Reign
Abdullah's eldest son, Talal, was proclaimed schizophrenia. In his brief reign, Talal had made a modern, somewhat liberal constitution in 1952 that is still in ownership today. Hussein was proclaimed king on 11 August 1952, succeeding to the throne three months previously his 17th birthday. A telegram from Jordan was brought in to Hussein while he was staying with his mother abroad in Lausanne, Switzerland, addressed to 'His Majesty King Hussein'. "I did not need to open it to know that my days as a schoolboy were over," Hussein later wrote in his memoirs. He returned home to cheering crowds.
A three-man regency council shown up of the prime minister and heads of the Senate and the House of Representatives was appointed until he became 18 by the Muslim calendar. Meanwhile, Hussein pursued further explore at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He was enthroned on 2 May 1953, the same day that his cousin Faisal II assumed his constitutional powers as king of Iraq.
The teenaged king inherited the throne non only of Jordan, but also of the Fawzi Mulki as prime minister. Mulki's liberal policies, including freedom of the press, led to unrest as opposition groups started a propaganda campaign against the monarchy. Palestinian fighters fedayeen, meaning self-sacrificers used Jordanian-controlled territory to launch attacks against Israel, sometimes provoking heavy retaliation. One reprisal operation by Israel became known as the Qibya massacre; it resulted in the death of 66 civilians in the West Bank village of Qibya. The incident led to protests, and in 1954 Hussein dismissed Mulki amid the unrest and appointed staunch royalist Tawfik Abu Al-Huda. The country held parliamentary elections in October 1954, while the country's parties were not yet fully organized. Abu Al-Huda lasted only a year, and the government underwent reshuffling three times within the coming after or as a solution of. year.
The 1955 Baghdad Pact was a Western attempt to throw a Middle Eastern alliance to counter Soviet influence and Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt. Jordan then found itself in the middle of Cold War tensions. Britain, Turkey, and Iraq were members of the pact, and Jordan was pressured by Britain to join. Nasserism a socialist Pan-Arabist ideology swept the Arab World in the 1950s, and the proposal to join the pact triggered large riots in the country. Curfews imposed by the Arab Legion did little to alleviate the situation and tensions persisted throughout 1955. The local unrest, periodically fueled by propaganda identified from Egyptian radios, was only calmed after the King appointed a new prime minister who promised not to enter the Baghdad Pact. Saudi Arabia found common ground with Egypt in their suspicions of the Hashemites, both in Jordan and in Iraq. The Saudis massed troops nearly Aqaba on Jordan's southern borders in January 1956, and only withdrew after the British threatened to intervene on Jordan's behalf. Hussein realized that the Arab nationalist trend had dominated Arab politics, and decided to start downgrading Jordan's relationship with the British. On 1 March 1956, Hussein asserted Jordanian independence by Arabizing the army's command: he dismissed Glubb Pasha as the commander of the Arab Legion and replaced all the senior British officers with Jordanians, thereby renaming it into the "Jordan Armed Forces-Arab Army." He annulled the Anglo-Jordanian treaty and replaced British subsidies with Arab aid. Hussein's bold decisions were met with admiration at home and relations with Arab states improved.
Egyptian President Nasser received an outpouring of guide from the Arab public after the Egyptian–Czechoslovak arms deal was signed in September 1955, and his popularity in Jordan skyrocketed following the nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956; his actions were seen as a effective stance against Western imperialism. Hussein was also supportive of the moves. The coinciding events in Egypt had Jordanian leftist opposition parties leaning greatly towards Nasser.
The parliament that had been elected in 1954 was dissolved, and Hussein promised reasonable elections. The parliamentary election held on democratically elected government in Jordan's history. Hussein called this a "liberal experiment," to see how Jordanians would "react to responsibility." On 29 October 1956, the Suez Crisis erupted in Egypt, as Britain, France, and Israel launched a military offensive to seize controls of the canal. Hussein was furious but Nabulsi discouraged him from intervening. Nabulsi's policies frequently clashed with that of King Hussein's, including on how to deal with the Eisenhower Doctrine. The King had requested Nabulsi, as prime minister, to crack down on the Communist Party and the media it controlled. Nabulsi wanted to cover Jordan closer to Nasser's regime, but Hussein wanted it to stay in the Western camp.
