This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Abdullah El Tell (Arabic: عبدالله التل, 17 July 1918 – 1973; his surname is also rendered Tal) was a Jordanian military officer.

[6] El Tell married Asia Mismar in 1944 and they later had five sons, Muntasir, Salah al-Din, Osama, Khaled and Hamza, and one daughter, Inas.

All were born after the 1948 War, when El Tell was living in exile in Cairo, Egypt, and all of his sons were named for prominent Muslim military figures or were associated with victory.

On 12 May, however, El Tell told one of his officers in Hebron, Captain Hikmet Muhair, to radio Glubb's headquarters saying that his convoy was under fire from the Kfar Etzion.

[8] The Jewish positions had been holding off attacks from local irregulars but could not resist El Tell's troops who were backed with armoured cars.

[9] Glubb was reported to have informed the Haganah in early May that when the Mandate ended his forces would enter the area allocated by the partition plan to the Arab state with "limited objectives".

[13] El Tell refused calls to take women combatants prisoners and is reported to have commented to Russnak "If I had known you were so few we would have come after you with sticks, not guns."

[15] On 11 June, King Abdullah ordered a hudna (ceasefire) and on a visit to Jerusalem on the same day promoted El Tell to Lieutenant Colonel giving him command of three infantry companies forming an improvised battalion based inside the Old City.

[16] There followed a series of meetings in the presence of UN observers between El Tell and Colonel David Shaltiel the commander of Israeli forces in West Jerusalem.

[17] On 16 June they discussed Deir Abu Tor, civilian access to retrieve personal belongings, "examination by Arabs of municipal records in the Jewish area", recovery of Torah scrolls from the Old City and the closing of the New Gate.

Two weeks later both men signed a formal cease-fire establishing "the status quo in no-man's land between the lines of the two parties.

[20] In the last major attack, on the night of 15 July, 500 shells were fired into the walled city over a period of three hours, causing many civilian casualties.

[21] At one of the cease-fire meetings El Tell advised the Israelis to stop wasting their 6-inch mortars on the Rawdah school beside the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif) since he was no longer using it as his headquarters.

[23] On 28 November, El Tell began a series of meetings with Israeli colonel Moshe Dayan, the new military commander of Israeli-controlled Jerusalem, with the objective of establishing a "real cease-fire.

Before delivering the letter El Tell discreetly lifted the seal and made a photostatic copy of its contents, which was an invitation from Elias Sasson to King Abdullah to restart the negotiations which had been led by Golda Meir before the outbreak of war.

By the autumn of 1949 King Abdullah was willing to abandon claims to Ramle and Lydda but was holding out for an access corridor to Gaza which he did not want under Egyptian control.

[31] Nine years later El Tell wrote an account of his reactions during the first meeting between Sasson and the King, on 16 January 1949: "I had expected His Majesty to be clever and cautious, taking without giving, terrorising without coveting.

[34] Other suggestions are it was because Glubb refused to promote him to Brigadier, that he feared the uncovering of a conspiracy against the king which he was involved with or that he was dismissed due to his popularity with the Palestinians.

From Irbid, El Tell moved to Syria, where he met Husni al-Za'im, who had become Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Army in May 1948, and had seized power on 30 March 1949 in a bloodless coup.

"[34] On his arrival in Cairo El Tell presented the Egyptian press with copies of letters from King Abdullah, claiming that British officers in the Arab Legion had prevented their units from fighting.

[42] In January 1967, El Tell wrote a letter to Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser chastising him for using the late King Abdullah's memoirs against Jordan.

"[44] Dayan is more positive: "El Tell is a young man, sinewy, handsome, light skinned, with a directness about him—he looked you straight in the eye—and an open and friendly smile."

"El Tell impressed me as being far superior to the other Arab officers and political functionaries I encountered in that period, he hated the British officials who were the real rulers in Amman, and was contemptuous of his friends who toadied to them.

"[26] Collins and Lapierre quote Pablo de Azcarate who witnessed the surrender of the Jewish Quarter as observing that he behaved "without a single word or gesture which could have humiliated or offended the defeated leader in any way."