ABSTRACT
One of the more enduring conspiracy theories in the historiography of the Arab-Israeli conflict relates to the existence of a JewishHashemite collusion to carve up Palestine between themselves following the termination of the British Mandate. Dating back to the late 1950s or the early 1960s,2 and unanimously accepted by both mainstream and ‘revisionist’ historians,3 this theory claims that the collusion was hatched at a secret meeting on 17 November 1947 between King Abdallah of Transjordan and the Acting Head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, Golda Meir, and was ‘consciously and deliberately intended to frustrate the will of the international community, as expressed through the United Nations General Assembly, in favour of creating an independent Arab state in part of Palestine’.4 ‘Thecommon ground for the agreement was a mutual objection to the creation of a Palestinian state,’ runs the conspiracy theory. ‘The Jewish Agency in particular abhorred such a possibility, asserting that the creation of a Palestinian state would perpetuate the ideological conflict in Palestine.’5
