by Avi Shlaim
Hussein sent a gracious letter to Johnson to thank him for his sympathy, concern and prompt action in helping Jordan to overcome the current crisis. He made no mention of the disappointment of the army chiefs with some aspects of the military aid package. In the negotiations with William Macomber, President Johnson’s special envoy, Hussein made it clear that he did not agree with their belief that there had been no basic change in Israeli policy towards Jordan. Hussein understood, however, that the American response was primarily meant to be a way of easing the current situation rather than a way of dealing with a longer-term threat. He could not give a guarantee to keep Arab troops out of his country, but he promised to do all he could, not least because they were not in Jordan’s interest either. Finally, Hussein informed Macomber that he intended to continue his moderate policies and measures to enhance regional stability. The only specific measure mentioned in this connection was to persist in the efforts to prevent terrorist infiltration into Israel.18
Inside the Jordanian national security establishment there were two very different responses to the Samu’ affair. One group argued that Jordan needed the other Arab states as the only possible defence against future Israeli aggression and that meant drawing closer to Nasser. The other group, led by Wasfi Tall, argued that Samu’ showed that the United Arab Command was a broken reed and that Jordan should therefore concentrate on building up its own defences. Tall pursued a confrontational policy towards the PLO, Syria and Nasser. Hussein recognized Tall’s ability, dynamism and devotion, but he wanted a less abrasive prime minister in order to improve relations with the Arab world. In April 1967 Hussein appointed Saad Juma’a as prime minister but kept Tall by his side as chief of the royal court. Juma’a had served as ambassador to the United States and was generally regarded as pro-Western and anti-Nasser. But he was a malleable character and, once he reached the top, faithfully carried out his master’s policy of patching up the old quarrels with Cairo and Damascus and calling for a new round of Arab summitry.
Within six weeks of Hussein’s change of course, Jordan was involved in a full-scale war with Israel that culminated in the loss of the West Bank. The loyalist version maintains that Jordan had no choice but to fight alongside its Arab brethren. But there was nothing inevitable about the chain of events that plunged the region into war. The June War was an unnecessary one with disastrous consequences for all the Arab participants, but especially for Jordan. The notion of ‘no alternative’ was invented by the Jordanian policy-makers to cover up their mistakes and their personal responsibility for the catastrophe that they brought upon their country. Hussein was admittedly faced with an extremely difficult situation, but he also had a range of options from which to choose, and he made the wrong choice. Wasfi Tall kept warning him that jumping on the Egyptian bandwagon would lead to war and to the loss of the West Bank and this is precisely what happened: because of his decision, Hussein lost control over the course of events and ended up losing half of his kingdom.
The decisive factor in triggering the crisis that led to the June War was inter-Arab rivalries. It may sound perverse to suggest that the war owed more to the rivalries between the Arab states than to the dispute between them and Israel, but such a view is supported by the facts. The Arab world was in a state of considerable turmoil arising out of the conflict and suspicions between its radical and conservative regimes. The militant Ba’th regime that had captured power in Syria in February 1966 posed as the standard-bearer of Arab unity and continued to agitate for a popular war for the liberation of Palestine. It not only unleashed Fatah units to attack Israel from Jordan’s territory but engaged in direct clashes with the Israeli Army along the common border. A major landmark in the spiral of violence was an air battle on 7 April 1967 in which six Soviet-made Syrian MiGs were shot down by the Israeli Air Force (IAF). This was the first time that the IAF penetrated all the way to the Syrian capital. Two of them were in fact shot down in the outskirts of Damascus, turning Syria’s military defeat into a public humiliation. All the Israeli planes returned safely to base. The shooting down of the six Syrian MiGs started the countdown to the June War. Syria’s conflict with Israel did nothing to improve its relations with Jordan. Relations between the two Arab countries reached their nadir when a Syrian truck loaded with dynamite exploded in the Jordanian customs station at Ramtha on 21 May, causing fourteen deaths and a wave of popular indignation throughout the country. Hussein was convinced that the radicals in Syria saw Jordan, and not Israel, as the real enemy. He described terrorism as an instrument designed by his Syrian enemies to bring about Israeli retaliation in order to destroy Jordan. An immediate rupture of diplomatic relations with Syria was ordered by Hussein on his return from the scene of the explosion.
