The War's Aftermath • 297most Egyptian generals and cabinet ministers had hoped to avoid the ex¬
pected war in Palestine. It was the zeal of the Muslim Brothers, the vanity
of King Faruq, and the momentum of Egypt's own threats that sent the
army in to fight a war for which it was unprepared. Amir Abdallah had as¬
sured Jewish emissaries that his Arab Legion would not fight beyond the
Jordan River, but he sent in his troops so that the other Arabs could not
claim the glory if they won. Once the fighting started, the Egyptian army
and the Arab Legion worked at cross-purposes. The Palestinians had an
Arab Liberation Army, led by a Syrian, but it would not work with the
British-officered Arab Legion. Abdallah also hated the best-known Pales¬
tinian Arab nationalist, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, Jerusalem's ex-mufti. Ex¬
pelled from Palestine in 1937, the mufti had taken refuge in Lebanon and
Iraq and then made his way to Berlin during World War II. Later he es¬
caped to Cairo and was now working for Faruq. As long as the Arabs had a
chance of defeating Israel in 1948, their leaders and armies competed to
pick up the most land and glory in Palestine. Once Israel began driving the
Arabs back, they began bickering over who was to blame.
The Palestinian Arabs
Who looked out for the Palestinian Arabs? No Arab government heeded
the needs or the interests of these people who, up to 1948, had formed the
majority of Palestine's population. About 150,000 managed, by chance or
by choice, to stay in their homes within lands controlled by Israel. They be¬
came Israeli citizens, an Arabic-speaking Muslim and Christian minority
within a Jewish state, subject for years to harsh restrictions that tarnished
Israel's claim to be the Middle East's only democracy. In time, though,
Israeli Arabs came to enjoy political rights, economic benefits, and educa¬
tional opportunities unmatched by most of their Arab neighbors. The
400,000 Arabs who lived in those parts of Palestine not taken by Israel (in¬
cluding the Old City of Jerusalem) came under the military occupation of
the Arab Legion. Abdallah soon annexed this region, now usually termed
the "West Bank," to the state he renamed the "Hashimite Kingdom of Jor¬
dan." Most other Arab countries protested, but they could no more restrain
Abdallah than they could defeat Israel. Although Israel opposed "Jordan¬
ian" rule over Jerusalem's Old City, its emissaries had secretly agreed to let
Abdallah keep the West Bank, as they hoped to make a comprehensive
peace settlement with Jordan later. Anyway, the Israelis held western Jeru¬
salem, plus strategic chunks of Palestine not given to them by either the
1947 partition plan or the modifications later proposed by Bernadotte.
There were also 200,000 Palestinians, many of them refugees, in the Gaza