From the desert he rose

摘要

Was King Hussein of Jordan a great man who, by dint of his remarkable personality, courage and far-sighted perseverance, played a critical part in nudging the Israelis and the Palestinians at least halfway towards the settlement they may one day reach? Or was he as much lucky as brave (he was known a little patronisingly in the region as the "PLK"-"plucky little king")? Was he a man who vacillated from crisis to crisis, buffeted by the ever-changing winds of global and regional politics but surviving against the odds by duplici-tously playing off all sides against each other and taking bids from whoever seemed to have the highest cards at the time—Russians and Americans, Arabs and Jews, Baathists and monarchists—while seeking merely to stay on his rickety and often irrelevant throne?