Jordan's Palestinian Challenge, 1948-1983

A Political History

Clinton Bailey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367155230
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429709166
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Two-thirds of all Palestinians are Jordanian citizens living on the East and West Banks; a sizable number also reside and work in various parts of the Arabian Peninsula. With the questions of ultimate sovereignty over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip attracting much international attention since Israel's occupation of these areas in 1967, the solution to the Palestinian question is often seen as entirely dependent on Palestinian relations with Israel, despite the fact that only one-third of the Palestinians live in the occupied territories. In contrast, Palestinian relations with the Arab states, including Jordan, are generally portrayed as a sideshow to the main theater of conflict. This book examines the thirty-five-year struggle between the Hashimite monarchy and the forces of Palestinian nationalism over the future identity, and perhaps location, of those two-thirds of the Palestinian people who have been Jordanian subjects since 1948. Dr. Bailey bases his study on "open" sources: reports appearing in the Arab, Israeli, and world press, in addition to academic studies and published memoirs of persons involved in the events described, providing an accurate portrayal of the significant developments in Jordan's Palestinian challenge over the past thirty-five years.

One
Jordan, 1948–1967

Years of Instability, 1948–1961

During the thirteen years after it had annexed the West Bank, the monarchy in Jordan was constantly on the defensive, forever fighting for its life. This was a period of instability for the inexperienced and unconfident regime as it tried to contend with the bitterness of the defeated and displaced Palestinians, and with their hopes of replacing the monarchy with Nasserism. It was a period marked by frequent demonstrations and riots, as well as by the assassinations of King Abdallah (1951) and Prime Minister Hazza al-Majali (1960) and an attempted military coup d'état (1957).

The five years between the Palestine War, which ended in 1949, and the advent of Nasserism in 1954 were marked by the rise of a new Palestinian nationalist leadership that occupied itself with organizing a popular backing. Unlike the mufti of Jerusalem and his political associates of an older generation who had led the Palestinians to defeat and dispersion in 1948, the Palestinian leaders who emerged in the Jordanian context were young (in their twenties and thirties), Western educated, and modern in their thoughts on political organization and activity. Most of their political experience had been gained in the three years between the end of World War II and the outbreak of the Palestine War, when they were being groomed for future leadership by the veteran Palestinian politician, Musa al-Alami. Although their opportunity to lead the Palestinians in a Palestinian state was not realized by 1948, they were the only group available to provide effective nationalist leadership when they became subjects of the Hashimite kingdom of Jordan.¹¹ All the former Palestinian leaders had fled abroad with the mufti.

For the first three years (1949-1951), the new leaders collaborated closely. The main figures were those who had become influenced by the Ba'th party of Syria: Abdallah al-Rimawi of Ramallah, Kamal Nasir and Musa Nasir of Bir Zayt, and Bahjat Abu Gharbiyyah and Abdallah Na'was of Jerusalem. The similarity between Ba'thist ideas and those of their mentor, Musa al-Alami, concerning inter-Arab affairs, the need for reform in Arab society, and the role of the Arabs in international relations was striking.¹² In 1953, when the young Palestinian leadership split up into several distinct parties, these men formed the nucleus of a Jordanian Ba'th party.

Another group of young intellectuals, differentiated from the others by their origins in noted Palestinian families, joined together to form the National Socialist party, which had an extreme nationalist appeal but no social ideology. The leading figures in this group were Anwar and Rashad al-Khatib of Hebron and Hikmat al-Masri of Nablus. In order to compete with these latter on a personal and familial basis, other young notables—such as Qadri Tuqan and Abd al-Qadir al-Salih in Nablus and Rashad Maswadah in Hebron—formed the National Front party, which was distinctly leftist in orientation and tended to cooperate with the West Bank Communists. The Communists, who had already been organized during Mandate times, were led by Dr. Abd al-Majid Abu Hijlah of Nablus, Fa'iq al-Warad of Ramallah, and Dr. Ya'qub Ziya al-Din of Jerusalem. At the opposite end of the political spectrum, the Liberation party, a right-wing religious party, was founded by Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani of Jerusalem and Ahmad al-Da'ur of Tulkarm. Despite their breakup into separate parties, however, the new Palestinian nationalist leaders who emerged in Jordan revealed a high degree of cooperation in organizing political activities and of solidarity in coming to each other's defense when each group, in turn, came under pressure from the regime.

