The Peace FAQ:

Jordan, Transjordan

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Where is the Kingdom of Jordan? What is its history?
• If Jordan's majority population is Palestinian, why are we trying to give them a second homeland?
• Did the concept of Palestine East of the River Jordan exist before the British Mandate?
• What happened when the Palestinian Arabs tried to take control of Jordan?

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Where is the Kingdom of Jordan? What is its history?

• Jordan was created in the part of the British Mandate of Palestine east of the Jordan River, the majority of the Mandate. It was carved out of the Mandate and given to the Hashemite tribe of Arabia as payment for the Hashemites cooperation with the British in World War I. In todays Jordan, the Hashemites are a minority, but control the state's power - the Monarchy. As a product of the British Mandate of Palestine, the majority non-Hashemite population identify themselves as 'Palestinians', or 'Southern Syrians' depending on the political climate.

  - Society for Rational Peace

 

If Jordan's majority population is Palestinian, why are we trying to give them a second homeland?

• Concerning Palestine East Of The River Jordan

  On August 23,1959, the Prime Minister of Jordan stated, "We are the Government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine."

  Each day brings me closer to the realization that Palestine, as it wants to exist within the boundary of Israel, and impose this view on the world community, is a farce... an imaginative place with imaginative people. History proves over and over again that JORDAN IS INDEED PALESTINE.

  Here are several quotes from "officials" in the so-called Palestinian community. LET THEM SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES!!!!

• "Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country."
  - King Abdullah, at the Meeting of the Arab League, Cairo, 12th April 1948

• "Let us not forget the East Bank of the (River) Jordan, where seventy per cent of the inhabitants belong to the Palestinian nation."
  - George Habash, leader of the PFLP section of the PLO, writing in the PLO publication Sha-un Falastinia, February 1970

• "Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate."
  - Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2nd February 1970

• "There is no family on the East Bank of the river (Jordan) that does not have relatives on the West Bank ... no family in the west that does not have branches in the east."
  - King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2nd February 1972

• "We consider it necessary to clarify to one and all, in the Arab world and outside, that the PALESTINIAN PEOPLE with its nobility and conscience is to be found HERE on the EAST Bank (of the Jordan River), The WEST Bank and the Gaza Strip. Its overwhelming majority is HERE and nowhere else."
  - King Hussein, quoted in An-Hahar, Beirut, 24th August 1972

• "The Palestinians here constitute not less than one half of the members of the armed forces. They and their brothers, the sons of Transjordan, constitute the members of one family who are equal in everything, in rights and duties." (Quoted by BBC Monitoring Service)
  - King Hussein, on Amman Radio, 3rd February 1973

• "There are, as well, links of geography and history, and a wide range of interests between the two Banks (of the River Jordan) which have grown stronger over the past twenty years. Let us not forget that el-Salt and Nablus were within the same district - el-Balka - during the Ottoman period, and that family and commercial ties bound the two cities together."
  - Hamdi Ken'an, former Mayor of Nablus, writing in the newspaper Al-Quds, 14^th March 1973

• "The new Jordan, which emerged in 1949, was the creation of the Palestinians of the West Bank and their brothers in the East. While Israel was the negation of the Palestinian right of self-determination, unified Jordan was the expression of it."
  - Sherif Al-Hamid Sharaf, Representative of Jordan at the UN Security Council, 11th June 1973

• Past "President Bourguiba (of Tunisia) considers Jordan an artificial creation presented by Great Britain to King Abdullah. But he accepts Palestine and the Palestinians as an existing and primary fact since the days of the Pharaohs. Israel, too, he considers as a primary entity. However, Arab history makes no distinction between Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians. Most of them hail from the same Arab race, which arrived in the region with the Arab Moslem conquest."
  - Editorial Comment in the Jordanian Armed Forces' weekly, Al-Aqsa, Amman, 11^th July 1973

• "With all respect to King Hussein, I suggest that the Emirate of Transjordan was created from oil cloth by Great Britain, which for this purpose cut up ancient Palestine. To this desert territory to the bast of the Jordan (River)., it gave the name Transjordan. But there is nothing in history which carries this name. While since our earliest time there was Palestine and Palestinians. I maintain that the matter of Transjordan is an artificial one, and that Palestine is the basic problem. King Hussein should submit to the wishes of the people, in accordance with the principles of democracy and self-determination, so as-to avoid the fate of his grandfather, Abdullah, or of his cousin, Feisal, both of whom were assassinated."
  - Past President Bourguiba of Tunisia, in a public statement, July 1973

