1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (21 page)

But the AHC appeared far less worried about inhabitants moving from one part of Palestine to another than by flight out of the country. The National Committees, in contrast, were simply worried about departure from their towns. Already on 9 December, Haifa's NC "comprehensively discussed" the problem and inveighed against the "cowards" who were leaving the town. It resolved to appeal to the AHC to "prohibit departure."74 A week later, the NC published a communique blasting the would-be fleers, who were "more harmful than the enemy."75 In January 1948, militiamen in Jerusalem prevented flight and the local NC punished departing families by burning their property or confiscating their homes.76 In February, the Tulkarm NC ordered the inhabitants to "stay in their places" in the event of Jewish attack.77

But AHC instructions to the localities down to the end of February 1948 to prevent flight appear to have been limited, hesitant, and infrequent. Things changed in March, probably due to the growing volume of the exodus and complaints from neighboring states. Husseini ordered the NCs of Tiberias and Jerusalem to halt the exodus. "The AHC regards this as flight from the field of honor and sacrifice and sees it as damaging to the name of the holy war movement and ... the good name of the Palestinians in the Arab states and weakens the aid of the Arab peoples for the Palestinian cause, and leaves harmful traces in the economy and commerce of Palestine. "78 The HIS summarized AHC and NC efforts to stem the exodus during the civil war thus: "The Arab institutions tried to combat the phenomenon of flight.... The AHC decided ... to adopt measures to weaken the flight by restrictions, punishments, threats, propaganda in the newspapers, radio, etc.... They especially tried to prevent the flight of army-age youths. But none of these actions was really successful. "79

Anti-exodus AHC and NC "orders" were not always obeyed and were themselves often subverted by contrary AHC and NC "orders" and behavior. The fact that almost all AHC and NC members were either out of the country before the outbreak of hostilities or fled Palestine with their families in the first months of the war undermined the remaining officials' ability to curb the exodus. And perhaps even more tellingly, the AHC, local NCs, and various militia officers often instructed villages and urban neighborhoods near major Jewish concentrations of population to send away women, children, and the old to safer areas. This conformed with Arab League secretarygeneral Azzam's reported thinking already in May 194.6 ("to evacuate all Arab women and children from Palestine and send them to neighboring Arab countries," should it come to war)80 and the Arab League Political Committee resolution, in Sofar in September 1947, that "the Arab states open their doors to absorb babies, women and old people from among Palestine's Arabs and care for them-if events in Palestine necessitate this."x 1

Almost from the start of hostilities frontline Arab communities began to send away their dependents. For example, already on 3-4 December 1947 the inhabitants of Lifta, a village on the western edge of Jerusalem, were ordered to send away their women and children (partly in order to make room for incoming militiamen).sz Dozens of villages in the Coastal Plain and Jezreel and Jordan Valleys followed suit in the following months. The cities, too, were affected. In early February, the AHC ordered the removal of women and children from Haifa,83 and by 28 March about iSo children had been evacuated, at least fifty to a monastery in Lebanon.s4 On 4-5 April 1948, a fifteen-vehicle convoy left Haifa for Beirut; on board were children and youths from the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood.85

Of course, the Arab exodus was not propelled only by the war-making and direct Arab and Jewish policies or actions. The changing economic circumstances also contributed. Almost from the first, the less-organized Arab economy was hard-hit. And the situation worsened as the war progressed. The separation of the two populations during the first weeks of fighting resulted in an economic divorce-cutting off many Arabs from their Jewish workplaces and closing the Jewish marketplace to Arab goods, especially agricultural products. Already in late December 1947, Haganah intelligence was reporting that Arab agricultural produce in Beit Sahur, southeast of Jerusalem, was rotting or selling for a farthing and there was no food for the animals. 86 By early March 1948, commerce in Jaffa was reported at a standstill and fuel was scarce; speculation and acts of robbery were rife (though there was no food shortage).87 By early April, flour was in short supply in Jaffa and Haifa (and Acre).ss Unemployment soared. The flight of the Arab middle class, which resulted in the closure of workshops and businesses, contributed to unemployment, as did the gradual shutdown of the British administration. All the Arab banks had closed by the end of April.

