After the British Mandate ended and Israel declared their state in 1948. Palestinians fled or were expelled. Fleeing into Egypt,Jordan and Lebanon.
After Jordan lost control of the West Bank to Israel in 1967, Palestinian fighters known as fedayeen moved their bases to Jordan and stepped up their attacks on Israel and Israeli-occupied territories.
On 17 September, the Jordanian army surrounded cities with a PLO presence including Amman and Irbid, and began shelling the fedayeen, who had established themselves in Palestinian refugee camps. Later pressure mounted by Arab countries for King Hussein to halt the fighting.
On 13 October he signed an agreement with Arafat to regulate the fedayeen's presence. However, the Jordanian army attacked again in January 1971. The fedayeen were driven out of the cities, one by one, until 2,000 fedayeen surrendered after being surrounded in a forest near Ajloun on 17 July, marking the end of the conflict.
The Black September Organisation was founded after the conflict to carry out reprisals against the Jordanian authorities. The organisation's first attack was the assassination in 1971 of Wasfi Tal, the then Jordanian Prime Minister who had commanded parts of the operation that expelled the fedayeen. The organisation then shifted to attacking Israeli targets, including the highly publicised 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli athletes.(cont)