• "The Palestinians and the Jordanians have created on this soil since 1948 one family - all of whose children have equal rights and obligations."
  - King Hussein, addressing an American Delegation, 19th February 1975

• "How much better off Hussein would be if he had been induced to abandon his pose as a benevolent 'host' to 'refugees' and to affirm the fact that Jordan is the Palestinian Arab nation-state, just as Israel is the Palestinian Jewish nation-state."
  - Editorial Comment in the publication The Economist of 19th July 1975

• "Palestine and Jordan were both (by then) under British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs, they were hardly separate countries. Transjordan being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine."
  - King Hussein, writing in his Memoirs

• "...those fishing in troubled waters will not succeed in dividing our people, which extends to both sides of the (River) Jordan, in spite of the artificial boundaries established by the Colonial Office and Winston Churchill half a century ago."
  - Yassir Arafat, in a statement to Eric Roleau

• "Palestinian Arabs hold seventy-five per cent of all government jobs in Jordan."
  - The Sunday newspaper The Observer of 2nd March 1976

• "Palestinian Arabs control over seventy per cent of Jordan's economy."
  - The Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram of 5th March 1976

• "There should be a kind of linkage because Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people."
  - Farouk Kadoumi, head of the PLO Political Department, quoted in Newsweek, 14^th March 1977

• "Along these lines, the West German Der Spiegel magazine this month cited Dr George Habash, leader of one of the Palestinian organizations, as saying that 70 per cent of Jordan's population are Palestinians and that the power in Jordan should be seized." (Translated by BBC Monitoring Service)
  - From a commentary which was broadcast by Radio Amman, 30th June 1980

• "Jordan is not just another Arab state with regard to Palestine but, rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations, both day and night. Though we are all Arabs and our point of departure is that we are all members of the same people, the Palestinian-Jordanian nation is one and unique, and different from those of the other Arab states."
  - Marwan al Hamoud, member of the Jordanian National Consultative Council and former Minister of Agriculture, quoted by Al Rai, Amman, 24th September 1980

• "The potential weak spot in Jordan is that most of the population are not, strictly speaking, Jordanian at all, but Palestinian. An estimated 60 per cent of the country's 2,500,000 people are Palestinians ... Most of these hold Jordanian passports, and many are integrated into Jordanian society."
  - Richard Owen, in an article published in The Times, 14th November 1980

• "There is no moral justification for a second Palestine."

  - The Freeman Center (September 3, 1993)

- Above Quotes researched by HMAVERIK.

Did the concept of Palestine East of the River Jordan exist before the British Mandate?

• The Dead Sea, as you have heard ever since you were children at school, has no outlet, and you can see at once that if it had any connection with the great body of seas and oceans, it would be an inlet. If, as Chinese Gordon proposed a few years ago, a canal were cut so that the waters of the Mediterranean Sea might pour in, they would swell the surface of the Dead Sea thirteen hundred feet up the sides of the mountains on either side; they would rise above the Jordan proportionately; the river Jordan would disappear; the Dead Sea and the lake of Galilee would disappear; and in the place of these a long body of sea water would divide western from eastern Palestine. These characteristics distinguish the Jordan from all the other rivers of the earth, and make its formation a profound study to the geologist--one that has never yet been explained in attempting to trace back the history of this old world.

  - J. W. McGarvey, Louisville, Kentucky, August 27, 1893

 

What happened when the Palestinian Arabs tried to take control of Jordan?

• King Hussein of Jordan ejected Arafat's Palestinians in September 1970, called Black September because they were trying to take over his kingdom. King Hussein drove them into Lebanon after killing more than 10,000. The Lebanese welcomed the fleeing Palestinians into their bosom, but suddenly found themselves under attack by Arafat's Palestinians who set up a mini Terror State within Lebanon. For the next 12 years terror raged and over 100,000 Lebanese were murdered by their Palestinian brothers.

  - Emanuel A. Winston, Middle East analyst & commentator

 

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• RELATED SECTIONS:

  Palestine, Arafat, Arabs, Islam, Expansionism, The West Bank, The War of Independence, The Six-Day War, Peace, Refugees, Demographics

• WWW RESOURCES:

• BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
  • Palestine: A Twice-Promised Land? Vol. 1: The British, the Arabs, and Zionism, 1915-1920, by Isaiah Friedman [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948, by Arieh L Avneri [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • A History of Jordan, by Philip Robins [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Martin Gilbert [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923, by Efraim Karsh, Inari Karsh [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in Palestine, by Samuel Katz [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, by Joan Peters [VIEW BOOK HERE]

  • Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israel Conflict, Second Edition, by Mitchell Geoffrey Bard [VIEW BOOK HERE]

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