Prices-of flour, petrol, and other basic goods-also soared. A can of petrol, which cost eight hundred mils89 or less before the war, cost five Palestine pounds in mid-May.90 The hostilities led to supply problems, especially in the towns. Arab public transportation gradually ground to a halt. In May 1948, Jewish economic analysts wrote that the Arab economy in Palestine had been pushed back "more than twenty years," with the relatively "modern," advanced Coastal Plain hardest hit.91

Through the civil war, the mufti and the AHC never issued a general call to arms or a blanket order to attack "the Yishuv." Neither did the Arab states. British intelligence assessed that at the Arab League's Cairo Conference in December 1947 the Arab leaders agreed that "the campaign must not start prematurely, for the Arabs are not ready, neither organized nor armed. The first real move should be made in May, by when the Mandate will have terminated. "`92 It appears that the Arab leaders were primarily motivated by fear of antagonizing the British.

The mufti and AHC desisted from ordering a general assault on the Yishuv, at least in the civil war's first three or four months, probably in large measure because of their inability to raise another full-scale military enterprise so soon after their crushing defeat in 1939 and because of Palestinian military unpreparedness.95 But they also took account of the needs of the Palestinian peasantry-to defer large-scale fighting until after the harvests of citrus fruit in the Coastal Plain in winter 1947-194894 and, perhaps, the start of the grain harvest in spring 194895-and the minatory British presence. The mufti repeatedly told visiting notables to keep their powder dry until a general assault was ordered several months hence. But the order was never issued. The mufti was probably preempted by the start of the Haganah offensives in early April 1948.

In mid-December 1947, one HIS informant told his controller that "the AHC had had no intention of starting disturbances on the scale that they had reached.... But they had made a mistake in announcing a three-day strike without taking account of the character of the Arab public; because the Arab going on strike for a protracted period is [prone to be] sucked into all sorts of acts of hooliganism and criminality [pirhahut uviryonut].1196

In late December, Hussein reportedly sent Jerusalem NC leader Hussein al-Khalidi a letter explicitly stating that the purpose of the present violence was "to harass (and only to harass)" the Yishuv, not full-scale assault.97 In January 1948, High Commissioner Cunningham assessed that "official [Palestinian] Arab policy is to stand on the defensive until aggression is ordered by the national leadership. That widespread assaults on Jews continue and are indeed increasing illustrates the comparatively feeble authority of most of [the National] Committees and of the AHC.... The latter is anxious to curb Arab outbreaks but probably not to stop them entirely."98 During the winter, perturbed by appeals from the notables of Jaffa and Haifa, Husseini appears to have agreed to nonbelligerency in the towns99 and to have ordered a shift of the focus of hostilities from the main towns to the countryside.10° On 22 February, the Haifa NC ordered a "cessation of shooting, and a return of each man to his regular workplace."101 It is unlikely that such an order was issued without prior AHC endorsement.

Many of the Arab attacks in November 1947-January 1948 were "spontaneous" and even contrary to the mufti's wishes.'()' Others were "incited" or led by Husseini agents, but in unconcerted fashion. 103 Gradually, however, and partly because of Haganah, IZL, and LHI retaliatory attacks, the whole country-or at least the areas with Jewish concentrations of populationwas set alight. And, occasionally, Husseini himself, approached by notables from this or that area of Palestine, would order the initiation of hostilities. But at other times he seems to have ordered local militias to desist. In February-March 1948 the orders were generally to refrain from mass attack and wait either for the British withdrawal or intervention by the Arab armies.

Despite the absence of a concerted effort, in the first stage of the civil war the Arabs had, or appeared to have, the edge, especially along the main roads, the lifelines to Jewish West Jerusalem and clusters of isolated settlements. Acting individually, armed bands attacked convoys and settlements, often recruiting local militiamen to join in. Gunmen sporadically fired into Jewish neighborhoods and planted bombs. The Haganah, busy reorganizing, and wary of the British, adopted a defensive posture while occasionally retaliating against Arab traffic, villages, and urban neighborhoods. The Haganah mobilized slowly, at first hobbled by the belief-shared by much of the Yishuv104-that it merely faced a new round of "disturbances." Only in early January did the Yishuv's leadership wake up to the fact that the war that they had long predicted had, in fact, begun-as Ben-Gurion told the JAE 1os

