1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (38 page)

But the actual military planning had been less ambitious. The Arab armies appear not to have had an agreed plan when they invaded Palestine on iS May, even of a most general kind.47 Certainly, there was nothing that can be considered a detailed plan. Safivat, in Damascus, had spent weeks trying to hammer out a joint strategy and, perhaps, a detailed plan: "A swarm of Syrian and Iraqi officers buzzed around the building seemingly more familiar with the science of political intrigue than with that of warfare. The distribution of funds, of commands, of rank, of operational zones, of arms and materials, all were objects of bargaining as intensive as any displayed in the city's souks."48

Yet some sort of draft plan was apparently produced by Captain Wasfi Tal, a young Arab Legionnaire serving as Safwat's head of operations. The plan foresaw an eleven-day campaign, with the Lebanese army pushing down the coast from Ras al-Naqurah to Acre; the Syrian army, in two separate columns, thrusting southward from Bint Jbail in southern Lebanon and westward from the Yarmuk Valley, through Samakh just south of the Sea of Galilee, eventually converging on Aftila; the Iraqi army crossing the Jordan at Beisan and thrusting northwestward toward Afula; and the Arab Legion, crossing the Jordan, and driving for Aftila from Jenin. The pincer around Af ila would then, in a second stage, turn into a combined drive on Haifa. (Haifa had figured in Jordanian invasion thinking as early as October 1947;49 for the Iraqis, the port's importance was enhanced by the presence of the oil refinery through which its chief export flowed to Europe.) At the same time, other Legion units would drive westward through Judea toward Lydda and Ramla and perhaps from there to the Mediterranean coast. Last, the Egyptian army, the Arab world's largest, would push up the coast road from Rifah through Majdal toward Jaffa-Tel Aviv, drawing Jewish forces away from the main Arab thrusts in the north.50 One report has it that King Farouk, at a meeting with Haidar and senior officers three days before the invasion, spoke of "help[ing] the [Arab] Legion occupy" Tel Aviv.-';1 The plan as originally envisaged called for far larger forces-as Safwat put it, "not less than 5 well-equipped divisions and 6 squadrons of bombers and fighter aircraft"52-than were actually committed by the Arabs on 15 May. Haganah intelligence picked up two variants of the plan in the days before the invasion.53

The "plan" was approved by the chiefs of staff in their meetings in Jordan on 29-3o April and endorsed by the Arab League Political Committee in Damascus on 11-12 May,54 which, brushing Safwat aside, appointed the Iraqi general Nur al-Din Mahmud as commander of the regular and irregular forces about to descend on Palestine (albeit under the nominal "Supreme Command" of King Abdullah). Just after the meeting, Azzam traveled to Amman, where he tried to persuade Glubb to replace Mahmud as commander of the invasion. Glubb declined. "I could not help laughing," he recalled. "`I am unfit to command the Arab Legion-much less several different armies,"' he recollected having responded.55 Perhaps he regarded `Azzam (and the plan) as "naive and impractical";56 perhaps he sensed a trap: although he would not have any real control of the Arab armies, he most certainly would be blamed for whatever failure ensued.57

Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the core plan-a limited invasion, focusing on the north-made strategic sense. The relatively small expeditionary forces were not being asked to take over the whole country, with its 25o-odd Jewish settlements or, at least initially, to conquer large, built-up urban centers, such as Tel Aviv. Instead, the core plan envisaged a limited objective, to sever Eastern Galilee from the rest of the country by converging from north and south on the junction town ofAfula. And this would necessitate a preliminary passage mainly through friendly Arab areas before moving on to Afula (four miles from Nazareth, six miles from Jenin).,18

During the following days, Mahmud-perhaps influenced by Glubb's skepticism-appears to have scaled down the grand design marginally, with Affila and severing Eastern Galilee, rather than Haifa, figuring as the main goals.-" But, in one sense, this was mere shadowboxing; no one actually accepted Mahmud's military overlordship or desires. Each country was bent on going, or not going, its own way.

At the last minute, Lebanon decided not to participate in the invasion. The decision, taken on 14 May, no doubt shook the Syrians. But even more unsettling for the whole Arab coalition was Jordan's last-minute announcement of changed intentions and objectives. That day Jordan informed its partners that its army was heading for Ramallah, Nablus, and Hebron, to take over the area later known as the West Bank; it had no intention of thrusting northwestward, toward Afula, or of driving westward, to the sea. The goal of the Arab Legion-the Arab world's best army, as all acknowledged and as it emerged-was the (peaceful) takeover of the core Arab area of Palestine, not war with the Jews. As a result, Syria's (and Egypt's) war plans were, a t the last minute, radically and unilaterally altered.

