King Hussein (Jordan)

Hussein bin Talal was proclaimed King of Jordan on 11 August 1952, at sixteen, a year after he stood beside his grandfather, King Abdullah I, when Abdullah was assassinated at the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. For nineteen years Jordan held eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and Jews could not reach the Western Wall. On 30 May 1967 Hussein signed a defense pact with Nasser, and when war came his army opened fire on Jerusalem despite Israeli messages urging him to stay out; by 7 June he had lost the Old City and all the land west of the Jordan. In September 1970 he crushed the PLO's attempt to take over his kingdom.

Behind the hostility, Hussein met Israeli leaders in secret for decades. On 25 September 1973 he flew to Israel and warned Golda Meir that Syria was preparing for war, a warning not read as a sign of an imminent attack. In 1994 he made peace with Yitzhak Rabin, and in March 1997, after a Jordanian soldier murdered seven Israeli schoolgirls at Naharayim, he came to Beit Shemesh and knelt before their grieving families. He died on 7 February 1999.