Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of

The territory constituting modern Jordan was the site of some of the earliest settlements and political entities known to historians. The Ammonites and the kingdoms of Edom, Gilead, and Moab, situated east of the Jordan River, are referred to repeatedly in the Bible. These kingdoms were successively conquered by, or made tributary to, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Romans. Jordan was wrested from the Byzantine Empire by the Arabs between 633 and 636 and has since remained an Arab-Islamic country. During the Crusades parts of Jordan were governed by Christians. From 1517 until 1918 Jordan was ruled by the Ottomans (see Ottoman Empire). Transjordan Independence The liberation of Jordan from Turkish sovereignty was achieved in September 1918, during World War I, by joint action of British and Arab troops. After the war, Jordan, along with the territory constituting present-day Israel, was awarded to Great Britain as a mandate by the League of Nations. In 1922 the British divided the mandate into two parts, designating all lands west of the Jordan River as Palestine and those east of the river as Transjordan. Transjordan was placed under the nominal rule of Abdullah ibn Husein in 1921. In February 1928 Transjordan obtained qualified independence in a treaty with Great Britain. The government of Transjordan cooperated with Great Britain during World War II (1939-1945), making its territory available as a base of British operations against pro-Axis forces, which had gained control of the government of Iraq. In 1945 Transjordan became a member of the Arab League, an organization created for the purpose of coordinating Arab policy in international affairs and curbing Jewish national aspirations in Palestine. The British government relinquished its mandate over Transjordan on March 22, 1946. By the terms of a treaty concluded by the two nations on that date, Transjordan received recognition as a sovereign independent state. The treaty also established an Anglo-Transjordanian military and mutual-assistance alliance, with the British securing military bases and other installations in the country in exchange for an agreement to train and equip the Transjordanian army. Abdullah ibn Husein was proclaimed king the following May. The Arab League and Jordan In May 1948 the Jordanian army, known at that time as the Arab Legion, joined with the armed forces of the other Arab League nations in a concerted attack on the newly formed state of Israel. During the war the Arab Legion occupied sections of central Palestine, including the Old City of Jerusalem. Transjordan signed an armistice with Israel on April 3, 1949. On April 24, 1950, despite strong opposition from other Arab League members, King Abdullah formally merged all of Arab-held Palestine with Transjordan and granted citizenship to West Bank residents. From that point on, the prefix trans (across) became inaccurate, and the kingdom has since been called Jordan. The word Hashemite refers to Hashim, the grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad, from whom the Jordanian royal house claims direct descent. King Abdullah was assassinated on July 20, 1951, by a Palestinian opposed to Jordanian tolerance of Israel, and was succeeded by his son Talal I the following September. On August 11, 1952, the Jordanian parliament deposed Talal, who suffered from a mental disorder, and elevated his son to become Hussein I the same day. A regency council acted for the new king until he reached the age of 18 on May 2, 1953. Armed Jordanian and Israeli detachments were involved in frequent frontier clashes during the early 1950s. Major sources of friction were Israeli irrigation and hydroelectric schemes that would have reduced the volume of the Jordan waters, considered vital to Jordanian development. Arab Problems and Disunity Jordan became a member of the United Nations (UN) on December 14, 1955. During the latter half of the following year Jordanian and Israeli UN delegates registered bitter and increasingly frequent charges of border violations and armed raids. By the provisions of a ten-year pact signed on January 19, 1957, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia agreed to furnish Jordan with an annual subsidy of $36 million. The pact was designed to free Jordan from dependence on Western nations, particularly Great Britain, whose policies were considered anti-Arab and pro-Israel. The Jordanian premier and other leftists in the government were dismissed by the king in April, however, and the following June, Syria and Egypt revoked the aid pact. On February 14, 1958, two weeks after Egypt and Syria merged to form the United Arab Republic (UAR), the more conservative governments of Jordan and Iraq announced the formation of the Arab Federation. When the Iraqi government was overthrown in July, however, largely as a result of UAR propaganda and intrigue, the federation was dissolved and Jordan severed diplomatic relations with the UAR. Although ties were restored in August 1959, relations between Hussein and President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the UAR remained strained. When the Jordanian premier, Hazza Majuli, was assassinated in August 1960, King Hussein charged Nasser with responsibility. Tranquillity in the Early 1960s During 1961 and 1962 Jordan was relatively free of domestic political strife and antigovernment agitation by the country's refugee population. The growing stength of the throne was evidenced by the general acceptance, and even popularity, of the king's marriage in May 1961 to Antoinette Avril Gardiner of Great Britain, who was granted the title Princess Muna. (They were divorced in 1972.) After the elections of December 1962, political parties, which had been banned during the height of Jordanian-UAR tensions, were reactivated. Foreign relations were less relaxed, however. In September 1961 Jordan recognized the new regime in Syria, which had just seceded from the UAR, and President Nasser of Egypt retaliated by breaking diplomatic relations with Jordan. After the fall of one premier and the resignation of his successor in the spring of 1963, political parties were banned again. Elections in July installed a new cabinet and inaugurated another two-year period of relative domestic tranquillity. Diplomatic relations with the UAR (Egypt) were restored in 1964 in response to mounting pressure for Arab League unity against Israel. Renewed clashes with Israel over Jordanian water rights led to an Arab summit conference in Cairo in September 1964, attended by King Hussein. Growing Tensions and War with Israel Relations between Jordan and the left-wing Baathist regime in Syria deteriorated in the mid-1960s. Despite calls for unity, Arab nations