1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (52 page)

The British and Americans-ever worried about the possibility of Soviet penetration of the Middle East, which the hostilities, they believed, could facilitate-pressed the Arab states to agree to a truce. But the Arabs, with little to show for their efforts, were still in an aggressive mode-all but Jordan, which had been successful, and Iraq, which had been humiliatingly unsuccessful. The Iraqis blew successively hot and cold. Their thinking-or feelings-are embalmed in a cable from the British minister in Baghdad to the Foreign Office, reporting on a meeting with the regent, 'Abd al-Ilah: "In regard to the future, the Regent said: `We cannot be beaten by the Jews. We cannot afford to be beaten by them. We will fight to the last even if we are left with only knives in our hands. I am ready to go into the front line myself. But if fighting is stopped by the Great Powers or by the United Nations that would be a different matter.' I got the impression that Arab honor would then be satisfied," commented the British minister.'

This was the background to the Security Council's resolution of z,q May, calling for a four-week truce, to begin on i June and imposing a blanket em bargo on arms and additional military personnel on Israel and the Arab states. Bernadotte was assigned the task of negotiating the truce.

Thus the mediator's tasks were amended and his order of priorities reset: to halt the fighting and then to negotiate a full peace settlement. He spent the next fortnight negotiating a truce. It proved no easy matter. And most observers were skeptical; after all, for six months the British, the United Nations, and others had tried to achieve a ceasefire without success. The Nei York Times gave Bernadotte "slim chances. "s

The problem was the Arab side: all the regimes were fearful of the "street," and each leader feared his peers; agreement to cease fire would immediately be interpreted, and vilified, as weakness if not cowardice or complicity with the enemy. The publics believed what their newspapers and leaders had told them since i May-that the expeditionary forces were beating the Jews and driving on Tel Aviv and Haifa. They would not understand agreement to a ceasefire. As Lebanese prime minister Riad al-Sulh-who "invited himself to tea" on 27 May with the British minister in Beirut, Houstoun Boswall-put it: "Any Arab leader who had accepted the ceasefire appeal unconditionally ... would, in the present state of public opinion, have done so at the risk of his life. (Iraqi Director General for Foreign Affairs has told me the same thing.) Result of anything that could be interpreted by peoples as weak would be chaos with students and workmen assuming the function of government in the Arab states." Moreover, the Arab leaders understood that a truce "would be more to the advantage of the Jews than it could be to the Arabs."'

But by the second week of June reality had begun to dawn; conditions were propitious. Both sides needed a respite. "The Arab forces are exhausted and lacking in ammunition," Yigael Yadin radioed his brigade commanders.7 And on the Israeli side there was unanimity among the "military experts": all "strongly favored the truce," as Ben-Gurion told his Cabinet colleagues.s

As to the negotiator, Bernadotte's energy, obvious impartiality, and sense of mission served him in good stead. He kicked off with talks in Cairo, where-on 30 May-he was told by Egypt's leaders and Abd al-Rahman Azzam that the Arab states might consent to a short-term truce but would never agree to the existence of a Jewish state.' His meeting with Ben-Gurion the following day was no more upbeat, the Israeli prime minister raising a variety of problems. But though the meeting had been "unpleasant," I" Israel had agreed to the truce, in principle." So, in the end, did the Arabs-who later said they regretted it, believing-or at least arguing-that they "had seen victory snatched from them."12

Bernadotte was left with two major concrete problems: the supervision of the arms embargo and the prevention, during the truce, of the entry of mili tary personnel into Palestine and the combatant countries. The Arab states worried that the Jews would find ways to circumvent the embargo, and the Israelis insisted that immigration to Israel must not be completely halted. The Egyptians, absurdly, proposed that their navy patrol the Palestine coastline "for" the United Nations. The Israelis pressed to allow men of military age into Israel, especially from the British detention camps in Cyprus, where thousands had been languishing for months or years, many of them Holocaust survivors. The Arabs objected. A blowup occurred between Shertok and Bernadotte in Haifa on 6 June, with the Israeli "raising his voice," or shouting. " a But Israel eventually gave way-as its military "manpower resources extremely strained and tired; many vital positions tenuously held ... 4 weeks respite would be great boon." 14 Bernadotte had threatened that if his terms were rejected there would be no truce-and Israel would be held to account.