The new Palestinian leadership was ill-disposed toward the Jordanian regime from the very outset. During the Palestine War of 1948-1949, they were informed by the Jordanian governor of Jerusalem, Colonel Abdallah al-Tall, of King Abdallah's "treachery to the Palestine cause"— namely, his surrendering of the towns of Ramlah and Lydda, his abandonment of the Egyptian army trapped at Faluja, his cession to Israel of 400 square kilometers at the Rhodes Armistice Talks, and his personal meetings with Israeli leaders in order to discuss peace.¹³ It quickly became axiomatic to the young nationalists that they must strive to overthrow the regime if they were ever to get Jordan to play its role, as they saw it, in rectifying the situation in Palestine.

The ultimate goal in the Palestinian strategy that evolved was to effect the amalgamation of Jordan into a unified Arab state—usually comprising Egypt and Syria and, sometimes, Iraq. In Arab unity lay the Palestinians' grand hope for overcoming Israel. It was a lesson the nationalist leaders had learned from Musa al-Alami, who wrote: "The Arabs are stronger than the Jews if they unite and cooperate. . . . If the Arab armies had had a unified command during the Palestine War, they would have been able to collect their forces and aim them at the heart of the enemy in a powerful decisive blow. . . . The Arabs will not be strong until they are united. . . . Unity means freedom and independence."¹⁴

If Jordan were going to join such a union, however, the regime had to be toppled. It was obvious that the king of Jordan would not willingly forgo his rule for the sake of having Jordan join an Arab union that he was not to rule. To topple the regime, however, was all but impossible as long as Britain continued to underwrite the regime's existence with economic and military aid. As that aid, in turn, was conditional upon Jordan's army being under British officers, these officers—most notably General John Bagot Glubb, known as Glubb Pasha, who was the commander of Jordan's Arab Legion—had to be dismissed.

The only one of these goals that the Palestinian nationalists actually accomplished—the dismissal of Glubb and the British officers—was not achieved until 1956. Of course, the nationalists had not been inactive before then; foremost among their previous accomplishments was their success in thwarting all Jordanian attempts to come to terms with Israel's existence and the other results of the Palestine War. Not only did they expose various attempts to negotiate an actual peace treaty—attempts that were then quickly terminated—but they also kept the government in a state of constant embarrassment for having signed the Rhodes Armistice Agreements with Israel. The agreements required the government to cede 400 square kilometers of Arab-held land in the "Little Triangle" to the Jewish state and to maintain quiet along the Jordan-Israel border.¹⁵ Finally, the nationalist leadership succeeded in causing the Palestinian refugees to reject the idea of resettlement outside Israel.

The impeding of the regime's efforts to acquiesce to the Palestinian status quo was accomplished in several ways. The nationalists both publicized all government moves on the subject, either in the press or in parliamentary debates,¹⁶ and organized public demonstrations and disorders. These activities, in turn, resulted in the politicization of the Palestinian population, which greatly benefited the nationalists' cause. They succeeded in inculcating the Palestinians with the conviction that the continuation of the Jordanian regime was the chief reason for the prolongation of the Palestinian misfortune. At the same time they established, as axiomatic, that the ultimate responsibility for the Palestinian condition lay in Jordan's British connection. The British-commanded Arab Legion, they pointed out, restrained Arab operations against the Israelis across the border, and, when the Palestinians did manage to strike, the army did not protect the Palestinian border villages from Israels reprisals. The nationalists thus saw to it that every reprisal was followed by violent demonstrations and protests.

This politicization of the Palestinian people proved crucial to the nationalists in their tests of strength against the regime between 1954 and 1956. By then, the nationalists had developed an organization that they could wield effectively when greater opportunities for action arose, as happened in 1954. That was the year when Gamal Abdul Nasser came to power in Egypt and succeeded in negotiating the withdrawal of British forces from the Suez Canal Zone, thereby demonstrating his abilities as a leader who could attain what had previously been considered unattainable. Thus, when Arab unity—which the Palestinian nationalists considered a panacea—became a cornerstone of Nasser's foreign policy, Nasser became the Palestinians' natural ally. Similarly, as Nasser was interested in toppling British-backed Arab regimes, such as that in Jordan, the Palestinians became his natural allies.

Egyptian funds subsequently began to pour into the nationalists' coffers on the West Bank, together with directives for antiregime activity. At the same time, the Egyptians waged a vicious and intensive anti-Hashimite propaganda campaign over the radio, aimed at raising Palestinian hopes, on the one hand, and weakening the resolve of the regime and its supporters, on the other. Syria and Saudi Arabia, each separately at odds with the British over narrower issues, also produced funds for antimonarchist activities. It seemed as if the entire Arab world had turned against the inexperienced young King Hussein, who had ascended to the throne on May 2, 1953, at the age of eighteen.

