page_title: Jordan Valley
section_title: Formation of Transjordan and Palestine
hierarchical_section_title: Jordan Valley / History, geopolitics, and events / Formation of Transjordan and Palestine
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the British Mandate of Palestine and Transjordan. Note: Wasserstein, Bernard (2004). Israel and Palestine: Why They Fight and Can They Stop?, pp. 105–106."Palestine, therefore, was not partitioned in 1921–1922. Transjordan was not excised but, on the contrary, added to the mandatory area. Zionism was barred from seeking to expand there – but the Balfour Declaration had never previously applied to the area east of the Jordan. Why is this important? Because the myth of Palestine's 'first partition' has become part of the concept of 'Greater Israel' and of the ideology of Jabotinsky's Revisionist movement." Deutsch: Britisches Völkerbundsmandat für Palästina und Transjordanien.
context_page_description: The Jordan Valley forms part of the larger Jordan Rift Valley. Unlike most other river valleys, the term "Jordan Valley" often applies just to the lower course of the Jordan River, from the spot where it exits the Sea of Galilee in the north, to the end of its course where it flows into the Dead Sea in the south. In a wider sense, the term may also cover the Dead Sea basin and the Arabah valley, which is the rift valley segment beyond the Dead Sea and ending at Aqaba/Eilat, 155 km farther south.
  The valley, in the common, narrow sense, is a long and narrow trough, 105 km long if measured "as the crow flies", with a width averaging 10 km with some points narrowing to 4 km over most of the course, before widening out to a 20 km delta when reaching the Dead Sea. Due to meandering, the length of the river itself is 220 km. This is the valley with the lowest elevation in the world, beginning at −212 m below sea level and terminating at less than −400 m BSL. On both sides, to the east and west, the valley is bordered by high, steep escarpments rising from the valley floor by between 1,200 m to 1,700 m.
context_section_description: Following conflicting promises and agreements during WWI, in particular McMahon–Hussein Correspondence and Balfour Declaration, as well as a power vacuum following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire led to a series of diplomatic conferences and treaties (Treaty of Sèvres, San Remo conference, Paulet–Newcombe Agreement) which convened with continued armed struggle between the great powers, their proxies, and Arab elements that were part of the Arab Revolt. Following the Battle of Maysalun the Transjordan area east of the valley become a no man's land and the British, who directly controlled the area west of the valley, chose to avoid any definite connection between the two areas. Following the Cairo Conference (1921) and meetings with Abdullah bin Hussein it was agreed that he would administer the territory east of the Jordan River, Emirate of Transjordan. The area west of the Jordan river was allocated in 1922 to the Mandatory Palestine under British Administration. The Jordan river, in the middle of the Jordan valley, was the border between these two entities. This agreement split the Jordan valley, which during Ottoman times was under a single administration, to two distinct entities.
  Following the division, the concept of an east and west bank of the Jordan, as separate territorial units took hold. As a political example to this new reality, in 1929 Ze'ev Jabotinsky composed the political poem Two Banks to the Jordan which asserts that the Jordan river should be the central feature of Greater Israel, with the repeating refrain: "Two Banks has the Jordan/This is ours and, that is as well."
caption: The Jordan valley divided between Mandatory Palestine & Emirate of Transjordan
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