The outbreak of hostilities had caught the Haganah on the hop, "in the very midst of the process of reorganization. The ... brigades have not yet deployed, the mobilization of the 17-25-year-olds has only just begun," complained one senior official in mid-December 1947.106 Going into the civil war, Haganah policy was purely defensive or, as Yisrael Galili, BenGurion's deputy in the political directorate of the organization, put it: "Our interest ... is that the hostilities don't expand over time or over a wide area." There should be Haganah retaliation, but preferably in the area in which the Yishuv had been hit and against perpetrators. "The Haganah is not built for aggression, it does not want to subjugate, it values human life, it wants to hit only the guilty ... [it] wants to douse the flames."107

During the first ten days of disturbances, the Haganah desisted almost altogether from retaliation, and Ben-Gurion instructed that only property, not people, be hit.108 But with the Jews, as Cunningham (somewhat unfairly) put it, in a "state of mixed hysteria and braggadocio,"' ()9 the Haganah decided, on 9 December, to shift from pure defense to "active defense, [with] responses and punishment.""() The following month, the HGS decided to target individual Husseini military and political leaders'''-though only one, Muhammad Nimr al-Khatib, of Haifa, was actually attacked (and badly wounded) in the civil war. One consideration behind this shift to a policy of limited retaliation was that the Arabs would interpret inaction as a sign of weakness; another, that the international community would stop supporting Jewish statehood in the belief that the Jews would "not be able to hold Out. 11112 The Haganah informed its members: "There is no thought of returning to the policy of restraint [havlaga] that seemingly existed during the disturbances of 193 6 - 39 ." 113

Yadin instructed the brigades to initiate retaliatory strikes against Arab transportation. 114 Two days later, on ii December, Alexandroni Brigade troops ambushed Arab trucks on the Qalqilya-Ras al- Ayin road. A young lieutenant, Ariel Sharon, who commanded the detail, reported: "We jump on the truck and set it alight with Molotov Cocktails. Three wounded Arabs are burning inside. It is the blood of the [ Jewish casualties in the] Ben-Shemen and Yehiam convoys [attacked by Arabs a few days earlier] that ignites this hatred in us." 115

Ben-Gurion cabled his finance chief, Eli'ezer Kaplan, that the situation was "increasingly grave" and that acquiring additional arms had become a "matter [of] life [and] death." He instructed Kaplan to provide "all necessary funds" to Ehud Avriel, the Haganah's purchasing agent in Czechoslovakia.116 In January 1948, Avriel signed the first of a string of arms contracts with the Czech government.

The Haganah still refrained from aggressive operations in areas not yet caught up in the conflagration. The policy was to "hit the guilty" and to avoid harming nonbelligerent villages, "holy sites, hospitals and schools," and women and children. 117 The following instruction is indicative: "Severe disciplinary measures will be taken [against those] breaching [the rules of] reprisals. It must be emphasized that our aim is defense and not worsening the relations with that part of the Arab community that wants peace with us." 118 Though Haganah reprisals increased in size and frequency during the following months, the organization remained strategically on the defensive until the end of March 1948.

This was reflected in Haganah policy toward specific villages. Orders went out to the field units that villages interested in quiet or in formal nonbelligerency agreements were to be left untouched. 119 Flyers were distributed calling on villagers to desist from hostilities. 120 During February and March 1948 the HGS attached "Arab affairs advisers" to each brigade and battalion to advise the commanders on the "friendliness" or "hostility" of specific villages in their zones of operation.121 As late as 24 March 1948, Galili instructed all Haganah units to abide by standing Zionist policy, which was to respect the "rights, needs and freedom," "without discrimination," of the Arabs living in the Jewish State areas.122

The policy changed only in early April, as reflected in the deliberations of the Arab affairs advisers in the Coastal Plain. At their meeting of 31 March, the advisers acted to protect Arab property and deferred a decision about expelling Arabs or disallowing Arabs to cultivate their fields. 123 But a week later the advisers ruled that "the intention [policy] was, generally, to evict the Arabs living in the brigade's area." 124