A Forgivable Genocide -- Part 3 - Black September ... by Bob Nelson
Part 3 - Black September
In the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Transjordan occupied and then annexed the "West Bank", changing its name to "Jordan". The "East Bank" at this time had a population of about 800 000, half of whom were refugees from lands west of the Jordan that had become Israel or been occupied by Israel. There were another 400 000 people living in the West Bank region. In other words, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was, by population, two-thirds Palestinian.
From safe-havens in Jordan, Yassir Arafat's Fatah began cross-border raids into Israel in 1965.
Jordan had sat out the 1956 war, but engaged in the disastrous Six-Day War of June, 1967. Israel routed all the the various Arab armies -- Egypt, Syria and Jordan -- and occupied territory belonging to each of them. Egypt lost everything east of the Suez Canal. Syria lost the Golan Heights. And Jordan lost the West Bank... but kept the name "Jordan" all the same...
One of the effects of the Six-Day War was to destroy the credibility of the Arab states as agents for victory against Israel, leaving the Palestinians to fend for themselves.
In March 1968, with the intention of destroying Fatah, Israel crossed the border and attacked several Fatah camps. Against the orders of King Hussein, Jordanian forces entered the fight on the side of Fatah. The battle was something of a Israel-advantage draw, but compared to preceding Arab catastrophes, a not-quite-draw was a very fine result indeed. Fatah's prestige rose high, and King Hussein could wonder about the loyalty of "his" troops.
King Hussein attempted to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, who were taking on more and more of the attributes of a government, within his kingdom. In November 1968, the PLO agreed to cease such actions as wearing uniforms, carrying arms, stopping/searching civilian vehicles, ... But the PLO did not keep that accord, and relations continued to worsen with hundreds of violent incidents, many of them deadly. Israeli reprisals following Palestinian raids resulted in Jordanian casualties.
In July 1969, Fatah joined the PLO, which had been created in 1964 in Cairo, and Yassir Arafat was soon elected Chairman.
Hundreds died in sporadic fighting between Jordanian security forces and PLO fighters. In an attempt to calm the situation, King Hussein fired his Interior Minister. In July 1970, Egypt and Jordan accepted an American-backed peace plan that called (among other things) for the West Bank to be returned to Jordanian authority. This was unacceptable to the more radical Palestinian groups, and fighting began again, with another thousand deaths.
Early September saw attempted assassinations against King Hussein, and several PLO-backed airliner hijackings. Among the hijackers' demands: that Irbid (Jordan's second largest city) be declared a "liberated region".
On September 15th, the Jordanian Army struck Palestinian offices and bases in Amman and a half-dozen other cities. Three days later, Syrian armor, hastily rebranded "Palestinian", attacked from the north. King Hussein asked the US and the UK for help, but in the end it was Israel's Air Force that flew mock strikes. The Syrians retreated.
The Arab states, in particular Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, put pressure on King Hussein to stop the fighting. On September 27, Nasser forced Hussein to sign a cease-fire that allowed the Palestinians to stay in Jordan, though not in the cities.
The very next day, Nasser died, throwing Egypt into political chaos. The Jordanian Army continued its assault.
The death toll for September may have been 1000 - 2000... or may have been 10 000 - 25 000... depending on the source!On October 31, Yassir Arafat signed a cease-fire that still would have allowed the Palestinians to operate from Jordan. But more extremist groups refused the agreement, even insisting that Transjordan must be incorporated into the future Palestinian state. Fighting continued to alternate with broken cease-fires, through June 1971, when the last Palestinian fighters were killed or forced to flee to Lebanon... or to surrender in Israel.
For the whole period of conflict, the death toll of the fighting between Palestinians and the Jordanian Army was certainly in the tens of thousands, with more tens of thousands fleeing to refugee camps in Lebanon.
Fatah tried for a few years to get revenge against Jordan, through a clandestine affiliate group named "Black September", without significant success. Jordan abandoned any thought of regaining control of the West Bank.
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See also:
A Forgivable Genocide -- Part 1 - Historical background
A Forgivable Genocide -- Part 2 - Jordan
A Forgivable Genocide -- Part 4 - Quandary
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Part three of a series