Ex-king Hussein Dead: Brought for Burial to Jerusalem

Ex-King Hussein, the central figure in the Pan-Arab movement of some years back, which sought to include Palestine in a confederation of Arab States under his rule, and in many long-drawn discussions in Parliament and elsewhere as to the exact nature of the promises made to him in the MacMahon Correspondence, which brought the Arabs into the war on the British side, died at dawn to-day, at Amman, the capital of Transjordan, where he had been living for the last few months with his son, the Emir Abdullah. He was 81 years of age. The burial will be in Jerusalem, in the Mosque of Omar, where Mohammed Ali, the Indian Moslem leader, was buried recently. The funeral cortege is expected to arrive in Jerusalem at mid-day to-day.

Three of the ex-King’s four sons were present at the bedside when he died, the Emir Abdullah of Transjordan, ex-King Ali of the Hedjaz, and the Emir Zeid. The fourth son, King Feisul of Iraq, came to Amman, but had to return yesterday to his capital, Baghdad.

Last November, a report arrived from Cyprus, where the ex-King Hussein was then living in exile, that he had died there, but it was soon after made clear that the report was premature, although he was critically ill, He rallied and after his recovery was given permission to reside in Amman with his son, the Emir Abdullah. Last week he was again reported seriously ill and on Tuesday he became unconscious and it was announced that there was no hope.

In 1924, after the Turkish Republic abolished the Caliphate, King Hussein, as he was then, was proclaimed Caliph by the Moslems of Hedjaz, Iraq, Transjordan and Palestine. For a short while, he was the outstanding figure in the Arab world. When he paid a visit to Transjordan, where one of his sons, the Emir Abdullah, is ruler, crowds thronged from Palestine and other countries to pay homage to him, and a Jewish delegation from Palestine also went to Amman, the capital of Transjordan, to present to him an address, “to offer your Majesry our respectful greetings, and to express the belief that the two great Semitic peoples united of yore by the bonds of common creative civilisation, will not fail in the hour of their national regeneration to apprehend the need of combining their vital interests in common endeavour”, and “to bring to your Majesty’s notice the indisputable fact that Palestine occupies a unique position in the hearts of the Jewish people, by virtue of historical association; of the love of the Jewish people for the land and their will to rebuild it; of their work in the country, and now also by virtue of international recognition. We believe, moreover, that the national harmony and concord with the Arabs in Palestine will prove a valuable factor in the general restoration of the ancient prosperity of the neighbouring lands”.

At the time of his deposition, after his defeat by the Sultan Ibn Saud of the Nejd, who is now King of the Hedjaz, King Hussein was still engaged in wrangling with the British Government over the terms of an Anglo-Hedjaz Treaty which he refused to sign unless it included the recognition of Palestine as one of the Arab countries.

Hassan Sidki el Dajani, a leading Palestine Arab, published about that time an article in the Palestine Arab paper “Meraat el Shark”, on the differences in the validity between the Balfour Declaration and the British pledges to King Hussein. “When the Jews obtained the Balfour Declaration,” he wrote, “they did not put all their confidence in it. They made every effort to obtain confirmation of the Declaration by the great Powers-France, the United States and Italy. After the conclusion of the war they made every effort to get the Balfour Declaration incorporated in the Mandate and they secured its ratification by the League of Nations. In the case of our Arab pledges, however, we have nothing more than letters which have passed between King Hussein and General MacMahon, and these have not any official significance.”

The MacMahon correspondence has nevertheless continued to be brought up, even since King Hussein’s deposition, figuring several times before the Shaw Enquiry Commission and in discussions in Parliament. Mr. Seymour Cocks, a Labour member, brought it up recently in the Palestine debate last November, contending that Sir Henry MacMahon, then High Commissioner for Egypt, had made prior promises to the Arabs with regard to Palestine before the issue of the Balfour Declaration. In May 1930, he raised a debate in Palestine on this question, urging the Government to publish the full MacMahon correspondence.

Dr. Drummond Shiels repeated the statement made by successive Governments on this point that “it is inadvisable to publish the text of the correspondence”. Mr. Winston Churchill, when he was Secretary for the Colonies, speaking in a debate on the subject in the House of Commons in 1922, declared that “the Government has always regarded Palestine as excluded from the scope of their undertaking”.

When King Hussein was driven from his country by Ibn Saud, questions were asked in Parliament whether Britain would not take action on his behalf. The Government stated that there was no intention of taking any such action, and afterwards, when King Hussein made a personal appeal to Mr. Baldwin, then Prime Minister, Mr. Baldwin replied that it was a matter in which the British Government were not concerned either directly or indirectly. The British Government, he said, had asked the Sultan Ibn Saud whether he would accept their good offices in an endeavour to reach a settlement of their good offices in an endeavour to reach a settlement of the differences, but as he replied that he was unable to accept such mediation, His Majesty’s Government were regretfully compelled to refrain from any further attempt at intervention.

Mr. Baldwin took occasion at the same time to draw attention to reports appearing in the Egyptian press that King Hussein was being detained in Cyprus as a prisoner of war. These reports are untrue, he declared, and it has never been the intention of the Government that His Majesty should be treated in any way other than as a private person who, on their invitation, took up his residence in Cyprus.

At the time of the August disturbances in Palestine, the Ex-King Hussein made a statement through Hassan Sidki el Dajani, who had previously spoken in the “Meraat el Shark” of the MacMahon correspondence as having no official significance, and who had just been visiting him in Cyprus, in which he bewailed the misfortunes in Palestine and recalled that “but for my intervention on behalf of Palestine I should not have been a miserable exile now”.

It was stated a few months ago that the ex-King Hussein has recently been engaged in writing a history of the Arab revolt against Turkey during the war, which led to the establishment of the Hedjaz.