In 1881 the 1st Aliyah of Jews returned to Palestine from Pogrom ravished lands of Russia and her Eastern European neighbors. They came armed with all kinds of ideas of what they wanted to create and had prepared themselves for this very day. They found a wasteland in Palestine of swamps, the land of mosquitoes and weeds galore everywhere you turned. Among it all were a few Bedouins riding through it all, looking for anything of worth. A few agricultural settlements had come early in 1871 and had spread the word to their families back in Europe that it was possible. There were 5 groupings of Aliyote that continued to come into the Ottoman held almost land that had been waiting for them for almost 2,000 years to return.
Following these Jews were Syrian-Palestinians surrounding the area of Palestine seeking work. At this time, any Jews or Arabs born in the land were also called Syrian-Palestinians. These hoping to get jobs building were Arab Syrian-Palestinians from the larger area of Syria. Others came from lands near and far for the whole area was full of people without positions or purpose also looking for work, as they knew the Jews to be building and might need workers.
The Palestinians who are today's refugees in the neighboring countries...know all this...that their present nationalist exploiters are the worthy some of their feudal exploiters of yesterday, and that the thorns of their life are of Arab, not Jewish origin.----Abadel Razak kader,1969.
The same Arab politicians who protested that they cared nothing for the money the Jews brought into the country...showed too such contempt for money when it came to the treatment of their own peasantry...The Reverend James Parker, Whose Land?
Jews at the Wall in Jerusalem praying
By 1909 the foundation of the all-Jewish city of Tel Aviv was up. The Jews of Palestine became involved in serving in WWI which started in 1914. In the end, 1917 and 1918 the Allies occupied the whole of Palestine, east and west of the Jordan River.
The British military were the administrators putting an end of the Ottoman reign. The local leaders were reassured that Transjordan would not come under Palestinian administration and that there would be no disarmament or conscription. Viscount Herbert Louis Samuel's terms were accepted, he returned to Jerusalem, leaving Captain Alec Kirkbride as the British representative east of the Jordan until the arrival on 21 November 1920 of Abdullah I,(Born February 1882 in Mecca, Hejaz, Ottoman Empire, Abdullah was the second of four sons of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca, and his first wife, Abdiyya bint Abdullah; .the brother of recently deposed king Faisal (Faisal I bin Al-Hussein bin Ali Al-Hashemi (, Fayṣal al-Awwal bin al-Ḥusayn bin 'Alī al-Hāshimī; 20 May 1885 – 8 September 1933) was King of the Arab Kingdom of Syria or Greater Syria in 1920, and was King of Iraq from 23 August 1921 to 1933. He was the third son of Hussein bin Ali, the Grand Emir and Sharif of Mecca, who was proclaimed as King of the Arabs in June 1916. He was a 38th-generation direct descendant of Muhammad, as he belongs to the Hashemite family.), marched into Ma'an at the head of an army of 300 men from the Hejazi tribe of 'Utaybah of Saudi Arabia. Without facing opposition, Abdullah and his army had effectively occupied most of Transjordan by March 1921.
Two brothers, the 2nd and 3rd sons of the head of Saudi Arabia, becoming kings of newly formed countries near and next door to ancient Israel which wanted dearly to be re-born. One wonders if these brothers had been having a competitive relationship, or if they visited each other.
To think, Samuel was a British statesman and philosopher and the 1st professing Jew to be a member of a British cabinet from 1909, held office in the Liberal government from 1905 to 1916, and in the national government from 1931 to 1932. His memorandum to the Cabinet in 1914 concerning a British trust for the Jewish Home influenced the Balfour Declaration. In 1920-1925, he was the 1st High commissioner for Palestine. From 1936, he served as president of the Council for German Jewry and in 1939, founded the Children's Movement to bring unaccompanied refugee children from Germany to Britain.
