World: Jordan: The King Takes On the Guerrillas

AS he fiddled with the dials on his short-wave set in Essex last week, a young British ham radio operator heard a familiar call signal from a Middle East station. "This is JY-one," the deep, British-accented voice could be heard over the crackle of the static. "Hussein on the mike." With that, the beleaguered King of Jordan proceeded to discuss the situation outside his well-fortified Al-Hummar Palace on the outskirts of Amman. "We get a bit of blasting here," said Hussein. "It is a sad time. But we are putting our house in order and soon it will be organized."

A bit of blasting was a mild way of describing the explosion that rocked the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan last week. Civil war was a more apt description of the battle that had erupted only hours before JY-one came on the air. Savage street battles raged in Amman between Hussein's army and the fedayeen ("men of sacrifice") of the Palestine guerrilla organizations. While the capital's 600,000 residents hid in terror, armored vehicles rumbled up and down the streets, swinging their turrets to counter small-arms fire from nearby buildings. Swiftly, the fighting spread from Amman to other parts of Jordan, centering particularly in towns to the north close to the Syrian border, where the guerrillas were able to put up their greatest resistance. Casualties were heavy. In the Six-Day War with Israel three years ago, Jordan suffered only 162 dead and wounded. Last week, after three days of intensive fighting, reports put the casualties at more than 5,000 in a nation of 2,200,000. Bodies lay in the streets and the Jordan Red Crescent reported that there were "hundreds of wounded dying in the streets or in the wreckage of their homes for lack of medical aid."

Widening Ripples

So sensitive is the Middle East's political seismograph that even as Arab leaders tried to contain the fighting in Jordan, the ripples created by the civil war continued to widen. The radical Baathist governments of Iraq and Syria gave unqualified vocal support to the guerrillas, defying Egypt's suggestion that they stay out of the dispute. "We will not spare one drop of blood to help," said Syrian President Noureddine Atassi. The U.S. and Israel hinted that they might intervene if the regimes in Baghdad and Damascus sent regular troops to reinforce the guerrillas. But at week's end Amman Radio reported that a Syrian armored brigade had crossed into Jordan with Soviet-built tanks. The radio added that Jordanian troops repulsed the invaders "with heavy losses."

The outbursts proved what Arab leaders have increasingly feared as the fedayeen grew from a handful to an army of 25,000 full-time fighters in Jordan alone: the movement is a greater threat to established Arab governments than it is to Israel. The guerrillas were also proving once again that they must be reckoned with in any Middle East peace settlement; only a week before, they had established the point beyond argument, defying Hussein and the world, with a multiple skyjacking. No Arab government can guarantee that a peace will be kept as long as the fedayeen, desperadoes with little to lose, cast such threatening shadows over the negotiating table.