Bernadotte demanded acceptance by 9 June. Both sides complied, the truce to begin on ii June. It was to last for four weeks, until 8 July. But Bernadotte and the United Nations had invested too little, too late in establishing a proper supervisory apparatus, and so the truce-which required close, continuous inspection of all the Arab Middle East's and Israel's seaand airports, as well as the front lines between the armies-was never adequately maintained, especially in all that concerned the arrival of war materiel and additional manpower.

The Arabs violated the truce by reinforcing their lines with fresh units and by preventing supplies from reaching isolated Israeli settlements; occasionally, they opened fire along the lines. Above all, the situation of Jewish Jerusalem remained precarious-because of the military threat by the Arab Legion, the shortage of supplies, and the political separation from the Jewish state, which weighed heavily on the population-and the Israeli Cabinet anticipated mass flight from the town during the truce. Ben-Gurion declared, "We must prevent panic flight with all the means at our disposal." I'

The Israelis, for their part, also moved additional troops to the fronts. But they dramatically changed the strategic situation in their favor by systematically violating the arms and military personnel embargoes, bringing in both clandestinely by air and sea.

At the start of the truce, a senior British officer in Haifa predicted that the four weeks "would certainly be exploited by the Jews to continue military training and reorganization while the Arabs would waste [them] feuding over the future division of the spoils."16 He was right. As one British official subsequently put it: "The Arabs lost the initiative throughout Palestine during the four weeks and the Jews were able to re-equip themselves."17 In his memoirs, Nasser highlighted this by recalling the situation on his front, around Isdud: the Israeli side "buzzed with activity" while on the Egyptian side there was lethargy, "laxity," and "laughter."18 In addition, the Israelis exploited the truce for raiding and occupying sites along the lines that would give them advantage when and if fighting resumed.

During the invasion weeks and the First Truce, the Yishuv managed to convert its pre-state "national institutions" rapidly into the agencies and offices of a frill-blown state. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the military domain. The Haganah quickly made the transformation from a semilegal underground/militia into a full-fledged army and by the end of the truce was far stronger, in terms of command and control, manpower, and weaponry. The IDF's manpower almost doubled between i5 May and 9 July, the number in uniform rising from some thirty to thirty-five thousand to sixtyfive thousand. Perhaps as many as four thousand of the new recruits were veterans of the Allied armies (British, American, Canadian, Czech) of World War II who came from abroad to help out. Most went home after the war. These veterans included specialists in the crucial specialized branchessailors, doctors, tank men, logistics and communications experts, air- and ground crews.

The Israelis also managed to bring in large quantities of arms. By the end of the truce, more than twenty-five thousand rifles, five thousand machine guns, and more than fifty million bullets had reached the Haganah/IDF from Czechoslovakia.'9 During the invasion weeks and the truce, the Haganah/IDF also began to receive some of the heavy weapons purchased earlier, principally in the United States and Western Europe. By the end of June, Israel had received and deployed some thirty Swiss-made 20 mm cannon. A number of Krupp 75 mm cannon also arrived in June.20 Fighter aircraft trickled in, principally from Czechoslovakia. By the end of July, Israel had received twenty-five Messerschmitts-though the far more useful Spitfires began to arrive only in late September and into October. By February 1949, Israel had a dozen Spitfires. By mid-July 1948 a number of transport aircraft, some of them converted to combat use, and three B-17 bombers had also arrived.21

During June, most of the existing IDF brigades were substantially beefed up, the companies and battalions filling out more or less to standard size, and two new brigades, the Eighth (armored) -which began organizing in late May-and the Ninth (Oded)-which was commissioned on 17 June-were added to the roster. Many of the newly arrived armored vehicles-mostly World War II-vintage American half-tracks, some mounting guns or mortars-were deployed in the Eighth Brigade. Large quantities of ammunition arrived and were forwarded to the expanding units. The army that con fronted the Arab states on 8 - 9 July was radically different from, and far stronger than, that which they had met on 15 May.

