Chapter 3. The First Stage of the Civil War, November 1947 to March 1948

"Ben-Gurion, was also gloomy, but for another reason: “I could not dance, I could not sing that night. I looked at them so happy dancing and I could only think that they were all going to war.”"

"In describing the first, civil war half of the war, it is necessary to take account of three important facts. One, most of the fighting between November 1947 and mid-May 1948 occurred in the areas earmarked for Jewish statehood (the main exception being Jerusalem, earmarked for international control, and the largely Arab-populated “Corridor” to it from Tel Aviv) and where the Jews enjoyed demographic superiority...Two, the Jewish and Arab communities in western and northern Palestine were thoroughly intermingled...And three, the civil war took place while Britain ruled the country and while its military forces were deployed in the various regions. The British willingness and ability to intervene in the hostilities progressively diminished as their withdrawal progressed, and by the second half of April 1948 they rarely interfered, except to secure their withdrawal routes. Nonetheless, throughout the civil war, the belligerents had to take account of the British presence and their possible reaction to any initiative. Down to mid-April, this presence seriously affected both Arab and Jewish war-making"

British policy of nonintervention: In theory

"Through the war, each side accused the British of favoring the other. But in fact, British policy—as emanating both from Whitehall and from Jerusalem, the seat of the high commissioner—was one of strict impartiality, generally expressed in nonintervention in favor of either side while trying to maintain law and order until the end of the Mandate. Both Whitehall and Jerusalem were eager to keep British casualties down. But at the same time Whitehall was bent on quitting Palestine with as little loss to its power and prestige in the Middle East as possible"

"The military’s guidelines were explicit: “Our forces would take no action except such as was directed towards their own withdrawal and the withdrawal of our stores; i.e., they would not be responsible for maintaining law and order (except as necessary for their own protection).”"

"Cunningham put it this way: “It is our intention to be as impartial as is humanly possible. . . . [But] we wish to protect the law-abiding citizen.”15 This meant that the British would try to protect those attacked."

Impact of limited British intervention on military operations

"British military interventions down to mid-March 1948 tended to work to the Yishuv’s advantage since during the war’s first four months the Arabs were generally on the offensive and the Jews were usually on the defensive. British columns repeatedly intervened on the side of attacked Jewish settlements and convoys. And the British regularly supplied escorts to Jewish convoys in troubled areas, such as the road to Jerusalem. This led to Arab accusations that the British were pro-Zionist. But strategically speaking, during this period the massive British military presence and Haganah suspicions that the British in fact favored the Arabs— “there is a sort of secret coalition between gAzzam Pasha and Bevin,” said Ben-Gurion17—tended to inhibit Haganah operations. The Haganah could not contemplate large-scale operations, of which it became growingly capable as the war advanced, or conquest of Arab territory, out of fear of British intervention; and it understandably shied away from fighting the British while its hands were full with the Palestinian Arab militias and their foreign auxiliaries (though, to be sure, the IZL and LHI were far less cautious). Until April 1948, the Haganah operated under the assumption that the British military would block or forcefully roll back large-scale operations"

British policy of nonintervention: In practice

"The guideline of impartiality, authorized by British cabinet decision on 4 December 1947, translated during the following months into a policy of quietly assisting each side in the takeover of areas in which that side was demographically dominant...This policy sometimes occasioned a more radical expression—British advice or urging to specific threatened or defeated communities to evacuate. For example, on 18 April 1948 the British urged the Arab inhabitants of Tiberias to evacuate the town; a week later they proffered the same advice in Balad ash Sheikh, an Arab village southeast of Haifa"

"British troops did not always abide by the guideline of impartiality. Occasionally they indulged in overt anti-Jewish behavior (usually immediately following LHI or IZL attacks on them). During the war’s first months British troops occasionally confiscated arms from Haganah units protecting convoys or manning outposts in urban areas (the British argued that they also seized arms from Arab militiamen).18 And on a number of occasions British units disarmed Haganah men and handed them over to Arab mobs and “justice.” For example, on 12 February 1948 a British patrol disarmed a Haganah road block and arrested its members on Jerusalem’s Shmuel Hanavi Street. The four men were later “released” unarmed into the hands of an Arab mob, which lynched them and mutilated their bodies.19A similar incident occurred a fortnight later, on 28 February, when British troops disarmed Haganah men at a position in the Hayotzek Factory near Holon. Eight men were “butchered.”20 (The next day, LHI terrorists blew up a British troop train near Rehovot, killing twenty-eight British troops and wounding dozens more.) Moreover, Whitehall’s fears that the circumstances of the withdrawal from Palestine might subvert Britain’s standing in the Middle East occasioned a number of major, organized British interventions against the Jewish militias, or noninterventions in face of Arab attack, in the dying days of the Mandate (see below for the cases of Jaffa and the gEtzion Bloc in April and May)."

