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Two-Thirds of a Nation. But neither reason nor Glubb Pasha could stem the bitterness in the refugee camps. For seven years the refugees had lived miserably on the UNRWA's 9¢-a-day food ration. They blamed the U.S. for supporting the Israelis, though they knew the U.S. helps pay for their food (70% of UNRWA's $14 million annual budget for the work). Idle, unwilling to accept resettlement, unwanted by other Arab lands, they festered in the squalor of huts and caves. On the rocky hills overlooking the Israeli plains, villagers stared balefully down at fields they tilled as theirs until the 1949 armistice line cut them off. "There is my orange grove, only a short distance away," said one. "I put everything into it and was expecting to send my two boys to study in England. Instead I am a janitor at the school, earning a miserable low wage, and my children are without education."
Around loudspeakers posted in the camps, glowering Palestinians listened to the anti-Western broadcasts of Cairo's Voice of the Arabs. (Amman's Arab broadcasting station they dismissed as a British front.) Agitators of the illegal Baath Party, which worships Egypt's Nasser and hates the West, busily organized schoolteachers, developed a technique for riots.
First move is to turn out the schoolchildren for a "peaceful" demonstration. Marching children attract adults. Baath agitators start up chants of rhythmic slogans in time to handclaps. Soon, with five thousand people chanting, the effect is frenetic. The agitators keep the crowd moving until they reach their objective—a police station, an UNRWA office, a Legion road block, anything that symbolizes authority and therefore the refugees' frustration. Then a picked task force of a dozen young men suddenly emerges from the crowd and attacks the building with kerosene, axes or clubs. The mob follows like cattle in a stampede.
Join with Nasser. The refugees' venom remained undirected until, late last year, the British made a mistake. They sent General Sir Gerald Templer to Amman to pound the table and demand Jordan's adherence to the Baghdad Pact. Nasser, his prestige suddenly grown huge with his acquisition of Russian arms, seized his opportunity. "The aim of the alliance is to destroy the Arabism of Palestine," shrieked the Voice of the Arabs. "Rise up, and at your side will stand the great leaders of Arabdom in Egypt and all other Arab lands!" All over Jordan the refugees rose. In Jerusalem and Amman they stoned and fired U.S. Point Four buildings and British libraries, shouting "Down with the Baghdad Pact!" and "Join with Nasser!" The Prime Minister resigned. Nasser and the rioting refugees had kept Jordan out of the Baghdad Pact.
Savoring their new power, the refugees rioted again when the government tried to forestall new elections which would predictably have installed an anti-British government dominated by Palestinians. The Legion was called out to quell the rioting. It did. But Nasser's insidious voice had reached into the Legion itself. When a Bedouin legionnaire fired on the Amman mob, a young Arab officer jerked the gun from his hands, saying: "If you cannot use this weapon against the Jews, you cannot use it against our own people."