The infamous Balfour Declaration was drawn up and signed at the end of the war in 1917-1918 which granted a "Jewish Homeland" to the Jews. This came about by having many meetings between Jewish leaders and English leadership. It was internationally approved. By 1920 the British were the civil administrators and Turkish sovereignty was renounced. The treaty included the Balfour Declaration. Finally in 1922, the Palestine Mandate was declared and the Jewish National Home was confirmed. It took another year for the Palestine mandate to come into operation which happened in 1923.
There never was a Palestine as a country with rulers and people to rule. It has remained as just the name the Romans adopted for the land, naming the land in anger for they had to fight the Jews for 3 years from 132 to 135 CE in order to regain Jerusalem when they had originally taking it in the year 70 CE. It was the Jewish general Bar Kokhba who had gathered an army and had retaken Jerusalem. He had had the chutzpa to challenge the strongest army in the world, the Romans. To have lasted for 3 years was considered quite an achievement. Jews called the land, Eretz Yisrael (land of Israel).
The Jews then found out that their "Jewish Homeland" had been cut apart and that 75% of it was set aside as an independent Arab "Palestinian State" called Transjordan. There's the 1st state of Palestine. It was created in 1923. Prince Abdullah of Arabia was the one who initiated the deal and was the benefactor; no reason other than he needed a state as he was not the first born of the king. England saw benefits in the deal for themselves and it became a done deal. Between 1916 and 1918, he played a key role as architect and planner of the Great Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule that was led by his father Sharif Hussein. Abdullah personally led guerrilla raids on garrisons. Abdullah's relations with the British Captain T. E. Lawrence were not good, and as a result, Lawrence spent most of his time in the Hejaz serving with Abdullah's brother, Faisal, who commanded the Arab Northern Army. When French forces captured Damascus at the Battle of Maysalun and expelled his brother Faisal, Abdullah moved his forces from Hejaz into Transjordan with a view to liberating Damascus, where his brother had been proclaimed King in 1918. Faisal had had good relations with Chaim Weizmann and the idea of a Jewish Homeland. It is possible that he might have been willing to sign a separate peace agreement with Israel, but for the Arab League's militant opposition.
Abdullah (1882-1951) Emir, later in 1946 Kinga of Transjordan, 2nd son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca and later , king of Hejaz. His support of Britain during WWI led to his nomination as ruler of Transjordan in 1923. He negotiated with Chaim Weizmann in 1922, but invaded Israel in 1948 along with others. He formally annexed the Arab-held part of Cis-Jordan in 1950 and proclaimed himself ruler of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. His attempts to reach an understanding with Israel were nullified by the growing influence of the Palestinian Arabs, and he was assassinated in Jerusalem allegedly at the instance of the Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini. Abdullah ruled until 1951 when he was assassinated in Jerusalem while attending Friday prayers at the entrance of the Al-Aqsa mosque by a Palestinian who feared that the King was going to make peace with Israel. He was succeeded by his eldest son Talal.
One of the first things the Jews built with Syrian-Palestinian Arabs was the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that opened in 1925. In 1927 high commissioners received a commission for Transjordan. Then in 1929, all hell broke loose all over the world and especially in the USA, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, was the stock-market crash that occurred. It started on October 28th and started the period of The Great Depression in the United States, starting a world-wide economic crisis and lasting till the mid 1930's. ...
This crash reveals a shaky foundation in the market. It's effects may have sparked a depression in the mind of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem, also called the Grand Mufti, as he instigated an attack on all the Jews of Jerusalem and in other cities in Palestine. He was the big fish in the little pond of political power over the Arabs of Palestine. 1929 was a year of Arab revolt against Jews living in Palestine and against the British mandate.
From 1936 to 1939, the time of German power rising and Nazism taking shape and power in Germany and slowly seeping into Europe, the Arabs of Palestine were revolting and Civil War was taking place. If one sees a connection here, there was. Arabs loved to read Nazi literature as they were also against the possibility that their country would be seeing more Jews. Violence erupted in in April 1936. In that month, six prominent Arab leaders overcame their rivalries and joined forces to protest advances in Palestine. The Arab High Command, as the group was known, was led by the Mufti, , and represented Arab interests in Palestine until 1948.
