1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (5 page)

France emerged from the world war with League of Nations mandates over Lebanon and Syria while the British held sway directly over Mandated Palestine and Iraq and indirectly over Egypt and Transjordan. The grand Hashemite vision of one giant, powerful Arab state had dissipated into a handful of smaller, separate semi-independent or mandated Arab territories, at least temporarily under Western imperial boots. But the imperial powers were only partly to blame for this fracturing of the Arab world; so, too, were the Hashemite princelings and the separate local Arab nationalist groupings, in Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut, and Cairo. Each sought power and independence in his own turf; none wished to be ruled from the remote, medieval village of Mecca by the would-be, unifying tribal chieftain, Hussein ibn Ali.

The imperial carve-up left British-ruled Palestine cut off from its former provincial capitals, Damascus and Beirut, now under French control, and the Palestinian elite quickly understood that their future would be separate from that of Syria and Lebanon. Thus, 1920 was to prove crucial in the emergence of a separate Palestinian Arab national movement and a decisive moment in the evolving Zionist-Arab conflict. The events in Damascus had released Arab nationalist passions that were indirectly and directly to lead to the first major Arab-Jewish clashes in Palestine.

These broke out in March-April that year. In the Galilee Panhandle, a gray no-man's-land between the French and British areas of control, a band of Arab marauders-driven by either anti-French or anti-Zionist sentiments -in the first week of March assaulted the Jewish settlement of Tel Hai. The assault led to the Zionist evacuation of the area, to which the settlers returned only in October, after Britain and France had agreed that the Panhandle would be part of the Palestine Mandate. But this was a sideshow. More ominous was the outbreak, on 4 April, in the midst of the Muslim Nabi Musa (the Prophet Moses) festivities, of pogrom-like Arab rioting in Jerusalem's Old City. A Muslim religious procession, the marchers wielding knives and clubs, erupted in anti-Jewish violence; shouts of "Idbah alYahud" (Slaughter the Jews) and "Muhammad's faith was born with the sword" filled the air. At the end of three days, six Jews lay dead, with about two hundred injured and a handful raped. The British authorities had reacted lackadaisically and ineptly, drawing from the Jews the accusation that they had behaved like Russian policemen during pogroms. The Zionist leadership, prodded by veterans of Hashomer, the Zionist self-defense/guards association founded a dozen years before, and the Jewish battalions that had fought with the British army in World War I, reacted by establishing an underground "national" or ethnic militia, the Haganah Organization (Irgun Hahaganah, Hebrew for defense organization), known simply as the Haganah.

The 1920 outbreak was only the first in a series of bouts ofviolence-i9zi, 1929, 1936-1939-that grew progressively more lethal and more extensive. The spread of national consciousness during the 192os and 1930S clearly paralleled, and probably drew sustenance from, the dramatic increase in literacy among Palestine's Arabs, one of the fruits of the enlightened British Mandate administration. Increased prosperity, triggering hopes of further betterment, relative political freedom, and the gradual emergence of an urban middle class also tended to radicalize the population. This burgeoning national consciousness periodically expressed itself in anti-Zionist violence.

But violence did not emerge only from "modern" nationalist passions; it also drew on powerful religious wellsprings. Nothing, it seemed, could mobilize the Palestinian Arab masses for action more readily than Muslim religious rhetoric and symbols. It was no coincidence that the April 19zo outbreak was triggered by religious festivities or that the far larger outbreak of 1929, in which about 130 Jews were murdered (including sixty-six ultraOrthodox, non-Zionist yeshiva students massacred by their neighbors in Hebron) was prompted by accusations that the Jews intended to take over the Haram al-Sharif (the noble sanctuary, the Temple Mount), destroy its two sacred mosques, and rebuild the Solomonic temple at the site. And it was indicative that the emerging leader of the Palestinian Arab national movement, Muhammad Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was to dominate Palestinian politics until mid-1948, was a (Muslim) cleric (an unusual phenomenon in third world nationalist movements). Al-Husseini and others consciously deployed religious rhetoric and symbols to mobilize the masses for anti-Zionist and, later, anti-British violence.

But, of course, the chief recruiting agent for Palestinian Arab nationalism was Zionism itself. Above all, the fear of and antagonism toward the Zionist enterprise fueled national awareness and passions in the salons, coffee shops, and streets of Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa.

