Again We Slept - 31-Jan-99

Note: The translations of articles from the Hebrew press are prepared by the Government Press Office as a service to foreign journalists in Israel. They express the views of the authors.

Again We Slept

(Op-ed by Amos Gilboa, Ma'ariv, Jan 31, 1999, p. B7)

No-one in the intelligence services, political echelon or the media noted the scale of the schism between Hussein and Hassan.

Over a week ago, I watched the arrival of King Hussein to Jordan. The television anchors told me that the King had recovered from his fatal illness and emotionally prepared me to see a healthy man returning to his homeland. And then the kings disembarks from his plane, the cameras close in and my wife cries out, "Look, the Angel of Death is on his face." I looked, and I too saw that when he knelt in prayer, it was very hard for him to stand up again without help. I expected headlines the next day, or even that same evening, that the King was not well and that he apparently had run back to Jordan while he still had a breath in his body in order to sort out the most important thing to him his heir but nothing. Near total silence!

What has happened in Jordan has been a complete surprise, and we had better be aware of it. For years, we in the State of Israel, in policy making, in intelligence, in academe and in the media had become used to the condition of Prince Hassan as King Hussein's heir. Every situational analysis was based on this starting point, and their conclusions were that Hassan would continue the stability. Only on the periphery would the question sometimes be raised whether Hussein would actually transfer the succession to one of his sons, and the name of Abdullah was rejected since his mother had been Christian and not Muslim when she married Hussein. And suddenly, Abdullah is the heir!

Only now is it clear to us that for a long time there has been severe tension between King Hussein and his brother Hassan, which has peaked over the past six months while the King was on his sick bed in an American hospital. I did not read about this tension and I did not hear about it. It received no mention in the media. We have always laughed at the Americans for being surprised by what was really happening in various Third World countries, despite all their embassies, representatives and agents. It seems that we are no different. It now becomes clear from Hussein's letter to his disposed brother Hassan that there were many signs bearing witness to the growing schism between King Hussein and his brother, but no-one paid attention to them. Thus we learn that after Hassan intended to dispose the chief of staff and heads of the security services, the entire Jordanian security leadership hastened to the King's sick bed in the United States in order to swear allegiance to him again. They did not travel in secret, in the dead of night or in disguise.

Was this correctly interpreted anywhere? In other words, that we are witness to a struggle between the King and Hassan, witness to a schism that will have obvious consequences on the succession and post- Hussein Jordan?

The answer is negative, and the reason is clear: Hussein and Hassan were as one in our intellectual concept, King and Heir, a dream team. In accordance with the concept, rather in accordance with reality, we judged the information that came to us, and we fell into the trap.

In practice, we are in a post-Hussein era in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. What can be said about the future? We must be aware that if we can be surprised regarding the successor in Jordan, we will certainly be surprised regarding the successor to Assad. On the face of it, Assad's son Bashir is expected to "succeed" his father, but what is the reality? The main thing is that it is less important to spend time memorializing Hussein now, and more important to carefully learn about Abdullah, know him deeply and to develop relations with him.