The Arab High Command began their protest by calling for a general strike of Arab workers and a boycott of Jewish products. These actions swiftly escalated into terrorist attacks against the Jews and the British. This first stage of the “Arab Revolt” lasted until November 1936. The second stage began in September 1937, shortly after the recommended the partition of Palestine. In this second phase, clashes with the British forces became much more severe, as did the attacks on Jewish settlements.
Abdullah I supported the Peel Commission in 1937, which proposed that Palestine be split up into a small Jewish state (20 percent of the British Mandate for Palestine) and the remaining land be annexed into Transjordan.(Of course he would support this). The Arabs within Palestine and the surrounding Arab countries objected to the Peel Commission while the Jews accepted it reluctantly. Ultimately, the Peel Commission was not adopted. In 1947, when the UN supported partition of Palestine into one Jewish and one Arab state, Abdullah was the only Arab leader supporting the decision.
In 1946, the establishment of the Arab state of Transjordan transpired. Very little has been written about the 1929-1939 history of Trans-Jordan-and the neighboring Arab countries, and the new awakening of Arab nationalism. During the 1930s, although still under the mandate of the League of Nations (which was entrusted to Great Britain), Trans-Jordan began to develop an international presence. The people remained very poor however, and the government was supported by a grant-in-aid from the British government. The British Resident in Amman, Col. Henry Cox, used that grant-in-aid as a justification for his financial and political control over the new mandated state, which limited its sovereignty. At this time, Great Britain had the largest empire on earth. Her wealth and power, as well as the survival of her empire, depended mainly on her ability to defend her trade routes with her overseas colonies, protectorates, and mandated territories. The Amir Abdullah Ibn al Husain wanted to take Trans-Jordan back from Great Britain and develop it into an independent state.
In 1948, he annexed the eastern part of the Cisjordan (the "West Bank"(Judea and Samaria) which had been designated by the United nations as a separate state. He then proclaimed the Kingdom of Jordan with himself as king. from 1952, the country was ruled by his grandson, Hussein. In 1967, Hussein entered the Six Day War with all the other neighbors against Israel but his army was defeated and Israel took over the West Bank (Judea and Samaria). Hussein's rule was characterized by adroit maneuvering within the Arab world.
In 1970,he expelled the Palestine Liberation Organization from his country but later was reconciled with Arafat. Black September (Arabic: أيلول الأسود; Aylūl Al-Aswad), also known as the Jordanian Civil War was a conflict fought in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between the Jordanian Armed Forces (JAF), under the leadership of King Hussein, and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, primarily between 16 and 27 September 1970, with certain aspects of the conflict continuing until 17 July 1971.
King Hussein also acted as a protector of the West Bank Arabs but in 1988 announced that he was withdrawing from this role and leaving it to the PLO. His own position was delicate as his major support derived from the bedouin tribesmen of his country while a majority of its inhabitants were Palestinians. The country had a population of over 2 million in 1992 of whom 85% are Moslem Arabs. The current population of Jordan is 10,305,777 as of Thursday, July 8, 2021, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data. The capital is Amman.
King Abdulah II married a Palestinian woman.
Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein (Arabic: عبدالله الثاني بن الحسين, romanized: Abd Allāh ath-thani bin Al-Husayn; born 30 January 1962) is King of Jordan, reigning since 7 February 1999. As a member of the Hashemite dynasty, the royal family of Jordan since 1921, he is a 41st-generation direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad. Abdullah was born in Amman as the first child of King Hussein of Jordan and his second wife, British-born Princess Muna.
She is now Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan. She was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents.
She received her bachelor's degree in business at The American University in Cairo. In 1991, following the Gulf War, she and her family fled to Amman, Jordan, where she met the then-prince Abdullah. Before meeting him, she worked at Citibank and then took a job in the marketing department at Apple. Since marrying the now King of Jordan in 1993, she has become known for her advocacy work related to education, health, community empowerment, youth, cross-cultural dialogue and micro-finance. She has 4 children, 2 boys and 2 girls.
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