Word: bedouins
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Western newsmen have summed up Jordan's civil war as a confrontation between "fed" and "Bed"-that is, between the Palestinian fedayeen and the Bedouins, who make up the largest segment (250,000) of the other Jordanians. To a certain extent this is true, for the Bedouins remain the backbone of Hussein's 56,000-man army. Yet increasing numbers of "Beds" are joining the "feds." Arabs estimate that up to 15% of the guerrillas are non-Palestinians. No fewer than 2,500 members of the Beni Sakhr, Jordan's most powerful Bedouin tribe, have joined Arafat...
...Hashemite kings of Jordan set in motion the forces that have led to this shift in loyalties. Amman was a dusty musabilah, or market town, when King Abdullah, Hussein's grandfather, made it the capital of his new kingdom in 1921. Most of the country's Bedouins roamed Transjordan's eastern deserts, proud and hawklike men who scorned as inferiors the Arabs in cities. Allah made the Bedouin and the camel, they were wont to say, and then Allah made the town Arab out of the camel's droppings...
...influence he had exerted in Egypt?and beyond. His death unstabilizes an area that has become the most volatile in the world. Beyond the continual coups, the constant bickering and the incessant intrigues were two related problems: the civil war in Jordan between Palestinian guerrillas and King Hussein's Bedouin-backed government, and the long-festering war with Israel. Just before Nasser's death, a number of Egyptians were voicing cautious optimism about the prospects for peace. "We can't go on like this," said a leader of Egypt's national assembly. "We are spending half a billion pounds...
Grimly the army's Bedouin soldiers stalked the streets, seeking guerrillas and occasionally looting shops. Many had their faces blackened, a traditional means of preventing identification and forestalling later feuds with the families of their victims. Amman became a city of sordid sounds-the crumbling of limestone buildings under the artillery barrage, the snap of rifle fire and the whoosh of shells, the cries of the wounded, and the wailing of women who had seen their families slain. In two of the biggest camps for Palestinian refugees, guerrillas insisted that at least 7,000 people had been killed...
...ventured into the hotel garden, hoping to attach themselves to a group of soldiers and get closer to the war. The soldiers waved them back and fired over their heads. Undaunted, the reporters climbed to the balconies of the hotel with their equipment. A Swedish cameraman waved to a Bedouin soldier in an armored car and was promptly shot in the leg. By some miracle, there were no more casualties among...