tended to polarize into an extremist camp including Syria, Egypt, and Iraq, and a moderate group including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia. For a time the Jordanian frontier with Syria was as troubled as its border with Israel. Arab guerrilla fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), infiltrating Jordan from Syria, launched terrorist attacks against Israel for which Jordan suffered Israeli reprisals. In July 1966 Jordan withdrew support from the PLO, but a massive Israeli raid in November created intense pressure for Hussein to back the terrorists. When he refused, the PLO called for his overthrow, and clashes on the Syrian border increased. Arab-Israeli tensions were meanwhile mounting steadily. When war seemed imminent, Hussein, in an unprecedented gesture of Arab solidarity, flew to Cairo and signed a defense treaty with Nasser on May 30, 1967. This action greatly enhanced his position with the refugees, but it also committed Jordan to active involvement when the Six-Day War broke out on June 5. On June 7, with its air force destroyed and the West Bank occupied, Jordan accepted a UN cease-fire. Jordanian postwar diplomacy aimed at reinforcing ties with the West and achieving an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied area. Hussein took no unilateral initiatives toward a peace settlement, however, and Egypt, Algeria, and Syria hardened their anti-Israel position with calls for a sustained guerrilla offensive against Israel, staged from bases in Jordan. The situation in Jordan reached the point of civil war in September 1970, when Palestinian guerrillas supported by Syria fought Jordanian troops in Amman and other areas of northern Jordan. After heavy casualties, a cease-fire agreement was reached requiring a number of concessions from Hussein. In 1971, however, Hussein ordered Premier Wasfi al-Tall to take military action against the guerrillas, and the movement was completely crushed. The Arab response to Jordan's actions was strongly hostile. On November 28, while attending a meeting of the Arab League in Cairo, Premier al-Tall was assassinated by guerrilla members of the Palestinian Black September organization. In 1972 Hussein proposed creation of a federated Arab state comprising Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Most Arab governments and the Palestinian organizations were unanimously opposed to such a state, however. In February 1973 King Hussein visited the United States and received promises of continued U.S. economic and military aid. On September 18 Hussein granted amnesty to 1500 political prisoners, including some 750 Palestinian commandos; the move was viewed as a peace gesture following meetings with the leaders of Egypt and Syria that had brought about reconciliation among the three countries. The Yom Kippur War and After The short, indecisive Arab-Israeli armed conflict known as the Yom Kippur War began on October 6, 1973 and lasted 18 days. Jordan contributed some token forces to assist Syrian troops fighting against Israel in the Golan Heights region. After the war the PLO gained standing in the Middle East, and in 1974 Jordan reluctantly recognized it as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. In return, Jordan was promised economic and military aid from other Arab nations. In November King Hussein dissolved parliament so it could be reconstituted without representatives of the West Bank. Elections for the new House of Representatives were postponed indefinitely in early 1976. In 1975 Jordan established closer ties with Syria, mainly in order to guard against a possible attack by Israel. King Hussein refused to accept the 1978 U.S.-sponsored Camp David agreements on the Middle East, because they failed to provide for Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories; in 1979 he denounced Egypt's separate peace with Israel. Jordan supported Iraq in its war with Iran beginning in 1980, a policy that strained relations with the pro-Iranian government of Syria. In January 1984 parliament held its first regular session in ten years, and limited parliamentary elections took place in March. In July 1988, in response to months of demonstrations by Palestinians in the Israeli-held West Bank, Hussein ceded to the PLO all Jordanian claims to the territory. Islamic fundamentalists showed significant strength in Jordan's first general election in 22 years, held in November 1989. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, King Hussein unsuccessfully sought to play a mediating role. Meanwhile, the large influx of refugees from the Persian Gulf region, combined with the worldwide embargo on trade with Iraq, took a toll on the Jordanian economy. An influx of Jordanians who had fled the Persian Gulf War from Kuwait and Iraq increased the country's unemployment rate to 30 percent. The falling worth of the Jordanian dinar also added to the country's economic problems. Jordan's apparent tilt toward Iraq during the Persian Gulf War strained relations with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states. A joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation took part in the comprehensive Middle East peace talks that began in October 1991. Also in 1991, King Hussein lifted a ban on political parties, paving the way for the country's first multiparty elections. The 1993 parliamentary elections, Jordan's first since 1956, resulted in a loss of seats for conservative religious parties and the election of a woman to the parliament for the first time. In July 1994 Hussein signed a peace agreement with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, ending 46 years of war and strained relations between the two countries. In October, Prime Minister Abdul-Salam al-Majali of Jordan and Rabin signed a full and historic peace treaty, making Jordan the second Arab nation (after Egypt) to establish relations with Israel. The treaty resolved the long-standing and deeply disputed issue of land and water rights: Israel agreed to return about 350 sq km (about 135 sq mi) of disputed territory to Jordan, most of it located in the Arava, just north of the Gulf of Aqaba, in exchange for a much smaller portion of land then under Jordanian control. Israel also agreed to make 50 million cu m (13.2 billion gallons) of water available to Jordan each year, mostly by diverting flows from the Jordan River. In addition, the two governments agreed to a full normalization of diplomatic relations, and cooperation in areas of mutual concern such as tourism, transportation, environmental protection, trade and economic development. While Israel recognized Jordan's claims to Islamic shrines in Jerusalem, Jordan pledged not to participate in anti-Israeli alliances, or to allow its land to be used for such purposes.