The politicization of the Palestinians, focusing as it did on the role of Britain in the Palestinian misfortune, facilitated their recruitment in the campaign against Jordan's plans to join the British-sponsored Baghdad Pact in 1955. The Baghdad Pact, formed in February of that year, was a defense organization comprising Britain, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq. Arab nationalists everywhere, and in Egypt in particular, opposed the pact. Nasser not only viewed with disfavor the further entrenchment of British influence in the Middle East, which Britain's sponsorship of and membership in the pact was sure to afford, but he was also displeased with the increased prestige and power that membership in the pact would confer on Egypt's greatest traditional rival, Iraq.

From the outset, Egypt had waged an intensive campaign against Iraq's plans to join the pact, but had failed. Its efforts to prevent Syria from joining, however, were crowned with success;¹⁷ now, strengthened by Nasser's ever-growing prestige, due to his weapons deal with the Soviet Union and his prominence at the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, Egypt embarked on a campaign to keep Jordan out of the pact.

In December 1955, when Jordan was expected to reply to an invitation to join the pact, Nasser's campaign began in earnest. Attacks on the regime, broadcast from Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, branded adherence to the Baghdad Pact as treason to the Palestinian cause. Anwar al-Sadat, then a member of the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council, was sent to Amman where he personally intimidated cabinet members, while over £60,000 ($144,000) were sent into the country to finance riots and disorders. The Egyptian success was overwhelming. Violent demonstrations broke out in Amman and in all the major towns of the West Bank. The French and Turkish consulates in Jerusalem were blown up, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) offices were destroyed, and even the experimental farm of Musa al-Alami, near Jericho, was destroyed. After three cabinets fell within twenty-three days, the regime backed down. It was not to join the Baghdad Pact.

Young King Hussein was bewildered and in despair. The British connection, upon which the survival of the monarchy had always depended, not only proved unable to help him now but might indeed have led to his removal from the throne. Without knowing exactly what results to expect, the king realized that he must sever Jordan's identification with England. Therefore, on the heels of the Baghdad Pact affair, when the victory-flushed nationalists began to demand the dismissal of the Legion's English officers, Hussein felt constrained to comply. On March 1, 1956, Glubb Pasha, who had spent twenty-six years in Jordan, left on twenty-four hours' notice. The first strategic goal of the Palestinian nationalists had finally been achieved, and control of the Legion fell into the hands of a group of young pro-Nasser officers led by Ali Abu Nuwwar, who, although an East Banker, had always been very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.¹⁸

Events then moved quickly, in keeping with the Palestinian strategy. With the Arab Legion now in sympathetic hands, the nationalists demanded the dissolution of the existing Chamber of Deputies—namely, the lower house of Jordan's parliament, which had been packed with supporters of the regime—and called for free elections. These elections, held in June 1956, returned an overwhelming antiregime majority of representatives who formed a "national" government under the premiership of Sulayman al-Nabulsi, an antiregime politician from the East Bank town of Salt. Serving prominently in Nabulsi's cabinet were five members of his own National Socialist party, a member of the Ba'th party (Abdallah al-Rimawi, as minister of state for foreign affairs), and a member of the extreme leftist National Front (Abd al-Qadir al-Salih).

One of Nabulsi's first acts was to abrogate the treaty with Great Britain under which that country had subsidized Jordan. In its stead an agreement was reached with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, whereby they would provide the £12,500,000 ($30 million) per year that Britain had been paying. The Palestinian nationalists considered this an important achievement. If England had been able to dictate Jordanian policies in the past, these would now be determined by Arab nationalist subsidizers.

Other popular steps were taken in the direction of the much-coveted idea of Arab unity. In October 1956, Jordan signed an agreement providing for the unification of the Jordanian, Egyptian, and Syrian military commands in the event of a war with Israel. In March 1957, a further agreement was signed with Egypt and Syria. This was a cultural agreement providing for a unified curriculum for the schools of the three countries "in order to form an Arab generation believing in the Arab motherland." To many Palestinians, complete Arab unity seemed just around the corner.

In a last-ditch effort to check this march of events, King Hussein, reportedly encouraged by the United States,¹⁹ confronted Nabulsi on his ostensible drift toward communism...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• INTRODUCTION: THE HASHIMITE-PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE
• 1 JORDAN, 1948-1967
• 2 AFTER THE SIX-DAY WAR
• 3 THE EXPULSION OF THE PLO
• 4 IN THE WAKE OF THE 1973 WAR
• 5 AFTER THE SADAT PEACE INITIATIVE
• 6 IN THE WAKE OF THE LEBANON WAR: THE REAGAN PROPOSALS
• CONCLUSIONS: LEGITIMACY ABOVE ALL ELSE
• Index