War in Palestine, 1948

Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy

David Tal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415761376
• eBook ISBN: 9781135775124
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

Arab involvement in the Jewish-Palestine conflict had started during the late 1930s, but it was only in the wake of the UN Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947 that active military intervention was considered. The Arab League tried to form a unified army that would prevent the implementation of the Partition Resolution, but failed. In Egypt, the government and the army opposed the idea of dispatching an expeditionary force to Palestine, but the pressure of public opinion and King Farouq's insistence carried the day. The order was given and in May 1948, Egyptian forces crossed the international border with Palestine. The author analyses the reasons for the decisive victory enjoyed by Israel over a larger opponent; and the successes and failures that were sealed in the Egyptian-Israeli General Armistice Agreement signed in Rhodes in March 1948.

1
Towards Invasion

The 1948 war was a war over Palestine, to which two communities—the Jewish and the Arab—aspired, however, the Jewish–Palestinian conflict lost any bilateral nature it might have had during the 1936–39 Palestinian uprising against the British. The uprising came to an end through the active interference of the Arab states, and after the destruction of the Palestinian national leadership during these years the Arab States imposed their patronage over the Palestinians. Thus, it was under the Arab League’s auspices that some form of Palestinian national leadership was formed, with the restructuring in 1945 of the Arab High Committee (AHC), whose members were Jamāl al-Husayni (acting chairman—officially Hajj Amin al-Husayni remained the head of the AHC), Husayn Khalidi (secretary), Ahmad Hilmi and Emile Khouri.¹ The intervention of Arab governments in the Palestine problem was the result of inflamed public opinion, which forced the Arab governments to take action; this served as a socially unifying force and even a distraction from their own problems. However, the Arab governments were not prepared to abandon their freedom of action, and acted in what they considered to be their own best interests, even where these did not accord with those of the Palestinians. Consequently—while publicly and in their joint meetings they expressed positions which were close to those of the Palestinians—the divisions amongst themselves and between them and the Palestinians were explored as the political process progressed in Palestine and as the end of the British Mandate drew closer. The Arab position on the Palestine problem had been shaped through events such as the Anglo-American Committee; the London Conference; the visit and recommendations of the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) to Palestine; and, finally, the United Nations Partition Resolution; all of which entailed Arab response and increased Arab involvement in the Palestine problem. The decision to go to war for the Palestinian cause had only been accepted at a late stage in this process. Some might even say that the Arab Armies never did go to war for the Palestinian cause.

Towards Partition

With Britain’s transfer of responsibility for the Palestine issue to the United Nations and the publication of the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine’s report in April 1946, which called for 100,000 Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) to be allowed into the country, the Arabs began to orchestrate their policy on Palestine. The first move was the convention, in May 1946, by Egypt’s King Faruk of a special meeting of Arab heads of state at his villa at Inshas, outside Cairo. Taking this initiative without first consulting the Egyptian government signaled Faruk’s commitment to the Palestine cause, and was to produce a head- on clash with his government exactly two years later, in May 1948. Delegates at the Inshas conference declared that Palestine should remain Arab; and, to ensure this, they demanded the prevention of further Jewish immigration into Palestine; the prohibition of the sale of Arab land in Palestine to the Jews; and the establishment in Palestine of a unitary state. The Arab heads of state also made a concrete move in announcing that they would provide the Palestinians with financial support to enable them to conduct propaganda campaigns to keep Arab Palestinian lands in Arab hands and to strengthen the Arab nature of Palestine.² Nothing was said at that stage about military intervention. The Inshas resolutions provided the basis for the Arab League’s official response, which was made at the Bludan meeting which took place in Syria in June 1946. The delegates decided to reject the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee and to establish a standing Committee of the Arab League for Palestine. They reiterated their demands to ban Jewish immigration to Palestine and the sale of Arab lands to the Jews. A clandestine resolution was added to this public resolution, calling on the Arab States to be ready to encourage volunteers to come to the Palestinians’ assistance and to provide them with money, arms and manpower. Letters were sent to the British and American governments, in which the League noted its total rejection of the Anglo-American Committee’s decisions.³

