King Hussein, of Jordan, has told the Arab world, in a radio broadcast monitored here and reported today, that he is sorry the Arabs missed “the chance of a lifetime” to destroy Israel while the rest of the world was embroiled in the Cuban crisis.
Declaring that “many of us used to say that progress in the Palestine Question could not be made until a suitable situation arose, ” Hussein stated: “The suitable world situation came with this crisis. ” He blamed the tactics of Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser and other intra-Arab rivalries for missing this opportunity “to recover the right to our usurped land, ” and said Jordan “could have been the nation” to make such “recovery. “
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