For President Nasser, Syrian militancy posed a different kind of problem: it threatened to drag the confrontation states prematurely into a war with Israel. Nasser kept repeating that two conditions had to be met before war with Israel could be contemplated: Arab unity and Arab military parity with Israel. Nasser’s dilemma was how to restrain the Syrian hotheads while working to achieve these conditions. As a first step Egypt and Syria signed a mutual defence treaty on 7 November 1966. But this merely papered over the cracks. Nasser suspected his Syrian allies of wanting to drag him into a conflict with Israel while they suspected that, if war actually came, he would leave them to face Israel on their own. Nasser’s failure to come to Syria’s aid during the air battle of 7 April exposed the hollowness of the treaty and undermined his credibility as an ally. Jordan seized the opportunity to launch a scathing attack on Nasser, contrasting his anti-Israeli rhetoric with the absence of any concrete action. There were two main thrusts to the Jordanian propaganda offensive: the failure to close the Straits of Tiran in the Red Sea to Israeli shipping; and hiding behind the skirts of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) that was stationed in Sinai in the aftermath of the Suez War as a buffer between Egypt and Israel. Jordan’s propaganda offensive escalated the Arab cold war and contributed to the crisis slide that culminated in a hot war between the Arabs and Israel.
Thrown on the defensive, Nasser took a series of steps designed to shore up his prestige at home and in the Arab world. He appeared to challenge Israel to a duel, but most observers agree that he neither planned nor wished a war to take place. What he did do was to embark on an exercise in brinkmanship that went well over the brink. On 13 May 1967 Nasser received a Soviet intelligence report that falsely claimed that Israel was massing troops on Syria’s border. Nasser responded by taking three successive steps that made war virtually inevitable: he deployed his troops in Sinai near Israel’s border on 16 May; he expelled the United Nations Emergency Force from the Gaza Strip and Sinai on 19 May; and he closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping on 22 May. Nasser’s first move, the deployment of the Egyptian Army in Sinai, was not intended as a prelude to an attack on Israel but as a political manoeuvre designed to deter the Israelis from attacking Syria and to rebuild his authority in the Arab camp. But it unleashed a popular current for war that Nasser was not able to contain. Each step that he took impelled him to take the next one and thus drove him closer and closer to the brink.
Hussein became increasingly apprehensive. On the one hand, he realized that Nasser’s actions increased the risk of war when the Arab side was not ready, and when there was no Arab cooperation, coordination or joint plan. On the other hand, Nasser’s challenge to Israel dramatically increased his popularity inside Jordan and raised expectations that the battle of destiny was at hand and that the liberation of Palestine was imminent. Not only Palestinians but the majority of Jordanians were swept along by the rising tide of Arab nationalism. This posed a threat to the regime, which reacted by emphasizing its nationalist credentials, by making overtures to the radical Arab states and by ostentatiously moving armoured units from the East Bank to the Jordan Valley. Egypt, Syria and Iraq did not reciprocate Jordan’s gestures of conciliation, leaving it completely isolated. To break out of h
is isolation Hussein made the fateful decision to go to Cairo for a grand reconciliation with Nasser.
Early in the morning of 30 May Hussein, wearing a khaki combat uniform with field marshal’s insignia, took a small group of advisers and piloted his Caravelle plane to Al-Maza military air base near Cairo. Nasser, who came in person to the air base to receive his visitor, was surprised to find him in uniform. ‘Since your visit is secret, what would happen if we arrested you?’ asked Nasser. ‘The possibility never crossed my mind,’ Hussein replied with a smile. This was an inauspicious beginning for the talks in the Kubbah Palace, in the course of which Hussein made one concession after another. Hussein began by stating that it was absolutely essential for the United Arab Command to rise out of the ashes. Nasser proposed another solution: to draw up a pact between their two countries there and then. At Hussein’s suggestion, Nasser sent someone to fetch the text of the Egyptian – Syrian mutual defence treaty. By his own account, Hussein was so anxious to come to some kind of agreement that he merely skimmed the text and said to Nasser: ‘Give me another copy. Put in Jordan instead of Syria and the matter is settled.’19 The manner in which Hussein negotiated this important international treaty was strange but in character. It reflected his impatient, impulsive and irresponsible side as well as his propensity for taking gambles.
