The limits of the land: Israel, Jordan, the United States, and the fate of the West Bank, 1949--1970

This dissertation is the first major study of the changing role of the West Bank in Middle Eastern regional politics. It argues that the fate of Jordan's West Bank, a major source of Arab-Israeli tension, was nearly resolved on the basis of the postcolonial status quo. Between 1957 and 1965, the Israeli government and Jordan's King Hussein adopted a policy of tacit cooperation, aimed at fostering Jordan's independence and consolidating the territorial status quo. By 1965, interlocking US-Israeli and US-Jordanian agreements effectively rendered the West Bank a demilitarized zone. This de facto settlement was reinforced by the decline of Pan-Arabism as a regional force, rapid Jordanian economic growth, and Israel's acquisition of a nuclear deterrent. Jordan no longer seemed likely to merge with another Arab state, and Israel appeared to have found a non-conventional remedy for its lack of strategic depth. The West Bank's proximity to Israel's major population centers and narrow coastal plain seemed to be becoming less problematic.;Ultimately, however, the status quo proved unsustainable. Superpower opposition prevented Israel from adopting a strategy of overt nuclear deterrence. The rebirth of Palestinian nationalism undermined the West Bank's integration into the Jordanian state. Both factors contributed to the collapse of the Israeli-Jordanian settlement in 1967 and diplomatic stalemate thereafter.;The longer Israeli-Jordanian stalemate persisted, the less credible Hussein's claims to represent the West Bank's Palestinians became, especially after the Jordanian civil war of 1970. By the early 1970s, the stage had already been set for Jordan's later disengagement from the West Bank, allowing Israeli-Palestinian relations to assume centrality within the Arab-Israeli conflict.