The recent accession by St Antony’s College Oxford of papers from British army officer John
Bagot Glubb, commander of Transjordan’s Arab Legion, affords a remarkable opportunity to test
and reimagine significant debates surrounding the first Arab–Israeli war. Glubb’s papers establish
two points. First, that military operational necessity best explains the actions of the Arab Legion
in 1948 and that this was more important than the political objective by Transjordan and Israel to
collude to divide Palestine. Second, the papers offer a new, augmented military history of the war
taking into account daunting command and logistical challenges faced by the Legion.