September 1970 in Jordan: A Civil War?

Abstract

The events of September 1970 in Jordan have enjoyed a variety of definitions, titles and nicknames, the most common being ‘Black September’ and a ‘civil war’. This article endeavours to juxtapose those events with criteria set by the scholarly literature that defines civil wars. It has been found that the events of September 1970 have indeed met the aforementioned criteria and been almost universally acknowledged as a civil war. Nevertheless, the main exceptions to this rule were the two belligerents themselves: the fedayeen organisations and the Jordanian regime. Each, for its own reasons, preferred to construe the bloody encounters as anything but a civil war.