Jordan

Abstract

During the first World War (1914–18) the Arabs of Transjordan and Palestine rebelled against the suzerainty of Turkey, which had become an ally of Germany. Britain supported the rebellion, occupied the areas and in 1920 was given a League of Nations mandate for Transjordan and Palestine. In April 1921 the Amir Abdullah Ibn Hussein (brother of King Feisal of Iraq) became the ruler of Transjordan, which was officially separated from Palestine in 1923. By a treaty signed in London on 22 March 1946 Britain recognized Transjordan as a sovereign independent state. On 25 May 1946 the Amir Abdullah assumed the title of king and the name of the territory was changed to that of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The part of Palestine remaining to the Arabs under the armistice with Israel on 3 April 1949, with the exception of the Gaza Strip on the Mediterranean coast, was placed under Jordanian rule and formally incorporated in Jordan on 24 April 1950. In June 1967 this territory (‘the West Bank’) was occupied by Israel. On 31 July 1988 King Hussein announced the dissolution of Jordan’s legal and administrative ties with the West Bank. King Hussein, who became king in 1953 at the age of 17 after his father was declared mentally unfit to rule, remained in executive control in the face of attempted assassinations and frequent changes of prime ministers for 35 years until his death on 7 Feb. 1999.