1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (53 page)

But the other Arab governments, having failed to attain their territorial objectives or the destruction of the Jewish state, and believing that the truce had favored the Jews, and egged on by opposition charges of weakness or treachery, pressed for a resumption of warfare. This or that Arab leader may have fathomed the real balance of forces-Syrian prime minister Neguib Armenazi, for example, was "personally convinced that the Arab States will all have to concede the existence of a Jewish State," reported one British interlocutor32-but none except the Jordanians were able to translate this into policy. As IDF intelligence explained, probably quoting an (unnamed) Arab agent: "The Arab states must continue the war for reasons of national pride, otherwise there is a danger of the collapse of their political regime[s] ."33 The Arabs were certain to renew the war at the end of the truce, "and possibly even before then," concluded Israeli intelligence.34

On 6 July Arab League representatives, meeting in Cairo, decided unanimously against the renewal of the truce.35 "I was in a minority of one," Jordanian prime minister Abul Huda explained to John Glubb. "All the others wanted to renew the fighting. If I had voted alone against it, we should only have been denounced as traitors, and the truce [in any case] would not have been renewed. Jordan cannot refuse to fight if the other Arabs insist on fighting. Our own people here would not stand for that."36 Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Muhammad Khashaba offered one explanation for the League decision-which was spearheaded by Egyptian insistence: "It was a matter of life and death for them [that is, the Arab leaders] that there should be no Jewish state. They had no desire for renewed hostilities and no illusions about military risks involved but saw no alternative."37 The stage was set for Egypt's renewal of hostilities and the Israeli offensives that followed.

DISMANTLING THE JEWISH DISSIDENT ORGANIZATIONS

One other important development occurred that June: the disbandment of the right-wing Zionist dissident organization the IZL. The crucial event was the "Altalena Affair."

On 1-2 June Ben-Gurion's aide, Israel Galili, and IZL commander Menachem Begin signed an agreement disbanding the IZL and providing for the transfer of the organization's troops to the IDF, where they were to constitute a number of separate battalions in the Alexandroni and Giv`ati Brigades. The IZL units in Jerusalem were left out of the agreement and maintained a separate, independent existence, Jerusalem officially not being part of the State of Israel.

But on 19-20 June there occurred what Ben-Gurion and his ministers were to regard-or said they regarded-as a mini-rebellion. An IZL ship, the Altalena, having embarked from France with some nine hundred immigrants and IZL members and a shipment of arms, arrived off Israel's shores. The IZL demanded that the arms be distributed among "its" IDF battalions and the independent IZL unit in Jerusalem. The government refused. Without obtaining government permission, IZL troops took control of a beach area near Kfar Vitkin, north of Netanya, and began to offload the immigrants and arms. IDF troops surrounded them, and a number of firefights ensued. On 21 June the IZL men on the beach surrendered, but the Altalena set sail for Tel Aviv. There, on Ben-Gurion's orders, IDF artillery fired on the ship. Hit and on fire, it soon sank. Most of the arms were lost. At the same time, Palmate troops also took over the organization's headquarters in downtown Tel Aviv and arrested and disarmed the dissidents. Altogether, eighteen men died in the clashes, most of them IZL.

Begin refrained from igniting a civil war, and most of the IZL men returned to the IDF. But this time they were dispersed in the different units; there were no longer "IZL battalions." The IZL and LHI units in Jerusalem remained separate from the IDF until mid-September, when there, too, they were disbanded in the wake of the Bernadotte assassination, described in the next chapter.

The First Truce was scheduled to end on 9 July. But, hoping to catch the IDF off guard, Egypt preempted and launched its offensive the day before, with the aim of bolstering its position along the Majdal-Beit Jibrin line. On 9 July Israel mounted offensives of its own on all three fronts. The IDF command hoped that they would be decisive and end the war. But they weren't, and the war would drag on for another half a year. The "Ten Days," as Israel called this brief, sharp bout of hostilities, ended on 18 July, following the UN Security Council's imposition of the Second Truce.

At the end of the First Truce, Israel was in a belligerent mood. It was still reeling from the impact and losses of the pan-Arab invasion. The country's feeling was encapsulated in David Ben-Gurion's statement in the Cabinet on ii July: "I would like [the war] to continue for at least another month, because the war must end in the conquest of Shechem [Nablus], and I believe it is possible; the war must end with such a bombing of Damascus, Beirut, and Cairo, that they will no longer have a desire to fight us, and will make peace with us. Our goal is peace, what will happen if at the end of the war there will [still] be enmity around us [I don't know].... If we do not blow up [that is, bomb?] Cairo, they will think, that they can blow up [that is, bomb] Tel Aviv and that we are powerless.... [If we bomb them] then they will respect us, I want it [to end] this way, and not by coercion by the UN in the middle of the war, [which will] enable the Arabs to say, [']had not En gland and America intervened, we could have destroyed the Jews. ['] It is better that they see that this is not so."1

