Israelis Grieve Over the ‘Death of a True Friend’

Leaders of the Jewish state and average Israelis alike responded to the death of Jordan’s King Hussein on Sunday with heartfelt grief, as if to the loss of a family member rather than an Arab leader.

Israeli radio played mourning songs traditionally broadcast during national tragedies, and state television followed events in neighboring Jordan minute by minute.

The Israeli Cabinet gathered in special session for a moment of silence to honor Hussein, and the government ordered Israel’s blue-and-white flag, with the Jewish Star of David, lowered to half-staff for the king’s Muslim funeral today.

President Ezer Weizman hailed the king as “one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century.”

“He was a courageous soldier in the army of peace,” Weizman said. “. . . The people of Israel are mourning today the death of a true friend.”

Certainly, Hussein was Israel’s best friend in the Arab world, a point driven home by the king’s own grief at the funeral of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and again in 1997 when he knelt before the family of a schoolgirl shot dead along with her classmates by a Jordanian soldier on the countries’ shared border.

Rivka Zipper was one of many government workers visibly shaken Sunday by the news from Jordan.

“I have only felt this way three times in my life: when my father died, when Rabin died and now,” she said.

Residents of the northern Israeli city of Haifa called a local television station in tears, speaking of their reverence for the king and their admiration for his commitment to peacemaking.

“I feel great sorrow and personal loss, even though I never met the king,” said Joseph Nevo, a Haifa University professor who was appearing on the station. “I watched him, as a student of history, for more than 30 years, and I respected him.”

Hussein’s friendship not only was dear to Israelis but gave them hope that they might one day have other such friends in the Arab world.

“Hussein symbolized the way things could be, and not the way they are,” explained Maariv newspaper columnist Hemi Shalev. “He was not one of our own in a national sense but in a family sense, someone most Israelis were born with, and he was portrayed for the last 30 years as a good member of the family.”

Hussein took power at the age of 16 when Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, was in office--and Dwight Eisenhower was elected president of the United States.

As early as the 1960s, the king and Israeli leaders traded secret visits across the border to discuss mutual interests and build a strategic alliance against common threats from countries such as Syria and Iraq.

Jordan joined other Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War against Israel, when Hussein was just 31 years old. But even then, Israelis regarded the king as different from their other adversaries in the conflict. Hussein’s soldiers have always been portrayed in Israel as worthy opponents who fought bravely from the still-preserved Jordanian bunker at Ammunition Hill, where the two sides battled for Jerusalem. Israel captured a large part of Hussein’s kingdom in that war.

During one of his secret visits to Israel in the 1970s, Hussein dressed in disguise so that he could tour downtown Tel Aviv by car--a story that became part of his folk image here.

Prime Minister Rabin signed a peace treaty with Hussein in 1994. The two became friends and allies in Rabin’s efforts to make peace with the Palestinians, which cost the prime minister his life.

More recently, Hussein preserved strong ties with Israel, but his personal relations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cooled over what he saw as Israel’s failure to advance the peace process with the Palestinians.

Still, Netanyahu on Sunday denied Israeli news reports that he would be unwelcome at Hussein’s funeral and announced that he will attend the worldwide tribute to the king who made peace with Israel accompanied by a delegation that cuts across Israel’s bitter political divide. Besides Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon and former Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Netanyahu said, the delegation will include some of his chief adversaries in the Labor Party: leader Ehud Barak, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Leah Rabin, the slain prime minister’s widow.

“On the personal level, there was no one more gracious, considerate and kind; no one more hospitable and generous; no one more capable of understanding and empathy,” Netanyahu said of Hussein.

Beyond the tributes, however, there was concern among Israelis that there be a smooth transition in Jordan from Hussein to the rule of his son, King Abdullah II, and that this pivotal country on Israel’s border remain stable.

Abdullah has promised to continue his father’s legacy, and the regional issues that made Jordan an ally of Israel remain. Israel Defense Forces chiefs, who enjoy good relations with their Jordanian counterparts, told Israeli reporters that they see no signs of instability next door.

Nonetheless, Israelis worry that sudden opposing winds in Jordan’s domestic politics could cause a reassessment of the bilateral relationship; they wonder how Abdullah would stand up to Arab pressures to distance himself from Israel.