This is a bit brief, but my hunches from the comments can be summarized by these two paras from Avraham Sela's "The West Bank Under Jordan" (chapter in The Palgrave Handbook
of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan):
Although the political history of the West Bank during the period under
discussion was fraught with alienation and defiance towards the Hashemite
establishment, their 19 years of unity with Jordan can be divided into two
equal periods namely, 1948–57 and 1957–67. During the first decade, the
absolute control of the king and his security establishment over the political system enabled the Hashemite monarchy to maintain some flexibility
with the West Bank-based political opposition. Aware of the host of contradictions between the West Bank residents and their administration, the
Hashemite rulers adopted a strategy of avoiding brutal repression and
reducing frictions with their opponents as much as possible. Such policy
was preferable for both earning domestic and Arab legitimacy for the
union and diffusing tensions between both parts of the kingdom.
This strategy of walking a tightrope in relation with the West Bank
came to an end in April 1957 with the dismissal of the short-lived government of Suleiman al-Nabulsi over crucial differences concerning the international orientation of the Kingdom and the continued authoritarian
nature of the monarchic regime. The following decade saw a shift towards
more violence and repression in the relations between the regime and
Palestinian opposition largely due to the latter’s subversion under the
Hashemite monarch and the escalating inter-Arab ideological and political
rivalries inspired by Gamal Abdal Nasser and his Palestinian adherents in
the West Bank.
And after accounting for some economics figures and the well known external Arab (Egypt-led) opposition to the annexation:
The poor Jordanian economy remained dependent on the foreign
financial aid of which only a small part could be dedicated to social and
economic development. The dire economic conditions triggered a broad
tendency of infiltration into Israel’s territory, beginning as attempts to
harvest and cultivate previously owned land, then committing property
thefts, which soon assumed the form of sabotage and murder. With the
broadening phenomenon of cross-border infiltrations, sabotage, and
attacks on its citizens, Israel adopted a policy of military retaliation against
Palestinian villages—often dragging Jordanian military forces into the
fray—and official institutions such as police stations.
In 1951, the Jordanian government established the National Guard in
which all men at the age of 20–40 would have to actively serve in defence
of the border villages. At its peak in the mid-1950s, the National Guard
encompassed 40,000 men organised in 46 battalions armed with only
light weapons and maintained under strict control of the Arab Legion
(Bar-Lavi 1981, 23). Israel’s military retaliations continued until late
October 1956 when, following the Suez War, the Jordanian authorities
managed to control their border with Israel better. The harshest Israeli
retaliation was the raid on the village Qibya in October 1953 in which an
Israel Defence Force (IDF) unit killed 69 civilians, many of them women
and children, and bombed some 45 homes. Israel’s military retaliations
resulted in repeated outcries by Palestinian politicians against the passivity
of the military, calling for arming the border villagers to enable them to
protect themselves. The public criticism against the armed forces was
directly aimed at the anomaly of Jordanian army being commanded by
British officers.
Not said there, but that division was probably later the seed of the infighting between Bedouin (king supporting) and hadari (non-Bedouin) units; more on that in Wikipedia's biography of Ali Abu Nuwar.
The Palestinians in Jordan sensed
political deprivation and discrimination by the Hashemite regime concerning power-sharing in the unified kingdom despite their formal equality to East Jordanians. Indeed, although Palestinians constituted two-thirds
of the population in the Kingdom and despite their better education and
experience in administration, the central state institutions, especially the
security system, remained strictly held by East Jordanians. The sense of
political discrimination was strongly expressed by the West Bank representatives of the opposition parties in the Parliament and through the printed
media, by repeatedly demanding democratisation of the political system.
Within this context, Palestinian representatives insisted on three significant constitutional changes, namely free political association, making the
government accountable to a freely elected Parliament, and the introduction of a general draft to the military. The implementation of these
demands would practically shift the political power to the Palestinian
majority and reflect its decisive demographic weight in the military as well.