The strength of the national identity of the two sides

"For the average Palestinian Arab man, a villager, political independence and nationhood were vague abstractions: his affinities and loyalties lay with his family, clan, and village, and, occasionally, region"

"And a giant question mark hangs over the “nationalist” ethos of the Palestinian Arab elite: Husseinis as well as Nashashibis, Khalidis, Dajanis, and Tamimis just before and during the Mandate sold land to the Zionist institutions and/or served as Zionist agents and spies"

"The contrast with Zionist society is stark. No national collective was more self-reliant or motivated, the Holocaust having convincingly demonstrated that there was no depending for survival on anyone else and having implanted the certainty that a giant massacre would as likely as not be the outcome of military defeat in Palestine. By the late 1940s, the Yishuv was probably one of the most politically conscious, committed, and organized communities in the world. It was also highly homogeneous: close to 90 percent Ashkenazi and 90 percent secular; only about 3 percent of the Yishuv was ultra-Orthodox and anti-Zionist."

"Hesitantly during the Ottoman years, and with increasing intensity during the beneficent Mandate, as Jewish numbers swelled, the Yishuv fashioned the infrastructure of a state-within-a-state or a state-in-embryo. By 1947, in addition to the Haganah, the Yishuv had a protogovernment—the Jewish Agency for Palestine—with a cabinet (the JAE), a foreign ministry (the agency’s Political Department), a treasury (the agency’s Finance Department), and most other departments and agencies of government, including a well-functioning, autonomous school system, a taxation system, settlement and land reclamation agencies, and even a powerful trades union federation, the Histadrut, with its own health service and hospitals, sports organization, agricultural production and marketing agencies, bank, industrial plants, and daily newspaper and publishing house. Unlike the Palestinian Arabs, the Yishuv had a highly talented, sophisticated public service–oriented elite, experienced in diplomacy and economic and military affairs. Most of the twenty-six to twenty-eight thousand Palestinian Jews who had served in the Allied armies during World War II were, or became, Haganah members"

"In an emergency fundraising tour of the United States in January–March 1948, Golda Myerson raised fifty million dollars for the Haganah, twice the sum that Ben-Gurion had asked her to bring back—“a brilliant success,” in the words of Abba Hillel Silver, who praised her “eloquence and persuasion.”26 In a second whirlwind tour of American Jewish communities in May and June, she raised another fifty million dollars.27 These funds paid for the Czech arms shipments that proved decisive in the battles of April through October 1948."

"Theoretically, the Palestinians had the whole Arab world to fall back on. But that world, less organized and less generous than world Jewry, gave them little in their hour of need in money and arms. More robust was the contribution in terms of volunteers. But in this sphere, too, the pan-Arab contribution was actually meager in all but bluster. There appears to have been great reluctance to actually go and fight, especially among the more prosperous and educated. As one British intelligence official put it in December 1947: “Among the younger men . . . there is a great deal of temporary enthusiasm and exhibitionism, especially in Egypt, but very many of the youths who have so bravely smashed the windows of defenseless [Jewish] shopkeepers have little intention of undertaking anything so hazardous and uncomfortable as warfare in the stark Judean hills.”"

Foreign volunteers for Palestine

"Several dozen Britons, most of them former British army or police officers (by mid-March 1948 some 230 British soldiers and thirty policemen had deserted),32 also served in Palestinian Arab ranks,33 as did some volunteers from Yugoslavia and Germany. The Yugoslavs, possibly in their dozens, were both Christians, formerly members of pro-Axis Fascist groups, and Bosnian Muslims;34 the handful of Germans were former Nazi intelligence, Wehrmacht, and SS officers.3"

Jewish military capabilities

"The Yishuv entered the civil war with one large militia and two very small paramilitary or terrorist organizations: the Haganah, the military arm of the mainstream Zionist parties, especially the socialist Mapai and Mapam, with thirty-five thousand members; and the IZL, the military arm of the Revisionist movement and its youth movement, Betar, and the LHI, which was composed, somewhat unnaturally, of breakaways from the IZL and left-wing revolutionaries who regarded the British Empire as their chief enemy. The IZL had between two and three thousand members and the LHI some three to five hundred. During the civil war, the three organizations occasionally coordinated their operations and did not clash with one another."