However, the Arab states did not abandon diplomacy; they sent representatives to the London Conference (September 1946), who repeated the basic ideas decided upon by the Arab League earlier, including the call to establish a unitary independent state in Palestine. This was to be an Arab state, with the Jewish minority recognized as an autonomous religious faction, being granted no more than one-third of the representation on the legislative council. The AHC, which refused to take part at the conference, vehemently opposed this plan. The Palestinians demanded that the Jewish share in the national institutions be set at one-sixth, accurately reflecting the proportion of the Jewish population in Palestine before 1918, with the implication that the post- 1918 Jewish immigrants would not be recognized as citizens. Another AHC condition was a ban on additional Jewish immigration and a prohibition on the sale of land to Jews by Palestinians.⁴ The Arab League did not accept the Palestinians’ demands, which also included a demand to promote the military option. At the Bludan meeting of the Arab League, Jamal al-Husayni pressured the participants to provide military aid that would enable the Palestinians to thwart an imposed Anglo-American solution entailing the partition of Palestine. Al- Husayni claimed that all the Palestinians needed were arms and financial and political support from the Arab governments, as the AHC had already recruited 30,000 Palestinians. Al-Husayni was confident that this force, assisted by the Arab governments, would easily be able to overpower the Jews.⁵ As will be seen in Chapter 2, there were no grounds for his optimism, as the Palestinians lacked even basic military formations.

The first reference to the Arab League’s readiness to employ force as a means of solving the Palestine crisis came in response to the visit of UNSCOP to Palestine in June–July 1947. The Arabs boycotted the Commission, but outlined their position in a long memorandum put forward to the Commission in July. Their position was not accepted, and UNSCOP recommended establishing two states in Palestine, one Jewish and one Arab, with Jerusalem and its environs being internationalized. The reaction of the Arab public to these recommendations was harsh, and the Arab governments were forced to act on behalf of the Palestinians. The Arab League’s political committee met at Sofar, Lebanon, in September 1947, and again in October in Alei, to formulate its reaction to the UNSCOP recommendations. Their decisions— which paved the way toward the growing involvement of the Arab League should violence erupt in Palestine—aimed to encourage the Palestinian Arabs to take active steps to prevent the implementation of the UNSCOP recommendation. The Arab League recommended that Arab governments warn the American and British governments of the possible repercussions of their support for the Zionist cause; and it called for an implementation of what had earlier been mentioned as a possibility: that is, the provision of money, arms and manpower to the Palestinians. The Arab League’s Political Committee also decided to establish a permanent technical committee—which later became the Military Committee—consisting of representatives from all the Arab League’s States. It was appointed ‘to decide the Palestinian needs to increase its defense; to coordinate and organize the material support provided by the Arab States; to supervise the expenditure of the money donated by the Arab countries’. Manning the committee took time, but by February–March 1948 its members were: General Isma’il Safwat from Iraq, who was appointed to head it; General Taha al-Hashimi; Colonel Shawkat Shukair; Colonel Mahmoud al-Hindi; and, later ‘Abd al-Qādir Jundi from Syria.⁶ From this committee originated the idea of dissociating the Palestinians from any responsibility for conducting the war. The Iraqi Premier, Sa^-lih Jabr, went even further when he claimed that the Iraqi and Jordanian Armies should occupy the whole of Palestine following the British withdrawal; an endeavor that the other Arab States would accept as a fait accompli. To that end, Jabr tried to persuade the British to coordinate the ‘mechanism of withdrawal’ with Iraq and Jordan.⁷

The Political Committee of the Arab League asked General Emir Isma’il Safwat, the Assistant Chief of the Iraqi General Staff and a member of the Military Committee, to prepare an overview of the military aspects of the Palestine problem; this he did in two reports which he presented in October and November 1947 to the Arab League Council, in which he further substantiated the claim that the Palestinians were unable to conduct their war against Jews alone. In his reports, Safwat, who was shortly thereafter appointed commander of the Arab irregular forces, stated that the Palestinians and the irregulars were unable to defeat the well-trained and organized Jews. Only the regular Arab Armies, acting under a unified command along with the Palestinians and the irregular forces, could attain this goal. As to the Palestinians, Safwat recommended supplying them with at least 10,000 rifles and ‘a sufficient quantity’ of machine-guns and grenades, and that one million dinars be given to the Military Committee, to be spent on the Palestinian fighting forces.⁸

The resort to military preparation shifted the focus of the Arab League’s activity. From Inshas through Bludan, the Arab League’s goal was to involve Britain and the United States to prevent the progress of the ideas of partition and Jewish statehood. When UNSCOP recommended partition, the Arabs resorted, during the Sofar and Alei meetings, to advancing the idea of military resistance to partition.⁹ However, at this stage the Arab League did not intend sending the Arab Armies to Palestine, it expected the Palestinians to fight for themselves. However, in response to Safwat’s recommendation, the Arab League decided to amass military forces along the Arab States’ borders with Palestine, in the hope that such a power build-up would prove to the world in general, and to Britain in particular, that the Arabs were serious in their determination to prevent a solution that would not grant full independence to a unitary state in Palestine, and that it would deter the British from accepting any alternative.¹⁰ Of all the Arab States, only Egypt and Syria responded to the Arab League’s decision. Under the orders of Shukri al-Quwatly, the Syrian President, the Syrian First Brigade had conducted three days of military maneuvers along the Syrian–Palestine border in November 1947.¹¹ The Egyptian government sent a small force of 2,000 troops to al-Arish, which remained there until May 1948.¹² At about the same time, in November, volunteer recruitment centers were opened throughout Syria, with a volunteer training center in Qtane, Syria. The training camp was quickly filled, and during that month there were more than 1,000 volunteers, most of them from Palestine, undergoing military training. The Syrian and Lebanese governments provided 900 rifles for the trainees, but at least another 5,000 rifles were needed.¹³

