Israel and the Arab Coalition in 1948
Avi Shlaim
in Eugene Rogan and Avi
Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the The United States
and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict History of 1948. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001, 79-103.
‘A
nation,’ said the French philosopher Ernest Renan, ‘is a
group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred
of their neighbours.’ Throughout the ages, the use of myths about
the past has been a potent instrument of forging a nation. The Zionist
movement is not unique in propagating a simplified and varnished
version of the past in the process of nation-building. But it does
provide a strikingly successful example of the use of myths for the
dual purpose of promoting internal unity and enlisting international
sympathy and support for the State of Israel.
The traditional Zionist
version of the Arab-Israeli conflict places the responsibility on the
Arab side. Israel is portrayed as the innocent victim of unremitting
Arab hostility and Arab aggression. In this respect, traditional
Zionist accounts of the emergence of Israel form a natural sequel to
the history of the Jewish people, with its emphasis on the weakness,
vulnerability, and numerical inferiority in relation to their
adversaries. The American Jewish historian Salo Baron once referred to
this as the lachrymose view of Jewish history. This view tends to
present Jewish history as a long series of trials and tribulations
culminating in the Holocaust.
The Military Balance
The War of Independence constituted a glorious contrast to the
centuries of powerlessness, persecution, and humiliation. Yet the
traditional Zionist narrative of the events surrounding the birth of
the State of Israel was still constructed around the notion of the Jews
as the victims. This narrative presents the 1948 war as a simple,
bipolar no-holds-barred struggle between a monolithic and malevolent
Arab adversary and a tiny peace-loving Jewish community. The biblical
image of David and Goliath is frequently evoked in this narrative.
Little Israel is portrayed as fighting with its back to the wall
against a huge, well-armed and overbearing Arab adversary.
Israel’s victory in this war is treated as verging on the
miraculous, and as resulting from the determination and heroism of the
Jewish fighters rather than from disunity and disarray on the Arab
side. This heroic version of the War of Independence has proved so
enduring and resistant to revision precisely because it corresponds to
the collective memory of the generation of 1948. It is also the version
of history that Israeli children are taught at school. Consequently,
few ideas are as deeply ingrained in the mind of the Israeli public as
that summed up by the Hebrew phrase, me’atim mul rabim, or
‘the few against the many.’
One of the most persistent myths surrounding the birth of the State of
Israel is that in 1948 the newly-born state faced a monolithic and
implacably hostile Arab coalition. This coalition was believed to be
united behind one central aim: the destruction of the infant Jewish
state. As there is no commonly accepted term for the liquidation of a
state, Yehoshafat Harkabi, a leading Israeli student of the
Arab-Israeli conflict, proposed calling it ‘politicide’
– the murder of the politeia, the political entity. The aim of
the Arabs, Harkabi asserted, was politicidal. Linked to this aim,
according to Harkabi, was a second aim, that of genocide –
‘to throw the Jews into the sea’ as the popular phrase put
it.[1] Harkabi is just one example of the widely held belief that
in 1948 the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine, faced
not just verbal threats but a real danger of annihilation from the
regular armies of the neighbouring Arab states. The true story of the
first Arab-Israeli war, as the ‘new historians’ who emerged
on the scene in the late 1980s tried to show, was considerably more
complicated.[2]
The argument advanced in this chapter, in a nutshell, is that the Arab
coalition facing Israel in 1947-49 was far from monolithic; that within
this coalition there was no agreement on war aims; that the inability
of the Arabs to coordinate their diplomatic and military moves was
partly responsible for their defeat; that throughout the conflict
Israel had the military edge over its Arab adversaries; and, finally,
and most importantly, that Israel’s leaders were aware of the
divisions inside the Arab coalition and that they exploited these
divisions to the full in waging the war and in extending the borders of
their state.
As far as the military balance is concerned, it was always assumed that
the Arabs enjoyed overwhelming numerical superiority. The war was
accordingly depicted as one between the few against the many, as a
desperate, tenacious, and heroic struggle for survival against
horrifyingly heavy odds. The desperate plight and the heroism of the
Jewish fighters are not in question. Nor is the fact that they had
inferior military hardware at their disposal, at least until the first
truce, when illicit arms supplies from Czechoslovakia decisively tipped
the scales in their favour. But in mid-May 1948 the total number of
Arab troops, both regular and irregular, operating in the Palestine
theatre was under 25,000, whereas the Israel Defence Force (IDF)
fielded over 35,000 troops. By mid-July the IDF mobilized 65,000 men
under arms, and be December its numbers had reached a peak of 96,441.
The Arab states also reinforced their armies, but they could not match
this rate of increase. Thus, at each stage of the war, the IDF
outnumbered all the Arab forces arrayed against it, and, after the
first round of fighting, it outgunned them too. The final outcome of
the war was therefore not a miracle but a faithful reflection of the
underlying military balance in the Palestine theatre. In this war, as
in most wars, the stronger side prevailed.[3]
The Arab forces, both regular and irregular, mobilized to do battle
against the emergent Jewish state were nowhere as powerful or united as
they appeared to be in Arab and Jewish propaganda. In the first phase
of the conflict, from the passage of the United Nations partition
resolution on 29 November 1947 until the proclamation of statehood on
14 May 1948, the Yishuv had to defend itself against attacks from
Palestinian irregulars and volunteers from the Arab world. Following
the proclamation of the State of Israel, however, the neighbouring Arab
states and Iraq, committed their regular armies to the battle against
the Jewish state. Contact with regular armies undoubtedly came as a
shock to the Haganah, the paramilitary organisation of the Yishuv which
was in the process of being transformed into the IDF. Yet, the Jewish
propaganda machine greatly exaggerated the size and quality of the
invading forces. A typical account of the war of independence, by a
prominent Israeli diplomat, goes as follows: ‘Five Arab armies
and contingents from two more, equipped with modern tanks, artillery,
and warplanes … invaded Israel from north, east, and south.
Total war was forces on the Yishuv under the most difficult
conditions.’[4]
The five Arab states who joined in the invasion of Palestine were
Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq; while the two contingents
came from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. All these states, however, only sent
an expeditionary force to Palestine, keeping the bulk of their army at
home. The expeditionary forces were hampered by long lines of
communication, the absence of reliable intelligence about their enemy,
poor leadership, poor coordination, and very poor planning for the
campaign that lay ahead of them. The Palestinian irregulars, known as
the Holy War Army, were led by Hassan Salameh Abdel Qadir al-Husayni.
The Arab Liberation Army consisted of around 4,000 Arab volunteers for
the Holy War in Palestine. They were funded by the Arab League, trained
in bases in southern Syria, and led by the Syrian adventurer Fawzi
al-Qawukji. Qawukji’s strong points were politics and public
relations rather than military leadership. The Arab politicians who
appointed him valued him more as a known enemy and therefore potential
counter-weight to the Grand Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, than as the
most promising military leader to lead the fight against the Jews. The
mufti certainly saw this appointment as an attempt by his rivals in the
League to undermine his influence over the future of Palestine.[5]
The Arab coalition was beset by profound internal political
differences. The Arab League, since its foundation in 1945, was the
highest forum for the making of pan-Arab policy on Palestine. But the
Arab League was divided between a Hashemite bloc consisting of
Transjordan and Iraq and an anti-Hashemite bloc led by Egypt and Saudi
Arabia. Dynastic rivalries played a major part in shaping Arab
approaches to Palestine. King Abdullah of Transjordan was driven by a
long-standing ambition to make himself the master of Greater Syria
which included, in addition to Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and
Palestine. King Farouq saw Abdullah’s ambition as a direct threat
to Egypt’s leadership in the Arab world. The rulers of Syria and
Lebanon saw in King Abdullah a threat to the independence of their
countries and they also suspected him of being in cahoots with the
enemy. Each Arab state was moved by its own dynastic or national
interests. Arab rulers were as concerned with curbing each other as
they were in fighting the common enemy. Under these circumstances it
was virtually impossible to reach any real consensus on the means and
ends of the Arab intervention in Palestine. Consequently, far from
confronting a single enemy with a clear purpose and a clear plan of
action, the Yishuv faced a loose coalition consisting of the Arab
League, independent Arab states, irregular Palestinian forces, and an
assortment of volunteers. The Arab coalition was one of the most
divided, disorganized, and ramshackle coalitions in the entire history
of warfare.
