Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

In 1911, Abdullah bin al-Hussein became deputy for Mecca in the parliament established by the Young Turks, acting as an intermediary between his father and the Ottoman government.
Ilan Pappe cites: "Until 1910, Abdullah had been the foreign minister for his father's government in the Hijaz and had considered himself a candidate for the throne of Iraq under a British mandate. Seeing that his father's family was greatly weakened by the rise of the rival house of Saud and that the British government was about to install his brother Faysal in iraq, he made an extremely shrewd move. Leaving his father's kingdon, he advanced towards Transjordan and declared he was going to wrest Damascus from the French. In reality he settled for much less. He reached a small Circassian town called Amman and forced the British government to accept him as the ruler of the territory, which also came under the British Mandate."

In September, 1936, King Abdullah met with Awni Abd al-Hadi, of the Istiqlal Pan-Arab Party حزب الإستقلال, and agreed to intervene in the Palestinian crisis.
Ilan Pappe cites: King Abdullah "could hardly resist the chance of becoming the king of Palestine, instead of the ruler of a desert kingdom with some 300,000 inhabitants. Moreover, the uprising in Palestine might have spread and infected gis kingdom."