Lion of Jordan (6 page)

The borders of the new principality did not correspond to any particular historic, cultural or geographical unit. Bounded by the valley of the Yarmouk on the north, by the Arabian Desert on the east, by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea and Wadi Araba on the west, it had no outlet to the sea until Abdullah grabbed Ma'an and Aqaba from the expiring Kingdom of the Hijaz. Effectively, Transjordan was a strip of cultivable land 270 kilometres long with a width tapering from 80 kilometres in the north to almost nothing in the south, and flanked by a great deal of desert; it possessed some 230,000 inhabitants, one railway line and hardly any roads, no industrial resources and no revenue except
for a modest British subsidy. The capital and largest town of this backward amirate was Amman – a drab and dusty place that could not even boast a glorious past. It was perhaps not altogether inappropriate that such a place should serve as the capital of this provincial backwater. And it was in a modest palace on the eastern hill overlooking Amman that Amir Abdullah settled down, ‘loyally and comfortably', as Churchill had hoped, with two official wives and a beautiful concubine.

But Transjordan was a very insubstantial principality for so ambitious a prince. The contrast between the barren and insignificant patch of territory assigned to him to administer on behalf of the British mandatory power and Abdullah's own heart's desire could hardly have been greater. Proud of his provenance, he was moved by an unshakeable faith that the true destiny of the Arabs lay in unity under Hashemite rule. From his father, Abdullah inherited the belief in Arab greatness, the yearning to revive the glories of the Islamic past and the vision of a mighty Hashemite empire and caliphate. But he did not inherit either the sanctimonious self-righteousness or the quixotic obstinacy that had brought his father's kingdom crashing down in flames.

Among Arab politicians Abdullah was never a popular or trusted figure. In his own way he was an ardent Arab nationalist, but the authoritarianism that marked his approach to the affairs of state and the confidence he exuded of being marked out by destiny to lead the Arab world to independence did not endear him to other Arabs, especially when they happened to be fellow kings or rulers in their own right.

Given his pride in his heritage, the faith that he himself was destined to play a commanding role, his penchant for playing for high stakes and the vaulting ambition he had nursed since his youth, it was inevitable that Abdullah would regard Transjordan as only the beginning, not the end, of his political career. ‘Much too big a cock for so small a dunghill,' was Lord Curzon's comment on Abdullah in September 1921. Another contemporary described him as ‘a falcon trapped in a canary's cage, longing to break out, to realize his dreams and passions of being a great Arab leader; but there he was, pinned up in the cage of Transjordan by the British.' Abdullah spent the rest of his life in a sustained attempt to project his political presence and influence beyond the borders of Transjordan. Behind this attempt lay not merely a personal sense of destiny and grievance but a statesmanlike appreciation that Transjordan needed a regional role if it was ever to become independent of Britain.

To this end Abdullah looked in all directions, but his greatest ambition was Greater Syria – Syria in its historical, or ‘natural', dimensions, encompassing Palestine, Transjordan and Lebanon. Abdullah aspired to realize this vision of Greater Syria with its capital in Damascus, the hereditary seat of the Umayyad caliphate, and with himself as king and overlord. He consistently maintained that Transjordan was only the southern part of Syria, and that his presence there was just a prelude to the attainment of complete Arab liberation, in the pursuit of which his family had sacrificed the Hijaz. The motto he adopted was: ‘All Syria to come under the leadership of a scion of the House of Hashem; Transjordan was the first step.' The cherished notion of a great Arab empire that eluded the father would thus be realized by the son.

In the early years of Abdullah's rule, frustrated Syrian nationalists and enemies of the French mandate descended on Amman in droves. Some found their way into Abdullah's embryonic administration, while others, more militant and bent on pursuing their struggle against the French, even mounted raids across the border. With Faisal keeping a low profile in Baghdad, and Hussein fighting a rearguard battle until 1924 in his remote corner of Arabia, Abdullah emerged as a leading champion of Arab unity, and Amman became a focal point for Arab nationalist politics. But the initial euphoria evaporated rapidly, and with the passage of time the gulf between his idea of Arab unity – based on Islam, autocracy and the preservation of the old social order – and the younger nationalists' conception of unity – based on attaining liberation from foreign rule, and freedom and social reform at home – grew wider and resulted in mutual disenchantment.

