Jordan (Hashemite Kingdom of)

Jordan (Hashemite Kingdom of) An area under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire from 1518. It was liberated by the Arab Revolt of 1916, but came under British control as a League of Nations Mandate, as part of a wider area covering Palestine and Iraq. In 1921 the British turned Jordan into a separate Mandate under the Hashemite Abdullah ibn Hussein. With considerable British help, the latter created political and administrative state institutions, such as the Arab Legion. In 1948, the country became independent as Transjordan.

Its gains during the first Arab–Israeli War of 1948–9 proved to be a hollow victory, and became a fundamental burden for the next four decades. For after annexation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the original Transjordanian population of 400,000 suddenly found itself outnumbered by over 800,000 Palestinians, half of whom were refugees from areas that were now Israel. This put a tremendous strain on the economy, and challenged the domestic stability of the country through ethnic tensions between the Jordanians and the Palestinians. The newly acquired territories and Transjordan were united in 1950 as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Domestic tensions reached a peak in 1951, when Abdullah was assassinated by a Palestinian. He was succeeded briefly by his son, Talal, and then his grandson, Hussein ibn Talal, who subsequently exerted firm control over the country's politics, buttressed by the loyality of his armed forces. In the 1950s the country's existence was fundamentally threatened by the pan-Arabism of its neighbours, Egypt and Syria.

Jordan lost its burdensome West Bank and East Jerusalem in the disastrous Six Day War with Israel, though this brought its Palestinian problems to a head. Not only did it lose important agricultural and industrial areas in the West Bank, but it now had to cope with an influx of one million Palestinian refugees, while Palestinian guerrillas such as the PLO were using Jordan as their base for attacks on Israel. These attacks put Jordan's sovereignty at risk from further external military confrontation, while the number of Palestinians in arms, and the formation of a virtual Palestinian rival government, became an internal threat to the Jordanian authorities. Consequently, the PLO was expelled, though this was not achieved without a bloody civil war in 1970–1. For this, Jordan became ostracized in the Arab world until 1974, when it accepted the decision of all other Arab states to recognize the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people, even though this questioned Jordan's own claim to the West Bank. After the outbreak of the Intifadah, which demonstrated the allegiance of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation to the PLO, Jordan finally renounced its claims to its former territory in 1988 and entered a harmonious relationship with the PLO. It remained neutral during the Gulf War, during which it experienced a sharp economic downturn and a large influx of Palestinian and other refugees from Iraq and Kuwait. In 1993, the first multi-party elections since 1956 resulted in a clear victory for the loyalists against the Islamic fundamentalists. This strengthened further the authority of the King, under whom Jordan became the first Arab state to sign a peace agreement with Israel after the latter's recognition of the PLO on 26 October 1994. King Hussein encouraged the peace process until his death in 1999. He was succeeded by his son, Abdullah II, who spent the first years of his reign stabilizing his grip on power. He continued his father's ambivalent attitude towards the Palestinians, which encouraged their claims against Israel in order to deny them rights in Jordan. He cracked down on the operations of Hamas, and also faced opposition by terrorist groups directed by Osama Bin Laden. At the same time he pursued a conciliatory policy twards Iraq, from which Jordan acquired cheap oil imports.