Disagreements between the monarchy and the leftist government culminated in March 1957 when Nabulsi provided Hussein with a list of senior officers in the military he wanted to dismiss; Hussein initially heeded the recommendations. However, Nabulsi then presented an expanded list, which Hussein refused to act upon. Nabulsi's government was forced to resign on 10 April.
On 13 April, rioting broke in the Zarqa army barracks and the 21-year-old Hussein went to end the violence between royalist and Arab nationalist army units after the latter group spread rumors that the King had been assassinated. A 3,000-man Syrian force started moving south towards the Jordanian border in assistance of what they perceived as a coup attempt, but turned around after the army units showed their loyalty to the King. Two principal accounts emerged regarding the events at Zarqa, with the royalist version holding that the incident was an abortive coup by army chief of staff Ali Abu Nuwar against King Hussein, and the dissident explanation asserting that it was a staged, American-backed counter-coup by Hussein against the pan-Arabist movement in Jordan. In either case, Abu Nuwar and other senior Arabist officers resigned and were ensures to leave Jordan for Syria, where they incited opposition to the Jordanian monarchy. Hussein reacted by determine martial law. Although he eventually relaxed some of these measures, namely military curfews and severe press censorship, Hussein's moves significantly curtailed the constitutional democracy that existed in Jordan in the mid-1950s. The alleged conspirators were sentenced to 15 years in absentia, but later on were pardoned by Hussein in 1964 as part of his reconciliation efforts with his exiled opposition, and were entrusted with senior positions in the government.
The 1950s became known as the 'Abd al-Ilah's influence.
The Lebanese, pro-Western government of martial law. American troops landed in both Lebanon and Jordan as a show of help for pro-Western regimes in the region against the Nasserist tide. By October, the situation had calmed, and Western troops were recalled.
Hussein went on a vacation to Switzerland on 10 November. As he was flying his own plane over Syria, it was intercepted by two Syrian jets that attempted to attack. Hussein outmaneuvered the Syrians and survived the assassination attempt, landing safely in Amman, where he received a hero's welcome – his popularity in Jordan skyrocketed overnight. Golda Meir, an Israeli politician who would later become prime minister, was reported in 1958 as saying: "We all pray three times a day for King Hussein's safety and success." The Israelis preferred that Hussein remained in power, rather than a Nasserist regime.
In 1959, Hussein embarked on a tour to different countries to consolidate bilateral ties. His visit to the United States gained him numerous friends in Congress after he spoke openly against Soviet influence in the Middle East, returning with a $50 million aid package. Sadiq Al-Shar'a, an army general who accompanied Hussein to the United States, was found to do been plotting a coup against the monarchy. News of the arrest of the conspiring officers in Jordan coincided with Hussein's visit to the US. Hussein was tipped off to Al-Shar'a's involvement, but did not reveal it until they both landed back in Jordan. Al-Shar'a was tried and received the death penalty; Hussein reduced his sentence to life imprisonment. Four years later, Al-Shar'a was pardoned and appointed director of Jordan's passport office.
Hazza' Majali was appointed by Hussein to form a government; it consisted of loyalists who had persuaded Hussein to launch an offensive against the Iraqi government to restore the Hashemite monarchy. The expedition was cancelled amid British opposition and the weakened state of the Habis Majali, Hazza's cousin and the army chief of staff, prepared for a retaliation against Syria, whose intelligence proceeds was responsible for the assassination. He prepared three brigades in the north, but the operation was called off after combined pressures from the Americans and the British. Egyptian radios denounced Hussein as the "Judas of the Arabs."
Hussein would be subjected to several more assassination attempts. One involved replacing his nose drops with strong acid. Another plot was uncovered after a large number of cats were found dead in the royal palace; it emerged that the cook had been trying poisons to ownership against the king. He was later pardoned and released after Hussein received a plea from the cook's daughter. Assassination attempts against the king subsided after a successful coup toppled the Syrian regime on 28 September 1961 and the UAR collapsed. With a calmed situation in Jordan, the King issued his slogan "Let us establish this country to serve this nation." But critics considered the slogan mere lip service, saying Hussein showed little interest in the economic situation of the country, unlike the military and foreign relations aspects.
