Lion of Jordan (7 page)

Abdullah was not the first member of his family to hold exploratory talks with Zionist leaders. In January 1919 his brother Faisal initialled an agreement with the moderate Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, one he was unable to ratify because of the strength of Arab opposition. Soon afte he got his principality, Abdullah embarked on a tangled relationship with the Zionists that was to last until the end of his life. To his early contacts with the Zionists Abdullah brought the self-confidence and flexibility in dealing with minorities that he had acquired under the Ottoman regime. His view of the Jews as fabulously wealthy and skilled in the ways of the modern world also went back to his time in Istanbul, where he had first met Jewish physicians, merchants and financiers. The Zionist leaders for their part could not fail to be impressed by the moderation and pragmatism of their new neighbour to the east, and their policy in consequence acquired a pro-Hashemite orientation at a very early stage.

The first meeting between Abdullah and Weizmann took place in London in 1922. Abdullah offered to support the Balfour Declaration
if the Zionists accepted him as the ruler of Palestine and used their influence with the British authorities to procure this appointment for him. The offer was politely brushed aside, but the traffic between the Zionists and the amir had begun. The basic solution, which Abdullah advanced at different times and in ever-changing forms, was a ‘Semitic kingdom' embracing both Palestine and Transjordan, in which Arabs and Jews could live as of right and as equals, with himself as their hereditary monarch. It is worth noting that none of these forms allowed for Jews living abroad to have an automatic right to come to Palestine: immigration controls of some sort were to be imposed to ensure Arab preponderance and to keep the Jews to a minority status in this ‘Semitic kingdom'.

There was never any chance of Abdullah's offer of autonomy within a larger kingdom being acceptable to the official leadership of the Yishuv, the pre-independence Jewish community in Palestine. The official leaders of the Zionist movement aspired to an independent Jewish state, and the offer of a limited autonomy under Arab rule fell far short of their expectations and was indeed incompatible with the basic goal of their movement. They wanted good relations with Abdullah, but they had no wish to be his subjects. This was the view of the Labour Zionists who dominated the political institutions of the Yishuv; further to the right were Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Revisionist Zionists, who not only spurned any idea of subservience to an Arab ruler but were never reconciled to the partition of mandatory Palestine and continued to include the East Bank of the Jordan in their ambitious blueprint for a Jewish state.

Abdullah's contacts with the mainstream Zionists continued almost without a break until his death in July 1951.
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They assumed particular importance during the critical phase in the struggle for Palestine following Britain's announcement, in February 1947, of its decision to relinquish the mandate. On 29 November 1947 the UN General Assembly voted to replace the British mandate in Palestine with two states, one Arab and one Jewish. The Jewish Agency accepted the UN partition plan because it endorsed the Jewish claim to independence and statehood. The Arab League and the Palestinian leaders rejected it as immoral, illegal and impractical, and they went to war to nullify it. The passage of the partition resolution by the UN was thus both an international charter of legitimacy for the establishment of a Jewish state and the signal for the outbreak of a vicious war in Palestine.

The First Arab–Israeli War is usually treated as one war. Israelis call it the War of Indpendence, whereas Arabs call it Al-Nakbah, or ‘The Catastrophe'. In fact, it could be considered two wars in that it had two distinct phases, each with a different character and, on the Arab side, each with different participants. The first phase lasted from 29 November 1947, when the UN passed the partition resolution, until 14 May 1948, when the British mandate expired and the State of Israel was proclaimed. The second phase lasted from the invasion of Palestine by the regular armies of the Arab states on 15 May 1948 until the termination of hostilities on 7 January 1949. The first and unofficial phase of the war was between the Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine, and it ended in triumph for the Jews and tragedy for the Palestinians. The second and official phase of the war involved the regular armies of the neighbouring Arab states, and it ended with an Israeli victory and a comprehensive Arab defeat.

