(4 of 5)
Preoccupied as the Israelis were with events in Jordan, they also kept a close watch on the Egyptian cease-fire line. New reconnaissance photos, Jerusalem claimed, revealed that nine more missile sites had been constructed in the standstill zone west of the Suez Canal in violation of the terms of the seven-week-old ceasefire. That brings the number of illegally emplaced SA-2 and SA3 batteries to 40, totaling 220 missiles. Despite the violations, however, the Suez remained quiet, and there were indications last week that it might continue that way. Egyptian Ambassador to the U.N. Mohammed Zayyat maintained in a Face the Nation telecast that all the missiles had been in the zone when the cease-fire began. But he suggested that Cairo would be willing to pull them back in return for a U.S. guarantee that Israel would never launch a pre-emptive attack on Egypt.
Strange Departure. At week's end Sudan's Numeiry and the six-man delegation that accompanied him to Amman to arrange a truce finally got both sides to agree to a ceasefire. As the truce was going into effect, word reached Amman that Jordan's Premier Brigadier General Mohammed Daoud, who was named to that post only two weeks ago when Hussein set up an all-military Cabinet, had abruptly resigned. Daoud, in Cairo to attend the Arab summit, disappeared from his Nile Hilton hotel room, leaving a note for Hussein explaining that he was making way for a government of "national unity." His resignation, however, was due to personal as well as political considerations.
Spare, smiling General Daoud was a career officer dedicated to the King and to Jordan. But the general was also a Palestinian who hoped for the eventual creation of a homeland. He soon discovered that he had little authority; Field Marshal Majali held the real power as military governor. Daoud was so insignificant that he was met at Cairo airport by Egypt's Minister of Irrigation. At the summit meeting he was ostracized by other representatives. He was even losing the loyalty of his own family. His daughter Mona loudly backed the fedayeen and badgered her father by letter to leave the government. When Daoud, aghast at the extent of the carnage in Jordan, finally did resign, the guerrillas announced that they would hold him, among others, responsible for the fighting. A bitter, forlorn figure, the general decided to go into exile in Libya.
Poisoned Relations. Bitterness, if not unalloyed hatred, is likely to poison relations between the two sides for years. Hussein last week angrily complained that his government was infiltrated by guerrillas, and that even his cook and chauffeur turned out to be terrorists. Newsmen who had been trapped in the Jordan Intercontinental Hotel (see THE PRESS) told of seeing Bedouins shooting a wounded fedai to death. Both army riflemen and fedayeen snipers fired on ambulances, and on one occasion guerrillas stole two Red Cross vehicles and converted them into ammunition carriers. The fedayeen lobbed mortars at Amman airport as planes landed to evacuate wounded Jordanians as well as U.S. and British women and children.