A Brief History of Royals in America
King Hussein, 1998
In October 1998, President Bill Clinton mediated arduous peace negotiations between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat. When negotiations appeared to derail on the sixth day, Clinton called in his trump card: King Hussein of Jordan, who arrived gaunt and pale, yet energetic, from the Mayo Clinic, where he was receiving cancer treatment. "You can't afford for this to fail," he told the gathered leaders. "You owe this to your people, your children, to future generations." Arafat and Netanyahu worked through the night, hammering out a final settlement that became the Wye River Memorandum — the basis for peace efforts from that point onward. The King died three months later.