The Israelis also used the truce to establish new settlements and begin planning others, mostly on newly conquered territory. Ben-Gurion believed the time was propitious-but cautioned against publicizing these activities: "We should speed up settlement, and in more places, and it is possible, but this time we should maintain silence," he told the Cabinet.22 But in fact the state was hard pressed on other fronts and devoted few resources to establishing new settlements, Weitz complained.23

The Arab armies also grew during the truce, but mainly in numbers. The Egyptian expeditionary force, for example, was beefed up with six companies of Sudanese regulars24 in addition to Egyptian recruits and reservists. But little additional weaponry or ammunition reached the army in Palestine.

Once the truce was in place, Bernadotte turned his attention to achieving a political settlement. He also spent time trying to persuade the Arabs to extend the truce. He spoke of "peace by Christmas"25 and hoped that negotiating peace would, of itself, generate Arab and Israeli interest in extending the truce.

The chief obstacles, as Bernadotte saw them, were the Arab world's continued rejection of the existence of a Jewish state, whatever its borders; Israel's new "philosophy," based on its increasing military strength, of ignoring the partition boundaries and conquering what additional territory it could; and the emerging Palestinian Arab refugee problem, the creation of which Moshe Shertok defined, with insight, as "the most spectacular event in the contemporary history of Palestine"26 and which Bernadotte almost immediately sensed would become a key issue for the Arab side.

On 26 June the mediator set his signature to "preliminary" proposals-a "basis [for] ... further discussion"-for a settlement. He recognized three basic facts: that (i) Israel existed (or as he put it a few weeks later: "It is there. It is a small state, precariously perched on the coastal shelf with its back to the sea, defiantly facing a hostile Arab world");27 (2) that the Jordanian takeover of the core area of the proposed Palestinian Arab state-the West Bank-was irreversible; and (3) that the partition borders were dead. But he misread the military situation. He still believed that there was a "military balance" between Israel and the Arab states, which he could capitalize on-whereas in reality, the balance had already shifted and would progressively shift further in Israel's favor.28 Bernadotte finessed the November 1947 UN decision to establish a Palestinian Arab state (alongside Israel) and proposed that a (vague) "Union" be established between the two sovereign states of Israel and Jordan (which now included the West Bank); that the Negev, or part of it, be included in the Arab state and that Western Galilee, or part of it, be included in Israel; that the whole of Jerusalem be part of the Arab state, with the Jewish areas enjoying municipal autonomy; and that Lydda Airport and Haifa be "free ports" -presumably free of Israeli or Arab sovereignty.29 He also asserted that the refugees have the "right to return home without restriction and to regain possession of their property"30 The proposals were transmitted to the two sides on 27 June.

The core idea, of reducing the size of the Jewish state by transferring the Negev to the Arabs while compensating Israel with (the much smaller) Western Galilee, was rooted in the British desire that the Arabs-preferably Jordan-hold the Negev so that territorial continuity between the eastern and western Arab lands-and between Britain's bases in Egypt and Iraq-would be maintained. This would have the added advantage of giving Jordan, Britain's most loyal regional client, an outlet, in Gaza-Majdal, to the Mediterranean.3i Moreover, the "exchange" (roughly) reflected the military status quo, following Israel's conquest of Western Galilee in Operation BenAmi and Egypt's (partial) conquest of the Negev. The Israelis and Soviets believed that Bernadotte's ideas emanated from the Foreign Office, but this is not clear from the available documentation.

A week later, the Israelis rejected the Bernadotte "plan," especially offended by the award of Jerusalem, with its majority Jewish population, to the Arabs. But they agreed to an extension of the truce by a month. The Arabs rejected both the plan, which included, of course, acceptance of the Jewish state, and a truce extension.

For the length of the truce, the Arab League had bitterly debated an extension. The Jordanians were dead set against the renewal of hostilities. After all, they had achieved their ambitions by occupying the West Bank, including Latrun, Lydda, and Ramla, and East Jerusalem. They feared that in renewed hostilities, the expanded IDF would overpower them and their allies. The Jordanians were also hardest hit by the embargo and suffered from an acute shortage of ammunition.