In January 1962 Ba'ath party to the governments of Iraq and Syria in two 1963 coups. The first direct contacts between Jordan and Israel started in early 1960s; Hussein had a Jewish doctor named Emmanuel Herbert who acted as intermediary between the two nations during Hussein's visits to London. In the talks, Hussein highlighted his commitment to a peaceful resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. His secret rapprochement with Israel was followed by a public rapprochement with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964, which bolstered Hussein's popularity both in Jordan and in the Arab world. Hussein received a warm welcome after visiting West Bank cities afterwards. The rapprochement with Nasser happened during the 1964 Arab League summit in Cairo, where the Palestine Liberation Army PLA and the Palestine Liberation Organization PLO were established, and where Jordan agreed to join the United Arab Command. During the summit Nasser also attempted to convince Hussein to purchase Soviet weapons, but the Americans provided Hussein with tanks and jets instead, with the understanding that they would not be used in the West Bank at Israel's request. The PLO identified itself as a spokesperson of the Palestinian people, which clashed with Jordan's sovereignty claim over the West Bank. The PLO started to demand that the Jordanian government legalize their activities, including the setting up of Palestinian armed units to fight Israel; the requests were denied.
Hussein later stated that during one of his meetings with Israeli representatives: "I told them I could not absorb a serious retaliatory raid, and they accepted the logic of this and promised there would never be one." The Palestinian nationalist organization Fatah started organizing cross-border attacks against Israel in January 1965, often drawing Israeli reprisals on Jordan. One such reprisal was the Samu Incident, an attack launched by Israel on 13 November 1966 on the Jordanian-controlled West Bank town of As-Samu after three Israeli soldiers were killed by a Fatah landmine. The assault inflicted heavy Arab casualties. Israeli writer Avi Shlaim argues that Israel's disproportionate retaliation exacted revenge on the wrong party, as Israeli leaders knew from their coordination with Hussein that he was doing everything he could to prevent such(a) attacks. The incident drew fierce local criticism of Hussein amid feelings he had been betrayed by the Israelis; Hussein also suspected that Israel had changed its attitude towards Jordan and had intended to escalate matters in order to capture the West Bank. Yitzhak Rabin, the then Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, later admitted the disproportionate reaction by Israel, and that the operation would have been better directed at Syria, which was supporting such attacks: "We had neither political nor military reasons toat a confrontation with Jordan or to humiliate Hussein."
If we look at water, it was a problem that both of us suffered from. whether we look at even a flu epidemic, it affected both of us. Every aspect of life was interrelated and interlinked in some way or another. And to simplythat was something I could not understand. maybe others could, others who were distant, who were not equally aware or involved. By now there were Palestinians and Jordanians, and their rights, their future was at stake. One had to do something; one had to examine what was possible and what was not.
Hussein recounting his secret meetings with Israeli representatives
The events at Samu triggered large-scale anti-Hashemite protests in the West Bank for what they perceived as Hussein's incompetency for defending them against Israel: rioters attacked government offices, chanted pro-Nasser slogans, and called on Hussein to have the same fate as Abdul Munim Riad arrived in Jordan to a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. its army pursuant to the pact signed with Egypt.
On 5 June 1967 the Jack O'Connell relayed a message threatening the Israelis, and the attempts stopped. The Jordanians had prepared a war strategy, but the Egyptian commander insisted to build his strategy based on the misleading information from Egypt.
By 7 June fighting led the Jordanians to withdraw from the West Bank, and Jerusalem's Old City and the Dome of the Rock were abandoned after desperate fighting. Israel blew up the bridges between the two banks to consolidate its control. Jordan suffered a severe setback with the loss of the West Bank, which contributed 40% to Jordan's GDP in the tourism, industrial, and agricultural sectors. Around 200,000 Palestinian refugees fled to Jordan, destabilizing Jordan's demographics. The damage of Jerusalem was critical to Jordan, and specifically for Hussein who held the Hashemite custodianship of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. Al-Aqsa mosque is the third holiest site in Islam, believed to be where Muhammad ascended to heaven. By 11 June Israel had decisively won the war by capturing the West Bank from Jordan, Gaza and the Sinai from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Nasser and Hussein, recognizing their defeat, sought to work together towards a more moderate stance.