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The effects of a "successful" PLO Black September in Jordan.

neonduke

Kenneth Kaunda drip
I put successful in quotes because I have my doubts that destabilising the Jordanian state would work out well for the PLO even short term but what happens should they succeed in overthrowing the Monarchy or at least carving out a viable state within a state?

It seems obvious that Israel is not going to put up with a PLO run state on its borders so another regional conflict seems assured. I could easily see this leading to the destruction of the PLO as a viable organisation long term as with a State of their own they are unlikely to abandoned it in the face of Israeli attack, meaning it's no retreat and no surrender until the inevitable collapse when the leadership evacuated to another Arab state.

What's the world's reaction to PLO victory in Black September?
 
There's a really dark potential consequence from this. I was reading a biography of King Hussein a while back which mentioned how during the difficulties in integrating the West Bank post '48 there was an attempt to bridge the gap with a 'Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan' policy. Thing is post '67 there were some in Israel who quite liked this idea as, if Jordan was Palestine, and the PLO took over Jordan, then logically the Palestinians had their state and there was no need to create one in the West Bank. Bonus points if all the Palestinian refugees had somewhere to go and to settle permanently.
 
Toppling Jordan's King Hussein in 1970 would have probably resulted in an immediate Palestinian/Jordanian civil war, with Arafat's nationalist Fatah clashing with the Socialists of the PFLP and DFLP. You would also have seen Syrian and Iraqi intervention and clashes between them in their efforts to establish hegemony over all or part of Jordan. The country would have probably dissolved into a patchwork of quarrelling militias, Palestinian militias aligned with the various political parties as well as Bedouin clan militias and the remnants of the royalist army.

The upside of this is that Lebanon probably would have been spared its civil war and remained a stable and (by the Middle Eastern standards of the time) liberal state.
 
Toppling Jordan's King Hussein in 1970 would have probably resulted in an immediate Palestinian/Jordanian civil war, with Arafat's nationalist Fatah clashing with the Socialists of the PFLP and DFLP. You would also have seen Syrian and Iraqi intervention and clashes between them in their efforts to establish hegemony over all or part of Jordan. The country would have probably dissolved into a patchwork of quarrelling militias, Palestinian militias aligned with the various political parties as well as Bedouin clan militias and the remnants of the royalist army.

The upside of this is that Lebanon probably would have been spared its civil war and remained a stable and (by the Middle Eastern standards of the time) liberal state.

I did a map based on this with a 5-way civil war with foreign support breaking out.
 
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