160 A Short History of the Middle East
that H.M. Government intended to grant them immediate self-
government with the help of a few British advisers. Local councils
were accordingly set up in the four principal towns; but before any
coherent administrative system could take shape, the Amir Abdul-
lah arrived in February 1921 with an Arab force at Ma'an, which
had been provisionally left within the boundaries of his father's
kingdom of the Hijaz, and announced his intention of raising a
rebellion against the French in Syria. He advanced to Amman, was
welcomed by the local councils and unopposed by the British, and
took over the effective administration. At the close of the Cairo
Conference in April, the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Churchill, agreed
to recognize him as dc facto ruler of Transjordan, provided that he
abandoned his aggressive intentions against the French and
accepted British protection and financial help in setting up a
modern administration. In September 1922 Britain secured the
consent of the Council of the League, as provided for in Art. 25 of
the Mandate, to the exemption of Transjordan from all the clauses
of the Mandate concerned with the establishment of a Jewish
National Home, including the Mandatory's obligation to facilitate
Jewish immigration and land-settlement. In 1923 Britain recog-
nized the existence of an 'independent government in Trans-
Jordan under the rule of the Amir Abdullah, provided that such
government is constitutional.''
The Zionists have never accepted the exclusion of Transjordan
from their potential embrace. In 1921 Dr. Weizmann told the
Zionist Congress, 'The question of the eastern frontier .. . will be
better answered when Cisjordania is so full of Jews that a way is
forced into Transjordania*;l and in March 1946, shortly before the
announcement of the treaty in which Britain terminated the Man-
date and recognized the independence of Transjordan, the Jewish
Agency Executive objected to the Colonial Office that 'the Jewish
people had a contingent interest in the retention of Transjordan
within the scope of the Mandate'; while previously Moshe Shertok,
then head of the Agency's political department, had commented:
'We have looked forward to arrangements that would make
Jewish settlement in Transjordan feasible and permit j oint develop-
ment with Palestine, which the Jewish Agency could initiate and
implement together with the Arabs of Transjordan. This would
make it possible for Jewish settlement to be fostered and to improve
1 Barbour, op. clt.? 104, n, L