Mideast Has Lost a Statesman

With the death of Jordan’s King Hussein on Sunday the Middle East has lost its longest-serving national leader and one of its few statesmen, and the United States has lost a close if sometimes errant friend.

With his hand on the Koran, Abdullah, Hussein’s eldest son, became the new monarch. President Clinton praised Hussein as a leader “on a higher plane” and made preparations to attend the funeral.

Hussein came to the throne in 1953, an 18-year-old suddenly given full monarchal powers when his father was judged to be mentally incompetent. The first two decades of what would stretch out to be 46 years as ruler found Hussein surmounting repeated crises. He was the intended victim of up to a dozen assassination attempts, nearly all of them plotted by other Arab rulers. His kingdom was diminished by loss of the West Bank after he joined Egypt and Syria in the 1967 war against Israel. In 1970 he survived a coup attempt by Palestinians. And in 1990, in a rare failure of nerve, he foolishly sided with Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait, a decision apparently prompted by fear that to do otherwise could make Jordan next on Saddam Hussein’s hit list. Within a short time he moved firmly back into the pro-Western camp.

In 1994 Hussein made peace with Israel, calling it “the fulfillment of a dream.” From the 1950s on, the king had secretly met with nearly every Israeli leader to try to reduce tensions and seek common ground. The leading moderate among Arab leaders, Hussein had a vision of Israeli-Arab cooperation as a way to bring greater stability and prosperity to a region urgently in need of both.

If Jordan’s new king has anything like the courage and political acumen of his father, the country should be in sound hands. King Hussein was a very special figure in the Middle East--as one U.S. official put it, “The symbol of decency in a region filled with vipers.” His death is being mourned on both sides of the Jordan River and far beyond.