Most of the literature on the First Arab–Israeli War relates to the official, or inter-state, phase that began with the invasion of Palestine by the armies of seven Arab states upon expiry of the British mandate. In many respects, however, the unofficial phase of the war was more important, and more fateful, in its consequences. The first phase was, essentially, a civil war between the local communities. It was during this phase that the irregular Palestinian military forces were defeated, Palestinian society was pulverized and the largest wave of 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 therefore
colluded 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.
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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.
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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 independent Jewish state and the annexation of the Arab part to Transjordan. Abdullah did not deny that this was what had been agreed, but the situation in Palestine had changed radically, he explained, and now that he was one of five he had no choice but to join with the other Arab states in the invasion of Palestine. Meir was adamant: if Abdullah was going back on their agreement and if he wanted war, then they would meet after the war and after the Jewish state had been established. The meeting ended on a frosty note, but Abdullah's parting words to Ezra Danin, who accompanied and translated for Meir, were a plea not to break off contact, come what may.
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In Zionist historiography the meeting of 10 May is usually presented as proof of the unreliability of Israel's only friend among the Arabs and as confirmation that Israel stood alone against an all-out offensive by a united Arab world. Meir herself helped to propagate the view that Abdullah broke his word to her; that the meeting ended in total disagreement; and that they parted as enemies.
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The king's explanation of the constraints that forced him to intervene was seized upon as evidence of treachery and betrayal on his part. In essence, the Zionist charge against Abdullah is that when the moment of truth arrived, he revoked his pledge not to attack the Jewish state and threw in his lot with the rest of the Arab world.
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This helped to sustain the legend that the outbreak of war was a carefully orchestrated all-Arab invasion plan directed at strangling the Jewish state at birth.

The truth about the second Abdullah–Meir meeting is rather more nuanced than this self-serving Zionist account would have us believe. Abdullah had not entirely betrayed the agreement, nor was he entirely loyal to it, but something in between. Even Meir's own account of her mission, given to her colleagues on the Provisional State Council shortly after her return from Amman, was nowhere near as unsympathetic or unflattering as the account she included much later in her memoirs. From her own contemporary report on her mission, a number of important points emerge. First, Abdullah did not go back on his word; he only
stressed that circumstances had changed. Second, Abdullah did not say he wanted war; it was Meir who threatened him with dire consequences in the event of war. Third, they did not part as enemies. On the contrary, Abdullah seemed anxious to maintain contact with the Jewish side even after the outbreak of hostilities. Abdullah needed to send his army across the Jordan River in order to gain control over the Arab part of Palestine contiguous with his kingdom. He did not say anything about attacking the Jewish forces on their own territory. The distinction was a subtle one, and Meir was not renowned for her subtlety.

Part of the problem was that Abdullah had to pretend to be going along with the other members of the Arab League who had unanimously rejected the UN partition plan and were bitterly opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state. What is more, the military experts of the Arab League had worked out a unified plan for invasion, one that was all the more dangerous for having been geared to the real capabilities of the regular Arab armies rather than to the wild rhetoric about throwing the Jews into the sea. But the forces actually made available by the Arab states for the campaign in Palestine were well below the level demanded by the Military Committee of the Arab League. Moreover, Abdullah wrecked the invasion plan by making last-minute changes. His objective in ordering his army across the Jordan River was not to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state but to make a bid for the Arab part of Palestine. Abdullah never wanted the other Arab armies to intervene in Palestine. Their plan was to prevent partition; his plan was to effect partition. His plan assumed and even required a Jewish presence in Palestine, although his preference was for Jewish autonomy under his crown. By concentrating his forces on the West Bank, Abdullah intended to eliminate once and for all any possibility of an independent Palestinian state and to present his Arab partners with annexation as a fait accompli. In the course of the war for Palestine there were some bitter clashes between the Arab Legion and the Israel Defence Force (IDF), especially in and around Jerusalem. But by the end all the invading Arab armies had been repelled and only the Arab Legion held its ground in central Palestine.

Thus there are two rival versions of Jordan's conduct in the First Arab–Israeli War: the loyalist version and the Arab nationalist one. The loyalist version maintains that Abdullah acted in accordance with the wishes of the Palestinians both in sending the Arab Legion into Palestine
in 1948 and in uniting the West Bank with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1950. The Arab nationalist version portrays Abdullah as a greedy villain whose collaboration with the Jews led to the Arab defeat in the 1948 war and to the enlargement of his kingdom at the expense of the Palestinians.
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The principal weakness of the loyalist narrative lies in its failure to make any mention of Abdullah's secret dealings with the Jewish Agency in the lead-up to the Palestine war. My own version of events is set out in my book
Collusion across the Jordan
and is close to the Arab nationalist narrative in as much as it stresses the importance of this secret diplomacy in determining the course and outcome of the First Arab–Israeli War. The main thesis advanced in my book is that in November 1947 Abdullah reached a tacit agreement with the Jewish Agency to divide Palestine between themselves following the termination of the British mandate, and that this laid the foundations for mutual restraint during the 1948 war and for continued collaboration in the aftermath of that war.