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The Prime Minister said: "None of us know the reason." But his question, according to Glubb, was: "Can you leave Immediately?" Glubb asked what he meant by immediately. The Premier's answer: "Say at 4 o'clock this afternoon. We will give you an airplane." Glubb balked at that. "No, sir," he said. "I have lived here for 26 years, and I cannot leave at two hours' notice." The Premier suggested: "You can leave your wife behind." They compromised on 7 a.m. the next day.
And the next morning the man who built and led the Arab Legion for a quarter of a century was shipped out of the country. His departure was so hasty that clothes and children's dolls were piled Into the plane in an open basket.
The People's Choice. By sacking Glubb, Hussein made himself King before his subjects in fact as well as in title. Overnight he was the hero of the Palestinians. Newspapers hailed him as "the new Sala-din." When he toured the refugee centers, frenzied crowds tore off his red-checkered headdress and bore him through the streets shouting: "Long live Hussein—with his sword we will go to war!" Legionnaires shouted: "Back to Palestine!" "It was the first time in the history of the Hashemite family that one of them stood up to the British," said a former Hussein critic. Only some of the old Bedouins, who had called Glubb Pasha their "little father," were silent.
But Hussein seemed appalled by the commotion his action set off in the West.
He hastily assured the British that he had expelled Glubb not from any animus against Britain but because Glubb had become a liability both to Britain and himself. Pointing to his cheering subjects, he asked: "Don't you think the spirit of the crowds might have been quite different if we had not dismissed Glubb?"
Since Glubb's firing, the young King has shown considerable nimbleness. He dexterously avoided the bear hug embrace extended by Nasser, Saudi Arabia and Syria, who offered to replace the British subsidy. There is no question that for the moment Hussein is in charge. In his negotiations with the British, he did not even bother to keep Prime Minister Rifai informed. He sent Major General Radi Innab (whom he installed as Legion commander to replace Glubb) to negotiate an agreement with Syria to regard their borders with Israel as "one military frontier" in case of Israeli attack. Last week Hussein persuaded Whitehall to leave many of the Legion's British officers as technicians and instructors. And Britain announced gruffly that it would renew its $25 million subsidy for the Legion.
But Hussein is a man on a tightrope, and the tightrope is fraying. For his Palestinians he proclaims: "We will regain what was lost of our fatherland, with God's help." Privately he admits that Israel is probably there to stay. "The Arabs were wrong to think that the Jews were like the American Indians and could nev er regain their lost lands," he says. His suggested solution: "First, the Jews must recognize Arab rights, and allow the refugees to return or give them compensation. Second, they must rectify the unrealistic border. It splits villages and makes people live in the face of death."