Separate and conflicting national interests were hidden behind the
fig-leaf of securing Palestine for the Palestinians. The Palestine
problem was the first major test of the Arab League and the Arab League
failed it miserably. The actions of the League were taken ostensibly in
support of the Palestinian claim for independence in the whole of
Palestine. But the League remained curiously unwilling to allow the
Palestinians to assume control over their own destiny. For Abd
al-Rahman Azzam, the secretary-general of the Arab League, the
mufti was ‘the Menachem Begin of the Arabs.’ Azzam Pasha
told a British journalist (who relayed it to a Jewish official), that
the Arab League’s policy ‘was intended to squeeze the mufti
out.’[6]
At Arab League meetings, the mufti argued against intervention in
Palestine by the regular Arab armies, but his pleas were ignored.[7]
All the mufti asked for was financial support and arms and these
were promised to him but delivered only in negligible quantities. It is
misleading, therefore, to claim that all the resources of the Arab
League were placed at the disposal of the Palestinians. On the
contrary, the Arab League let the Palestinians down in their hour of
greatest need. As Yezid Sayigh, the distinguished historian of the
Palestinian armed struggle, put it: ‘Reluctance to commit major
resources to the conflict and mutual distrust provoked constant
disputes over diplomacy and strategy, leading to incessant
behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, half-hearted and poorly conceived
military intervention, and, ultimately, defeat on the
battlefield.’[8]
The Hashemite Connection
The weakest link in the chain of hostile Arab states that surrounded
the Yishuv on all sides was Transjordan. Even since the creation of the
amirate of Transjordan by Britain in 1921, the Jewish Agency strove to
cultivate friendly relations with its Hashemite ruler, Abdullah ibn
Husayn. The irreconcilable conflict between the Jewish and Arab
national movements in Palestine provided the setting for the emergence
of the special relations between the Zionists and Abdullah who became
king in 1946 when Transjordan gained formal independence. Failure to
reach an understanding with their neighbours spurred the Zionist
leaders to seek a counterweight to local hostility in better relations
with the neighbouring Arab countries. Indeed, the attempt to bypass the
Palestine Arabs and forge links with the rulers of the Arab states
became a central feature of Zionist diplomacy in the 1930s and 1940s.
The friendship between the Hashemite ruler and the Zionist movement was
cemented by a common enemy in the shape of the Grand Mufti, Hajj Amin
al-Husayni, the leader of the Palestinian national movement. For the
mufti had not only put his forces on a collision course with the Jews;
he was also Abdullah’s principal rival for control over
Palestine. Both sides perceived Palestinian nationalism as a threat and
therefore had a common interest in suppressing it.[9] From the
Zionist point of view, Abdullah was an immensely valuable ally. First
and foremost, he was the only Arab ruler who was prepared to accept the
partition of Palestine and to live in peace with a Jewish state after
the conflict had been settled. Second, his small army, the Arab Legion,
was the best trained and most professional of the armies of the Arab
states. Third, Abdullah and his aides and agents were a source of
information about the other Arab countries involved in the Palestine
problem. Last but not least, through Abdullah the Zionists could
generate mistrust, foment rivalry, and leak poison to weaken the
coalition of their Arab adversaries.
In 1947, as the conflict over Palestine entered the crucial stage, the
contacts between the Jewish side and King Abdullah intensified. Golda
Meir of the Jewish Agency had a secret meeting with Abdullah in
Naharayim on 17 November 1947. At this meeting they reached a
preliminary agreement to coordinate their diplomatic and military
strategies, to forestall the mufti, and to endeavour to prevent the
other Arab states from intervening directly in Palestine.[10]
Twelve days later, on 29 November, the United Nations pronounced its
verdict in favour of dividing the area of the British mandate into two
states, one Jewish and one Arab. This made it possible to firm up the
tentative understanding reached at Naharayim. In return for
Abdullah’s promise not to enter the area assigned by the UN to
the Jewish state, the Jewish Agency agreed to the annexation by
Transjordan of most of the area earmarked for the Arab state. Precise
borders were not drawn and Jerusalem was not even discussed as under
the UN plan it was to remain a corpus separatum under international
control. Nor was the agreement ever put down in writing. The Jewish
Agency tried to tie Abdullah down to a written agreement but he was
evasive. Yet, according to Yaacov Shimoni, a senior official in the
Political Department of the Jewish Agency, despite Abdullah’s
evasions, the understanding with him was:
entirely
clear in its general spirit. We would agree to the conquest of the Arab
part of Palestine by Abdullah. We would not stand in his way. We would
not help him, would not seize it and hand it over to him. He would have
to take it by his own means and stratagems but we would not disturb
him. He, for his part, would not prevent us from establishing the state
of Israel, from dividing the country, taking our share and establishing
a state in it. Now his vagueness, his ambiguity, consisted of declining
to write anything, to draft anything which would bind him. To this he
did not agree. But to the end, until the last minute, he always said
again and again: ‘perhaps you would settle for less than complete
independence and statehood, for full autonomy, or a Jewish canton under
the roof of the Hashemite crown.’ He did try to raise this idea
every now and again and, of course, always met with a blank wall. We
told him we were talking about complete, full, and total independence
and are not prepared to discuss anything else. And to this he seemed
resigned but without ever saying: ‘OK, an independent
state.’ He did not say that, he did not commit himself, he was
not precise. But such was the spirit of the agreement and it was
totally unambiguous.
Incidentally, the agreement included a provision that if Abdullah
succeeded in capturing Syria, and realized his dream of Greater Syria
– something we did not think he had the power to do – we
would not disturb him. We did not believe either in the strength of his
faction in Syria. But the agreement included a provision that if he did
accomplish it, we would not stand in his way. But regarding the Arab
part of Palestine, we did think it was serious and that he had every
chance of taking it, all the more so since the Arabs of Palestine, with
their official leadership, did not want to establish a state at all.
That meant that we were not interfering with anybody. It was they who
refused. Had they accepted a state, we might not have entered into the
conspiracy. I do not know. But the fact was that they refused, so there
was a complete power vacuum here and we agreed that he will go in and
take the Arab part, provided he consented to the establishment of our
state and to a joint declaration that there will be peaceful relations
between us and him after the dust settles. That was the spirit of the
agreement. A text did not exist.[11]
Neutralizing the Arab Liberation Army
King Abdullah was the Zionists’ principal vehicle for fomenting
further tension and antagonism within the ranks of the conflict-ridden
Arab coalition, but he was not the only one. Fawzi al-Qawukji, the
commander of the Arab Liberation Army, was another weak link in the
chain of hostile Arab forces. The first companies of the ALA started
infiltrating into Palestine in January 1948 while Qawukji himself did
not arrive until March. Qawukji’s anti-Husayni political
orientation provided an opportunity for a dialogue across the battle
lines that were rapidly taking shape in Palestine as the British
mandate was approaching its inglorious end.
