When in 1921 the British created the 'Amirate of Transjordan' for Abdallah to rule, the barren and desolate region he was given made him concentrate almost from the start on Palestine for an expansionist drive that was to underpin the legitimacy of the kingdom he craved and lend lustre to the crown he coveted. Analyzing Abdallah's strategies vis-a-vis the other players involved - the British, the Jews, the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs - the author painstakingly shows how Abdallah gradually went about fulfilling that lifelong ambition.

Throughout the decade that predated the 1967 war, Jordan s declared views regarding Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict were not basically different from those of the Arab consensus. Namely, rejection of Israel s legitimacy. In the wake of the war King Hussein was the first Arab leader to realize that in order to regain the recently lost territories, which he considered a most vital and urgent task, he (and the other heads of state) would have to offer Israel a meaningful quid pro quo. Hence the shift in Jordan's policy was twofold: (1) A change of the traditional statements that had been...