The regime, on its part, allowed the opposition, mostly located in the
West Bank, to play an active role in the parliamentary system albeit without an official approval of political existence as parties and in strict “rules
of the game,” employing punitive measures, such as imprisonment of
political figures and bans on the opposition printed media for violating
those rules. Nonetheless, following years of repression and fraudulent
elections, under the growing Nasserist tide (see below) and intense political agitation of the opposition groups in support of “Arabisation of the
military” and breaking up with the British patronage of Jordan, the regime
held free elections in October 1956. [...]
The democratic parliamentary election of October
1956 brought about the first government of typical opposition parties,
including the leader of the Ba’ath Party, ’Abdallah al-Rimawi from
Ramallah and ’Abd al-Qadir al-Saleh from Nablus who was identified with
the Communist Party. Prime Minister Sulayman al-Nabulsi’s government,
however, was short-lived due to foreign policy decisions that collided
head-on with the monarchy’s traditionally western orientation. The most
salient of all was the “Arab Solidarity Agreement” signed with Egypt,
Syria, and Saudi Arabia in January 1957 by which the latter Arab States
were to cover Jordan’s defence expenditures instead of hitherto British
aid. [...]
April 1957 was saturated with growing popular demonstrations in the
West Bank cities organised by the opposition parties and escalating tension
between the government and the monarchic establishment. The tension
reached its peak over the government’s declaration on establishing diplomatic relations with the USSR, on the one hand, and the king’s welcoming of the Eisenhower Doctrine. The sense of crisis reached its height with
the allegedly failed military coup attempt against the king followed by his
decisions to dismiss the government, outlaw all parties, and declare a state
of emergency, all of which triggered broad popular demonstrations and
protests in the West Bank cities and escape of leading opposition leaders
and senior military officers to Syria. [...]
Rimawi and other opposition figures who fled to Damascus conducted subversive and terrorist activities
against the Jordanian regime with unhidden support by the UAR. [...] The efforts of Jordan’s
enemies to undermine its domestic stability included sabotage and terrorist attacks—peaked in the assassination of Prime Minister Hazza’ al-Majali
in August 1960—and many coup attempts by military officers of East
Jordanian descent connected to the Jordanian-Palestinian Ba’ath Party
aimed at toppling the regime.[...]
Domestically, the aftermath of April 1957 witnessed a decisively restrictive approach of the Hashemite regime towards any indication of opposition against the regime, especially in the West Bank. This policy grew
more repressive parallel to the escalating activities, both domestic and
external, of subversion and resistance to the regime’s very existence.
Henceforth, the regime adopted a tight control over all aspects of political
life in the Kingdom. Following the crisis of April 1957, the regime disbanded all political parties in the country, turning the Parliament into a
façade of political representation without any real say by the public about
the king’s appointment of loyalist figures as representatives. The ban on
party activity was accompanied by harsh persecution of former and actual
members of the opposition parties, including imprisonment and tortures
(Bar-Lavi 1981, 31). Similarly, the press came under strict control, and in
return for their “good behaviour,” the publishers received an official subsidy from the government.
Parallel to repressing the opposition groups, the regime turned to foster traditional patronage relations with local leaders, especially his traditional supporters among the Bedouin population in the southern part of
East Jordan. Of all the pre-1957 parties and political movements, the
regime allowed only the MB [Muslim Brotherhood] to continue their social and political activities. Though the movement’s leaders constantly preached the application
of the Islamic law (shari’a) and criticised cultural westernisation and the
regime’s close relations with Britain and the US, the MB traditionally supported the monarch, especially against the tide of Nasserism and its
nationalist-leftist supporters (Cohen 1982, Ch. 4). The MB’s main areas
of support in the West Bank were in Hebron and Nablus, and their senior
members served as ministers with many others taking important positions
in the Jordanian administration.
So, essentially only the Muslim Brotherhood could [officially] represent the West Bank interests after '57, inside the Jordanian political establishment.
Despite the harsh repression of the political parties in the kingdom, the
West Bank population continued to be highly responsive to nationalist
events in the Arab arena such as the establishment of the UAR and the
military coup in Iraq. The breakup of the UAR caused a deep frustration
among many Palestinians, especially in the West Bank, but the tripartite
unity agreement between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq in April 1963 once again
took thousands of demonstrators to the streets of Jerusalem, Ramallah,
and Nablus in support of Jordan incorporation to the newly established
Arab union, which turned very short-lived. This time the regime took no
risks by harshly repressing the demonstrations by military force [citations].
