1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (35 page)

The big Jewish offensives ... instilled fear also in the Arab fighters and exaggerated rumors, influenced by the Oriental imagination, spread about Jewish secret weapons and great damage and losses that the Arabs suffered. The fear and depression grew with each new ... offensive.... After these victories the Arabs reached the conclusion that there is no place in the country where they are safe, and flight began also from purely Arab areas.... A psychosis of flight [took hold] and massive flight and a complete evacuation of Arabs settlements [began], even before any [military] action was taken against them, or solely on the basis of rumors that they were about to be attacked ....

The influence on the Arab fighters was great because in large measure their military forces were directly hit, [and] they suffered many hundreds of casualties. They lost arms and ammunition and important bases, they moved from a position of attack to a condition of defense in the midst of demoralization.... The Arab population in large parts of the country was destroyed in every way, many Arab settlements ceased to exist, economic life was paralyzed and a vast amount of property was lost. Tens of thousands of Arabs fled from their places of residence into the interior of the country and to neighboring Arab countries.... They have almost no bases which they once had from which to attack the contiguous Jewish areas. [They suffered from] vast economic losses, the undermining of their military forces, anarchy and chaos because of the large number of refugees, and lack of [provisions] and diseases and a danger of epidemics.

But in mid-May what figured large in the Jewish leadership's minds was not Palestinian defeat or refugeedom but the looming pan-Arab invasion. The plight, and then fate, of the bloc seemed to prefigure what might happen when the invasion was unleashed. Indeed, Gush `Etzion was prominent in the crucial deliberations of the People's Administration on 12-13 May, in which the leadership finally resolved on the establishment and declaration of Jewish statehood. It was the first time a large Haganah contingent and settlement bloc had confronted a regular Arab army-and the result had been swift and disastrous.

As the struggle for dominion between the Haganah and the Palestine Arab militias was winding down, the political and diplomatic struggle over the emergence of the Jewish state was reaching a crescendo.

Following Warren Austin's Security Council declaration calling for a "temporary trusteeship" for Palestine, the Americans engineered a UN Security Council resolution on i April 1948 calling for (i) a truce in Palestine and (2) the convocation of a "special session" of the General Assembly to discuss "the future government of Palestine."

Both the Arab states, egged on by Palestine's Arabs-who were "vehemently opposed to even a temporary solution on these lines"326-and the Zionists rejected trusteeship. To be sure, many Arabs regarded the American proposal as "a considerable victory."327 But this did not translate into support of the idea. The Arabs sought immediate independence and sovereignty over all of Palestine, not a prolongation of international rule, as embodied in an open-ended trusteeship; the Zionists were focused on declaring state hood on the termination of the Mandate, in line with the November 1947 partition resolution. They submitted a series of detailed rebuttals of trusteeship and mobilized for diplomatic battle. One overeager Jewish Agency official in New York, Dorothy Adelson, proposed to Shertok that a number of "brown, black or even coffee-colored Jews (the hue of an Egyptian could do)" be added to the Zionist delegation to the General Assembly, where the "non-white group" had nineteen votes, some of which could be mobilized to vote against trusteeship. This would "provide a visible answer to the canard that we are `white aggressors,' that we are the servants of white imperialism, or that we are currying favor with the western world by hiding our dark-skinned oriental component."328 It is unlikely that Shertok acted on the advice.

Abba Eban, the Jewish Agency representative at the United Nations, was delegated to present the case against trusteeship: that the General Assembly had already endorsed partition and undercutting Resolution 181 would weaken the United Nations; that both communities in Palestine were sufficiently mature to govern themselves; that a prolongation of British rule in Palestine was unthinkable and contrary to the will of the British public; that a trusteeship administration would fail to impose its authority in Palestine and would be actively resisted by Jews and Arabs-it swam "against every current of political sentiment in the country"; and that the physical partition of Palestine was so far advanced, as a result of events on the ground since November, that nothing could reverse it.329

On 17 April the Security Council called for a truce. The day before, the General Assembly convened in special session. There, during the next four weeks, the trusteeship proposal as well as separate proposals for a truce in Jerusalem were debated. American diplomats, maneuvering phlegmatically (perhaps with deliberation), proved unable to muster a two-thirds majority, and trusteeship was never brought to a vote. As one diplomat put it: "Trusteeship was so dead that if it were dropped on the floor, it would not bounce."330

