ABSTRACT
On 17 July 1958, the vanguard of the British forces arrived in an Arab capital that had undergone a rapid metamorphosis since the first Arab-Israeli war. In contrast to the quiet multiethnic backwater familiar to King Abdullah and John Glubb, the city was now an advanced metropolis at the forefront of the political convulsions in the Arab world. Between 1952 and 1962 the population of Amman increased from 190,000 to nearly 300,000 on the back of a construction boom, and in the aftermath of the major influx of Palestinian refugees following 1948 the city took on a more obviously bustling and Arab character. Operation Fortitude not only had to contend with a potentially rebellious urban population but also the prospect of mutinous elements in the Jordanian armed forces. Colonel Michael Strickland, who had been invited from London to the Jordan Army Day parade in Amman in May 1958, noted in his subsequent report that while the government would not permit pictures of Nasser to be shown in public, most of the people were privately pro-UAR. Strickland also warned that some Jordanian officers remained potentially disloyal and opposed to further Anglo-American interference in the Middle East. 1
