Word: arab
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Then at 8 p.m. on a Sunday evening, Hussein, sitting beneath a portrait of Sharif Hussein, his great-grandfather, went on Jordanian television. Calmly he informed his 3.6 million countrymen that in response to the wishes of both the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Arab states, he was "dismantling the legal and administrative links" between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank...
...announcement struck like an earth tremor, disrupting the status quo in the West Bank and scrambling the assumptions that have underlain talk of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. In Baghdad P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat met late into the night with his advisers; he then imposed a blackout on all official comment and called a meeting of the 451-member Palestine National Council, the P.L.O.'s top decision-making body, later this month to take measure of the King's maneuver. In Jerusalem officials at first brushed off Hussein's announcement, but the Knesset scheduled a special session to discuss...
...series of disappointments. Through the eight months of the Palestinian intifadeh, or uprising, Hussein has found Jordan's role and influence steadily diminished in the West Bank. While the King has a keen interest in easing the living conditions for West Bank Palestinians, fellow leaders in the Arab world have persistently refused to recognize his efforts. Jordan's financial and political efforts on behalf of the West Bank have provoked Arab criticism that the King is trying to usurp the P.L.O.'s role. Hussein's attempts to promote the U.S.-sponsored peace plan have met with angry charges that...
...Hussein's patience was already strained, the summit in Algiers pushed it to the snapping point. During the three-day meeting, Hussein, whose government spends up to $70 million annually on administration in the West Bank, appealed to Arab leaders to honor past financial commitments, as well as new ones, to both the P.L.O. and Jordan. He was turned down on both counts. Instead, the summiteers voted to pay the P.L.O. $128 million directly to defray the costs of the intifadeh so far, plus $43 million a month to keep the uprising alive. (Not a dinar of that pledge...
Hussein's frustration also extends to the U.S. and Israel. When Washington renewed its attempts last March to broker a settlement in the Middle East, Hussein, unlike some of his Arab brethren, attempted to promote the initiative. At the Reagan Administration's bidding, he approached the P.L.O. with the notion of forming a joint delegation for future negotiations. But . Hussein received little support from Washington, which declined to press Israel to accept a land-for-peace exchange. Says Robert Neumann, a former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia: "Hussein finally got disgusted with the American efforts...