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Using a wide range of unpublished Israeli and British documents supplemented with published memoirs, diaries, and material from the foreign relations of the United States, Yoav Gelber denies that Jordan's King Abdullah and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion had a secret understanding to divide Palestine between them. He disagrees with the earlier work by Professor Avi Shlaim, who concluded there was collusion between King Abdullah and the Israeli government. According to Gelber, Shlaim's work was influenced by a discredited source, Israel Ber, a senior member of the Israeli army's general staff who was later convicted of spying for the Soviet Union (p. 2). Which of the two scholars will win the debate remains an open question.
Territorial expansion had long been a Hashemite dream. According to Gelber, King Abdullah's desire to annex the West Bank preceded the United Nations' 1947 partition plan. Furthermore, Israel's preference for the enlargement of Jordan rather than establishment of an independent Palestinian state resulted from the absence of a Palestinian leader willing to...