During late April and into early May, the State Department increasingly saw the truce proposals as an alternative to trusteeship or at least as a cover through which the idea could be reintroduced. As Shertok said: "The [antiZionist] school in the State Department did not despair and tried to obtain through a truce what it hadn't succeeded in obtaining through the [appeal for a] trusteeship."--" The assumption was that a truce, which would include a deferment of the declaration of Jewish statehood, would be matched by an Arab postponement of the invasion. But the Americans were unwilling to commit troops to enforce a truce.

United Nations representatives and local diplomats (under the rubric of "the Consular Truce Committee," established by UN Security Council resolution of 24 April 1948) working in Jerusalem tried to negotiate a truce throughout Palestine or at least in the holy city, but to no avail, despite official Jewish and Arab agreement to many of the proposed clauses. The truce proposals included a cessation of fighting, prohibition of entry of foreign troops into Palestine, and a limitation of Jewish immigration. In the course of the General Assembly deliberations, the Syrian delegate, Faris alKhouri, against the backdrop of the battles for Tiberias and Haifa, charged on 22 April that the Jews were massacring and expelling the Arabs. Shertok responded that there had been no massacres and that the Arab flight was engineered by the Arab leaders, designed to blacken the image of the Jews and clear the ground for the prospective invasion.

From the last week of April, the State Department focused on obtaining a deferment of a Jewish declaration of statehood, arguing that the declaration would precipitate an invasion. The consensus in the US government departments was that the Arab states would attack the Jewish state and persist in a guerrilla war for as long as it took: "It is extremely unlikely ... that the Arabs will ever accept a Zionist state on their doorsteps." Without "diplomatic and military support" from at least one Great Power, the Jewish state would go under within "two years," they believed. Their advice against American intervention in support of a Jewish state was unequivocal.332

The Americans submitted a series of draft proposals to the Jewish Agency and the AHC, linking the proposed three-month deferment of statehood (by both sides) to an extended ceasefire.333 During April and early May, the Americans drafted and redrafted comprehensive truce proposals, which included a military and political standstill that required the Jews to curb immigration severely .334 Article 6 of the proposals of a9 April read: "During the period of the truce, no steps shall be taken by Arab or Jewish authorities to proclaim a sovereign state in a part or all of Palestine."33S Israel consistently rejected the linkage and the deferment of statehood,336 but the proposalsagainst the backdrop of intense fighting in Palestine and Arab threats to invade-triggered a painful debate in the Zionist leadership about whether to postpone statehood.

Shertok initially, very guardedly, favored acceptance of the truce and, implicitly, a deferment of the declaration, as (in qualified fashion) did several senior Zionist figures in the American Section of the JAE.337 They were principally moved by a desire to improve the Yishuv's standing in the international arena, primarily in Washington. But Ben-Gurion consistently opposed any postponement. He bluntly vetoed several provisions in the truce proposals (such as the limitation on `aliya).338 Shertok's position hardened. At the showdown with Marshall and Assistant Secretary of State Lovett on 8 May in Washington, Shertok flatly declared that the Yishuv "would not commit suicide to gain friendship." The Yishuv would not defer the declaration of statehood: "There was a feeling of either now or never.... Who can say what would happen during and after the three months' period? How can we be expected to be a party to our own undoing?"

Lovett responded that in November, in supporting partition, the United States had envisaged a peaceful transition from the Mandate to two states. But war had ensued. A truce could prevent the widening of the conflict, "and the position of the Jewish state [has been] rendered most precarious." To declare statehood would be a "gamble." Marshall warned against following the advice of soldiers "flushed by victory.... If we [the Jews] succeed, well and good. He would be quite happy; he wished us well. But what if we tailed?"339 Marshall may have had in mind the CIA report of August 1947, which predicted that if war broke out between a newborn Jewish state and the Arab states, the Arabs would win. The prognosis had been "coordinated" with the intelligence arms of the departments of State, the army and navy, and the US Air Force. At most, the Jews could hold out for "two years," the report concluded. (The report added that the eruption of such a war would unleash a wave of anti-Zionist, and perhaps anti-Western, jihadist "religious fanaticism. ,),340