Yehoshua (‘Josh’) Palmon was one of the Haganah’s
ablest intelligence officers and a fluent Arabic speaker. From close
observation of factional Arab politics, Palmon was aware of the bitter
grudge which Qawukji bore the mufti. In 1947 Palmon discovered wartime
German documents bearing on this feud and he passed them on to Qawukji.
These documents confirmed Qawukji’s suspicion that it was the
mufti who had instigated his arrest and incarceration by the German
authorities. Qawukji expressed a desire to meet Palmon but, on being
appointed to command the ALA, he dropped the idea. From officers who
arrived in Palestine before their chief, however, Palmon learnt that
Qawukji was not hell-bent on fighting the Jews. He apparently realized
that such a war would be neither short nor easy and he was said to be
open to suggestions for averting it.[12]
David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, approved
Palmon’s plan for a secret meeting to try and persuade Qawukji to
keep out of the fight between the Haganah and the mufti’s forces
provided no promises were made to limit their own freedom of action to
retaliate against any armed gangs.[13] Palmon went to see Qawukji at
the latter’s headquarters in the village of Nur al-Shams on 1
April. After a great deal of beating about the bush, Palmon got down to
the real business of the meeting which was to turn inter-Arab rivalries
to the advantage of his side. A solution could have been found to the
problem of Palestine, he said, had it not been for the mufti. Qawukji
launched into a diatribe against the mufti’s wicked ambitions,
violent methods, and selfish lieutenants. When Palmon mentioned Abdel
Qadir al-Husayni, the mufti’s cousin, and Hassan Salameh, Qawukji
interjected that they could not count on any help from him and, indeed,
he hoped that the Jews would teach them a good lesson. Palmon then
suggested that the Haganah and the ALA should refrain from attacking
each other and plan instead to negotiate following the departure of the
British. Qawukji agreed but explained frankly that he needed to score
one military victory in order to establish his credentials. Palmon
could not promise to hand him a victory on a silver plate. If Jews were
attacked, he said, they would fight back. Nevertheless, he went away
with a clear impression that Qawukji would remain neutral in the event
of a Jewish attack on the mufti’s forces in Palestine.[14]
The extent of Palmon’s success in neutralizing the ALA became
clear only as events unfolded. On 4 April the Haganah launched
Operation Nahshon to open the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road which had been
blocked by the Palestinian irregulars. First, Hassan Salameh’s
headquarters in Ramla was blown up. Although an ALA contingent with
heavy guns was present in the neighbourhood, it did not go to the
rescue. Qawukji was as good (or as bad) as his word to Palmon. Next was
the battle for the Kastel, a strategic point overlooking the road to
Jerusalem, which changed hands several times amid fierce fighting.
Abdel Qadir al-Husayni telephoned Qawukji to ask for an urgent supply
of arms and ammunition to beat off the Jewish offensive. Thanks to the
Arab League, Qawukji had large stocks of war material but, according to
the Haganah listening post which monitored the call, he replied that he
had none.[15] Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni himself was killed in the
battle for the Kastel on 9 April. He was by far the ablest and most
charismatic of the mufti’s military commanders and his death
marked the collapse of the Husayni forces in Palestine.
The Road to War
The tide now turned decisively in favour of the Jewish forces. The
mixed towns of Tiberias, Haifa, Safad, and Jaffa fell into Jewish hands
in rapid succession and the first waves of Palestinian refugees were
set in motion. With the collapse of Palestinian resistance, the Arab
governments, and especially that of Transjordan, were subjected to
mounting popular pressure to send their armies to Palestine to check
the Jewish military offensive. King Abdullah was unable to withstand
this pressure. The flood of refugees reaching Transjordan pushed the
Arab Legion towards greater participation in the affairs of Palestine.
The tacit agreement that Abdullah had reached with the Jewish Agency
enabled him to pose as the protector of the Arabs in Palestine while
keeping his army out of the areas that the UN had earmarked for the
Jewish state. This balancing act, however, became increasingly
difficult to maintain. Suspecting Abdullah of collaboration with the
Zionists, the anti-Hashemite states in the Arab League began to lean
towards intervention with regular armies in Palestine, if only to curb
Abdullah’s territorial ambition and stall his bid for hegemony in
the region. On 30 April the Political Committee of the Arab League
decided that all the Arab states must prepare their armies for the
invasion of Palestine on 15 May, the day after expiry of the British
mandate. Under pressure from Transjordan and Iraq, King Abdullah was
appointed as commander-in-chief of the invading forces.[16]
To the Jewish leaders it looked as if Abdullah was about to throw in
his lot with the rest of the Arab world. So Golda Meir was sent on 10
May on a secret mission to Amman to warn the king against doing that.
Abdullah looked depressed and nervous. Meir flatly rejected his offer
of autonomy for the Jewish parts under his crown and insisted that they
adhere to their original plan for an independent Jewish state and the
annexation of the Arab part to Transjordan. Abdullah did not deny that
this was the agreement but the situation in Palestine changed
radically, he explained, and now he was one of five; he had no choice
but to join with the other Arab states in the invasion of Palestine.
Meir was adamant: if Abdullah was going back on their agreement and if
he wanted war, then they would meet after the war and after the Jewish
state had been established. The meeting ended on a frosty note but
Abdullah’s parting words to Ezra Danin, who accompanied and
translated for Golda Meir, were a plea not to break off contact, come
what may. It was nearly midnight when Mrs Meir and her escort set off
on the dangerous journey back home to report the failure of her mission
and the inevitability of an invasion.[17]
In Zionist historiography the meeting of 10 May is usually presented as
proof of the unreliability of Israel’s only friend among the
Arabs and as confirmation that Israel stood alone against an all-out
offensive by a united Arab world. Golda Meir herself helped to
propagate the view that King Abdullah broke his work to her; that the
meeting ended in total disagreement; and that they parted as
enemies.[18] The king’s explanation of the constraints that
forced him to intervene were seized upon as evidence of treachery and
betrayal on his part. In essence, the Zionist charge against Abdullah
is that when the moment of truth arrived, he revoked his pledge not to
attack the Jewish state and threw in his lot with the rest of the Arab
world.[19] This charge helped to sustain he legend that grew up
around the outbreak of war as a carefully orchestrated all-Arab
invasion plan directed at strangling the Jewish state at birth.
The truth about the second Abdullah-Golda meeting is rather more
nuanced than this self-serving Zionist account would have us believe. A
more balanced assessment of Abdullah’s position was presented by
Yaacov Shimoni at the meeting of the Arab Section of the Political
Department of the Jewish Agency on 13 May in Jerusalem: ‘His
Majesty has not entirely betrayed the agreement, nor is he entirely
loyal to it, but something in the middle.’[20] Even
Meir’s own account of her mission, given to her colleagues on the
Provisional State Council shortly after her return from Amman, was
nowhere as unsympathetic or unflattering as the account she included
much later in her memoirs. From her own contemporary report on her
mission, a number of important, but frequently overlooked points,
emerge. First, Abdullah did not go back on his word: he only stressed
that circumstances had changed. Second, Abdullah did not say he wanted
war: it was Golda Meir who threatened him with dire consequences in the
event of war. Third, they did not part as enemies. On the contrary,
Abdullah seemed anxious to maintain contact with the Jewish side even
after the outbreak of hostilities. Abdullah needed to send his army
across the River Jordan in order to gain control over the Arab part of
Palestine contiguous with his kingdom. He did not say anything
about attacking the Jewish forces in their own territory. The
distinction was a subtle one and Golda Meir was not renowned for her
subtlety.