The treaty was one of mutual defence, with each party undertaking to go to the defence of the other in the event of an armed attack. The detailed provisions gave Nasser everything he asked for. First, the Jordanian armed forces were placed under the command of Egyptian General Abdel Munim Riad. Second, Hussein agreed to the entry into Jordan of troops from Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Third, Hussein had to agree to reopen the PLO offices in Amman and to reconciliation with Ahmad Shuqairi, who was summoned to Cairo from Gaza City for the occasion. Hussein also reluctantly agreed to take Shuqairi back to Amman with him on his plane. Jordan’s role in the event of war was to tie down a substantial portion of Israel’s army and to prevent it from attacking the other confrontation states one by one. In return, Nasser agreed to augment Jordan’s tiny air force with air support from Egypt and Iraq. This promise went some way towards allaying Hussein’s anxiety about conducting ground operations with little or no air cover. Hussein warned his hosts of the danger of a surprise Israeli air attack. He pointed out that Israel’s first objective would be the Arab air forces, starting with Egypt. Nasser replied that that was obvious and that they were expecting it. He exuded self-confidence and assured Hussein that his army and air force were ready to confront Israel. The signing ceremony of the treaty was broadcast live on Radio Cairo and was followed by a press conference attended by the two heads of state and Ahmad Shuqairi. On his return home later in the day, Hussein basked in the glory of his friendship with Nasser. Jubilant crowds lined the streets as the royal procession drove to the hilltop palace. The king was left in no doubt that his people approved his latest move. The following day the Chamber of Deputies voted overwhelmingly in favour of the pact and dispatched cables of congratulations to the king and the Egyptian president.20
Hussein’s pact with Nasser was not the brilliant diplomatic coup that it was almost universally perceived to be at the time. Within a week Jordan was at war with Israel alongside its new and feckless Arab allies. After the defeat that overwhelmed his country in this war, Hussein frequently repeated that he had had no real choice in the matter, that events took their own course regardless of his wishes. To the present author he said:
In 1967 I had the impression that various events happened without one having anything to do with them and that this was going to be a problem. We came under pressure to hand over the control of our army and our destiny to a unified Arab command as part of the Arab League. And when Nasser moved his forces across the Suez Canal into Sinai, I knew that war was inevitable. I knew that we were going to lose. I knew that we in Jordan were threatened, threatened by two things: we either followed the course we did or alternately the country would tear itself apart if we stayed out and Israel would march into the West Bank and maybe even beyond. So these were the choices before us. It wasn’t a question of our thinking there was any chance of winning. We knew where we were. We knew what the results would be. But it was the only way and we did our best and the results were the disaster we have lived with ever since.21
Hussein’s retrospective account of the sequence of events that led to war is excessively deterministic. He was not compelled to throw in his lot with Egypt. Egypt had lost two wars to Israel, in 1948 and 1956, and there was no reason to think that it could win a third. Even if one concedes that Hussein had no choice but to sign a mutual defence pact with Egypt, he was responsible for the hasty manner in which it was concluded and for the terms it embodied. Two mistakes stand out above all others. The first and most disastrous was to place the Jordanian armed forces under the command of an Egyptian general. This meant that the most crucial decisions affecting Jordanian security, including the decision to go to war, would be taken in Cairo, not in Amman. It also meant that in the event of war, the Egyptian high command would determine how the Jordanian Army would be deployed and how it would fight. Syria had a defence pact with Egypt but it would never have agreed to place its army under the operational command of a non-Syrian officer. Hussein’s second mistake was to agree unconditionally to the entry of Iraqi troops into Jordan. In every previous crisis involving the entry of Iraqi troops into Jordan, Israel reserved its freedom of action. The closure of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping constituted one casus belli. The opening of Jordan to Iraqi and other Arab troops raised the perception of threat by Israel and made it more likely that it would take pre-emptive action. Far from providing political and military insurance, the pact with Egypt increased the external perils and dangers facing Jordan.
