Word: jordan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Nightly Diatribes. In the eleven years since the Suez crisis, the Arabs have increased the power of their armies mightily. Egypt alone has received $1 billion in military hardware-tanks, planes and rockets-from Russia, and both Moscow and Peking have helped arm the Syrians. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have been able to beg and buy their share of power from the West, and Iraq has been getting guns from both sides. Yet Israel has been keeping pace with the Arabs in expanding its armed might, still believes that its army of 300,000 regulars and reservists can stand...
...Arab world is so divided and its hatreds so deep that not even the threat of immediate war with Israel can bring it back together. Last week government-controlled radio stations in Cairo and Damascus never once let up on their nightly diatribes against such moderate Arab leaders as Jordan's King Hussein ("the Hashemite harlot") and Saudi Arabia's King Feisal ("the bearded bigot"). In a speech to his men on the Sinai front, Nasser himself spent as much time raging against the two Kings ("traitors who plot against us in the name of our religion...
Throughout the crisis, in fact, the only actual casualties so far have been caused by fighting between the Arab states themselves. Sixteen people were killed when a booby-trapped Syrian car exploded at the Jordanian customs post of Ramtha. Jordan accused the Baathist regime of "premeditated sabotage," ordered Syria to close down its embassy in Amman and recalled its own diplomats from Damascus. In Yemen, Egyptian troops launched a new campaign aimed at driving Yemeni royalists from a stronghold in the northern mountains; in raids during the previous week, Egyptian planes had bombed two Saudi Arabian towns. Forgotten entirely last...
...Israel acts alone, however, war is inevitable. Nasser cannot back down now without sacrificing forever his claim to leadership in the Middle East--and perhaps even his position in the United Arab Republic. His latest adventure was probably directed less at harming Israel than at reviving Arab unity, forcing Jordan and Saudi Arabia, his avowed enemies, to join him in an anti-Israeli coalition...
This policy would have some costs for the U.S., even if Nasser backed down. For the Egyptian leader's indictment of the West would lose this country some good-will in the Middle East, and would force the U.S.'s best friends -- King Hussein of Jordan and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia -- to adopt a less friendly stance, at least in public...