Part of the problem was that Abdullah had to pretend to be going along
with the other members of the Arab League who had unanimously rejected
the UN partition plan and were bitterly opposed to the establishment of
a Jewish state. What is more, the military experts of the Arab
League had worked out a unified plan for invasion. This plan was
all the more dangerous because it was geared to the real capabilities
of the regular Arab armies rather than to the wild rhetoric about
throwing the Jews into the sea. But the forces actually made
available by the Arab states for the campaign in Palestine were well
below the level demanded by the Military Committee of the Arab League.
Moreover, King Abdullah wrecked the invasion plan by making last-minute
changes. His objective in ordering his army across the River
Jordan was not to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state but to
make himself master of the Arab part of Palestine. Abdullah never
wanted the other Arab armies to intervene in Palestine. Their
plan was to prevent partition; his plan was to effect partition.
His plan assumed an even required a Jewish presence in Palestine
although his preference was for Jewish autonomy under his crown. By
concentrating his forces on the West Bank, Abdullah intended to
eliminate once and for all any possibility of an independent
Palestinian state and to present his Arab partners with annexation as a
fait accompli.
As the troops marched into Palestine, the politicians of the Arab
League continued their backstage manoeuvres,labyrinthine intrigues, and
sordid attempts to stab each other in the back – all in the name
of the highest pan-Arab ideals. Politics did not end when the war
started but was inextricably mixed with it from the moment the first
shot was fired until the guns finally fell silent and beyond.[21]
On 15 May, the day of the invasion, an event took place which
presaged much of what was to follow and exposed the lengths to which
the Arab politicians were prepared to go in their attempts to outwit
their partners. Syrian President Shukri al-Quwwatti sent a
message to King Abdullah saying it was necessary to halt the advance
into Palestine and to provide the Palestinians instead with all
possible arms and funds. Abdullah suspected that this was a ploy
to find out his true intentions. His answer was a flat rejection
of this proposal.[22] His army had already been given its
marching orders. The die was cast.
If King Abdullah’s relations with his fellow Arab leaders had
sank to one of their lowest points, his contact with the Jewish Agency
had been severed altogether. The momentum generated by popular
Arab pressure for the liberation of Palestine was unstoppable.
The Jews were in a similarly truculent and uncompromising mood: they
had proclaimed their state and they were determined to fight for it,
whatever the cost. It was an ultimatum that Mrs Meir had gone to
give King Abdullah, not sympathy or help in dealing with his inter-Arab
problems. The Hashemite-Zionist accord, which had been thirty
years in the making, looked about to unravel amid bitter
recriminations. Five Arab armies were on the move, dashing the
hope of a peaceful partition of Palestine that lay at the heart of this
accord. As the soldiers took charge on both sides, the prospects
of salvaging anything from the ruins of the Zionist-Hashemite accord
looked at best uncertain.
The Invasion
The first round of fighting, from 15 May until 11 June, was a critical
period during which the fate of the newly-born Jewish state seemed to
hang in the balance. During this period the Jewish community
suffered heavy causalities, civilian as well as military; it reeled
from the shock of contact with regular Arab armies; and it suffered an
ordeal which left indelible marks on the national psyche. For the
people who lived through this ordeal, the sense of being me’atim
mul rabim, the few against the many, could not have been more
real. During this period, the IDF was locked in a battle on all
fronts, against the five invading armies. The IDF had numerical
superiority in manpower over all the Arab expeditionary forces put
together, but it suffered from a chronic weakness in firepower, a
weakness that was not rectified until the arrival of illicit arms
shipments from the Eastern bloc during the first truce. The sense
of isolation and vulnerability was overwhelming. And it was
during this relatively brief but deeply traumatic period that the
collective Israeli memory of the 1948 War was formed.[23]
Israel’s political and military leaders, however, had a more
realistic picture of the intentions and capabilities of their
adversaries. David Ben-Gurion, who became prime minister and
defence minister after independence, expected Abdullah to take
over the Arab part of Palestine in accordance with the tacit agreement
that Golda Meir had reached with him in November 1947. So he
could not have been altogether surprised to learn from Mrs Meir in May
1948 that Abdullah intended to invade Palestine. The real
question was whether Abdullah’s bid to capture Arab Palestine
would involve him in an armed clash with the Israeli forces.
Ben-Gurion did not have to wait long for an answer to this
question. No sooner had the Arab armies marched into Palestine,
when the Arab Legion and the IDF came to blows. Some of the fiercest
battles of the entire war were fought between these two armies in and
around Jerusalem. Even before the end of the British mandate, an
incident took place which cast a long shadow over the relations between
the Yishuv and Transjordan. An Arab Legion detachment launched an
all out attack, with armoured cars and canons, on Gush Etzion, a bloc
of four Jewish settlements astride the Jerusalem Hebron road.
After the defenders surrendered, some were massacred by Arab villagers
from the Hebron area and the rest were taken captive by the Arab
Legion.[24] The Etzion bloc was an enclave in the middle of a
purely Arab area which had been assigned to the Arab state by the
UN. Nevertheless, this ferocious assault could not be easily
reconciled with Abdullah’s earlier protestations of friendship or
professed desire to avert military hostilities.
In Jerusalem the initiative was seized by the Jewish side. As
soon as the British evacuated the city, a vigorous offensive was
launched to capture the Arab and mixed quarters of the city and form a
solid area going all the way to the Old City walls. Glubb Pasha,
the British commander of the Arab Legion, adopted a defensive strategy
which was intended to avert a head-on collision with the Jewish
forces. According to his account, the Arab Legion crossed the
Jordan on 15 May to help the Arabs defend the area of Judea and Samaria
allocated to them. They were strictly forbidden to enter
Jerusalem or to enter any area allotted to the Jewish state in the
partition plan. But on 16 May the Jewish forces tried to break
into the Old City, prompting urgent calls for help from the Arab
defenders. On 17 May, King Abdullah ordered Glubb Pasha to
send a force to defend the Old City.[25] Fierce fighting
ensued. The legionnaires inflicted very heavy damage and civilian
casualties by shelling the New City, the Jewish quarters of
Jerusalem. On 28 May, the Jewish Quarter inside the Old City
finally surrendered to the Arab Legion.
After the Jewish offensive in Jerusalem had been halted, the focal
point of the battle moved to Latrun, a hill spur with fortifications,
that dominated the main route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Like
Gush Etzion, Latrun lay in the area allotted by the UN to the Arab
state. But Latrun’s strategic importance was such that
Ben-Gurion was determined to capture it. Against the advice of
his generals, he ordered three frontal attacks on Latrun, on 25 and 30
May and on 9 June. The Arab Legion beat off all these attacks and
inflicted very heavy losses on the hastily improvized and ill-equipped
Jewish forces.
Any lingering hope that Transjordan would act differently to the rest
of the Arab countries went up in smoke as a result of the costly
clashes in and around Jerusalem. Yigael Yadin, the IDF chief of
operations, roundly rejected the claim that there had ever been any
collusion between the Jewish Agency and the ruler of Transjordan, let
alone collusion during the 1948 War:
Contrary
to the view of many historians, I do not believe that there was an
agreement or even an understanding between Ben-Gurion and
Abdullah. He may have had wishful thoughts... but until 15 May
1948, he did not build on it and did not assume that an agreement with
Abdullah would neutralize the Arab Legion. On the contrary, his
estimate was that the clash with the Legion was inevitable. Even
if Ben-Gurion had an understanding or hopes, they evaporated the moment
Abdullah marched on Jerusalem. First there was the assault on
Kfar Etzion, then the capture of positions in Latrun in order to
dominate the road to Jerusalem, and then there was the entry into
Jerusalem. From these moves it was clear that Abdullah intended
to capture Jerusalem.