Abdullah's tendency to assume that what was good for the Hashemites was good for the Arabs did not gain him many friends abroad. He began to focus more narrowly on his dynastic and personal interests at the expense of the broader political ideals. After the loss of the Hijaz to Ibn Saud and the expansion of his domain down to the Gulf of Aqaba, Abdullah settled down patiently to await opportunities for promoting his Greater Syria scheme. This was modified following the death in 1933 of his brother Faisal. From that point on he was to toy with various ideas for merging Iraq with Greater Syria, possibly in a federation of the Fertile Crescent of which he, as the oldest member of the Hashemite family and the only surviving leader of the Arab Revolt, would be the natural ruler.

Abdullah worked industriously, if rather fitfully, to propagate the idea of Greater Syria, always harking back to Faisal's lost kingdom, which should revert to him, just as Faisal's lineal heirs should succeed to the throne of Iraq. He assiduously cultivated a following in Syria itself and managed to enlist the support of some of the conservative elements there: the Ulama (religious scholars), the small landlords and the tribal shaikhs scattered around the country. Among Abdullah's most prominent supporters were Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, the nationalist politician, and Sultan al-Atrash, the Druze leader from Jabal al-Druze in south-eastern Syria. (The Druze are an Arabic-speaking national–religious minority in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Their sect is a branch of Shia Islam whose origins go back to the eleventh century.)

A not insignificant number of Syrians retained their monarchist sentiments, and after Faisal's death in 1933 pinned their hopes on his aspiring older brother. But as long as the French remained in Syria and Lebanon, Abdullah had little chance of success, for the French regarded the Greater Syria movement as an unwitting stalking horse, and Abdullah as a direct instrument of sinister British plots to undermine their own position in the area. In actual fact the British had never encouraged Abdullah to pursue his claims to Greater Syria; after the departure of the French in 1946, when Abdullah's expansionist plans were directed perforce against his Arab neighbours, they actively tried to discourage him. In March 1946, under the terms of a new treaty, Britain granted Transjordan formal independence; Abdullah assumed the title of ‘king', and the name of the country was changed from the Amirate of Transjordan to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Formal independence, however, was not matched by real independence.

Caught up in Great Power rivalries and in the cut and thrust of inter-Arab politics, the Greater Syria scheme ran for decades as a leitmotif in the affairs of the Middle East, provoking suspicion, antagonism and outright hostility towards Abdullah. Attack on it came from every corner of the Arab world. The Lebanese emphatically refused to become absorbed in a unitary Muslim state. The republicans in Syria, who had struggled for so long to achieve independence from the Ottomans and the French, were not about to surrender their hard-won gains by turning their country over to Hashemite rule. They also felt that if there were to be a Greater Syria, they were better equipped to lead it than the upstart from the Hijaz, and that its core and political centre of gravity should
be Syria itself rather than backward Transjordan. Syria, after all, believed itself to be the beating heart of Arab nationalism. The Hashemites of Iraq and the nationalist politicians around them thought that their country was the natural leader of the Arab world; they devised their own plans for a federation under their leadership and gave Abdullah little support. The Saudis naturally opposed any plan that might strengthen the Hashemites and were determined not to let Abdullah extend his power outside Transjordan, lest he be tempted to try to reconquer the Hijaz. The Egyptians added their opposition to the concept of a Greater Syria, seeing the Hashemite bloc as the principal rival for their own hegemony in the Arab world. By trying to impose himself as the champion of Arab unity, Abdullah thus ended up antagonizing the majority of Arab nationalists both inside and outside the boundaries of Greater Syria. The nationalists came to see him as the lackey and tool of British imperialism in the Middle East; they perceived his expansionist plans as a threat to the independence of the other Arab states in the region; and they were critical of his accommodating attitude towards Zionism and the Jews in Palestine.

