Book: Jordan King Warned Golda Meir
By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Wednesday, April 15, 1998; 12:44 p.m. EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) -- King Hussein of Jordan urged the
late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir shortly before
the 1973 Yom Kippur war to make a peace move toward
Egypt because his intelligence had found ominous
buildups along the Egyptian and Syrian borders, says a
new book.
While the king did not know the two Arab nations
planned to move against Israel 12 days later, his
report alarmed Mrs. Meir as they met secretly north of
Tel Aviv, says the book by Israel journalist Samuel
Segev. She immediately notified Moshe Dayan, her
defense minister, who ordered an emergency meeting of
the Israeli general staff.
A senior Army officer who was at the Sept. 25, 1973,
meeting with Mrs. Meir and the king suspected a
coordinated Egyptian-Syrian attack was possible, Segev
writes in ``Crossing the Jordan,'' to be published in
late April by St. Martin's Press.
But Gen. David Elazar, the chief of staff, and Gen. Eli
Zeira, the chief of military intelligence, saw nothing
new in the warning.
Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Oct. 6. Israel
defeated Syria while Egypt and Israel fought to a draw,
setting the stage for former Secretary of State Henry
A. Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy and eventual peace
treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.
Hussein had lost the West Bank and east Jerusalem in
the 1967 Mideast war. In the 1973 conflict, he sent an
armored brigade to assist Syria on the Golan Heights.
The Jordanian brigade lost 22 tanks, but Hussein
continued to send reinforcements.
Despite past wars with Israel and its support for
Syria, Segev writes that the king had a ``warm and
trustful'' relationship with Mrs. Meir and met with her
secretly several times. Once, in May 1973, the king's
helicopter landed at an airstrip north of Jerusalem,
and he then flew in an Israeli helicopter to Tel Aviv.
Mrs. Meir served him tea. ``I have never been served by
a prime minister,'' the king told her, Segev writes,
and Mrs. Meir replied instantly: ``And I have never had
the honor of serving a king.''
According to the book, Israel had saved the king's life
several times, warning him of assassination plots and
of military coups backed by Egypt and Syria. In
gratitude, Hussein assembled all living leaders of
Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence operation, and
their wives in a palace in Amman as his official guests
for two days in February 1995.
The gathering was organized by then-deputy Mossad chief
Ephraim Halevy, who last week was named the new chief
of the Israeli intelligence agency.
On another front, with Iraq, the book discloses that
retired Gen. Abraham Tamir, then director-general of
Israel's foreign ministry, met several times in 1985
and 1986 with Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz
and Nizar Hamdoon, then Iraq's ambassador to
Washington. The meetings occurred in Paris and Geneva.
The talks progressed to the point that in 1989, Iraq
suggested a meeting in Baghdad between Saddam Hussein
and Israel's then-defense minister Yitzhak Rabin. The
offer was made through an American banker, Robert
Abboud, and an Israeli businessman and former
intelligence official, Azriel Enav.
Rabin refused to travel to the Iraqi capital and
suggested instead a meeting in the United States,
Europe or Cairo, Egypt. While preparations were under
way, Rabin changed his mind because of a detailed
Mossad report about Iraqi plans to produce weapons of
mass destruction. Rabin suspected the meeting idea was
meant only to shield the Iraqi program.
Segev surmises that one of Saddam's motives for wanting
to meet with Rabin was to get U.S. economic assistance
after the devastation of Iraq's eight-year war with
Iran.
(c) Copyright 1998 The Associated Press
