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During World War I the Arabs joined the British against the Ottomans. In a revolt of 1916, in which they were assisted by Colonel T.E. Lawrence, the Arabs severed the Hejaz Railway. In July 1917 the army of Prince Faisal ibn Hussein (of the Hashemite [or Hāshimī] dynasty) captured Al-ʿAqabah, and by October 1918 Amman and Damascus were in Allied hands. In 1920 the Conference of San Remo in Italy created two mandates: one, over Palestine, was given to Great Britain, and the other, over Syria, went to France. This act effectively separated the area now occupied by Israel and Jordan from that of Syria. In November 1920 Abdullah, Faisal’s brother, arrived in Maʿān (then part of the Hejaz) with 2,000 armed supporters intent on gathering together tribes to attack the French, who had forced Faisal to relinquish his newly founded kingdom in Syria. By April 1921, however, the British had decided that Abdullah would take over as ruler of what then became known as Transjordan.
Effectively, Turkish rule in Transjordan was simply replaced by British rule. The mandate, confirmed by the League of Nations in July 1922, gave the British virtually a free hand in administering the territory. However, in September, the establishment of “a Jewish national home” was explicitly excluded from the mandate’s clauses, and it was made clear that the area would also be closed to Jewish immigration. On May 25, 1923, the British recognized Transjordan’s independence under the rule of Emir Abdullah, but, as outlined in a treaty as well as the constitution in 1928, matters of finance, military, and foreign affairs would remain in the hands of a British “resident.” Full independence was finally achieved after World War II by a treaty concluded in London on March 22, 1946, and Abdullah subsequently proclaimed himself king. A new constitution was promulgated, and in 1949 the name of the state was changed to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Throughout the interwar years Abdullah had depended on British financial support. The British also assisted him in forming an elite force called the Arab Legion, comprising Bedouin troops but under the command of and trained by British officers, which was used to maintain and secure the allegiance of Abdullah’s Bedouin subjects. On May 15, 1948, the day after the Jewish Agency proclaimed the independent state of Israel and immediately following the British withdrawal from Palestine, Transjordan joined its Arab neighbors in the first Arab-Israeli war. The Arab Legion, commanded by Glubb Pasha (John [later Sir John] Bagot Glubb), and Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi troops entered Palestine. Abdullah’s primary purpose, which he had spelled out in secret discussions with Jewish envoys, was to extend his rule to include the area allotted to the Palestinian Arabs under the United Nations partition resolution of November 1947. Accordingly, he engaged his forces in the region of Palestine now popularly known as the West Bank (the area just west of the Jordan River) and expelled Jewish forces from East Jerusalem (the Old City). When the Jordan-Israel armistice was signed on April 3, 1949, the West Bank and East Jerusalem—an area of about 2,100 square miles (5,400 square km)—came under Jordanian rule, and almost half a million Palestinian Arabs joined the half million Transjordanians. One year later, Jordan formally annexed this territory. Israel and Britain had tacitly agreed to Abdullah keeping the area, but the Arab countries and most of the world opposed the king’s action; only Britain and Pakistan recognized the annexation. The incorporation into Jordan of the West Bank Palestinians and a large refugee population that was hostile to the Hashemite regime brought severe economic and political consequences. On the other hand, Abdullah gained such Muslim shrines as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem’s Old City, which compensated for his father’s loss of Mecca and Medina to Ibn Saud a generation earlier.
Abdullah was assassinated at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on July 20, 1951, by a young Palestinian frustrated by the king’s hostility toward Palestinian nationalism. In August 1952 the parliament declared Abdullah’s son and successor, Ṭalal, mentally unfit to rule, and he abdicated in favor of his eldest son, Hussein ibn Talal, who was crowned king on his 18th birthday, May 2, 1953.
Jordan under King Hussein
Securing the throne, 1953 to c. 1960
The history of Jordan after 1953 was largely shaped by King Hussein’s policies to secure his throne and to retain or regain the West Bank for the Hashemite dynasty. Jordan’s relationship with Israel in the first decade of the Jewish state’s existence was uneasy but tolerable, though bloody raids and acts of terrorism carried out by both sides added to the tension. Jordan’s involvement in the Palestinian question led as much to a contest with Egypt over Jordan’s future as it did to a struggle with Israel. In particular, it repeatedly forced Jordan to balance relations with and between various Arab nations, the Palestinians, and the West and Israel. Thus popular demonstrations, especially in the West Bank, and pressure from Egypt prevented Hussein in 1955 from signing the Baghdad Pact, a pro-Western mutual defense treaty that he had initiated between Great Britain, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. The next year Hussein—bowing to popular pressure and in a show of support for Egyptian efforts at pan-Arab leadership—dismissed his British advisers, including Glubb, and abrogated the Anglo-Jordanian treaty of 1946. However, when members of the National Guard, drawn mainly from the West Bank, attempted a coup in April 1957, the king, supported by loyal East Bank Bedouins, purged the legislature of Palestinian nationalists and extremists, banned political parties, and set up a royal dictatorship to curb domestic unrest.
After Egypt and Syria merged in February 1958 to form the United Arab Republic (UAR; 1958–61), King Faisal II persuaded Hussein, his cousin, to join in a federal union with Iraq. In July, however, Faisal and his family were killed in an army coup in Iraq led by Iraqi army officer ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qāsim.
Hussein, realizing his regime was under threat, turned to Great Britain and the United States for assistance. Washington agreed to provide additional military and economic aid. The British government, eager to see the pro-Western Hussein secure in Jordan, stationed British paratroops in the country until late 1958. As a result, anti-Hashemite Palestinians supported by Nasser made no further attempts to overthrow the monarchy. By the early 1960s the United States was providing Hussein with about $100 million annually, which stimulated economic development and, despite a number of assassination attempts, secured the king’s future.
The PLO and the June 1967 war
The emergence in the late 1960s of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the militant group Fatah represented a potential threat to Jordan’s sovereignty in the West Bank as well as to Israel. In early 1965, with the support of Egypt and the radical Baʿth Party government in Syria, Fatah began a series of Jordan-based raids against Israel that inflicted serious casualties and property damage. Israel retaliated by raiding the West Bank in an effort to deter these operations. Relations between Jordan and Syria and Egypt and between the Palestinians and Amman soon deteriorated. Hussein continued private talks with Israel over the internal and external dangers both countries faced. In late 1966 the Israeli army made a devastating raid into the West Bank village of Al-Samu south of Hebron. Hussein responded by attempting to stop the passage of Syrian-based Palestinian guerrillas coming through Jordan into Israel, and he eventually broke off diplomatic ties with Syria. However, as tension mounted between Israel and Egypt and Syria in the spring of 1967, Jordan reversed its position and signed a defense pact with Egypt and Syria. Israeli and Jordanian forces clashed in East Jerusalem, and in June 1967 Hussein joined Egypt and Syria in the third Arab-Israeli war.
The June 1967 war was a watershed in the modern history of Jordan. Within 48 hours Israeli forces had overrun the entire territory west of the Jordan River, capturing Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, Nāblus, Ramallah, Janīn, and the city of Jerusalem. Jordan suffered heavy casualties and lost one-third of its most fertile land; its already overburdened economy was then faced with supporting tens of thousands of new refugees. Hussein had regarded entering the war as the lesser of two evils: he believed that if he had not joined Egypt and Syria, they would have supported the Palestinians in overthrowing his regime. The loss of the West Bank and Jerusalem, devastating as it was, was preferable to the loss of his kingdom.