Summary
Amir Abdullah, ruler of Transjordan, is in Kanafani’s account the leading figure of the Surrounding Arab Regimes that helped end the 1936-39 revolt: his regime mediated the strike’s end, was represented inside the Palestinian movement by the National Defence Party, and suppressed support for the revolt at home.
Details
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An editor’s note in the text identifies Transjordan as the East Bank of the River Jordan, while the West Bank is part of Palestine (footnote 20, The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.23 / printed p.44).
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In the summer of 1936 Amir Abdullah and Nuri al-Said began to mediate with the Arab Higher Committee; the mediation was at first unsuccessful, despite the leadership’s readiness to accept their good offices (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.23 / printed p.44-45).
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With Amin al-Hussaini and Auni Abd al-Hadi, Raghib al-Nashashibi confirmed to the British High Commissioner that the leadership was prepared to end the revolt if the Arab kings asked them to do so, and on 11 October 1936 the strike was called off in obedience to the kings and amirs (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.23-24 / printed p.45-46).
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Kanafani names the attitude of Transjordan, as embodied in the subservient regime led by the Amir Abdullah, as one of two interconnected factors that played a prominent role in frustrating the revolt (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.27 / printed p.52-53).
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The National Defence Party, led by Raghib al-Nashashibi, played the role of legal representative of that Transjordan regime inside the Palestinian nationalist movement (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.27 / printed p.52-53).
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Kanafani records Transjordan’s suppression of its own support movement for the revolt, its closure of the roads to Iraq, and its handing over in 1939 of Yusuf Abu Durrar (also spelled Abu Daur) to the British, who executed him (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.27-28 / printed p.52-55).
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In the essay’s closing survey, the British are said to have made it possible, through imperialists like Wingate and through reactionary leaders of the type of the Amir Abdullah, for the Zionist movement to become a beach-head guarding British interests (The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, PDF p.30 / printed p.58-59).
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In Pappe’s Chapter Five, Abdullah sent thirty trucks to help move women and children out of Tiberias, claiming he was convinced another Deir Yassin was about to occur (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.121-122); in January 1948 the unwritten agreement with the Jews was cemented, and in early February his prime minister reported the tacit alliance to London (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.149).
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At the final meeting of 2 May 1948 his Legion officers were told the UN-designated Arab state had shrunk to the West Bank alone; on 13 May Golda Meir met him in Amman as he played his double game between the Arab League and the Jewish state — the agreement side of which, Pappe writes, “became decisive for the course of action he would take”, his main objective in practice being to secure Israeli consent for the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank (PDF p.150) — and Sir Alec Kirkbride reported the Legion-Haganah negotiations to Bevin, who would not prejudice them (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.149-151).
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On the last day of April 1948 the Arab world appointed Abdullah (named as the League’s supreme-commander appointee at PDF p.161; the appointment passage at PDF p.154-155 does not name him) — whom most of its leaders knew had a secret agreement with the Jews — to head the military operations against Palestine (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.154-155); Pappe adds that by annexing the West Bank the Jordanians saved 250,000 Palestinians from being ousted, until 1967 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.151).
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In Pappe, Chapter 11: Abdullah, with Ben-Gurion, deliberately torpedoed the Lausanne conference of spring 1949, the two having set their minds on partitioning what was left of Palestine between them (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.274).
Related pages
The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine, Transjordan, Surrounding Arab Regimes, Nuri al-Said, National Defence Party, Raghib al-Nashashibi, 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine