The Arab Countries • 299
there were several Arab states, many leaders, and various policies. Some
Arab governments were stable, a few were popular, and many were neither.
Jordan
The country most directly affected by the war was Jordan. What had been a
desert emirate called Transjordan became the Hashimite Kingdom of Jor¬
dan. A half-million Transjordanians, most of bedouin origin, were joined
by a million Palestinians, half of them local farmers or city dwellers in the
newly annexed West Bank and the other half refugees in UNRWA camps.
The Palestinians, all of whom were offered Jordanian nationality, tended to
be more westernized and politically articulate than the Transjordanians
over whom Abdallah had long ruled as a father figure. Most of the Pales¬
tinians were (or, in the case of the refugees, had been) subsistence farmers,
but some were lawyers, teachers, merchants, or bureaucrats. Few were
monarchists. For King Abdallah, controlling Jerusalem's Old City, with its
Muslim shrines such as the Dome of the Rock, compensated for his father's
loss of Mecca and Medina to Ibn Sa'ud a generation earlier. Content with
his new lands and the tripled number of subjects, he secretly offered Israel
diplomatic recognition in exchange for rail access to Haifa. Angry Palestini¬
ans, especially supporters of the ex-mufti, denounced Abdallah as a traitor.
In 1951 a young Palestinian murdered him in Jerusalem. His son was soon
eased off the Jordanian throne due to alleged mental instability in favor of
Abdallah's seventeen-year-old grandson, Husayn, who took charge offi¬
cially in 1952.
During this time, Britain continued to subsidize Jordan's government,
and Sir John Bagot Glubb commanded the Arab Legion. Although Jordan
had become nominally independent in 1946, not until 1955 did the USSR
agree to its admission to UN membership. There followed a brief period
during which King Husayn supported Arab nationalism and the Palestinian
Left. Westerners argued that Jordan should have made peace with Israel and
gained access to the Mediterranean. But the lesson of Abdallah's assassina¬
tion was clear. The Palestinians might have lost their homes and accepted
refuge in Jordan, but they could block any attempt to bury their claims by a
peace settlement. Never would Husayn be the first to settle with Israel. As for
Abdallah's Greater Syria ambition, it faded like a desert mirage.
Syria and Lebanon
What did happen to the rest of Greater Syria? The impact of the war on
Lebanon and Syria was different but no less disruptive. What was now the
