Fun with Wikipedia. Here’s another link to Black September. The differences are interesting. Note the number of causalities in the side box. I only say this to contrast with King Hussein’s quotes in the video. His actions are not consistent with his words. I also mention this because the article only cites Arafat’s word regarding the casualties, but the side box has other citations. It’s possible that examination of the footnotes will circle back to Arafat.

You can also see that there is very little sense that the PLO was perceived as little else than a terrorist organization. And oddly, Israel did not play a prominent role in this very complex set of events of Black September.

Here is the key, as far as I’m concerned, in the aftermath section:

Jordan: King Hussein of Jordan was maligned throughout the Arab world for having attacked the Palestinian resistance, and although he had now averted the physical threat to his throne, his legitimacy had suffered a crippling blow among Palestinian refugees (who made up the majority of the kingdom’s inhabitants[citation needed] ) and on the regional Arab scene. Only a few years later, in 1974, the Arab League (and then the UN) would recognize the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, denying Jordan’s long-held claim to ownership of East Jerusalem and sovereignty over the Palestinian West Bank population.

And there you have it. You can almost bet that if King Hussein were allowed to maintain sovereignty over the West Bank, there would be a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, with clear language regarding the West Bank. There is an excellent chance that Israelis would be able to live anywhere in the West Bank, and history would have recorded the constant battle between King Hussein and Arafat, in which Hussein would have prevailed.

Now, why would the Arab League and the UN grant representation to a terrorist organization, when there was already a country that could claim full, legitimate sovereignty over the West Bank? Why would they turn the West Bank into a no-man’s land?