Yet Palestinian Arab society was acutely fragmented, and British Mandatory rule aggravated this divisiveness. Palestine's Arabs exhibited little "national" solidarity, neither in 1920 nor in 1947. In the years between, few Palestinians proved eager, or even willing, to sacrifice life or purse for the national cause.

A major fault line ran between the Muslim majority and the generally more prosperous, better-educated Christians, who were concentrated in the large towns. The British authorities favored the Christians with contracts, permits, and jobs, further alienating the majority. Through the Mandate, and especially in such crisis periods as the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 and 1947-1948, Muslims suspected Christians of collaborating with the "enemy" and secretly hoping for continued (Christian) British rule or even Zionist victory. These suspicions were expressed in slogans, popular during the revolt, such as "After Saturday, Sunday"-that is, that the Muslims would take care of the Christians after they had "sorted out" the Jews. This probably further alienated the Christians from Muslim political aspirations, though many, to be sure, kept up nationalist appearances. "The Christians [of Jaffa] had participated in the 1936 -1937 disturbances under duress and out of fear of the Muslims. The Christians' hearts now and generally are not with the rioting," reported the Haganah Intelligence Service (HIS).17 A Haganah list from the mid-19405 of Arabs with a "tendency to cooperation with the Jews" included "many ... Christians" but few Muslims.18

Loyalties in Palestinian society continued, down to 1948, to run principally along family, clan, and regional lines. Envy and antagonism often divided families and clans within villages and, even more often, village from neighboring village (frequently there were age-old blood feuds and land disputes). And the inhabitants of one town often cared little for those of other towns; commercial rivalry habitually underpinned such hostility. Another, major fault line divided the sedentary rural population from neighboring bedouin tribes; the bedouins, of whom there were almost a hundred thousand in the late 1940s, were traditionally seen as a threat to village crops and herds.

Vaguer but still real fissures also separated townspeople from villagers, who tended to be less educated and less politically conscious and, within towns, between notable families and the mass of commoners.

Through the Mandate years the a'yan themselves were badly split. The leading Jerusalem notable families-the Khatibs, Khalidis, Husseinis, Nashashibis, Nusseibehs, and Budeiris-had been vying for positions of leadership, with their attendant prestige, economic benefit, and social and political power, through the Ottoman centuries. In the 1920S these rivalries were reinforced by nationalist political considerations connected to the relations with the new Mandate authority and the challenge of Zionism. At the start of the Mandate, the Husseinis emerged as the country's most powerful urban clan. Musa Kazim al-Hussein, the mayor of Jerusalem, served as chairman of the Palestine Arab Executive, the national movement's leadership body until 1934, and Haj Amin al-Hussein was appointed by the British as Jerusalem's grand mufti (1921) and head of the country's Supreme Muslim Council (1922), subsequently emerging as the head of the Arab Higher Committee (AHC) and the leader of the Palestinian Arab national movement.

An Opposition (muaridun) emerged, rallying around another of the notable Jerusalem families, the Nashashibis. Through the 192os and 19306 (and, more subtly, during the i94os), the Opposition struggled against Hussein dominance, occasionally backing this or that British measure or proposal and assisting the Mandate government, covertly or overtly, and even occasionally receiving material support from the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the emergent "government" of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. Each clan was supported by other notable clans and elements of the rural and urban masses (often a function of each clan's economic interests and holdings). For form's sake, the vying coalitions of clans set up "political parties." But in reality, what characterized Arab Palestine during the Mandate was a feudal "two-party" system with the Husseinis pitted against the Opposition. It was a struggle for power and its benefits, not an ideological clash, though the Husseinis, almost from the start, painted their opponents as collaborators with British rule and soft on Zionism. The Nashashibis, though also ultimately desirous of political independence for Palestine under Arab rule, appeared to be more "moderate" than the Husseinis, whom the British and Zionists branded as "extremists."

