Word: amman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Beirut and Amman lie 140 miles apart, and the jet flight between the two cities normally takes only 40 minutes. These days, however, the journey is an extended and somewhat nerve-wracking odyssey. Passengers aboard Alia (Royal Jordanian Airline) Caravelles are subjected to a thorough and intimate antihijack body check; still, four mid-air hijackings have been foiled, while another plane was shot at by anti-Jordanian guerrillas while taking off. After leaving Beirut, Alia Caravelles must fly out over the Mediterranean toward Cyprus and then to Mersa Matruh, swing inland over Egypt to Luxor, turn again to cross...
...world's attention by hijacking four commercial airliners and holding hundreds of passengers hostage in the blazing Jordanian desert. That taste of glory was short-lived. Determined to crush not only the P.F.L.P. but all the freewheeling guerrilla groups, King Hussein and his army chased them out of Amman and penned them in in a mountainous area near the Syrian border. Two months ago, 30,000 royal troops, mostly Bedouins, attacked again and wiped out that last guerrilla pocket. The fedayeen either surrendered to the King or fled to friendlier Arab countries. George Habash, the soft-eyed physician...
Habash returns the compliment. In a Beirut office plastered with Mao posters and such artifacts as a U.S. seal torn from the American embassy in Amman 18 months ago, Habash said Hussein and Feisal are among his targets. "Feisal is part of the enemy camp," he told Scott. "He is working for the petroleum companies. Regimes like his want the resistance to be part of their planning. They want to rule us. We say it is more important to have the masses than to have $5,000,000 from Saudi Arabia...
...began his repression of the Palestinian guerrillas in earnest. Last month's final drive, which all but extinguished the fedayeen presence in the Jerash woods of northern Jordan, so upset Damascus that Syria closed her border with Jordan. The decision disrupted the usual heavy road traffic between Amman and Beirut and forced Jordan to route its phosphate exports and all imports through its only port at Aqaba...
...dull thud of mortars rent the still, dry air along the border. Rival communiqués were, as customary, completely contradictory. According to Damascus, a Jordanian armored unit raked a Syrian observation post with machine-gun fire; in retaliation, Syrian gunners destroyed five Jordanian tanks. According to Amman, an "unidentified force" started the action, and Jordan retaliated by destroying five Syrian tanks, a gun position, and an observation post. In any event, by week's end Syria had broken relations with Jordan, following similar action taken by Libya and Algeria in the last two months...