Annexation of the West Bank by Jordan

Shortly after the proclamation of the All-Palestine Government in Gaza, the Jericho Conference named King Abdullah I of Transjordan as the 'King of Arab Palestine'. The Congress called for the union of Arab Palestine and Transjordan, and Abdullah announced his intention to annex the West Bank. However, the other Arab League member states opposed Abdullah's plan. The New Historians, like Avi Shlaim, suggest that there was an unwritten secret agreement between King Abdullah of Transjordan and Israeli authorities to partition the territory between themselves, which translated into each side limiting their objectives and exercising mutual restraint during the 1948 war. The presence of a large number of immigrants and refugees from the now dissolved Mandate of Palestine fueled the regional ambitions of King Abdullah I, who sought control over what had been the British Jerusalem and Samaria districts on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Towards this goal, the king granted Jordanian citizenship to all Arab holders of the Palestinian Mandate identity documents in February 1949 and outlawed the terms 'Palestinian' and 'Transjordanian' from official usage, changing the country's name from the Emirate of Trans-Jordan to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The area east of the river became known as al-Ḍiffah al-Sharqiyya, or 'The East Bank'. In April 1950, with the formal annexation of the positions held by the Jordanian Army since 1948, the area became known as al-Ḍiffah al-Gharbiyya or 'The Western Bank'. With the formal union of the East and West Banks in 1950, the number of Palestinians in the kingdom rose by another 720,000, of whom 440,000 were West Bank residents and 280,000 were refugees from other areas of the former Mandate then living on the West Bank. Palestinians became the majority in Jordan although most believed their return to what was now the state of Israel was imminent.