Without abandoning his larger goal, from the late 1930s onwards Abdullah gradually began to turn his thoughts and energy to Palestine. Palestine was only one of the four parts into which ‘natural Syria' had been divided, and a small one at that. But for Abdullah it had importance out of all proportion to its small size. To want to rule over Palestine was not for him a vacuous ambition, nor was it an accident that at the very first meeting with Churchill he asked to be entrusted with its administration. Transjordan and Palestine were bound together by a complex network of political and family ties, trade relations and routes of communication stretching back to the very distant past. Transjordan needed the capital, the markets, the trained manpower and an outlet to the Mediterranean Sea that only Palestine could provide.

This unity was severed by the British decision in 1922 to exclude Transjordan from the area available to the Jewish national home. Imperial self-interest, rather than respect for the rights of the local communities, lay behind this decision. Geopolitics and grand strategy were the controlling considerations in separating Transjordan from western Palestine. Transjordan was needed as a buffer in the south between Saudi Arabia on the one hand and Egypt and Palestine on the other; it could also serve as a buffer to contain France in the north. Both
Ottoman and Faisali Syria had extended down to Transjordan. Now a sharper line was drawn between the British and the French spheres of interest in the Levant.

The internal division of the Palestine mandate met with both strong Zionist opposition and resentment from Abdullah. True, Abdullah had formally recognized the British mandate over the whole of Palestine and the Balfour Declaration – something his father had resisted to the bitter end – but he felt that he had had no real choice in the matter. To Abdullah's way of thinking, gaining control over Palestine thus represented both an important end in itself and a possible means to a still larger long-term objective. The British attitude, here as always, was an important factor in Abdullah's calculations. He believed that the British would not look with the same disfavour on his plans for Palestine as they had always displayed towards his Greater Syria scheme. The other two elements that had to be taken into consideration were the Palestine Arabs and the Jews. Accordingly, Abdullah's policy for furthering his design on Palestine operated in three distinct but overlapping circles: the British; the Palestine Arabs; and the Jews. In all three, he used the same method – personal diplomacy.

Of all the political friendships cultivated by Abdullah, the most controversial, the least well understood by fellow Arabs and the most damaging to his reputation was his friendship with the Zionists. No other aspect of his policy provoked such intense suspicion, stirred such strong passions or brought him so much opprobrium. Abdullah's motives for seeking such an understanding were indeed complex, but they can be reduced to two basic and seemingly inconsistent factors: his fear of Zionism and his perception of the opportunity it offered him to realize his own goals in Palestine.

Abdullah may not have fully understood the ideas that propelled the Zionists to strive so relentlessly for a state of their own, but he recognized a going concern when he saw one. A newcomer though he was to the affairs of Palestine, he read the situation of the Jews there, and the politics of his Arab kinsmen, with remarkable clarity. Whereas the latter indulged in facile optimism and hopes of an easy victory until overtaken by the disaster of 1948, he never underestimated the power, skill and commitment that activated Jewish nationalism in Palestine. Realizing that Zionism could not be destroyed or ignored, his strategy was attuned to circumventing it and preventing a head-on collision. But he was also
shrewd enough to see at an early stage that Zionism's force, if rightly channelled, could turn out to be not a barrier but a help in fulfilling his ambition of a Greater Transjordan: Jewish enmity could only weaken his chances of being accepted by the world as the ruler of Palestine, but Jewish acquiescence, especially if it could be purchased at the price of autonomy under his rule, might pave the way to a Greater Transjordan, incorporating part, or possibly all, of the Holy Land.

In his personal dealings with the Zionists, Abdullah was not hampered by any racist prejudice. Hatred of the Jews did not burn in his heart, and he stood above the fanatic anti-Jewish prejudices harboured by some Arabs. His unbiased and pragmatic attitude towards the Jews, while not unique, did stand in marked contrast to the anti-Semitism of the majority of Arabs. Respect for the Jews, the People of the Book, was in fact for the Hashemites a family tradition, consistent with the teachings of the Koran. Abdullah's father refused to condone the Balfour Declaration not out of blind anti-Zionism but because it did not safeguard the civil and religious rights of the Arabs, and disregarded what he perceived as their inalienable political and economic rights in Palestine. He was not opposed to letting the Jews live in peace beside Muslims in the Holy Land on the clear understanding that all the legitimate rights of the Muslims would be respected.