Word: arabia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...scientist doctors cloning a man from his nose. But most authors and directors and sociologists and philosophers start from the premise that the society thus transformed was ready for progress to begin with. Dr. Seymour Gray, an American physician appointed to head a brand-new hospital in Saudi Arabia, had the opportunity to see how much more wrenching such advancement can be when a country moves from a primitive nomadic culture to a modern technological state in only a few decades...
...Beyond the Veil, Gray almost novelistically traces his adjustment to the challenges and idiosyncracies he found in Saudi Arabia. Built with proceeds from the sale of Saudi Arabian oil, the hospital is "one of the newest and best-equipped in the world." Most of its patients, however, especially the desert nomads, have never seen a doctor before and believe no medical care can help them if Allah wants them to die. Better-educated Saudis, including numerous princes and princesses, rarely get medical care at home, preferring the better-known hospitals abroad. Gray's vivid anecdotes tell of other incongruities...
...week's biggest uncertainty centered on Arafat's travels. After visiting Morocco, the P.L.O. leader was expected in Amman on March 27 to meet with Hussein. But instead Arafat flew to Saudi Arabia and then to Iraq, Bahrain, Kuwait and Syria. Arafat's aim was to shore up Arab support before making any commitment to King Hussein. Arafat did not see Syrian President Hafez Assad, who is strongly opposed to Jordanian participation in peace talks, but he did deliver a fiery speech to a large throng of supporters in Damascus. The next day Arafat arrived...
Hussein's dilemma is no less agonizing. He cannot agree to enter peace talks without having the support of both Arafat and Jordan's Arab allies, notably Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. Jordan is dependent on Saudi Arabia and the gulf states for more than $1 billion a year in economic assistance. Hussein, moreover, would be personally even more vulnerable than assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was after he signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Says a European diplomat in Amman: "Jordan is not Egypt. It could not sustain the burdens of isolation...
...commitments, Mubarak used the Israeli invention of Lebenon last summer as a pretest to a recal his ambassador from [arme] and attacked Prime Minister Begin for "sounding the drums of war and flexing the muscles of tyrannous force." Though Libya and Syria remain of to Mubarak's overtures, Soudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraq--which receives Egyptian arms for its war against Iran--have responded positively and are ready to welcome Cairo back to the fold...