If there had indeed been
an agreement between Ben-Gurion and Abdullah, it was violated and it
was Abdullah who violated it. That was the turning point in
Abdullah’s policy. He cancelled any agreement and any
understanding. His armies entered the battle and the clash was
unavoidable. The contact with Abdullah was severed and it was not
renewed at any level until September.
After May 15, Ben-Gurion saw the Legion as the number one enemy.
He strove towards a showdown with the Legion. For Ben-Gurion
Jerusalem was the focal point of the entire War of Independence and he
concentrated all the forces in order to gain the upper hand over the
Legion in Jerusalem. I, for military reasons, saw Egypt as the
number one enemy. But Ben-Gurion did not want to clash with
Egypt. It was with difficulty that he was persuaded to divert
forces to the southern front when the war broke out.[26]
Yadin’s testimony cannot be dismissed lightly for it reflected
the unanimous view of the IDF General Staff that the link with
Transjordan had no influence on Israel’s military conduct during
the War of Independence. As Major-General Moshe Carmel, the
commander of the northern front, put it: ‘All of us felt that
‘à la guerre come à la guerre and that we had to
act against all the Arab forces that had invaded the
country.’[27] What may be questioned is the assumption of
Israel’s military leaders that Abdullah intended to capture
Jerusalem.
One of the many paradoxes of the 1948 War was that the greatest
understanding – that between Israel and Transjordan – was
followed upon the outbreak of war by the bloodiest battles. One
explanation of this paradox is that within the context of the tacit
understanding between the two sides, there was plenty of scope for
misunderstandings. Jerusalem was the most likely area for
misunderstandings to arise both because of its symbolic and strategic
importance, and because the fact that it was to form a separate enclave
under an international regime permitted both sides to keep their fears
and their hopes to themselves. In the first round of fighting,
which ended when the UN-decreed truce took effect on 11 June,
Transjordan and Israel looked like the worst of enemies. During
the rest of the war, however, they were, in the apt phrase of one
Israeli writer, ‘the best of enemies.’[28]
The other Arab armies were not as effective as the Arab Legion in the
first round of fighting. There was little coordination between
the invading armies and virtually no cooperation. Although there
was one headquarters for all the invading armies, headed by an Iraqi
general, Nur al-Din Mahmud, it had no effective control over those
armies, and the military operations did not follow the agreed
plan. Having accomplished the initial thrust into Palestine, each
army feared that it would be cut off by the enemy from the rear.
Consequently, one after the other, the Arab armies took up defensive
positions. The Egyptian army sent two columns from their forward
bases in Sinai. One advanced north along the coastal road in the
direction of Tel Aviv. Its advance was slowed down by its
attempts, mostly abortive, to capture Jewish settlements scattered in
the northern Negev. It continued its advance, by-passing these
settlements, until it was stopped on 29 May by the Negev Brigade in
Ashdod, 20 miles from Tel Aviv. The second column, which included
volunteers from the Muslim Brotherhood, proceeded towards Jerusalem
through Beersheba, Hebron and Bethlehem. It was stopped at
Kibbutz Ramat Rahel at the southern edge of Jerusalem on 24 May.
An Arab Legion unit was stationed nearby but it extended no assistance
to the Egyptian fighters. Thus, after only 10 days of fighting,
the Egyptian advance was halted.
The Iraqi army, despite considerable logistical difficulties, managed
to assemble a sizeable force, with tanks and artillery, for the
invasion of Palestine. In the first three days following the end
of the mandate, the Iraqi army launched attacks on three Jewish
settlements, all of which were repulsed. Having given up the
attempt to capture Jewish settlements, the Iraqi army retreated,
regrouped, and took up defensive positions in ‘the
triangle’ defined by the large Arab cities of Jenin, Nablus, and
Tulkarem. When attacked by IDF units, in Jenin for example,
it held its ground. It also launched occasional forays into
Jewish territory, but none of them lasted more than a few hours.
Although its westernmost point was less than ten miles from the
Mediterranean, the Iraqi army made no attempt to push to the sea and
cut Israel in two. One reason for the relative passivity of the
Iraqi military leaders was the fear of being cut off by the
enemy. Another reason was their mistrust of the Arab Legion or,
more precisely, of its foreign commander Glubb Pasha. Salih
Sa’ib al-Jubury, the Iraqi chief of staff, claimed that it was
the failure of the Arab Legion to carry out the mission assigned to it
in the overall invasion plan that exposed his own army to attacks from
the Israelis and prevented it from achieving its aims. According
to al-Jubury, the Legion acted independently throughout, with terrible
results for the general Arab war effort.[29]
In the north, the Syrians crossed into Israel just south of the Sea of
Galilee and captured Zemah, Sha’ar ha-Golan, and Massadah before
being stopped at Degania. They retreated, regrouped, and launched
another offensive a week later north of the Sea of Galilee. This
time they captured Mishmar Hayardem, establishing a foothold on the
Israeli side of the Jordan river, from which the IDF was unable to
dislodge them. While the Syrians were fighting in the Jordan
Valley, the Lebanese forces broke through the eastern gateway from
Lebanon to Israel and captured Malkiya and Kadesh. IDF operations
behind the lines and against villages inside Lebanon succeeded in
halting the Lebanese offensive. By the end of May the IDF
recaptured Malkiya and Kadesh and forced the Lebanese army on the
defensive.
All in all, the combined and simultaneous Arab invasion turned out to
be less well-coordinated, less determined, and less effective than
Israel’s leaders had feared. Success in withstanding the
Arab invasion greatly enhanced Israel’s self-confidence.
Ben-Gurion was particularly anxious to exploit the IDF’s initial
successes in order to move on to the offensive and go beyond the UN
partition lines. On 24 May, only ten days after the declaration
of independence, Ben-Gurion asked the General Staff to prepare an
offensive directed at crushing Lebanon, Transjordan, and Syria.
In his diary he wrote:
The
weak link in the Arab coalition is Lebanon. Muslim rule is
artificial and easy to undermine. A Christian state should be
established whose southern border would be the Litani. We shall
sign a treaty with it. By breaking the power of the Legion and
bombing Amman, we shall also finish off Transjordan and then Syria will
fall. If Egypt still dares to fight – we shall bomb Port
Said, Alexandria and Cairo.[30]
These plans were over-ambitious. By the end of the first week in
June a clear stalemate had developed on the central front and a
similarly inconclusive situation prevailed on all the other
fronts. The UN truce came into force on 11 June. To the
Israelis it came, in Moshe Carmel’s words, like dew from
heaven. Though they had succeeded in halting the Arab invasion,
their fighting forces were stretched to the limit and badly needed a
respite to rest, reorganize, and train new recruits. On the
Israeli side, the four weeks’ truce was also used to bring in
large shipments of arms from abroad in contravention of the UN embargo
– tanks, armoured cars, artillery, and aircraft. On the
Arab side, the truce was largely wasted. No serious preparations
were made by any of the Arab countries to reorganize and re-equip their
armies so that they would be better placed in the event of hostilities
being resumed. The UN arms embargo applied in theory to all the
combatants but in practice it hurt the Arabs and helped Israel because
the Western powers observed it whereas the Soviet bloc did not..[31]
Consequently, the first truce was a turning-point in the history
of the war. It witnessed a decisive shift in the balance of
forces in favour of Israel.
The Second Round of Fighting
Inter-Arab rivalries re-emerged with renewed vigour during the
truce. As far as King Abdullah was concerned, the war was
over. He began to lobby in the Arab world for the incorporation
of what was left of Arab Palestine into his kingdom. He made no
secret of his view that the resumption of the war would be disastrous
to the Arabs. His solution, however, was unacceptable to any of
the other members of the Arab coalition. Syria and Lebanon saw
Abdullah as a permanent threat to their independence, while King Farouq
saw him as a growing menace to Egypt’s hegemony in the Arab
world. Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator, omitted all
reference to the UN partition plan, and proposed the partition of
mandatory Palestine between Israel and Transjordan.