Having replaced Wasfi Tall with a pliant prime minister, Hussein was left with no persons of stature to advise and support him in the lead up to the war that he now considered inevitable. Field Marshal Habis Majali, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, was a rather staid and conventional army officer. His deputy, Brigadier Nasser, the king’s uncle, was better known for his corrupt practices than for his skills as a staff officer. A British diplomat reported from Amman that the king was ‘thoroughly fed up with Sharif Nasser’s arms and drugs smuggling activities and is determined to put a stop to them once and for all. The king has said that if Sharif Nasser fails to toe the line, he will have to go.’22 The chief of staff was General Amer Khammash, a well-educated professional soldier and planner who led the reorganization of Jordan’s armed forces in the mid 1960s. He was the brightest and ablest individual in the king’s inner circle. But he was a strong supporter of cooperation with Nasser and the integration of Jordan into the United Arab Command. Khammash was thus not a constraining influence but a contributing factor in the policy that led Jordan down the road to disaster. Other generals also pressed for coordinating Jordan’s defence plans with the rest of the confrontation states. Failure to stand together, they argued, would result in losing more soldiers and more territory. The CIA reported that ‘the army’s mood was determined, their argument was irrefutable and the King faced serious morale and loyalty problems if he did not respond to it.’23
Arab overconfidence and Arab overbidding were among the main causes of the 1967 June War, which thus provides a striking illustration of the perennial predicament of the Arab states: they cannot act separately and they cannot act collectively; they have separate national agendas and they keep getting in each other’s way. On this occasion, the level of incompetence displayed by the Arab leaders was quite staggering. After ten years of preparation for what was often referred to as the battle of destiny, and after raising popular passions to a fever pitch with their bombastic rhetoric, the leaders of the confrontation states were caught by complete surprise when Israel took their threats at face value and landed the first blow.
On 1 June, General Abdel Munim Riad arrived in Amman and assumed comma
nd of the Jordanian armed forces, under the terms of Hussein’s pact with Nasser. From this point on it was the Egyptian who made the key decisions on orders from Cairo. Israel opened hostilities at dawn on Monday 5 June, with a brilliantly planned and executed air strike that annihilated most of Egypt’s air force on the ground. Despite three separate warnings from Hussein, the Egyptians were totally unprepared and as a result virtually lost the war on the first day. Elementary decency required the Egyptian high command to inform its allies of the setback and to warn them to take precautionary measures. But there was no decency and no honesty in the relations between the Arab allies.
At about 9.00 a.m. Hussein rushed to his army headquarters after being informed that the Israeli offensive against Egypt had begun. Shortly before his arrival, General Riad had received a cable from Cairo; it was from Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, the first vice-president and deputy supreme commander of the Egyptian armed forces. Amer was a fool who largely owed his rapid promotion to his friendship with Nasser. A major and a Free Officer during the revolution of 1952, Amer became minister of war two years later and was promoted to field marshall in 1958. He was inexperienced in military affairs, corrupt, often drunk and prone to wishful thinking. He was responsible for the lack of preparedness of the Egyptian air force on the eve of battle.
Amer’s cable to Riad was a pack of lies. It said that the enemy’s planes had started to bomb Egypt’s air bases, that the attack had failed, and that 75 per cent of the enemy’s aircraft had been destroyed or put out of action. It also said that Egypt’s forces had engaged the enemy in Sinai and taken the offensive on the ground. On the basis of these alleged successes, Amer ordered Riad to open a new front against the enemy and to launch offensive operations. By the time Hussein arrived at the headquarters, Riad had already given the orders for the artillery to move to the front lines and bombard Israeli air bases and other targets; for an infantry brigade to occupy the Israeli enclave on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem; for the two Egyptian commando battalions to infiltrate enemy territory from the West Bank at dusk; and for the air force to be put on combat alert and commence air strikes immediately. Although these decisions were made in his absence, Hussein made no attempt to cancel them or to delay the opening of fire until the information from Cairo could be checked. Jordan was thus committed to war by the decision of an Egyptian general who was acting on the orders of an idiot in Cairo.