In contrast to Syria, Jordan was a stable state. Its army, the Arab Legion commanded by British officers, was by all accounts the best trained and “by far the most loyal and efficient” fighting force among the Arab League states. Its commander, General John B. Glubb, or Glubb Pasha as he was known, always favored the notion of a Greater Syria acting as the centerpiece of British policy in the Middle East. As he explained to the British government: “It is not fanciful to imagine the Arab Legion as the nucleus of the Army of Greater Syria in the future.” [14] The Prime Minister of Egypt, Nuqrashi Pasha, also acknowledged that the Jordanian army was superior to either the Egyptian or Syrian armies when he proposed to the Arab League in October 1947 that they pay for the Jordanian army to serve as the guardian of Palestine. [15]
From President Quwwatli’s perspective, the war in Palestine offered Abdullah the ideal opportunity to bring down Syria’s republican regime and to push forward his ambition to reestablish Hashemite rule in Damascus. Each stage of Syrian planning for the war in Palestine makes sense when seen through the lens of President Quwwatli’s fear of Abdullah and the possibility that the Jordanian monarch would win British support for his Greater Syria plan.

The division between Iraq and Syria, between Syria and Lebanon, between Syria and Palestine, and between Palestine and Jordan, were all imposed to weaken one of the most rebellious people on earth. Nevertheless, the entire Sourian population opposed these divisions and fought hard to reunite. The Sourian rebels quickly organized and formed several nationalist groups. Among these groups were the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) created by the intellectual Antoun Sa’adeh in 1932, the Arab Nationalist Movement (ANM) created by leading Arab historian and professor Constantin Zureiq and Dr. George Habash in 1948; and the Baath Party (1946), created by Syrian philosopher Michel Aflaq, which later merged with Akram Horani’s Socialist Party to form the Arab Socialist Baath Party (1952). These nationalist movements were supported by people from all religious sects, including clergymen. Marxists and Communists also gained momentum and were the most fierce in their battles against puppet regimes, most notably in Iraq when Abdul-Kareem Qasim overthrew the Hashemite monarchy (1958).

The Islamists were there, but almost no one listened to them because their solution to occupation, colonization, and puppet regimes was to pray and fast and be good Muslims, and wait for God to save them when the time was right. The Islamists call to “calm down until we have revived the Islamic empire” did not resonate, and in most cases was seen as a colonial instrument to thwart the nationalist revolution.