Bar-Joseph Uri. The Best of Enemies: Israel and Transjordan in the War of 1948

Routledge, 2013. — 257 p.An analysis of Israel's relations with Abdullah before the outbreak of hostilities. The present study is devoted to an inquiry into the Arab–Israel conflict during the period of the 1948 war. It does not purport to examine relations between Israel and all the Arab states, but rather to concentrate on those between the Yishuv (pre-State Jewish society in Palestine) – subsequently the State of Israel –and the Kingdom of Transjordan during the period between November 1947, the eve of acceptance of the Partition Plan, and April 1949, the date of the signing of the ceasefire agreement between the two countries. The book’s objective in examining the links between these two countries is to show that, though manifestly at war, the two maintained a clandestine relationship in which shared interests predominated. In this sense, the book is an attempt to refute the myth of the ‘fight unto death’ between the newly-formed Israeli Defence Forces and Transjordan’s Arab Legion.