Throughout the Mandate, the leading Arab families, including Husseinis and Opposition figures, sold land to the Zionists, despite their nationalist professions. Jewish landholding increased between 1920 and 1947 from about 456,000 dunams to about 1.4 million dunams. The main brake on Jewish land purchases, at least during the 19206 and 1930s, was lack of funds, not any Arab indisposition to sell.'9 Moreover, hundreds of Arabs collaborated with the Zionist intelligence agencies.20

The bouts of violence of 19zo, 19zi, and 1929 were a prelude to the far wider, protracted eruption of 1936 1939, the (Palestine) Arab Revolt. Again, Zionist immigration and settlement-and the prospect of the Judaization of the country and possibly genuine fears of ultimate displacement-underlay the outbreak. But this time the threat was palpable: the resurgence of antiSemitism in Central and Eastern Europe had washed tip on Palestine's shores an unprecedented wave of Jewish immigration. The country's Jewish population more than doubled in less than a decade, rising from 175,000 in 1931 to 460,000 in 1939; 1935 alone had seen the arrival of 62,000 legal immigrants. A far smaller number of illegals also trickled each year into the country. In less than a decade, the Arab proportion of the population had declined from 82 percent to under 70 percent. "What Arab cannot do his math and understand that immigration at the rate of 6o,ooo a year means a Jewish state in all of Palestine?" Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive (JAE), wrote to Moshe Shertok (Sharett), director of the agency's Political Depart ment, in 1937.2 1 (Throughout the Mandate period, there was also limited legal Arab immigration to Palestine from neighboring countries, prompted by the Mandate's relative prosperity, as well as an indeterminate amount of illegal immigration, often seasonal, linked to this or that harvest. For example, according to HIS, Sz5 Arabs arrived legally from neighboring countries in 1944, 829 in 1945, and almost three thousand in 1946, most of the latter Christian Arabs recruited to serve in the Palestine police. )22

The Zionist leaders intermittently attempted to reach a compromise with the Arabs. But none proved possible. The Palestinian Arabs consistently sought to halt Zionist immigration and demanded "all of Palestine"; the Zionists as consistently insisted on continued immigration and Jewish statehood. Ben-Gurion argued that the Jewish influx would better the condition of the Arabs as well as the Jews. Musa al- A1ami, a leading Palestinian moderate and assistant Mandate attorney general, countered: "I would prefer that the country remain impoverished and barren for another hundred years, until we ourselves are able to develop it on our own."23 And Arab nationalists outside Palestine were no more amenable to an accommodation. At a meeting in 1936 between JA representatives (Eliahu Elath, Dov Hos, David Hacohen, and Yosef Nahmani) and leaders of the Syrian National Bloc (Shukri al-Quwwatli, Faiz Bey al-Khouri, and Lutfi Bey al-Haffar), al-Quwwatli countered, "What is the use of economic well-being if we are not masters in our own home," after Hos made the conventional arguments.24

Both communities increased in power and size during the beneficent years of the Mandate. But the Jews fared far better than the Arabs. They received enormous contributions and investments from Western Jewry and large British government loans; the Arabs benefited from little foreign investment or loans. Jewish numbers had grown under the Ottomans from some twenty-five thousand to sixty to eighty-five thousand between 188 i and 1914. By the end of 1947, they had reached 630,000. The Arab increase had been less dramatic-from 450,000 (1881) to 650,000 (1918) to 1.3 million (1948).

Economically, Palestinian Arab fortunes had steadily improved-but the Jews' had soared. The net domestic product of the Palestine Arab community in 1922 had been 6.6 million pounds sterling; in 1947 it was 32.3 million. During the same period, the Yishuv's had rocketed from 1.7 million pounds sterling to 38.5 million. The net product of the Jewish community in the manufacturing sector had jumped from 491,ooo pounds sterling in 1922 to 31 million in 1947 (the Palestinian Arab equivalent was 539,000 pounds sterling to 6.7 million in 1945).25

In most other fields, the Yishuv had also advanced by leaps and bounds. Perhaps most significantly, the Jews managed to forge internal, democratic governing institutions, which in 1947-1948 converted more or less smoothly into the agencies of the new State of Israel. The Jewish Agency for Palestine served as the Yishuv's government, its Executive (the JAE), from 1929 until 1948, functioning as a cabinet. A number of bodies, such as the Jewish National Fund, the Histadrut Agricultural Center, and the agency's Settlement Department, promoted land reclamation and settlement activity. The Yishuv established a "national" health care system, the Histadrut's Sick Fund, and educational systems catering to its constituent communities (secular, socialist, Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox). In 1925-with a population of about i5o,ooo-the Jews established their first university, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. By comparison, Palestine's Arabs established universities (in the West Bank and Gaza Strip) only in the 1970S (ironically, while under Israeli military occupation).