Did Jews buy land in Transjordan?
For a short time, Jews settled in what is today Jordan (formerly Transjordan), on the eastern side of the river Jordan. Trawling through Arabic sources, Elder of Ziyon has found evidence that Jews bought land in the 19th century, from which they were expelled by local tribes.Jamil Youssef Al-Shaboul, writing in Sawaleif, tells a story about a brief episode of Jewish settlement in Transjordan.“Palestine was not alone as a destination for the Jews and the Zionist movement. With the intention of establishing the slandered national homeland, the eastern part of the river was also targeted.When the Zionist Montefiore built the first neighborhood for the Jews outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem in 1862, after he purchased a plot of land specifically for that, the first two agricultural settlements for the Jews were built in both Jerash / on the Zarqa River and Salt, and through bribes received by some Ottoman officials to facilitate their entry into the country and their ownership for the land.The Jordanian clans sensed the seriousness of the matter early on, especially after the Jews tried to buy other lands adjacent to the Zarqa River in order to bring in another group of immigrants. The northern and Bani Hassan clans came together and held a meeting in the guesthouse of Sheikh Mustafa al-Ayasra headed by Sheikh Mufleh al-Obaidat, the father of the martyr Kayed al-Obaidat, and they unanimously agreed to expel these Jews. With all the simple light weapons they had, they burned the settlement of Rachel in Jerash and expelled the Jews from it. They headed towards Al-Balqa and burned the settlement of Kfar Ehud near Salt. The presence of these bastards from East Jordan ended.The Jordanian clans were able to save Jordan from the clutches of the Zionist movement, which was announced at the Basel Conference in Switzerland in 1891, and this confirms that the choice of force in the time of lies and hypocrisy is the one who restores things to their rightful place and that the thief will not escape punishment.”
Notice that they admit that the land was purchased by Jews but the author still considers the land “stolen.”
A similar story was published in 2020 in Rai al Youm, another Jordanian news site. It said that the Jews were there from 1870 to 1876 when thy were driven out, and the names of the settlement are the same.
The writers are gleeful that they ethnically cleansed Jews from Transjordan, and they regard this as an honorable story to tell today.
I cannot find English-language documentation of any of these Jewish settlements in Transjordan in the 19th century. But the story is not altogether implausible. Zionists did buy land across the Jordan, in the Golan Heights. See my previous articles about that here and here.
Moreover, I found an Arabic book about about a dozen plans for Jews to include parts of Transjordan in the Jewish homeland, from the mid-19th century up until the 1940s. Dr. Issam Muhammad Al-Saadi wrote “Zionist Aspirations in Transjordan, 1862 – 1946.” It includes all of these attempts (autotranslated so the names might be misspelled).