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In the past, Hussein scrupulously avoided a confrontation. More and more, critics accused him of wavering. Finally, the King decided to make a tough decision stick. He had little choice. If he did nothing, there was a real chance of an army mutiny. Rifai volunteered to resign as Premier because he was "tired." Instead, Hussein scathingly rebuked him and then fired him—along with the rest of his 17-member Cabinet. The King appointed a new Cabinet made up of eleven army officers and headed by Brigadier General Mohammed Daoud, 50, as Premier. More important, he dusted off a measure that was hurriedly enacted during the 1967 war with Israel and declared martial law. Hussein appointed Field Marshal Habes Majali, a 57-year-old Bedouin officer, as commander in chief of the army as well as military governor of Jordan.
Hussein's orders were terse. The new government was "to act immediately to undo hostile planning and restore matters as they should be." "Hostile forces," the King added, had "undermined national unity, shaken the armed forces, dynamited their military spirit and discipline, and created a state of despair." At Majali's command, the Jordanian army was soon moving tanks and artillery into Amman.
The guerrillas accepted the challenge. Yasser Arafat, leader of Al-Fatah, the biggest guerrilla group, and of the overall PLO command, had already summoned ambassadors from other Arab states and told them: "Will you kindly inform your governments that King Hussein, with mature consideration, has drawn up a detailed plan which is bound to end in a blood bath? I possess irrefutable proof that he intends to liquidate the Palestinian resistance." In Amman, Damascus and Baghdad, guerrilla radios suddenly began crackling with curiously coded messages. "The dinner is hot," said one. "Ghazi is marching to Haifa," said another. In plainer language, the fedayeen command advised its men to "keep your finger on the trigger until the fascist military rule has been removed." In Amman, shopkeepers, who have suffered through previous confrontations, shuttered their stores. Schools closed, offices emptied, and civilians huddled in the basements of limestone houses on Amman's seven hills. Telephone lines went dead. The airport waved off incoming flights and sent Royal Jordanian Airline's Caravelles out of the country.
The 54 skyjacking hostages were also moved for "safekeeping." Anxious to thwart any rescue attempts, the Popular Front split them up into groups of four or five and scattered them to different hiding places. Before the fighting broke out, most were believed to be in a sprawling Palestinian refugee center on the southern rim of the capital, called Amman New Camp. At the same camp the guerrillas are believed to be holding $650,000 in U.S. bills that Swissair last week admitted had been aboard its skyjacked plane. When the guerrillas found out about the money by reading the craft's loading sheet, they marched the plane's captain into the desert, held guns to his temples and forced him to tell them where it was.
Groping in the Dark