Abdullah could have hardly asked for more but since the Arab
League and Israel rejected Bernadotte’s proposals out of hand, he
saw no point in going out on a limb by publicly accepting them.
Having failed to promote a settlement of the Palestine problem,
Bernadotte proposed the extension of the truce that was due to expire
on 9 July. Once again, Transjordan found itself in a minority of
one in the Arab League. All the Arab military leaders pointed to
the gravity of their supply positions but the politicians voted not to
renew the truce. To deal with the difficulty of resuming
hostilities when their arsenals were depleted, the Arab politicians
settled on a defensive strategy of holding on to existing
positions. Abdullah suspected that the decision was taken with
the sinister intention of undermining his diplomatic strategy and
embroiling his army in a potentially disastrous war with the
Israelis. He therefore summoned Count Bernadotte to Amman to
express his extreme unease at the prospect of war breaking out afresh
and to urge him to use the full power of the UN to bring about a
reversal of the Arab League’s warlike decision.[32]
But the Egyptians pre-empted by attacking on 8 July, thereby ending the
truce and committing the Arab side irreversibly to a second round of
fighting.
If Abdullah was against a second round of fighting, Glubb Pasha was
even more reluctant to be drawn in as his army had only four contact
days’ worth of ammunition and no replenishments in sight.
Indeed, in the second round, the Arab Legion only reacted when it was
attacked. When hostilities were resumed, the IDF quickly seized
the initiative on the central front with Operation Danny. In the
first phase the objective was to capture Lydda and Ramla; in the second
it was to open a wide corridor to Jerusalem by capturing Latrun and
Ramallah. All these towns had been assigned to the Arab state and
fell within the perimeter held by the Arab Legion. On 12 July,
Israeli forces captured Lydda and Ramla and forced their inhabitants to
flee eastwards. In Latrun, on the other hand, the Israeli
offensive was repulsed as was the last minute attempt to capture the
Old City of Jerusalem.
The ALA, the Egyptian, Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese armies all suffered
some reverses in the course of the second round of fighting. The
IDF offensive in the north culminated in the capture of Nazareth and in
freeing the entire Lower Galilee from enemy forces. On the other
hand, the attempt to eject the Syrians from the salient at Mishmar
Hayarden was not successful and the fighting ended in stalemate.
Israel’s overall position improved appreciably as a result of the
ten days’ fighting. Israel seized the initiative and was to
retain it until the end of the war.
The second UN truce came into force on 18 July and, unlike the first
truce, it was of indefinite duration. As soon as the guns fell
silent, Arab politicians resumed the war of words against one
another. The line that the Arab Legion was being prevented from
using its full strength against the Jews, both through the treachery of
the British officers and the withholding of supplies by the British
government, was actively propagated by the Syrian and Iraqi officers
and by Azzam Pasha. The Iraqi army officers operating in
Transjordan were particularly hostile to the British who served in the
Arab Legion.[33] The suspicion that Glubb was secretly working
to impose on the Arabs London’s policy of partition accounted for
the virtual breakdown of the relations between the two Hashemite armies
and for the Iraqi branch jealously guarding its freedom of action.[34]
Lull in the Storm
During the lull in the storm Abdullah kept flirting with the idea
of bilateral negotiations with Israel to settle the Palestine
problem. Though it did not go as planned, the war had served its
basic purpose in enabling him to occupy the central areas of Arab
Palestine. Not only was there nothing else to be gained from an
appeal to arms, but such an appeal could jeopardize both his
territorial gains and his army, the mainstay of his regime and his only
defence against his Arab opponents. Accordingly, he shifted his
attention from the military to the political arena.
The Israelis had their own reason for wanting to resume direct contact
with their old friend. Disunity in the Arab camp gave them
considerable room for manoeuvre. The Arabs had marched into
Palestine together but as they sustained military reverses, each
country looked increasingly to its own needs. Each country was
licking its wounds and was in no position and in no mood to help the
others or to subordinate its interests to the common cause. Under
these circumstances, anyone looking for cracks in the wall of Arab
unity could easily find them. Israel, with the memory of its
military victories still fresh in everybody’s mind, was well
placed to play off the Arabs against one another.[35] This was
the background of the renewal of contact with King Abdullah’s
emissaries in September 1948.
Rumours that Abdullah was once again in contact with the Jewish leaders
further damaged his standing in the Arab world. His many critics
suggested that he was prepared to compromise the Arab claim to the
whole of Palestine as long as he could acquire part of Palestine for
himself. ‘The internecine struggles of the Arabs,’
reported Glubb, ‘are more in the minds of the Arab politicians
than the struggle against the Jews. Azzam Pasha, the Mufti and
the Syrian Government would sooner see the Jews get the whole of
Palestine than that King Abdullah should benefit.’[36]
To thwart Abdullah’s ambition, the other members of the Arab
League, led by Egypt, decided in Alexandria on 6 September to approve
the establishment of an Arab government for the whole of Palestine with
a seat in Gaza. This was too little and too late. The
desire to placate public opinion, critical of the Arab governments for
failing to protect the Palestinians, was a major consideration.
The decision to form the Government of All-Palestine in Gaza, and the
feeble attempt to create armed forces under its control, furnished the
members of the Arab League with the means of divesting themselves of
direct responsibility for the persecution of the war and of withdrawing
their armies from Palesitne with some protection against popular
outcry. Whatever the long-term future of the Arab Government of
Palestine, its immediate purpose, as conceived by its Egyptian
sponsors, was to provide a focal point of opposition to Abdullah
and serve as an instrument for frustrating his ambition to federate the
Arab regions with Transjordan.
But the contrast between the pretensions of the All-Palestine
Government and its capability quickly reduced it to the level of
farce. It claimed jurisdiction over the whole of Palestine, yet
it had no administration, no civil service, no money, and no real army
of its own. Even in the small enclave around the town of Gaza its
writ ran only by the grace of the Egyptian authorities. Taking
advantage of the new government’s dependence on them for funds
and protection, the Egyptian paymasters manipulated it to undermine
Abdullah’s claim to represent the Palestinians in the Arab League
and in international forums. Ostensibly the embryo for an
independent Palestinian state, the new government, from the moment of
its inception, was thus reduced to the unhappy role of a shuttlecock in
the ongoing power struggle between Cairo and Amman.[37]
Israel was content to see the rift develop inside the Arab League but
prudently refrained from expressing any opinion in public for or
against the All-Palestine Government. Before the Provisional
State Council, on 23 September 1948, foreign minister Moshe Sharett
described what remained of Arab Palestine as a ‘geographical
expression’ rather than a political entity. There were two
candidates for ruling this part of Palestine: the mufti and King
Abdullah. In principle, said Sharett, Israel had to prefer a
separate government in the Arab part to a merger with Transjordan; in
practice, they preferred a merger with Transjordan though their public
posture was one of neutrality.[38] In practice, Israel also took
advantage of the renewed contacts with Abdullah in order to thwart the
establishment of a Palestinian state and expand the territory of the
Jewish state. As Yaacov Shimoni, the deputy head of the Middle
East department in foreign ministry, candidly confessed:
Sharett
knew that we had agreed with Abdullah that he will take and annex the
Arab part of Palestine and Sharett could not support this ludicrous,
impotent, and abortive attempt made by the Egyptians against
Abdullah. This attempt had nothing to do with us. It was a
tactical move by Abdullah’s enemies to interject something
against his creeping annexation. At that time there was no
annexation. Formal annexation only occurred in April 1950.
