King Hussein of Jordan: On A Knife Edge | Al Jazeera World

King Hussein of Jordan: On A Knife Edge is the second of a two-part series telling the story of Jordan's King from 1952 to his death in 1999.

The second half of King Hussein’s career, his relationship with Israel, the Palestinians, the Arab world and the West.

This two-part series is the story of Jordan's king from 1952 to 1999, a major political figure in the cauldron of the Middle East and one whose life and career were never far from a crisis, at home and abroad. Hussein was still only fifteen when his grandfather, King Abdullah I, was shot dead by a Palestinian gunman in July 1951 with the boy by his side at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

His critics described him as an artful opportunist, cynically shifting alliances with the sole aim of staying in power. An Israeli intelligence report once described him as a man trapped on a bridge-burning at both ends, spanning a crocodile-infested river.

He was certainly an arch politician who navigated the minefield of the Middle East all his political life but never lost faith in the peace process. In his last major TV interview he said he believed that peace would eventually be reached in the Arab-Israeli conflict although, of course, almost two decades later, that peace is still proving as elusive as ever.

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