Lion of Jordan by Avi Shlaim Read Free Book Online

refugees was set in motion. It was only after the collapse of Palestinian resistance that the neighbouring Arab states committed their own regular forces to the battle.
    King Abdullah’s hope was to effect a peaceful partition of Palestine between himself and the Jewish Agency, and to isolate his great rival, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian national movement. The political agendas of the two rivals were incompatible. The Mufti rejected categorically any idea of Jewish statehood and staked a claim to a unitary Arab state over the whole of Palestine. Abdullah was prepared to accommodate a Jewish state, provided it allowed him to make himself master of the Arab part of Palestine. The British secretly backed Abdullah’s bid to incorporate the Arab part of Palestine into his kingdom because he was their client, whereas the Mufti was a renegade who had supported Nazi Germany in the Second World War. In British eyes a Palestinian state was synonymous with a Mufti state. They thereforecolluded with Abdullah in aborting the birth of a Palestinian state but at the same time urged him not to cross the borders of the Jewish state as defined by the UN and to avoid a direct collision with the Jewish forces.
    Abdullah had a secret meeting with Golda Meyerson (later Meir) of the Jewish Agency in Naharayim, by the Jordan River, on 17 November 1947. Here they reached a preliminary agreement to coordinate their diplomatic and military strategies, to forestall the Mufti and to endeavour to prevent the other Arab states from intervening directly in Palestine. 22 Twelve days later, on 29 November, the United Nations pronounced its verdict in favour of dividing the area of the British mandate into two states. This made it possible to solidify the tentative understanding reached at Naharayim. In return for Abdullah’s promise not to enter the area assigned by the UN to the Jewish state, the Jewish Agency agreed to the annexation by Transjordan of most of the area earmarked for the Arab state. Precise borders were not drawn, and Jerusalem was not even discussed, as under the UN plan it was to remain a
corpus separatum
under international control.
    Abdullah’s hope of a peaceful partition was dashed by the escalation of fighting in Palestine. The collapse of Palestinian society and the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem generated intense popular pressure on the Arab governments, and especially that of Transjordan, to send their armies to Palestine to check the Jewish military offensive. Abdullah was unable to withstand this pressure. The flood of refugees reaching Transjordan pushed the Arab Legion towards greater participation in the affairs of Palestine. The tacit agreement that Abdullah had reached with the Jewish Agency enabled him to pose as the protector of the Arabs in Palestine, while keeping his army out of the areas that the UN had earmarked for the Jewish state. This balancing act, however, became increasingly difficult to maintain. Suspecting Abdullah of collaboration with the Zionists, the anti-Hashemite states in the Arab League began to lean towards intervention with regular armies in Palestine, if only to curb Abdullah’s territorial ambition and stall his bid for hegemony in the region. On 30 April 1948 the Political Committee of the Arab League decided that all the Arab states must prepare their armies for the invasion of Palestine on 15 May, the day after the expiry of the British mandate. Under pressure from Transjordan and Iraq, Abdullah was appointed as commander-in-chief of the invading forces. 23
    To the Jewish leaders it looked as if Abdullah was about to throw in his lot with the rest of the Arab world. So Golda Meir was sent on 10 May on a secret mission to Amman to warn the king against doing so. Abdullah looked depressed and nervous. Meir flatly rejected his offer of autonomy for the Jewish territories under his crown and insisted that they adhere to their original plan for an