Middle East: Tension Below the Surface

MIDDLE EAST

Outwardly, Jordan's frontier with Israel seemed calm enough. Gunfire along the border had died away. In Jordan's frontier towns of Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah, old men puffed their snake-stemmed hookahs outside coffeehouses, and traffic beeped its way back to normal. But beneath the surface, tensions were tight. "The whole place," said one of King Hussein's former Cabinet ministers, "is ready to blow."

Hussein's refusal to arm Jordan's Palestinian refugees against another attack by Israel had merely spurred the flow of contraband weapons that have been filtering quietly into refugee camps on both sides of the Jordan River. Jordanian troops uncovered...

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