And then there was the '64 détente with Naser, which however brought new problems for Jordan (the PLO and Fatah) culminating in the same old demands from the West Bank:
The Arab summit conference held in January 1964 in Cairo signalled a
new era of mitigated inter-Arab tensions and rapprochement between
Jordan and Egypt following years of hostility and conflict, not without a
cost for the former. In return for Nasser’s conciliatory approach, Hussein
gave his consent to the establishment in May 1964 of the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) by Ahmad al-Shuqayri, as a political
framework of the vaguely defined structure of the ‘Palestinian Entity’.
Shukeiri was a veteran Palestinian politician and diplomat who had just
inherited the position of representative of the “All-Palestine Government”
(established in September 1948 in Gaza City) in the Arab League. If the
Hashemite king assumed he could control the PLO by having many of his
Palestinian loyalists participating in the founding conference, the newly
established organisation turned into a primary cause of frustration for the
Jordanian government. This was primarily due to Shuqayri’s demands that
challenged Jordan’s sovereignty, such as establishing a Palestinian army on
Jordan’s territory under the PLO’s authority, taxation of Palestinian salaries in the Kingdom, and arming the border villages. At the same time, the
Jordanian monarch could not ignore the enthusiasm and rising national
sentiments among Palestinians, especially in the West Bank, about the
newly established organisation.
The establishment of the PLO coincided with the rise of the Palestine
Liberation Movement (harakat tahrir filastin known in its abbreviations as FaTaH). On 1 January 1965, the organisation launched its first sabotage action in Israel following a few years of clandestine ideological and
mobilisation preparations, including in the West Bank. Contrary to the
Arab patronage of the PLO, Fatah was a grassroots organisation representing authentic Palestinian nationalist commitment, hence the heated
competition between the two. The Fatah attacks against Israel from the
West Bank territory once again triggered repeated Israeli retaliations
against Jordanian targets though the Jordanian regime made sincere
efforts, albeit partly successful, to repress the Fatah and other Palestinian
activists and prevent infiltrations across the border with Israel.
The last two years of the Hashemite rule over the West Bank thus saw
a rising Palestinian nationalist sentiment which grew stronger along with
the growing feud between the Jordanian government on the one hand
and Shuqayri and his Egyptian patrons on the other and repression of
Fatah’s activists in the West Bank. In November 1966, Israel launched a
massive raid on the village of Samu’ south of Hebron in retaliation for the
killing of three Israeli soldiers by a mine explosion within Israel. Fifteen
Jordanian Army soldiers were killed, and over 50 homes were destroyed.
The responses that erupted in the West Bank cities were the gravest of all
in the history of their relations with the Hashemite regime and the most
dangerous for the latter’s stability indicating the peak of the Palestinisation
of the West Bank residents.
The mass demonstrations and strikes assumed an unprecedented scope
and organisation, including the sporadic use of firearms by the demonstrators against the Jordanian soldiers sent to repress them. The opposition
leaders behind the protest represented primarily local interests of notable
families in addition to being strongly encouraged by outside incitement.
At the height of the turmoil, they signed a joint “covenant” with a list of
far-reaching political demands reminiscent of the grievances and demands
of the Palestinian opposition in the early 1950s, especially the democratisation of Jordan. Indeed, had the 1966 demands been accepted, it would
have resulted in Palestinian autonomy [citations]
Wikipedia's coverage of the last event only mentions that
King Hussein was faced with a storm of criticism for failing to protect Samu, emanating from Jordanians, as well as from Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries. Riots spread throughout the West Bank demanding the king be overthrown. Four Palestinians were killed by Jordanian police as a result of the riots. On 20 November, Hussein ordered nationwide military service.
Alas, I could not find a more grassroots account than that. And as you can see, Sela's account is rather focused on the implications of the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts for Jordan.
