(2 of 2)
Ordering the Bedouin armor to take over the official duty of guarding the capital, the King sped back to his palace. Confronting Abu Nuwar and ex-Premier Suleiman Nabulsi, he demanded: "Is this what you want? Does this make you happy—to see our country in turmoil like this?" From the palace windows the quaking leaders could see the Bedouins swinging their armored cars into positions outside. The desert warriors had blackened their faces with charcoal—Bedouin war paint that meant they were ready to kill. Inside ex-Premier Nabulsi sat pale and sweating, fingering his prayer beads. On "advice" from the King to take a two-week vacation, Abu Nuwar gathered up his family and took off to Syrian exile.
For the next two days some 300 army officers, desert sheiks and city notables flocked to the palace to pay homage to their King. As each bowed and swore fealty, Hussein murmured: "Allah be praised." By telegram, King Saud turned over to his command the 5,500 Saudi Arabian troops stationed in Jordan; by telephone, Hussein's Hashemite cousin, Iraq's 21-year-old King Feisal, offered immediate all-out military aid. Abu Nuwar's pro-Soviet friends in the Syrian army prudently held off.
But Hussein could not forget that the volatile Palestinian Arab townsmen who backed Premier Nabulsi's leftist coalition far outnumber the loyal tribesmen. To head off urban eruptions, he warned Nabulsi and other party leaders that they would be tried for manslaughter if troops had to fire on their followers. He also broadcast reassuring statements that Jordan would continue to pursue the ideal of Arab unity, reject "imperialism" and foreign alliances, and follow "positive neutrality" as the basis of its policy. Whatever his personal inclinations, it was unlikely that Hussein would dare invite the U.S.'s Ambassador James Richards to discuss U.S. aid until he was assured of firmer control. In due course he named a compromise Cabinet headed by Jordan's first refugee Premier, Dr. Hussein Fahkri Khalidi, 62.
A doctor who once served in the Ottoman Turkish army, Khalidi is an anti-Communist conservative pledged to no political party. Member of an aristocratic Palestinian family, Khalidi was a pre-World War II mayor of Jerusalem, secretary-general of the Arab Higher Committee ("We must make their lives hell," he said of the Jews), and three times Foreign Minister of Jordan.
Few observers predicted a long life for Khalidi's government, in which ex-Premier Nabulsi was kept on as Foreign Minister. At week's end King Hussein's new chief of staff, Major General Ali Hayari, went to Syria and from there telephoned his resignation. Hayari charged the royal palace with having "prepared a plot in cooperation with foreign, non-Arab military attaches in Amman" to "force Jordan out of the Arab liberation policy of Syria and Egypt." Deep in the deadly game of survival, the King formed a five-man army council made up of Bedouin officers who had stood by him unwaveringly in the showdown. Jordan still teetered on the brink of oblivion.