Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril

by King Abdullah II

  My father had been advised that the operation was taking place, but he had not been briefed in detail, so he was quite surprised to see me on the morning news. I was summoned to the palace. When I arrived, my father was standing by the breakfast table, frowning. Picking up a copy of a newspaper and waving it at me, he said, “What on earth were you doing yesterday? You put your life in danger.” I explained that although I had commanded the operation, the media had exaggerated my role. “Jamal and his people went into the house. They’re the ones who took the risks,” I said. “Well,” he said, “don’t let me catch you pulling a stunt like that again!” Although he pretended to be angry, I later learned from family members that he was very proud of my role in the operation.

  My military training had prepared me for being shot at. What it had not prepared me for was a life in politics. When people are shooting at you, it is evident who the enemy is. This is not so clear when they are smiling and paying compliments.

  PART III

  Chapter 12

  In the Footsteps of a Legend

  As King Hussein’s firstborn son, I started out life as the crown prince, but in 1965, when I was just three, my father decided to remove me from the line of succession. There had already been some eighteen documented assassination attempts on his life, most during the turbulent 1950s, when radical Arab nationalism was on the rise, and it seemed unlikely that he would survive long enough to see me reach adulthood. My father asked parliament to amend the Constitution, and named his brother, Prince Hassan, as his new heir.

  As a young man I believed my mission in life was to be a soldier, acting as my father’s shield and sword. But there was one attacker from which I was powerless to protect him. In the summer of 1992 he went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and was diagnosed with cancer. He underwent surgery and the operation was successful. The family, and the nation, breathed a sigh of relief. But in July 1998 he again began to feel unwell, and he returned to the United States for medical evaluation.

  At the time, I was attending a short course at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. With me on the course was Abdul Razaq, a Jordanian general who had been my battalion commander in my first army posting. He was a great mentor to a young second lieutenant still trying to learn the ropes. He had heard the news of my father’s return to Mayo, and in a quiet moment between classes he took me aside and said, “Without your father, Jordan will not survive.”

  The graduation ceremony was the day after my father’s arrival at Mayo. As soon as it ended, I went straight to Minnesota with Rania and the children to be by his side. My son Hussein was very close to his grandfather. Sharing more than a name, they both had a deep love of aircraft. After work, my father would often stop by our house. He would ask me if Hussein was in the house, and if Hussein was not, he would not even come in. “Okay, bye,” he would say in a rush, before heading off on his way. From the age of two, Hussein began to memorize the names of various types of planes, and my father delighted in showing him small Corgi models and hearing his little voice cry out “Stuka” or “Jumbo.” Once, when we traveled to London, my father flew his TriStar himself and called Hussein, then two and a half, into the cockpit as he landed at Heathrow. To the amazement of the crew and my father’s delight, he correctly identified a Concorde and a Boeing 747 sitting on the tarmac as we came in to land.

  After the laughter and joy of our little family reunion in Minnesota, my father asked to speak to me alone. Placing his hand on my arm, he said, “The cancer has come back.” I had never given serious consideration to the possibility that my father might die. I thought he would defeat his cancer, as he had done before. But something about his tone of voice told me this time might be different.

  We stayed two more days, and then he asked me to go back to Jordan and carry on my army duties. In 1996 I had been promoted from leading Special Forces to heading Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and I was focused on modernizing our tactics, facilities, and equipment. But I would soon have much more to think about than military training.

  In late July 1998, my father released a televised public statement from the Mayo Clinic saying that his cancer had returned and that he was undergoing chemotherapy. That summer in Amman was hot and tense. The air was thick with rumors and gossip. It was then that Crown Prince Hassan inadvertently added fuel to the fire.

  I was at my brigade headquarters, sitting at a long oak table with some army officers discussing the weekly training program, when I was told that the crown prince would join our meeting. Prince Hassan was acting as regent in my father’s absence. We all stood when he entered the room. Motioning us to sit, he asked us what we were working on and, after I had explained, said that there was an urgent matter he needed to discuss. He then began telling us how he had just heard that King Hussein was in dire straits and didn’t have long to live. “It is irreversible, just a matter of time,” he said. We sat in stunned silence. It is a harsh moment when a son is told that he may soon lose his father. And it is sobering for a soldier to be told he may soon lose his king and commander in chief. A hundred thoughts were going through my mind about what I had just heard and what the terrible news, if true, could mean for my country and my family.

  After my uncle left, the other officers and I looked at one another in confusion. We did not know whether the news could possibly be true. But if it were, it would mean a change of king, with a possible shake-up of the army to follow. Still reeling from my uncle’s visit, I headed off to a previously scheduled lunch in Amman. At the lunch were General Samih Battikhi, the head of the General Intelligence Department (GID), responsible for both internal and external security, and Field Marshal Abdul Hafez Kaabneh, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces. They had both also just been told by the Crown Prince that my father was terminally ill, and they looked pale, concerned for my father and uncertain as to what exactly was going on. I told them I would call my father to find out the truth.

