Introducation of karameh

Al Karameh (or simply Karameh) is a town in Jordan, near the Allenby Bridge which spans the Jordan River. The river defines the border with territory controlled by Israel.

Karameh was also the battle ground for one of the main events in the history of the Palestinian national movement. In 1968, the city served as the political and military headquarters of the Palestinian al-Fatah movement. Israeli military forces entered the city in search of the Palestinian leadership, which the Israelis labelled as “terrorists". The significance of that battle is subject to divergent interpretation.

Supporters of the Palestinians characterize it as an event in thich the heavily armed and technologically advanced Israeli military was rebuffed and forced to retreat, suffering a blow to their reputation while heartening the Palestinian resistence to Israel. For the Palestinians, therefore, Karameh was seen not as a victory in battle, but survival against overwhelming odds - an event that placed Palestinians back on the political map.

Supporters of Israel, by contrast, characterize the battle as a succesful operation in which the number of “terrorists” killed outweighed the number of Israeli soldiers killed. Political experts uninvolved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have expressed a third view, that the battle was “a conflict with limited military importance” which has since been blown up and exaggerated to an almost mythological level by both sides.

The Battle of Karameh set up a series of events leading to Black September in Jordan, in which King Hussein ordered the Jordanian army to crush the emboldened Palestinian forces, in order to prevent revolt against his monarchy.