But he had started taking an preparing for annexation. So they
tried, without any success, to build a countervailing force.
The second point is that
at that time Sharett and our men knew what the powerful State of Israel
has forgotten in recent years. He understood the meaning of
diplomacy and knew how to conduct it. Sharett was definitely
aware that publicly we were obliged to accept the Palestinian Arab
state and could not say that we were opposed to the establishment of
such a state. In the first place, we had accepted the UN
resolution which included a Palestinian Arab state. Secondly, this was
the right, fair, and decent course and we were obliged to agree to
it. The fact that below the surface, behind the curtain, by
diplomatic efforts, we reached and agreement with Abdullah
– an agreement which had not been uncovered but was kept secret
at that time – was entirely legitimate but we did not have to
talk about it. Sharett knew that our official line had to be in
favour of a Palestinian state if the Palestinians could create
it. We could not create it for them. But if they could
create it, certainly, by all means, we would agree. The fact that
he made a deal with Abdullah on the side to prevent the creation of
such a state, that is diplomacy, that is alright. Sharett behaved
in accordance with the rules of diplomacy and politics that are
accepted throughout the world.[39]
The War against Egypt
The rivalries among the Arab states that gave rise to the so-called
Government of All-Palestine complicated Israel’s diplomacy but
simplified its strategy. David Ben-Gurion, the man in charge of
grand strategy, was constantly on the look out for divisions and
fissures in the enemy camp that might be used to extent Israel’s
territorial gains. Arab disunity provided the strategic luxury of
fighting a war on only one front at a time and the front Ben-Gurion
chose to renew the war was the southern front. In early October
he asked the General Staff to concentrate the bulk of its forces in the
south and to prepare a major offensive to expel the Egyptian army from
the Negev. In view of the worsening relations between Egypt and
Abdullah, he thought it unlikely that the Arab Legion would intervene
in such a war.[40]
On 15 October, the IDF broke the truce and launched Operation Yoav to
expel the Egyptian forces from the Negev. In a week of fighting,
the Israelis captured Beersheba and Bayt Jibrin, and surrounded an
Egyptian brigade (which included Major Gamal Abdel Nasser) in
Faluja. As Ben-Gurion expected, Transjordan remained neutral in
the war between Israel and Egypt. The Arab Legion was in a
position to intervene to help the Egyptian brigade trapped in the
Faluja pocket but it was directed instead to take Bethlehem and Hebron,
which had previously been occupied by the Egyptians. Abdullah and
Glubb were apparently happy to see the Egyptian army defeated and
humiliated.
The formation of the Government of All-Palestine revived the
mufti’s Holy War Army – Jaish al-Jihad al-Muqaddas.
This irregular army endangered Transjordan’s control in Arab
Palestine. The Transjordan government therefore decided to nip in
the bud the challenge posed by this army to its authority. On 3
October, the minister of defence laid down that all armed bodies
operating in the areas controlled by the Arab Legion were either to be
under its orders or disbanded.[41] Glubb carried out this order
promptly and ruthlessly. Suspecting that Arab officers would balk
at performing such an unpatriotic task, he sent British officers to
surround and forcibly disband the Holy War Army. The operation
brought the Arabs to the brink of internecine war when they were
supposed to be cooperating against the common enemy. But it
effectively neutralized the military power of Abdullah’s
Palestinian rivals. Against this background, the Israeli attack
on the Egyptian army was not altogether unwelcome. Glubb
privately expressed the hope that the Jewish offensive ‘may
finally knock out the Gaza government and give the gyppies [sic] a
lesson!’ In a letter to Colonel Desmond Goldie, the British
commander of the First Brigade, Glubb explained that ‘if the Jews
are going to have a private war with the Egyptians and the Gaza
government, we do not want to get involved. The gyppies and the
Gaza government are almost as hostile to us as the Jews!’[42]
The Israelis followed up their ‘private war’ in the south
by launching a major offensive in the north. Israel’s
enemies were now being picked off one by one. On 29 October,
Operation Hiram unfolded, resulting in the capture of central Galilee
and in the displacement of many more Arabs. The ‘cleansing
of the Galilee’ was the result of high-level policy rather a
random by-product of the war. Central Galilee contained a large
number of Arab residents, including refugees from western and eastern
Galilee. On 26 September, Ben-Gurion had told the cabinet that,
should the fighting be renewed in the north, the Galilee would become
‘clean’ and ‘empty’ of Arabs.[43] In the
event, it was Israel that renewed the fighting, and it was the IDF that
carried out the expulsions. Four brigades were concentrated
in the north for Operation Hiram. In four days of fighting they
pushed the Syrians further east, caught Qawukji’s Arab Liberation
Army in a pincer movement and knocked it out of the fight, and banished
the Lebanese army from the Galilee. In hot pursuit of the
retreating forces, the Carmeli Brigade crossed into Lebanon and
captured 14 villages which were later relinquished when the armistice
agreement was signed. Thus, on the northern front, too, the tide
turned dramatically and menacingly against the Arabs.
The third UN truce came into force on 31 October. On 22 December
Israel once again broke the truce by launching a second offensive in
the south. The objective of Operation Horev was to complete the
destruction of the Egyptian forces, to drive them out of Palestine, and
to compel the Egyptian government to negotiate an armistice.
Conflict between the Arab states and lack of coordination between their
armies in Palestine gave Israel the freedom to choose the time and
place of the second offensive. Egypt appealed to her Arab allies
for help but its appeals fell on deaf ears. Lebanon, Saudi
Arabia, and the Yemen all promised assistance but failed to honour
their promises. The Iraqis shelled a few Israeli villages near
their front line as a token of solidarity with their embattled
ally. Without exception the Arab states were either afraid to
intervene or did not wish to intervene. The Israeli troops surged
forward, expelled the Egyptians from the south-western flank of the
Negev, and penetrated into Sinai to the outskirts of El-Arish.
Operation Horev succeeded in compelling Egypt, the strongest Arab state
with the best claim to lead the others, to open armistice negotiations
with the State of Israel and thus to bring the war to an end. On
7 January 1949, the UN-decreed cease-fire went into force marking the
formal end of the first Arab-Israeli war.
Conclusion
This survey of Israel’s strategy and tactics in dealing with the
Arab coalition in 1948 is not intended to belittle Israel’s
victory but to place it in its proper political and military
contest. And when one probes the politics of the war and not
merely at the military operations, the picture that emerges is not the
familiar one of Israel standing alone against the combined might of the
entire Arab world but rather one of a remarkable convergence between
the interests of Israel and those of Transjordan against the other
members of the Arab coalition, and especially against the Palestinians.
My purpose in writing this survey was not to pass moral judgement on
Israel’s conduct in 1948 or to delegitimize Zionism but to
suggest that the traditional Zionist narrative of the birth of Israel
and the first Arab-Israeli war is deeply flawed. The Zionist
narrative, like all nationalist versions of history, is a curious
mixture of fact and fiction. The new historiography has been
denounced by its critics for being driven not by the scholarly search
for truth about the past but by an anti-Israeli political agenda.
Despite these criticisms, which are themselves politically inspired,
the new historiography is essentially a cool attempt to use official
documents in order to expose some of the fictions that have come to
surround the birth of Israel. It offers a different perspective,
an alternative way of looking at the momentous events of 1948.
History is a process of demystification and the new historiography
helps to demystify the birth of Israel, to give a fuller, more nuanced,
and more honest picture of what is undoubtedly of the great success
stories of the twentieth century. That the debate between the
traditional, pro-Zionist and the ‘new historians’ should be
so heated is hardly surprising. For the debate about the 1948 war
cuts to the very core of Israel’s image of itself.
Notes
[1] Y. Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1972), 37-38.
