Rule Marked by Battles, Yet He Fought for Peace

King Hussein, whose death from cancer at age 63 was announced Sunday, survived more than four decades of turbulent Middle East history to become a pivotal figure in the search for peace.

A lifelong champion of the Arab cause, the tenacious monarch of Jordan sent his troops into two wars with Israel against impossible odds yet in his last years became the Israelis’ most trusted ally in the Arab world and a crucial mediator attempting to build a lasting peace.

He transformed his tiny Bedouin kingdom into a modern nation while constantly battling to save his throne in the face of internal threats and the violent ambitions of Arab leaders in neighboring Iraq, Egypt and Syria.

Hussein was a darkly handsome teenager when he assumed the throne in 1952, not long after his grandfather was shot to death at his side in Jerusalem.

From a youth of fast cars, airplanes and discotheques, Hussein grew into one of the Arab world’s most influential leaders and became, despite his autocratic style, one of the first to introduce something close to multi-party democracy in a region of dictators and powerful emirs.

His regime survived threats from radical Arab nationalists in the 1950s, the traumatic loss of the West Bank and part of Jerusalem to Israel in 1967, a civil war with the Palestine Liberation Organization three years later and widespread violent riots in 1989.

His popularity with his people grew over the years and endured despite broad disappointment at the fruits of Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel. That peace did not bring the economic benefits that Jordanians had expected--and left them increasingly out of step with most of the Arab world.

Even Palestinian refugees and their descendants, who rebelled against the king in 1970, came to appreciate Hussein over time. He gave them sanctuary, opportunity and a passport in Jordan, and voluntarily relinquished his family’s claim to rule over the West Bank.

Palestinians in Jordan now make up more than half the kingdom’s population and essentially run the economy.

Earned Admiration of Many Israelis

Hussein’s special place in the hearts of Israelis was confirmed in 1995, when he traveled to Jerusalem and wept at the funeral of his slain friend and collaborator in the quest for Mideast peace, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 1997, when a deranged Jordanian soldier gunned down Israeli schoolchildren on a field trip to Jordan, the king went to the homes of the victims to apologize to and console their mothers and fathers.

In his later years, he shifted Jordan’s foreign policy into closer political and strategic alliance with the United States and worked behind the scenes to foster Arab-Israeli agreements and to prevent an open rupture in the peace process, despite his often obvious irritation with Israel’s hard-line prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

In the fall of 1998, Hussein was credited with helping to end an 18-month stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He rose from his sickbed at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he was receiving treatment for cancer, and joined marathon negotiations in Maryland with President Clinton. They persuaded Israeli and Palestinian leaders to sign the Wye River accord, which, at least temporarily, revived the trading of Israeli-held land to the Palestinians in exchange for measures against terrorism.

Hussein’s charmed reign was not without personal cost. He was the victim of several assassination attempts and efforts to overthrow his monarchy, often supported by neighboring Arab leaders who portrayed themselves as his friends.

He was wed four times. His marriages to Egyptian-born Sherifa Dina Abdel Hamid in 1955 and to Toni Avril Gardiner, the daughter of a British army officer, in 1961 ended in divorce. In 1972, he wed Alia Touqan, a Jordanian diplomat’s daughter, whose death in a 1977 helicopter crash preceded his marriage to his fourth wife, the American-born Lisa Halaby, now Queen Noor.

Candidly Discussed His Health Problems

Hussein battled cancer twice. In 1992, he underwent successful surgery to remove a cancerous kidney. And in July 1998, in a television broadcast that was memorable as a rare instance in which an Arab leader candidly discussed personal health problems, he revealed that he had received a diagnosis of lymphoma and would undergo several months of chemotherapy at the Mayo Clinic.

It was after his return to Jordan from that treatment in January that Hussein stunned his nation by abruptly removing his younger brother Hassan from the line of succession. Hassan, who had served as heir apparent for more than three decades, was replaced by Hussein’s eldest son, Abdullah, a politically inexperienced but capable army officer.

The king was motivated by a desire to be succeeded by his own children, but a letter he wrote announcing the decision lay bare a bitter family feud. It took pointed swipes at Hassan, accusing him of exceeding his authority during the months he had served as interim leader while Hussein underwent cancer treatment.

Many Jordanians believed that Hussein acted so hastily because he knew death was imminent. The cancer had recurred, and, hours after announcing the succession change, Hussein again set off for Minnesota to battle the disease.

Suffered Burden of Supporting Iraq

Known for years as a moderate friend of the West, the king suffered the wrath of his erstwhile backers for his support of Iraq, a crucial trading partner, in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The episode left the monarch a grayer, somewhat embittered man, though he had long made plain the burdens he bore as a leader.

“I seem to belong to a family which, according to the will of Allah, must suffer and make sacrifices for its country without end,” he said, his voice breaking with emotion, in an address to the nation after the disastrous Arab defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War.

