seccombe, Ian J. Jordan. World Bibliographical Series 55. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1984. More than eight hundred critical annotated entries on works from the nineteenth century to modern times, dealing with key aspects of Jordan’s history, geography, economy, politics, culture, and social organization. Many entries provide invaluable background information for a study of Hussein’s life. Comprehensive cross-referencing system and thorough author, subject, and title index.

Snow, Peter John. Hussein: A Biography. Washington, D.C.: R. B. Luce, 1972. Though it is of the “popular” variety, Snow’s biography, which is anecdotal rather than scholarly, is readable and persuasive about both Hussein and the Middle East situation. Snow is sympathetic toward Hussein, whom he presents in the complex political context that includes Zionism, the PLO, Arab nationalism, and Western ties.