It was planned by Israel as one of two concurrent raids on PLO camps, one in Karameh along the Jordan River and the other in the distant village of Ghor es-Safi south of the Dead Sea.

Israel stated that it aimed to destroy fedayeen camps at Karameh, and to capture the leader of the PLO Yasser Arafat as reprisal.

Israel assumed the Jordanian Army would choose to not get involved in the battle, but the latter deployed heavy artillery fire, while the Palestinian irregulars engaged in guerrilla warfare.

On a tactical level, Israel managed to destroy most of the Karameh camp and take around a hundred PLO fighters as prisoners.

[4] The engagement also marked the first known deployment of suicide bombers by Palestinian fighters,[16] and the issuance of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 248, which unanimously condemned Israel for violating the cease-fire line and its disproportionate use of force.

The Palestinians had limited success in inflicting Israeli casualties, but King Hussein allowed them to take credit, to the point of proclaiming "we are all fedayeen".

[20] Palestinian groups used to initiate few attacks on Israeli targets from both the West Bank and Jordan before the Six-Day War, some of which caused Israel to retaliate which became known as the Reprisal operations.

[21] Following the seizure of the West Bank from Jordan in the June 1967 Six-Day War, Israel destroyed the existing Palestinian group Fatah networks there.

As a result, thousands of Jordanian farmers fled eastwards, and fedayeen (agents willing to sacrifice themselves for the Palestinian cause) moved into the valley.

[22] In February, King Hussein sent twenty carloads of troops and police to order a Fatah unit to leave the town of Karameh.

When it arrived, the column found itself surrounded by men wielding machine guns; their commander said "You have three minutes to decide whether you leave or die".

On the other hand, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban and his chief of bureau Gideon Rafael — mindful of an adverse American reaction due to the good relationship between Jordan and the US — worried a raid could result in innocent civilian deaths and be a political disservice to Israel.

On 13 December, Operation Karameh was scheduled for the next night, it was placed in the hands of both Brigade 35 of the Paratroop Corps and the Sayeret Matkal special-operations force.

[24] On 18 March, an Israeli school bus was blown up by a mine near Be'er Ora in the Arava, killing two adults and wounding ten children.

[26] On 17 March, Dayan warned that the fedayeen were preparing for a "new wave of terror", which Israel would take steps to contain if King Hussein of Jordan could not.

The Jordanians assumed the Israelis were planning an attack with a drive on Amman, and the army took up positions near the bridges, with the 60th Armored Brigade joining the 1st Infantry Division.

Time magazine reported the fedayeen had been warned in advance by Egyptian intelligence, and most of the 2,000 Arab commandos who used Karameh as a training base had pulled back into the surrounding hills to snipe at the Israelis.

[33] When the southern task force began their drive north towards Karameh, they encountered a Jordanian infantry brigade supported by armor, artillery and antitank weapons.

[34] Combined with the paratroopers, this Israeli force engaged in heavy fighting against the central brigade of the 1st division and a number of Fatah fighters.

[2] The rest of the Allenby Bridge force was blocked to the east and south of Shuna, by elements of the 1st Division's central and southern brigades, and by a tank battalion from Salt.

[10] Meanwhile, Operation Asuta was mounted against a few smaller guerrilla bases south of the Dead Sea, near Ghor es-Safi, where the school bus had struck the mine.

Ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, said "We believe that the military counteractions such as those which have just taken place, on a scale out of proportion to the acts of violence that preceded it, are greatly to be deplored.

[24] The chief of bureau of the then Israeli Foreign ministry Gideon Rafael later said that "The operation gave an enormous lift to Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization and irrevocably implanted the Palestine problem onto the international agenda, no longer as a humanitarian issue of homeless refugees, but as a claim to Palestinian statehood".

[41] Jordan claimed to have won the battle and stopped an Israeli drive on Balqa Governorate in intentions of occupying it and turning into a security buffer zone, which was supposed to serve as a punishment, due to the Jordanian support to the PLO.

[42] Arafat said "What we have done is to make the world ... realize that the Palestinian is no longer refugee number so and so, but the member of a people who hold the reins of their own destiny and are in a position to determine their own future".

[19] Palestinians and Arabs generally considered the battle a psychological victory over the Israeli military, which had been seen as 'invincible' until then, and recruitment to guerilla units soared.

[46] The battle of Karameh and the subsequent increase in the PLO's strength are considered to have been important catalysts for the 1970 events of the civil war known as Black September,[47] in which the kingdom managed to expel the Palestinian groups to Lebanon after they had started to gain control over Jordan.

[5]Moshe Barbalat, a sergeant in the Israeli Armored Corps who lost both his legs in the battle and was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service, later talked about his participation in Karameh: "Everything was burning around me, and whenever I tried I could not get up.

"[49] Muki Betser, a commander in the Sayeret Matkal commando unit, wrote in his book, Both military and political decision makers responsible for the operation worked to make sure the public never knew of the debacle.

Jordanians claim that Moshe Dayan invited Israeli journalists on the previous day for lunch in western Jordan after occupying it.