Predictive History

The Jordan-Zionist Collusion

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The Jordan-Zionist Collusion

Core idea: The secret agreement between the Jewish Agency and King Abdullah of Jordan to divide post-Mandatory Palestine between them was the second most decisive enabling factor of the ethnic cleansing — by neutralizing the only competent Arab army (the Arab Legion), it ensured that the Arab world lacked all serious capacity to defend the Palestinians or foil the Zionist plan, allowing Israel to anticipate a state stretching over eighty per cent of Mandatory Palestine before a shot was fired.

The Negotiations

In late 1946, the Jewish Agency embarked on intensive negotiations with King Abdullah of Jordan. Abdullah was a scion of the Hashemite royal family from the Hejaz who had fought alongside the British in the First World War. Granted the Kingdom of Jordan by the Mandate system, he was unhappy with the deal — Transjordan was little more than an arid desert princedom. He wished to expand into fertile, cultural, and populated Palestine.

After the Second World War, Abdullah reached an agreement in principle with the Jewish Agency over how to divide post-Mandatory Palestine between them. Vague ideas became the basis for serious negotiations after UN Resolution 181 was adopted on November 29, 1947. Most leaders of the Jewish community were willing to give up the West Bank (today’s West Bank), even though it included biblical Jewish sites like Hebron. The Jordanian quid pro quo was irresistible: Abdullah promised not to join any all-Arab military operations against the Jewish state.

What It Meant

This tacit agreement constituted the second decisive step towards ensuring the ethnic cleansing could go ahead unhindered. Crucially, it neutralized the strongest army in the Arab world and confined it to battle with the Jewish forces solely in a very small part of Palestine. Without the Jordanian Army, the Arab Legion, the Arab world lacked all serious capacity to defend the Palestinians or foil the Zionist plan to establish a Jewish state in Palestine at the expense of the indigenous population.

The Jewish leadership anticipated their future state would stretch over eighty per cent of Mandatory Palestine: the fifty-six per cent promised to the Jews by the UN, with an additional twenty-four per cent taken from the Arab state. The remaining twenty per cent would be picked up by the Jordanians.

The Final Meetings

In April 1948, Abdullah promised a leading Israeli official he would not obstruct Israel’s creation and would only occupy territories designated for the Palestinian state. On May 13, 1948 — one day before Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state — a nervous King Abdullah met in Amman with labor Zionist Golda Meir. Despite his anxieties about Arab public opinion, Abdullah chose to make his deal with the Zionists over fighting for Palestine. He was caught in a dilemma: Jordanian press pushed the narrative that he was about to “liberate Palestine” while he negotiated partition with the enemy behind closed doors.

Abdullah was then chosen as Supreme Commander of all Arab forces despite everyone knowing his allegiances were fraudulent. His position ensured catastrophic coordination between the various Arab armies — exactly as the Zionists needed.

The Arab Legion’s Role

When Arab armies entered Palestine on May 15, 1948, the Jordanian Arab Legion — by far the best-trained and most professional Arab force — largely honoured its side of the bargain. The Legion defended those parts of the West Bank that Abdullah claimed as his, but did not enter the areas the Zionist movement had designated for their Jewish state. Most senior Arab Legion officers were British. When high-ranking Jewish officer Shlomo Shamir met with British officers of the Legion, he told them bluntly: “We could take all of Palestine if we wanted to, but this is a political question.”

The Arab Legion actively refused to collaborate with the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) forces of Fawzi al-Qawuqji, and Jordanian soldiers willing to help were ordered by their commanders to refrain. Al-Qawuqji, who commanded roughly 2,000 volunteers, had himself sought a non-aggression pact with the Zionists as early as January 1948, and by end of March offered direct contact to the Consultancy.

The Legion’s most significant engagement was the battle for Jerusalem, where it successfully repelled Israeli attacks on the eastern neighbourhoods, especially Shaykh Jarrah. The Legion also defended the Latrun area so tenaciously that it became engraved in the collective memory of the Israeli armed forces as their biggest defeat in the war. But this fighting was for Abdullah’s claimed territory, not for the defence of Palestinian villages.

When Glubb Pasha, the British commander of the Legion, was instructed to withdraw from Lydd and Ramla, the populations of both cities — approximately 70,000 people — were left defenceless for the Israeli forces to expel on July 14, 1948. Glubb Pasha later lost his position and had to return to Britain for his decision to retreat.

The Wadi Ara Betrayal

The collusion extended even beyond the war. In the summer of 1949, King Abdullah ceded fifteen villages in Wadi Ara, on the road between Afula and Hadera, to Israel as part of a bilateral armistice agreement. These villages had successfully resisted every Israeli attempt to capture them during the war, aided by Iraqi officers who had defied their own government’s orders to stay and fight. The people who had heroically defended their homes were simply handed over to the state that had tried and failed to conquer them.

Key Insight

The Jordan-Zionist collusion proves that the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was enabled not only by Zionist military power but by the complicity of an Arab ruler who traded Palestinian lives for territorial expansion — neutralizing the only army capable of stopping the Nakba in exchange for a share of the spoils, and later betraying even the villages that had successfully resisted by ceding them in a backroom deal.

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