Eran Lerman, deputy director of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), spoke to an October 5 Middle East Forum podcast (video). The following summarizes his comments:
In 1916, during World War I, the Hashemite family of Sharif Hussein and his two sons, Faisal and Abdullah, rebelled against the Ottoman Empire, then the sovereign of the region. The Hashemites, custodians of Islam’s two holy places in Mecca for nearly a millennium under various sovereigns, joined the British to drive the Ottomans out of Arabic-speaking lands. In return for supporting the British, the Husseinis were promised a kingdom extending from Arabia’s Hejaz region, over which Sharif Hussein was king, to the southern border of Turkey, excluding the area of what is now the current state of Israel.
At the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann negotiated an agreement with Prince Faisal, head of the Arab delegation, to create two national entities, one Jewish and one Arab.
At the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann negotiated an agreement with Prince Faisal, head of the Arab delegation, to create two national entities, one Jewish and one Arab. The Faisal-Weizmann agreement stipulated that the two entities were to live side by side, “but this was a three-way game, unfortunately.” While British promises given to Weizmann and Faisal were not contradictory, the Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916 that the British secretly made with the French to dominate Syria and Lebanon in the northwestern parts of the Arab domain did contradict the Faisal-Weizmann agreement.
The French drove the Hashemites out of Damascus and, with the promise that he would rule over a vast area of Arabic-speaking lands broken, Faisal no longer felt bound by the terms of the promise. In compensation for the humiliation, the British installed Faisal as king of Iraq. In 1921, then-secretary for the British colonies, Winston Churchill, gave Sharif Hussein’s second son Abdullah sovereignty over the eastern portion of British mandatory Palestine. Originally designated as part of the Jewish National Home by the Balfour Declaration and approved by the League of Nations, this territory, then known as “Transjordan,” became the independent kingdom of Jordan in 1946.
Despite the British betrayal of the lands promised to the Jews, the Zionist leaders accepted the Hashemite presence and established contact with Abdullah to build a relationship. During Israel’s pre-state days, Ben-Gurion, the Zionist leader, sought President Truman’s support for the establishment of an independent Jewish state and an end to the British mandate. Based on Ben-Gurion’s contacts with Abdullah, the Zionist leader reasoned that Truman would not support Israel’s establishment of a Jewish state on the land west of the Jordan River. Instead, Ben-Gurion submitted a formal plan dividing the land west of the Jordan River into two states called Judea and Abdalia, the latter of which would be King Abdullah’s domain.
Ben-Gurion believed Abdullah would consent to the partition and to the creation of a Jewish state because they shared a common enemy in Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian Arab leader aligned with Hitler in a shared goal of exterminating Jewry. On the eve of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, the Arab League was determined to go to war. “With a tone of regret,” King Abdullah, who was unable to stay out of the war, conquered Jerusalem’s Jewish quarter and portions of the land west of the Jordan River “which later came to be called the West Bank.” The city remained divided for the next 19 years.
By 1950, the possibility of peace between Israel and Jordan was in the offing, but the following year, King Abdullah was assassinated by a follower of Haj al-Amin Husseini.
Although agreements in October 1948 between the Israeli and Jordanian military commanders stabilized Jerusalem, “I think Ben-Gurion preferred to see Jerusalem divided between him and Abdullah.” Even if Israel had conquered all of the city in battle, it would have been forced to abandon its entirety under the U.N. Partition Plan, which had designated Jerusalem as a “corpus separatum” that would not have been part of the Jewish state. Ben-Gurion wanted to retain the densely populated parts of Jerusalem where Jewish life was thriving and flourishing. “And so, he saw in the partition of the city between Israel and Jordan probably a way out of this trap.”
By 1950, the possibility of peace between Israel and Jordan was in the offing, but the following year, King Abdullah was assassinated by a follower of Haj al-Amin Husseini. Not long afterwards, Abdullah’s young grandson Hussein came to power and ruled as king of Jordan for more than 40 years.
In 1967, unable to resist pressure from Egyptian president Nasser and the Syrians, Hussein entered the Six-Day War against Israel and lost the West Bank to the Jewish state. The kingdom became a target of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which attempted to take it over and turn it into a base of operations for launching attacks against Israel. “A decisive turning point” came in 1970, when the PLO, joined by the Syrians, turned against King Hussein. The king had enough and ordered his military, primarily comprised of Bedouins, to destroy the Palestinians on Jordanian soil. The attack, dubbed “Black September,” changed the nature of Jerusalem’s relationship with Amman, as well as with Washington. Because Israel was willing to deter the Syrians from invading America’s Jordanian ally, Jerusalem gained a partnership with the Nixon administration. From that point on, there has never been a war fought with the Jordanians.
Both Jerusalem and Amman have a mutual interest “against Islamic terrorism, against Palestinian terrorism, against the Iranian subversion.”
King Hussein even went so far as to warn then-Israeli prime minister Golda Meir just prior to the 1973 Yom Kippur war that he sensed Syria was a threat. Although neither was aware of Egypt’s plans to send troops across the Suez into the then-Israel controlled Sinai Peninsula, Meir heeded Hussein’s warning. As a result, the northern front was reinforced, and the Golan was protected. Although it was friendly but secret, the relationship between Hussein and Israel was publicly acknowledged after the 1993 Oslo Agreements. This was also a strategically wise move on Jordan’s part because Amman was on the outs with Washington after being pressured to side with Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War. Grateful that Jerusalem bridged the divide between Jordan and the U.S., Hussein signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.
Both Jerusalem and Amman have a mutual interest “against Islamic terrorism, against Palestinian terrorism, against the Iranian subversion.” This was demonstrated when the Jordanians shot down Iranian missile barrages headed for Israel in 2023 and 2024. Jordanian stability is vested in preventing Iranian penetration of the West Bank. Although unsaid publicly, Jordan, which shares Israel’s longest border, prefers that the Jordan Valley remain under Israeli security control, albeit not under Israeli sovereignty, so as to prevent destabilization of the monarchy. Although there are tensions due to pressures from the Arab world, the important relationship between Amman and Jerusalem “must be sustained and maintained.”