Ben-Gurion's confrontational mood may in part have been caused by the previous week's "rebellion" in the IDF General Staff, directed against his "overbearing" authority in all matters military. Over the previous weeks, BenGurion had acted like a generalissimo, effectively usurping the powers of the chief of staff. Now, in the first week of July, in preparation for the impending battles, he was bent on appointing two British army World War II veterans, Shlomo Shamir and Mordechai Makleff, as Negev Brigade and Central Front OCs, respectively, over the heads of more experienced or incumbent Haganah/Palmah veterans. Yigael Yadin and other General Staff members responded by tendering their resignations. In part, it was a struggle over the management of the war, with Ben-Gurion dismissive of the Haganah/ Palmah veterans' military abilities and the generals resentful of Ben-Gurion's autocratic (and amateur) interferences. It was also, in part, a political squabble between the Mapai leader and affiliated colonels and the nonpartisan or Mapam-linked veterans of the Haganah and Palmah, vaguely rallying in support of Mapam stalwart Israel Galili, the former head of the Haganah National Staff whom Ben-Gurion had effectively ousted back in May.

A ministerial committee, the Committee of Five, headed by Interior Minister Yitzhak Gruen bauin, was appointed to sort out the mess, but the compromise they proposed on 6 July, substantially curtailing Ben-Gurion's powers, resulted in the Old Man withdrawing to his bedroom in a huff (in "a state of collapse," as Moshe Shertok described it)2 and himself threatening resignation. In the end, a settlement was reached, and Ben-Gurion was reinvested with almost complete control over the army. But his feathers had been ruffled, and he had been forced to accept the appointment of General Yigal Allon, the Palmah OC (and Mapam stalwart), as head of the planned operation in the central sector (albeit without the title of "front commander"). Nonetheless, Galili was now definitively ejected from the Defense Ministry, and a few weeks later, in September, the Palmah's separate HQ was disbanded, with the three Palmah brigades falling under the full control of the IDF General Staff (previously the Palmah HQ had exercised autonomous control in certain administrative matters, training, and appointments in the brigades).-'

THE SOUTH

Even more markedly than during the invasion, the Ten Days were distinguished by a complete absence of cooperation and coordination between the different Arab armies, enabling the IDF to make the most of its unity of command, internal lines of communication, and superiority in manpower.

During the truce, the IDF had planned a major offensive against the Egyptian army. The Egyptians held a thin strip of territory on either side of the Majdal-Faluja-Beit Jibrin road, which connected their major holdings along the coast, from Rafah to Isdud, and the secondary arm of the expeditionary force, strung out between Beersheba, Hebron, and Bethlehem. At the same time, the Majdal-Beit Jibrin strip separated the coastal core of the Jewish state from the Negev settlements enclave, with its two dozen kibbutzim, guarded by the Negev Brigade. The aim of mivtza an far (Operation An[ti]-Far[ouk]) was to reestablish the territorial link between the two areas, cut through the Egyptian-held strip, and serparate the right wing of the Egyptian expeditionary force from its main arm along the coast.4 The intention, at least of one of the participating brigades, Giv ati, was also to destroy and clear of inhabitants the villages that were to be captured and to demolish or drive out makeshift Arab refugee encampments.5

But the Egyptians, having used the truce to enlarge their expeditionary force to four brigades, preempted the IDF by striking at dawn on 8 July. In his memoirs, Gamal Abdel Nasser, a staff officer in the Sixth Battalion, noted "a spirit of indifference" and an absence of "conviction" in the Egyptian preparations. The Egyptian officers seemed to be playing at soldiering and "there was no trace of the authentic fighting spirit." "We spent the [truce] days as though we were in our barracks in Cairo. Our laughter filled the trenches and our jokes made the rounds throughout our positions," he recalled.6 But Nasser himself, by his own admission, was behaving no better: he seems to have spent the time recruiting officers to the clandestine Free Officers Organization, which planned and eventually carried out the coup that overthrew the monarchy in 1952, instead of preparing for renewed hostilities.7

The main aim of the Egyptian offensive was to widen and strengthen the Majdal-Beit Jibrin wedge, deepening the isolation of the Negev settlements enclave, and to remove the threats to their supply lines along the coast and in the interior. Their minor effort, by the Second Brigade (Seventh and Sixth battalions, and the newly arrived Sudanese battalion), starting out from the Isdud area, targeted Beit Daras and the Sawafir villages8 (perhaps with the ultimate aim of reaching the Masmiya Junction).9 The attack on Beit Daras, held by Giv`ati's Fifty-third Battalion, was swiftly repulsed, the Sudanese and Israelis engaging with "bayonets and grenades" 10 on the outskirts of the village.11 Nasser ascribes the Egyptian defeat to bungling by the Sudanese, who fired the wrong-colored flare into the air, precipitating an Egyptian ar tillery barrage on their own positions. In turn, this prevented the Sixth Battalion's planned follow-up attack on the Sawafirs.12