Did Abdullah Collude With Britain and Israel?
A Soldier with the Arabs - Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., O.B.E., M.C.
Avi Shlaim in Collusion Across the Jordan makes what I see as an overblown case for collusion between King Abdullah, the British Government and the Israelis prior to the war in 1948. Abdullah certainly lusted after land, any land, but he seemed to believe that a nod was as good as a wink in this case.
In 1946, King Abdulla had personally negotiated a new treaty with the British government. But in the ensuing two years, certain unsatisfactory aspects of the new agreement had become apparent to the Trans-Jordan government. In the spring of 1948, a Trans-Jordan delegation went to London to negotiate a number of modifications to the treaty. The delegation consisted of Taufiq Pasha abu al Huda, the Prime Minister, and Fawzi Pasha al Mulqi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I accompanied the party as their military adviser.
The treaty modifications were negotiated with no great difficulty. When the negotiations were finished, Taufiq Pasha requested a private interview with the British Foreign Secretary, Mr. Ernest Bevin. The Trans-Jordan Prime Minister spoke no English, preparations and consequently he asked me to accompany him as interpreter. The meeting took place in the Secretary of State's room in the Foreign Office, where the tall windows looked out on the Horse Guards' Parade and the black leafless trees in St. James's Park.
Taufiq Pasha explained the reason for his request for an interview, while I translated for him, sentence by sentence. The British mandate for Palestine, he said, was about to come to an end. The Jews had prepared a government which would be able to assume power as soon as the mandate was terminated on May 15th. But the Palestine Arabs had made no preparations to govern themselves. They had no leaders in the country capable of organizing an administration. In the same way, the Jews had prepared a police force from the Jewish members of the Palestine Police. But, what was more important still, the Jews had an army in the form of the Hagana. The Arabs had no armed forces, and no means of creating an army. Consequently, Taufiq Pasha explained, if the situation were left as it was, one of two things would happen. Either the Jews would neglect the United Nations partition plan and would seize the whole of Palestine up to the River Jordan; or else the Mufti would return and endeavour to make himself ruler of Arab Palestine. Neither of these alternatives would suit either Britain or Trans-Jordan. The Mufti was the bitterest enemy of Britain and had spent the war with Hitler in Berlin. He was also an irreconcilable enemy of Trans-Jordan and considered himself to be the personal rival of King Abdulla.
During recent weeks, King Abdulla and the government of Trans-Jordan had received, and were still receiving, many requests and petitions from Palestine Arab notables. In all these communications, the Palestinians begged for the help and protection of the Arab Legion as soon as the British forces withdrew. The Trans-Jordan government accordingly proposed to send the Arab Legion across the Jordan when the British mandate ended, and to occupy that part of Palestine awarded to the Arabs which was contiguous with the frontier of Trans-Jordan.
I can to this day almost see Mr. Bevin sitting at his table in that splendid room. When I had finished my translation thus far, he interrupted Taufiq Pasha's statement by saying: "It seems the obvious thing to do."
I reminded Taufiq Pasha, speaking in Arabic, that the Arab Legion could not occupy the Gaza area or upper Galilee, which had also been allotted to the Arabs. Taufiq Pasha accordingly made a statement to that effect, which I duly translated into English.
"It seems the obvious thing to do," repeated Mr. Bevin, "but do not go and invade the areas allotted to the Jews."
"We should not have the forces to do so, even if we so desired," replied the Jordan Prime Minister. He then continued his statement by pointing out that the Anglo-Trans-Jordan treaty made it incumbent on the two contracting parties to consult one another whenever a critical situation threatened to arise. It was in accordance with this paragraph of the treaty that he had explained the intentions of the Trans-Jordan government to the British Foreign Secretary.
Mr. Bevin thanked Taufiq Pasha for his frank exposition of the position of Trans-Jordan, and expressed his agreement with the plans put forward. We rose, shook hands cordially and took our leave.
It should be recollected that, when this conversation took place, neither the British nor the Trans-Jordanians had any idea that the Arab League would intervene - much less that the Arab States would send troops to Palestine. At the time when we visited London, we anticipated that the Arab Legion would occupy Arab Palestine (less Gaza and Galilee), would establish internal security there, form an administration and patrol the frontier with the Jewish areas.
War In Palestine 1948 - David Tal
Ideological aspirations notwithstanding, the Jewish leadership made a clear and unequivocal political decision: to accept the idea of partition. When the Partition Resolution was adopted by the UN General Assembly, the Jewish leadership, Ben-Gurion included, welcomed it enthusiastically as a major success for the Zionists.17 This is not to say that the Jewish leadership regarded the Partition Lines as the fulfillment of their historical aspirations-on the contrary. Moshe Shertok, the head of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, called the Zionists' acceptance of partition a major compromise,18 and when the chance arose, the Jews did not hesitate to extend the borders set by the United Nations. However, that happened only after a major shift had occurred in the political and strategic situa- tion, when the Arabs refused to accept the Partition Resolution and took military action against the nascent Jewish State. Still, the Jews' initial acceptance of the Partition Resolution was not mere rhetoric; it was the basis for the strategic planning of the war against the Palestinians.
The Jews were not bothered about the prospect of an Arab Palestinian state. Their main concern was their ability to establish a Jewish state, and to ensure that Palestinian resistance would not prevent this. The Jews were familiar with Abdullah's plans, but they had neither played any part in his decision nor approved it as a part of some kind of a deal.19 In a meeting between Golda Meyerson (Meir), the director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, and King Abdullah, in November 1947, ten days before the UN vote on partition, the King asked whether the Jewish forces would act to thwart a Jordanian military incursion into Palestine. Meyerson 'said she was hoping for a [UN] resolution that would establish two states, one Jewish and one Arab, and that they wished to speak to the King only about an agreement based on such a resolution'. As to Abdullah's query about Jewish reaction to his seizure of the Arab part of Palestine, Meyerson said that the Jews:
would view such an attempt in a favorable light, especially if he did not interfere with the establishment of their state and avoided a clash between his forces and theirs and, secondly, if he could declare that his sole purpose was to maintain law and order until the UN could establish a government in that area.20
In her last meeting with Abdullah, which took place on 11 May 1948, Meyerson reiterated Jewish adherence to the UN 29 November 1947 resolution.21 Shertok expressed readiness to cooperate with a sister-Arab state, regardless of its ruler, whether it was the ex-Mufti, or Abdullah's proxy (who might possibly be Qawukji). It was possible, however, that Abdullah would assume direct control over the territory allocated to the Palestinians.22 In any case, the real issue was the Jews' ability to establish their own state. Danin assumed that the majority of the Palestinians regarded partition as a fait accompli, and thought that, without external assistance, Palestinian resistance would fade away. Gad Mahnes, an expert on Arab affairs, agreed; he believed that if partition were enforced the Palestinian opposition (to al-Husayni) would accept it. He also thought that in such a situation an internal power struggle would take place between the al-Husaynis and the opposition.23