On another occasion, he wrote: “I always felt as lonely as someone shipwrecked.”

Hussein ibn Talal al Hashem, heir to the historic Hashemite dynasty of western Arabia, which claims direct descendance from the prophet Muhammad, was born Nov. 14, 1935, in what was then the tiny, hilly desert town of Amman.

His great-grandfather Sherif Hussein--”the noble Hussein”-- had dreamed at the dawn of the century of a grand Arab nation running from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates.

But the Jordan that the sherif’s son Abdullah came to rule, one of the checkerboard Arab monarchies created by the British and French in the wake of World War I, ended up little more than a morsel of desert wedged between the state of Israel on one side and Iraq on the other. It was a geographic recipe for turbulence that would plague Jordan continually.

With Hussein’s grandfather King Abdullah on the throne in Amman and Abdullah’s brother Faisal reigning in Baghdad, Hussein was sent to school in Alexandria, Egypt.

At 16, Hussein returned to Amman and accompanied his grandfather to Friday prayers at Jerusalem’s famed Al Aqsa mosque when a hail of bullets rang out, fired by a disgruntled Palestinian. Abdullah was killed; Hussein escaped death when one of the bullets bounced off a military medal on his chest.

He was packed off to boarding school in Britain, in part because the increasingly aggressive regime of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was thought to have had a hand in Abdullah’s death.

Hussein’s father, Talal, took the throne, but advancing mental illness forced him to abdicate within a few months, and Hussein assumed the monarchy after a quick course at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, Britain’s West Point. He became Jordan’s ruler on Aug. 11, 1952, just a few months short of his 17th birthday, though he wasn’t crowned king until May 1953, after finishing at Sandhurst.

‘The Plucky Little King’

He became known early on as “the plucky little king”--testimony to his 5-foot-4 stature and independent mind. Three years after taking over the throne, Hussein--surrounded by growing Arab nationalist sentiment and criticized by Nasser as an “imperialist stooge”--fired Gen. John B. Glubb, the celebrated British officer who had turned Jordan’s Arab Legion into an effective fighting force.

A year later, he abrogated the Anglo-Jordan pact of 1948, a move viewed by Britain as an audacious piece of ingratitude but celebrated throughout the Arab world as an important declaration of independence.

But Nasser had set his sights on Hussein, and, about a decade later, the king barely weathered, with the aid of British paratroops, a Nasser-inspired coup. The Syrians, apparently aiming to force his abdication, that same year tried to force his plane to land in their capital, Damascus, menacing it with two MIG fighters all the way back into Jordan.

Hussein was reconciled with Nasser only shortly before June 1967, when, in the midst of a regional pan-Arab euphoria, Jordan was drawn into war against Israel.

The conflict was a six-day disaster that cost Jordan the entire West Bank of the Jordan River, which had been annexed to the kingdom by King Abdullah in 1950. It sent thousands more Palestinian refugees flooding into Jordan, swelling the refugee population to 2 million. “Our calamity is greater than anyone could have imagined,” a heartbroken Hussein said in an address to the nation after the war.

The homeless Palestinians proved to be nearly Hussein’s undoing. Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat was using Jordan as a base for launching military operations against Israel, drawing bloody reprisals that killed and injured Jordanian citizens, while PLO leaders ignored Jordanian sovereignty, setting up their own checkpoints within the country and clashing often with the Jordanian army.

The situation came to a boil when George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a wing of the PLO, hijacked three foreign airliners and, after releasing their passengers, blew the planes up at the Amman airport.

Troubles Mount; ‘Black September’

The month that became known as “Black September” began Sept. 17, 1970, when Hussein ordered the Jordanian army into Amman to root out, once and for all, the troublesome Palestinian fedayeen. What resulted was a prolonged civil war that solidified the opposition of surrounding Arab regimes, who purported to back the Palestinians.

Arafat summoned his central committee and called for the overthrow of “Hussein’s fascist government.” Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi called for immediate Arab assistance to the PLO. The Syrians joined the fray on Sept. 19, sending troops and armor across the border at Ar Ramtha; and Iraq fired on four Jordanian reconnaissance planes near the frontier.

The U.S. 6th Fleet moved into the Mediterranean, the Soviet Union began leaning heavily on its ally Syria to pull out, and the fedayeen gradually were driven out of the suburbs of Amman, allegedly after a series of massacres committed by Jordanian troops, although guerrillas remained entrenched in central Amman.

Arafat agreed to a cease-fire on Sept. 25, and an exhausted Hussein flew to Cairo two days later for a summit of Arab leaders, where details of a truce were worked out. Nasser, who had been given the task of ironing out the dispute and was seated at the center of the table, collapsed and died the day after the last summit guests flew home.