From the first, King Abdullah recognized Jewish strength and the limitations of his efficient but small army; and he knew, and despised and feared, his fellow Arab leaders and belittled their military capabilities. Abdullah did not want Afula and did not really want his army operating in conjunction with the Syrians and Egyptians; he distrusted them. He wanted the West Bank, if possible including East Jerusalem. On 13 May, unilaterally changing plans, he instructed Glubb (and informed his Hashemite Iraqi allies) that the West Bank was the objective. He probably approved the one element in Mahmud's plan that remained intact, the prospective Iraqi assault across the Jordan into Israel at Gesher, in the Jordan Valley.

Perhaps the Iraqis insisted on this point; perhaps, unlike 'Abdullah, they were loath to break openly with their coalition partners. After all, they had all along championed a pan-Arab assault on the Zionist entity, sometimes even insisting-or pretending to insist-on opening the assault before the British left. Perhaps they hoped to conquer the length of the Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline through the lower Jordan and Jezreel Valleys to the sea at Haifa. Or perhaps they merely sought a localized "symbolic" victory, unconnected to any grand design to gain the whole of Eastern Galilee or the pipeline's route.'o

But, from Abdullah's perspective, an Iraqi offensive just north of the West Bank meant pinning down Israeli troops who might otherwise be free to engage his own. Meanwhile, his legion would cross the river at Jericho and fan out toward Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron, and then take over Lydda and Ramla, thus occupying the core area of Arab Palestine-while refraining from attacking the territory earmarked by the United Nations for Jewish statehood.

'Abdullah's last-minute change of plans was not whimsical. It was deeply rooted in history-in decades of frustrated geopolitical hopes and in months of secret negotiations with the British and the Jewish Agency. Since arriving in the small village of Amman-population two thousand-in November 1920, the young Hashemite prince, son of Hussein Ibn Ali, the sharif of Mecca and king of Hijaz, had sought to rule a vast and important domain. Transjordan, awarded him by Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in March 1921, was always too small for his britches. He wanted, at the least, to be king of "Greater Syria," encompassing present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and Jordan. But the French, the British, and assorted Arab politicians were forever frustrating his expansionist ambitions. Then, in 1937, a way forward at last seemed to open up, as embodied in the Peel Commission partition recommendations, which posited the union, under Abdullah, of Transjordan and the bulk of Palestine (side by side with a minuscule Jewish state in the remaining 20 percent of the country). If he couldn't get "Greater Syria," perhaps he could at least have a "Greater Transjordan." But the Palestinian Arabs, backed by the rest of the Arab world, objected, and nothing came of the proposal. 'Abdullah, however, remained enchanted with the idea of annexing Palestine, or parts of it, to his emirate; Palestine would accord his godforsaken desert realm some import and prestige.

World War II, with its tantalizing promise of Transjordanian territorial aggrandizement as compensation for Abdullah's loyalty and services to Britain, came and went, with nothing gained. But when partition reemerged at the end of the war as a possible solution to the Palestine conundrum, 'Abdullah was back on board. He saw his chance. Of course, he sought a partition not between the Jews and the Palestine Arabs but between the Jews and himself. Optimally, the Palestine Arabs would abandon al-Hussein and the notion of Palestinian Arab independence and call for union with Jordan under Hashemite rule (and during the 194os Abdullah persistently tried to organize such Palestine Arab support, with only minor success). But he could also manage without such endorsement. The Palestine Arabs, crushed by Britain in 1936 - 39 and still weak, could be ignored. Palestine or parts of it could be fused with Transjordan-if only there was agreement with Britain and the Jews, respectively Abdullah's political-military patron and his powerful neighbors. From the summer of 1946 to early 1948 Abdullah gradually hammered out the relevant agreements.