[2] See Avi Shlaim, ‘The Debate about 1948,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, no. 3 (August 1995).
[3]
Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism and the
Palestine Problem Until 1948 (Beirut: Institute for Palestinian
Studies, 1971), 858-71; Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and
Realities (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 187-99; and Benny Morris, 1948
and After: Israel and the Palestinians (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994),
13-16.
[4] Jacob Tsur, Zionism: The Saga of a National Liberation Movement (New York, 1977), 88-89.
[5] Zvi
Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti: Hajj Amin al-Hussaini, Founder of the
Palestinian National Movement (London: Frank Cass, 1993), 86.
[6] Flapan,
The Birth of Israel, 130, quoting from a report by Michael Comay of a
conversation with the British journalist Claire Hollingworth.
[7] Muhammad
Amin al-Husayni, Haqa’iq an Qadiyyat Filastin [Facts about the
Palestine Question] (Cairo: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, 1956), 22.
[8] Yezid
Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian
National Movement, 1949-1993 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 14.
[9] On
the relations between Abdullah and the Zionists see Mary C. Wilson,
King Abdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1987); Joseph Nevo, King Abdullah and Palestine: A
Territorial Ambition (London: Macmillan, 1996); Yoav Gelber,
Jewish-Transjordan Relations, 1921-1948 (London: Frank Cass, 1997); and
Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist
Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1988).
[10] Ezra
Danin, ‘Talk with Abdullah, 17 Nov. 1947,’ S25/4004, and
Elias Sasson to Moshe Shertok, 20 November 1947, S25/1699, Central
Zionist Archives (CZA), Jerusalem. See also Shlaim, Collusion across
the Jordan, 110-17.
[11] Interview with Yaacov Shimoni, 26 August 1982, Jerusalem.
[12] Unsigned report, 16 March 1948, S25/3569, CZA.
[13] David
Ben-Gurion, Yoman Ha-milhama [War Diary: The War of Independence,
1948-1949], 3 vols., ed. Gershon Rivlin and Elhanan Orren (Tel Aviv:
Ministry of Defence, 1982), 1:330.
[14] Interview
with Yehoshua Palmon, 31 May 1982, Jerusalem. See also Dan Kurzman,
Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (London: Vallentine, Mitchell,
1972), 67-69; and Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem
(New York: Pocket Books, 1972), 269-70.
[15] Kurzman, Genesis 1948, 137.
[16] Iraqi
Parliament, Taqrir Lajnat at-Tahqiq al-Niyabiyya fi Qadiyyat Filastin
[Report of the Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry into the Palestine
Question] (Baghdad: Government Press, 1949).
[17] Golda
Meir’s verbal report to the 13-member Provisional State Council.
Israel State Archives, Provisional State Council: Protocols, 18 April
– 13 May 1948 (Jerusalem, 1978), 40-44. See also Shlaim,
Collusion across the Jordan, 205-14.
[18] Golda Meir, My Life (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), 176-80.
[19] For
a comprehensive review of the literature and the debate see Avraham
Sela, ‘Transjordan, Israel and the 1948 War: Myth, Historiography
and Reality,’ Middle Eastern Studies 28, No.4 (October 1992).
[20] State of Israel, Political and Diplomatic Documents, December 1947-May 1948 (Jerusalem: Israel State Archives, 1979), 789-91.
[21] Among
the more revealing Arabic sources on the discord and deception inside
the Arab coalition are Iraqi Parliament, Taqrir Lajnat al-Tahqiq;
Abdullah al-Tall, Karithat Filastin [The Palestine Catastrophe] (Cairo:
Dar al-Qalam, 1959); Salih Sa’ib al-Jubury, Mihnat Filastin
wa-Asraruha al-Siyasiyya wa al-Askariyya [The Palestine Disaster and
its Political and Military Secrets] (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub, 1979); and
Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Al-Urush wa al-Jiush: Kazalik Infajara
al-Sira’ fi Filastin [The Thrones and the Armies: Thus Erupted
the Struggle for Palestine] (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1999). For two
excellent reviews of Arabic sources and Arab historiography on the 1948
war, see Walid Khalidi, “The Arab Perspective”, in Wm.
Roger Louis and Robert W. Stookey, eds., The End of the Palestine
Mandate (London: I.B. Tauris,1986), 104-36: and Avraham Sela,
“Arab Historiography of the 1948 War: The Quest for
Legitimacy”, in Laurence J. Silberstein, ed., New Perspectives on
Israeli History: The Early Years of the State (New York: New York
University Press, 1991), 124-54.
[22] King
Abdullah of Jordan, My Memoirs Completed: ‘Al-Takmilah’,
translated from the Arabic by Harold W. Glidden (London: Longman,
1978), 20-21.
[23] Anita
Shapira, ‘Politics and Collective Memory: The Debate over the
“New Historians” in Israel,’ History and Memory 7,
No. 1 (Spring/Summer 1995), 9-40.
[24] Major
Abdullah al-Tall, who led the attack, reveals in his memoirs that he
tricked Glubb Pasha into allowing him to rush reinforcements to another
unit which was falsely reported to have fallen into a Jewish ambush in
Kfar Etzion. See al-Tall, Karithat Filastin, 31-34
[25] Sir John Bagot Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1957), 110.
[26] Interview with Lieutenant-General Yigael Yadin, 19 August 1982, Jerusalem.
[27] Interview with Major-General Moshe Carmel, 1 September 1983, Tel Aviv.
[28] Uri Bar-Joseph, The Best of Enemies: Israel and Transjordan in the War of 1948 (London: Frank Cass, 1987).
[29] Al-Jubury, Mihnat filastin, 189-90.
[30] Ben-Gurion, Yoman Ha-milhama, 2: 453-54.
[31] Amitzur
Ilan, The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Arms Race: Arms, Embargo,
Military Power and Decision in the 1948 Palestine War (Basingstoke: St
Antony’s/Macmillan series, 1996); and Robert Danin, ‘The
Rise and Fall of Arms Control in the Middle East, 1947-1955: Great
Power Consultation, Coordination, and Competition’ (Oxford:
unpublished D.Phil. thesis, 1999).
[32] Folke
Bernadotte, To Jerusalem, translated from Swedish by Joan Bulman
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951), 163-64; Arif al-Arif Al-Nakba
[The Disaster] 6 vols. (Beirut and Sidon: Al-Maktaba al-Asriya,
1956-60), 3: 593; and C.M. Pirie-Gordon to B.A.B. Burrows, 25 July
1948, FO 371/68822, Public Record Office (PRO), London.
[33] Sir Alec Kirkbride to FO, 6 August 1948, FO 371/68830, PRO.
[34] Muhammad Mahdi Kubba, Mudhakirati [My Memoirs] (Beirut: Dar al-Talia, 1965), 261-67.
[35] Interview with Yehoshua Palmon, 31 May 1982, Jerusalem.
[36] Glubb to Burrows, Secret and Personal, 22 September 1948, FO 371/68861, PRO.
[37] Avi
Shlaim, ‘The Rise and Fall of the All-Palestine Goverment in
Gaza,’ Journal of Palestine Studies, 20/1, No. 77 (Autumn 1990),
37-53.
[38] Moshe Sharett, Besha’ar Ha-umot, 1946-1949 [At the Gate of the Nations, 1946-1949] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1958), 307-9.
[39] Interview with Yaacov Shimoni, 26 August 1982, Jerusalem.
[40] Ben-Gurion, Yoman Ha-milhama, 3: 737, diary entry for 7 October 1948.
[41] Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs, 192.
[42] Glubb to Goldie, 16 October 1948. I am grateful to Colonel Goldie for giving me access to this letter.
[43] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 218.
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