  After lunch I spoke to my father’s aide-de-camp, Colonel Hussein Majali, who was with my father at the Mayo Clinic. I asked him if the news was true. He did not answer my question directly but said he would have my father call me back. Two long hours later, my father called and angrily asked me who was spreading this rumor. I told him that the crown prince had told me and a few others that his condition had deteriorated.

  “Well,” he said, “it is not true at all. I’ve got better things to do over here than worry about this nonsense. But thank you for letting me know.”

  Our conversation put my mind at rest. He sounded like the same upbeat fighter I had always known. But rumors and speculation continued to abound, strengthened by my uncle’s statement.

  Prince Hassan had served loyally as crown prince for more than three decades and believed he had earned the right to be king, as did those around him. But some in the country had begun to believe that my father, in his last days, would name somebody else as crown prince. And there were those who had a candidate in mind. A group of people, including my father’s head of security, the chief of protocol, and the head of the GID, were pushing for Prince Hamzah, the king’s eldest son by his fourth wife, Queen Noor, to head the line of succession. Only eighteen at the time, and a cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Hamzah was innocent of the plotting going on around him. He and I were very close, as I was with all four of my brothers. Sensing an opportunity, the two groups competed behind the scenes to promote their candidate and discredit the other. Rumors in Amman were rife.

  Adding to the gossip was Crown Prince Hassan’s decision not to visit my father in America. His supporters argued that he was just doing his job as regent, providing much-needed stability in the country at an uncertain time. But Field Marshal Kaabneh later told me that while my father was in the hospital Prince Hassan gave orders for some officers to be given early retirement and others to be promoted. Kaabneh refused. Prince Hassan had said, “I am the supreme commander now.”

  “No, sir,
” was Kaabneh’s reply. “Nobody has told me that. I only take my orders from His Majesty King Hussein. The king is in America, but we can call him at any time.” The crown prince was insistent, but Kaabneh stood his ground. Military affairs were strictly under the control of the king, and it was unprecedented and unconstitutional for the crown prince to issue orders directly to the military. Prince Hassan may well have had good intentions, hoping to provide leadership and continuity in the face of a growing power vacuum and to quell the many rumors flying around Amman. But his attempt to bypass institutional structures only added to the mounting apprehension.

  I still hoped for the best, and prayed that my father would win his struggle.

  In early October I took time off and went back to the Mayo Clinic to visit my father. He loved Japanese food, so as a treat I had some Kobe beef flown in fresh from Japan. I reached the clinic in the evening and met up with my sisters Aisha and Zein, who had also come to visit. We found him watching Patton, one of his favorite movies (he was a big fan of movies and would watch one every night if he could). The opening scene always brought a gleam to his eye. Patton addresses his men under a huge American flag, saying as he sends them off, “Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

  While my father, sisters, and other family members watched the film, I prepared the Kobe beef teppanyaki style, one of his favorites. The conversation turned to the situation back in Jordan, and some family members started repeating a few of the rumors circulating in Amman. At this point I lost my temper and asked to speak with them outside. “Listen,” I said, “we’re here to keep his morale up, not to sit around and peddle nasty gossip.” Going back inside, we enjoyed the meal and watched the rest of the movie before retiring for the evening.

  The next morning I came back early to apologize to my father for losing my temper. He told me to sit down, and we had a long personal talk that lasted almost three hours. Although we talked often, we mostly spoke about affairs of state, military matters, the family, cars, and motorbikes—rarely about personal feelings. Educated at boarding schools in Egypt and England, he could be reserved, and he encouraged his children to act the same way. But this conversation was different.

  He told me he was really proud of the work I had done in the military, and said he was proud of me as his son. He told me that although I may have felt at times that he was neglecting me, in fact it was the opposite. He had been watching my career very closely. He had wanted me to make my own way in the military. So he had withheld his support many times, hoping that I would overcome challenges on my own. But, he conceded, he might have gone too far. “I feel I’ve let you down as a father,” he said, “because at many times during your military career I knew that you were getting the short end of the stick, and I didn’t step in. You must be angry that you didn’t get your father’s support.”

  With a smile I told him that, frankly, there were a couple of times over the previous twenty years when I could have done with some help. But in hindsight, I could not thank him enough, because it was during the hardest times that I had learned the most. Then he went on to say that he was expecting a lot from me, and that when he got back to Jordan he had some major changes he wanted to make. I thought he was talking about changes in the government, or a new approach to jump-starting the economy, which had been slowing in part because of the king’s deteriorating health. I still hoped and prayed that he would have many years left ahead of him. Was my father telling me that he was dying? If so, I was not ready to face that possibility.