It was no coincidence that the main volunteer camp was in Syria. Military considerations dictated that decision, the Syrians regarded it as a counter-balance to King Abdullah of Jordan’s efforts in Palestine. It was also of internal significance as since, 29 November, public opinion in Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world had been aroused, and there were demands for action to frustrate the UN Resolution. Syrian newspapers fiercely attacked the UN Partition Resolution, and criticized the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain for the way they voted. In Damascus and Aleppo, demonstrators filled the streets, chanting anti-Zionist and anti-Western slogans and calling for the Syrian government to come to the Palestinians’ assistance. The volunteers’ training camp, and later the establishment of the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) in Syria, proved that the government was ready to respond in the appropriate manner.¹⁴ Parliament took further steps in supporting the Palestinian cause when it introduced compulsory army service, and members of Parliament deducted one month’s pay from their salary to aid Palestine. The government pledged to give two million Syrian pounds to the Arab League for the Palestinian Arabs.¹⁵ The Syrian government’s activity on behalf of the Palestinians, and the later formation of the ALA, based in Damascus, served another purpose. In late 1947 to early 1948, Syria’s ability to take an active part in the fighting in Palestine had seemed improbable; internal problems—mainly the revolt of the Druze in Jabal Druze—threatened to paralyze the government’s ability to spare troops for the war in Palestine. However, by endorsing and assisting volunteers and irregular activity, they could ensure that the Arab Legion would not be isolated in Palestine.¹⁶

The Jews in the Face of Partition

It would probably be correct to claim that the Jews were preparing for war at least from early 1947, but this would be to oversimplify a more complex situation. Jewish activity during the years following the loosening of the British hold over Palestine in 1946 followed two paths—political and military–which eventually led to the same place. While at the beginning of the process the political arena was more obvious, the two methods converged as the political process progressed. On the news that UNSCOP was to submit a recommendation to partition Palestine to the United Nations General Assembly, the Yishuv leaders launched a diplomatic campaign aiming to convince the members of the General Assembly to endorse the UNSCOP recommendations; they also took measures to ensure that the UNSCOP recommendations were implemented. The diplomatic campaign was highly successful, and the United Nations General Assembly approved resolution number 181. Ideological aspirations notwithstanding, the Jewish leadership made a clear and unequivocal political decision: to accept the idea of partition. When the Partition Resolution was adopted by the UN General Assembly, the Jewish leadership, Ben-Gurion included, welcomed it enthusiastically as a major success for the Zionists.¹⁷ This is not to say that the Jewish leadership regarded the Partition Lines as the fulfillment of their historical aspirations—on the contrary. Moshe Shertok, the head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, called the Zionists’ acceptance of partition a major compromise,¹⁸ and when the chance arose, the Jews did not hesitate to extend the borders set by the United Nations. However, that happened only after a major shift had occurred in the political and strategic situation, when the Arabs refused to accept the Partition Resolution and took military action against the nascent Jewish State. Still, the Jews’ initial acceptance of the Partition Resolution was not mere rhetoric; it was the basis for the strategic planning of the war against the Palestinians.

The Jews were not bothered about the prospect...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1: Towards Invasion
• 2: Communal War
• 3: Invasion
• 4: The Egyptian Invasion of Palestine: From Containment to the First Truce
• 5: The Israeli–Jordanian Front, 15 May–10 June
• 6: The Palestine Northern Front, 15 May–10 June
• 7: The First Truce
• 8: Ten Days of Fighting: The Egyptian–Israeli Front
• 9: Ten Days of Fighting: The Israeli–Jordanian Front
• 10: Ten Days of Fighting: The Northern Front
• 11: The Second Truce: Days of Diplomacy and Military Preparation
• 12: The Egyptian–Israeli Front: The Decisive Campaigns, I
• 13: Jordan–Israel: A Permanent Cease-Fire Agreement
• 14: The Northern Campaign: The Decisive Stage
• 15: The Egyptian–Israeli Front: The Decisive Campaigns, II
• Conclusion
• Select Bibliography