It wasn’t until the following summer, after more clashes, that the last of the Palestinian fighters left Amman and outlying areas; the payback came on Nov. 28, 1971, when Jordan’s prime minister, Wasfi Tal, was gunned down in front of a Cairo hotel by Palestinians who belonged to the new Black September organization, a group that was later responsible for the slayings of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

The four gunmen who killed Tal were allowed by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to fly to Damascus after four months in a Cairo jail. According to James Lunt, the king’s biographer, who recalled details of the civil war and its aftermath in his “Hussein of Jordan,” the king never forgave the injury.

In October 1973, Jordan again was plunged into conflict, this time with a lightning attack by Egypt and Syria on the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights--the fourth Arab-Israeli war. Jordan at first tried to stay out of the conflict, but it eventually sent its 3rd Armored Division and 40th Tank Brigade to aid a flagging Syria, to no avail. The war ended in a virtual stalemate, with Israel still holding territory it had seized in 1967.

During Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger’s round of shuttle diplomacy after the 1973 war, and in the years that followed, Hussein emerged as a central figure in efforts to broker a peace between Israel and the Arabs, urging the convening of an international peace conference and attempting to persuade the PLO to accept United Nations resolutions that recognized Israel’s right to exist.

Frustrated on most counts, Hussein again broke off relations with the PLO in 1986. Two years later, after mending fences once more, he stunned the world by announcing that he was breaking off all legal and administrative ties to the West Bank, in effect renouncing any claim to a key portion of his kingdom, now occupied by Israel, and leaving the PLO with all responsibility for the 850,000 Palestinians there.

A year later, in 1989, Hussein faced another challenge as widespread rioting followed a round of International Monetary Fund-sponsored price increases on basic commodities. The riots led to the resignation of Hussein’s prime minister, Zaid Rifai, and Jordan’s first elections in 22 years.

Arab World Divided Over Iraq, Kuwait

But perhaps the worst crisis of his reign came on the morning of Aug. 2, 1990, when neighboring Iraq invaded Kuwait. The result was a split in the Arab world, and Hussein, whose economic survival depended on Iraq and whose population was rallying warmly to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s Arab nationalist rhetoric, sided with Iraq.

After the invasion, Hussein pleaded for an Arab-negotiated resolution to the situation short of a war. He infuriated the Saudis by referring to himself by his great-grandfather’s title, sherif, a clear reference to his descent from the ruling tribe of Mecca and also, one might presume, to his authority over the Hijaz region that is now western Saudi Arabia.

The moves brought a furious response from old Gulf allies and the West, which cut off aid to Jordan and left it to fend for itself in handling the 300,000 Palestinians who came streaming home from jobs in the Gulf, driving up unemployment in Jordan to 30%.

As Hussein saw it even before the Iraqi invasion, the Middle East was headed for the same kind of catastrophe that occurred in 1967.

“The 1967 situation was a trap set by Israel into which the Arabs fell, and I’m afraid this situation is very similar,” he told the Wall Street Journal in June 1990, with a picture of Saddam Hussein hanging on the wall behind him. “Israel cannot continue to throw its weight around without response. The Arabs have taken all they can take.”

But the crisis clearly took its toll on the aging king. After the war, Hussein shocked the nation by revealing that he had contemplated abdicating.

As he did during previous times of crisis in his life, such as after the death of Queen Alia, he grew a beard. In the fall of 1991, just before Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s arrival to discuss another revived peace process, Hussein told the nation: “I am on the threshold of my autumn years of shouldering responsibility. . . .

“Recently, a question has been weighing heavily on me: Should I give in to the call within me to rest, which I badly need, or should I continue to maintain the trust you have placed with me? I have contemplated the question and thought of the difficult period our country is going through. I concluded that to think of doing so now is no more than an escape from duty.”

Most Indebted Country in World

With his kingdom more than $7 billion in debt--per capita, Jordan is the most indebted country in the world--Hussein managed to parlay his key role in the peace process into a restoration of U.S. aid and began to pare unemployment.

Legitimizing a role for Islamists who had been repressed throughout the rest of the Arab world, Hussein also began a democratization process that resulted in nearly a third of the parliament’s being taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1989; he moved after the elections, in 1992, to fully legalize a wide range of political parties.

“Arabs have to open up a path for their freedom, unity, independent will and new democratic systems,” the king said in announcing the political reform plan.

Arab leaders, he said, have two options: “A new strong order based on justice, freedom, democracy, forgiveness and tolerance that can ensure the protection for their land, resources and their dreams; or a regional order dependent on others that seeks to breach the Arab body, loot its resources and dominate its will.”

Despite the moves toward democracy, there was never a doubt in Jordan as to who was in charge. The king nimbly replaced prime ministers and entire Cabinets whenever he felt they had lost the confidence of the nation, and he would not hesitate to jail political opponents if he believed that they posed a threat to Jordan’s vaunted stability.

But, often as not, he would release them just as quickly, and he was known on occasion to drive his critics home from prison in his own car.

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Amman contributed to this report.