  Two years earlier, in May 1996, the Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu had assumed power in Israel. Netanyahu was no supporter of the Oslo Accords, which the Palestinians had signed in 1993 with his Labor predecessors, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. A few months after Netanyahu came to power, the opening of a tunnel in Jerusalem in the vicinity of Al Haram Al Sharif triggered Arab anger and violent protests in the West Bank. It also ran counter to the peace treaty Israel had signed with Jordan in 1994, which included a clause recognizing Jordan’s special role in overseeing Jerusalem’s holy shrines. Relations between Israel and the Palestinians deteriorated precipitously after that. Against this backdrop of tension, U.S. president Clinton invited Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian president Yasser Arafat to join him on October 15, 1998, for a four-day summit at the Wye River Plantation, a compound on Maryland’s eastern shore. The talks were going badly, and on October 18 Clinton asked my father to come and energize both parties. Two days later the sight of my father, gaunt and nearly bald, having painfully risen from his hospital bed to plead for peace, helped inspire the feuding parties to resolve their differences. After days of prolonged negotiations, the two delegations endorsed a breakthrough land-for-peace agreement under which Israel would redeploy from a further 13 percent of the West Bank. Although they were thrilled that their king had come to fight for peace, many Jordanians watching the proceedings on television were shocked to see the change in his condition. Two months before, he had been much sturdier; by now he had lost weight and looked very frail. His rapid deterioration fueled speculation in Amman that perhaps my father was sicker than people had realized, and that the country might soon need to prepare for a new king.

  The Wye River Memorandum, signed on October 23 at the White House, restarted the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians that had been stalled for a year and a half. In exchange for control over additional land in the West Bank, the Palestinians agreed to prevent “acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities” against Israel and to amend the Palestinian National Charter, removing provisions calling for the elimination of the state of Israel. In return, the Israelis agreed to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, open the Gaza airport, and provide safe passage for Palestinians moving from Gaza to the West Bank. Both sides, it seemed, were at last moving toward tackling the most difficult final status issues, including political control of Jerusalem, the return of refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars, and the final borders of a Palestinian state.

  My father asked me to come and be with him in America, so I flew to Washington, D.C., from Jordan on October 22, the day before the signing ceremony. I arrived in the evening and received word on arrival that my father wanted to see me. From the airport I jumped into a waiting car. Driving to my father’s home in Maryland, I watched the sun glinting on the Potomac River and wondered what was in store. When I arrived, my father called for me to join him in the study. I stood at attention until he motioned for me to sit. I never lost sight of the fact that although he was my father, he was also my king. I was a bit shocked to see how frail and thin he had become, but I found that he still had that reassuring look of strength in his eyes.

  He told me he had missed me and said he had heard good things about me since we had last met. It was clear he had heard about a lot of the intrigue going on back home, and he knew I was not part of it. Then, in a low voice, he described his anger at hearing reports that Prince Hassan had attempted to bypass the military chain of command and issued orders to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I told him that the chief of staff was holding the armed forces in complete and utter loyalty to him. He would have resigned rather than follow orders given by anyone but the king.

  My father told me that he had been thinking about the matter a lot. Then he said, “I have decided to change the line of succession.” I nodded, and he continued, “I hope you understand that this will be difficult for many in Amman, but I believe you will be up to the task. I will be expecting things from you.” He didn’t specify who he intended to choose, and I didn’t press him. My father was tired from his treatments, and this was clearly a very difficult conversation for him. He left it at that and said, “Why don’t you go out and have a good time.”

  My head was spinning as I headed to Morton’s restaurant in Georgetown with a family friend for a steak. Perhaps my uncle’s prediction was about to come true
. If my father intended to change the line of succession, then clearly my uncle would not become king. But then who? If he was planning to make Hamzah crown prince, why hadn’t he told me? I was not yet ready to accept that my father was dying, let alone that he might intend to choose me as his successor.

  The signing ceremony between Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Yasser Arafat was scheduled at the White House late in the afternoon of the next day. My father spoke a few words at the ceremony.

  “We quarrel, we agree; we are friendly, we are not friendly,” he said. “But we have no right to dictate through irresponsible action or narrow-mindedness the future of our children and their children’s children. There has been enough destruction, enough death, enough waste. It is time that, together, we occupy a place beyond ourselves, our peoples, that is worthy of them under the sun . . . the descendants of the children of Abraham.”

  After the event, I waited for my father at our embassy in Washington, where he would soon begin to receive senior members of the Jordanian government who were visiting. Usually he saw such delegations at his house, but by holding the meetings at the embassy he was making a public statement. He held a series of private meetings with visiting dignitaries, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, a delegation from Crown Prince Hassan’s office, and two former prime ministers. All of the visitors were sitting together in the waiting room outside the ambassador’s office. My father walked into the waiting room and, in front of everybody, embraced one of the former prime ministers, Abdul Karim Kabariti, who was known to be opposed to Prince Hassan. My father then met with each delegation individually in the ambassador’s office. In every meeting, I later learned, he said that he planned to make “major changes” when he returned to Jordan—a message he would reiterate in public for the first time in late November.