Of course, 'Abdullah preferred to coopt all of Palestine, with the Jews receiving an "autonomous" zone (a "republic," he called it) inside his ex panded kingdom. He repeatedly offered this to the Jewish Agency. But the Jews wanted a sovereign state of their own, not minority status. So partition it would have to be. This was agreed in principle in two secret meetings in August 1946 in Transjordan between Abdullah and Jewish Agency emissary Eliahu (Elias) Sasson.61 (Incidentally, 'Abdullah and his prime minister, Ibrahim Hashim, believed-as had the Peel Commission-that such a partition, in order to be viable and lasting, should be accompanied by a transfer of the Arab inhabitants out of the area of the Jewish state-to-be.)62

There matters stood until UNSCOP proposed partition-but between Palestine's Arabs and Palestine's Jews-as the preferred solution. Neither Abdullah nor the Jewish Agency wanted a Husseini-led Palestinian Arab state as their neighbor; both preferred an alternative partition, between themselves. On 17 November 1947, twelve days before the passage of the partition resolution, Golda Myerson (Meir), acting head of the Jewish Agency Political Department, secretly met 'Abdullah at Naharayim (Jisr alMajami), to reaffirm the agreement in principle ofAugust 1946. Abdullah at first vaguely reiterated his preference for incorporating all of Palestine in his kingdom, with the Jews enjoying autonomy. Meir countered that the Jews wanted peaceful partition between two sovereign "states." The Jews would accept a Jordanian takeover of the West Bank as a fait accompli and would not oppose it-though, formally, the Jewish Agency remained bound by the prospective UN decision to establish two states. 'Abdullah said that he, too, wanted a compromise, not war. In effect, Abdullah agreed to the establishment of a Jewish state in part of Palestine and Meir agreed to a Jordanian takeover of the West Bank (albeit while formally adhering to whatever partition resolution the General Assembly would adopt). Both sides agreed not to attack each other. The subject of Jerusalem was not discussed or resolved. The assumption was that the holy city would constitute a corpus separatum under UN jurisdiction, in line with the UNSCOP recommendation. Or, simply, the subject was too sensitive and complex to resolve.63

For 'Abdullah, this was sufficient; he had the Yishuv's agreement. There remained Whitehall. 'Abdullah since the early 192os had intermittently badgered his British patrons to allow him to take over "Greater Syria" or at least Damascus; World War II and the dissolution of the French Mandate seemed to afford a major new opening. Yet once again the British, fearful of alienating the French and of inter-Arab entanglements, kept 'Abdullah at bay. But the steady advance of the international community toward accepting a partition of Palestine following Britain's renunciation, in February 1947, of the Mandate laid the groundwork, as 'Abdullah saw things, for his acquisition of parts of the country. During the second half of 1947, as the UNSCOP recommendations hardened into a General Assembly resolution, 'Abdullah mounted a persistent campaign to persuade Whitehall to support a Jordanian takeover of Arab Palestine.

Already in August 1947 Christopher Pirie-Gordon, the acting British minister in Alnman, endorsed the attachment to Transjordan of "the Arab areas of Palestine. The advantages to Transjordan ... are obvious" and it would "immensely strengthen [Britain's] Hashemite Alliance."64 In October, Kirkbride, the British minister, told visiting journalists that Abdullah wanted "to rule Nablus and Hebron" and that "in his own view it was the logical solution" for the Palestine problem. Glubb also thought it was "the obvious thing" to do.65 Both men lobbied Whitehall directly and vigorously: "strategically and economically Transjordan has the best claim to inherit the residue of Palestine and ... the occupation of the Arab areas by Transjordan would lessen the chances of armed conflict between a Jewish state and the other Arab states.... A greater Transjordan would not be against our interests, it might be in their favour," argued Kirkbride.66 And Glubb, at a meeting with Britain's director of military intelligence, Major-General C. D. Packard, laid out the Jordanian intentions more concretely: "The main objective of the invading force would be Beersheba, Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, with forward elements in Tulkarm and the area just south of Lydda. "67 'Abdullah was also keen on annexing the Negev or a large part of it, arguing that he "could not possibly agree to the Jewish State ... cutting off Transjordan from Egypt" and, more widely, "the Arabs of Africa from ... the Arabs of Asia. "68 In addition, Jewish possession of the Negev would threaten 'Aqaba, Transjordan, and the West Bank and would block the pilgrimage route to Mecca.69

Gradually, against the backdrop of the UN partition resolution and Britain's formal need not to be in violation, Whitehall was persuaded, though for months it played its cards very close to its chest. The culmination of the Jordanian lobbying campaign, and its success, was marked in the meeting between the new Jordanian prime minister, Tawfiq Abul Huda, and Foreign Secretary Ernst Bevin in London on 7 February 1948. It was attended by Glubb though the Jordanian foreign minister, Fawzi al-Mulki, at Abul Huda's request, was not informed of the meeting or its content and was not present. Abul Huda, conveying "the point of view of King Abdullah," suggested that it would be to "the public benefit" for the Arab Legion, on the termination of the Mandate, to enter "the Arab areas of Palestine to maintain law and order." He added that he did not want or expect a "reply" from Bevin.70