The State Department had said its piece. It was now up to the Yishuv's leaders. The proponents of "statehood now" were doubtless encouraged by messages from Bartley Crum, a member of the Anglo-American Committee and a friend of Truman's-he reported that Truman's aide, Clark Clifford, "advised go firmly forward with planned announcement of State" and that he, Crum, "has definite impression President considering recognition" 341 -and by Sumner Wells, the former secretary of state, against postponement. 342

The mood in Tel Aviv during those last days of the Mandate-as the prospective invasion loomed ever larger-was far less resolute than Shertok had appeared in Washington. It was pendular and uncertain. A hesitant joyfulness at the prospect of British departure and liberation from the colonial yoke was accompanied by a mixture of boundless hope and fear of the future. There was certainty that there would be an invasion. But no one knew which countries would invade, and with what force or ferocity.

The crucial meeting of the Yishuv's leadership-the thirteen-member People's Administration, which in mid-April had succeeded the JAE as the fount of power and which, on 14 May, was to become the Provisional Government of the State of Israel-took place on 12 May. The People's Administration, like the Provisonal Government, was a coalition body consisting of representatives of the Yishuv's main political parties, including the nonZionist Agudat Yisrael, but excluding the Revisionists and the Communist Party. The coalition, as the state's first general elections, in January 1949, were to demonstrate, represented about 85 percent of the Yishuv. The chief components of the People's Administration-Provisional Government were the two socialist parties: the social-democratic Mapai (four representatives) and the Marxist Mapam (two representatives). Mapai held the chairmanshippremiership and the defense, foreign affairs, and finance portfolios, effectively the main levers of power in the new state. Together, the two socialist parties, along with their affiliate, the representative of the Sephardi community, Bechor Shitrit (police and minority affairs minister in the Provisional Government), enjoyed a controlling seven-seat bloc in the thirteen-member body, and they could usually rely on the centrist Progressive Party and General Zionists Party representatives to go along with their decisions. During the following months, only rarely was Ben-Gurion unable to mobilize a solid majority in support of his policies.

On 1 z May, the situation appeared far from rosy. To be sure, the Yishuv had just vanquished the Palestinian Arabs. But the immediate military background was ominous. That morning, the Arab Legion had attacked Gush `Etzion. "The situation there is very bad," Yigael Yadin, Haganah chief of operations, told the gathering. And, he added, the Haganah assumed that there would be a pan-Arab invasion within days.

After reviewing in detail the balance of forces between the Arab states and the Yishuv, Yadin concluded cautiously that "at this minute, I would say that the chances are very even [hashansim shkulim]. But to be more candid, I would say that they have a big advantage, if all this force is deployed against us."a4a Ben-Gurion was more optimistic: "We can withstand [an invasion] and defeat it, [but] not without serious losses and shocks."344

All the assembled knew that the state's fate hinged on the speed with which the heavy weaponry recently purchased in Europe and the United States could be brought over and deployed. "We have a large stock of weapons," said Ben-Gurion, who kept detailed tabs on the arms purchases. "But it is a bit far. Were it all in the country ... we could then stand with confidence.... But it is not easy bringing it to the country.... The length of time [needed] to bring it ... and how much we will succeed in bringingthis will play a major role not in the final outcome, but ... in the number of casualties and the length of time it will take [to win].... It won't be a 'picnic."'345

In Czechoslovakia, ten S-i99 MesserschmittAvia fighters were waiting on the tarmac, as were thousands of "Czech" (Mauser) rifles and MG-34 and ZB-37 machine guns and millions of rounds of ammunition. In the United States were a handful of B-17 decommissioned bombers, C-46 Commando transport aircraft, dozens of half-tracks (repainted and defined as "agricultural equipment"). In Western Europe, Haganah agents had amassed fifty 65 mm French mountain guns, twelve Ito mm mortars, ten H-35 light tanks, and a large number of half-tracks. All waited for the lifting of the British blockade of Palestine's shores and skies on 15 May. The Haganah had readied twelve cargo ships in European harbors. It was to this equipment that BenGurion and Galili referred in trepidation, almost in Messianic terms, that morning.