"The Yishuv’s military capabilities improved significantly during the immediate postwar years. One element was the establishment of a clandestine arms industry. The plants were usually built under cowsheds and other agricultural installations. The industry was based on machine tools purchased in the United States by Haganah representatives in 1944–1946. By the end of 1947, the Haganah’s arms factories were producing two- and three-inch mortars, Sten submachine guns, and grenades and bullets in large numbers. Their contribution was not insignificant. Between 1 October 1947 and 31 May 1948 the secret plants produced 15,468 Sten guns, more than two hundred thousand grenades, 125 three-inch mortars with more than 130,000 rounds, and some forty million 9 mm (Sten gun) bullets.40"

Arab military capabilities

"The Futuwwa was founded at the end of 1935 by Jamal Husseini as the Arab Party’s youth corps; the Nazi Party or the Hitlerjugend appear to have been his model.44"

"The largest and best-organized Arab formation fighting in Palestine until the pan-Arab invasion of May 1948 was the ALA, consisting mainly of volunteers from Syria, Iraq, and Palestine mustered by the Arab League in Syria. The volunteers were trained in Syrian army camps in Qatana, near Damascus, beginning in November 1947, and the ALA was officially established on 1 January 1948, with Fawzi al-Qawuqji at its head. Al-Qawuqji told his volunteers that “they were going off to Jihad to help the persecuted Arabs of Palestine. . . . We must expel the Jews from the Arab part of Palestine and limit them in that small area where they live and they must remain under our supervision and guard. Our war is holy. Women, children and prisoners must not be harmed.”50"

Druze alliance with the Yishuv

"Many villages tried to stay out of the fray, and some even preferred to assist the Jews out of a deep-seated antagonism toward their neighbors or because they believed that the Jews would win. By the beginning of summer 1948, the Druze villages of the Carmel and Western Galilee had thrown in their lot with the Jews. A few weeks later, the IDF set up a Druze unit, which participated in its offensives.55"

THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE CIVIL WAR

Religious rift in Arab community

"The fighting had deepened the traditional Muslim-Christian rift. In Jerusalem, the Christians were eager to leave, but the Muslims threatened to confiscate or destroy their property.64 Outside the town, Muslim villagers overran the monasteries at Beit Jimal and Mar Saba, in the former “robbing and burning property,” in the latter “murdering [monks] and robbing.”65 The daughter, living in England, of one middle-class Muslim, identified as “Dr. Canaan”—possibly Tawfiq Canaan, a well-known physician, political writer, and folklorist—of Musrara (Jerusalem), wrote to her father: “Yes, daddy, it is shameful that all the Christian Arabs are fleeing the country and taking out their money.”66"

Arab families being mass evacuation

"Within twenty-four hours of the start of the (still low-key) hostilities, Arab families began to abandon their homes in mixed or border neighborhoods in the big towns. Already on 30 November 1947 the HIS reported “the evacuation of Arab inhabitants from border neighborhoods” in Jerusalem and Jaffa"

"By the end of March 1948 most of the wealthy and middleclass families had fled Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem, and most Arab rural communities had evacuated the heavily Jewish Coastal Plain; a few had also left the Upper Jordan Valley. Most were propelled by fear of being caught up, and harmed, in the fighting; some may have feared life under Jewish rule. It is probable that most thought of a short, temporary displacement with a return within weeks or months, on the coattails of victorious Arab armies or international diktats. Thus, although some (the wealthier) moved as far away as Beirut, Damascus, and Amman, most initially moved a short distance, to their villages of origin or towns in the West Bank or Gaza area, inside Palestine, where they could lodge with family or friends. During this period Jewish troops expelled the inhabitants of only one village—Qisariya, in the Coastal Plain, in mid-February (for reasons connected to Jewish illegal immigration rather than the ongoing civil war)—though other villages were harassed and a few specifically intimidated by IZL, LHI, and Haganah actions (much as during this period Jewish settlements were being harassed and intimidated by Arab irregulars). Altogether some seventy-five thousand to one hundred thousand Arabs fled or were displaced from their homes during the first stage of the civil war, marking the first wave of the exodus"

NC's begin to prohibit evacuations

"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 communiqué 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"

Anti-exodus orders undermined by actions of AHC

"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 gAzzam’s reported thinking already in May 1946 (“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.”"

"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).82 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 150 children had been evacuated, at least fifty to a monastery in Lebanon.84 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"

Impact of economy on refugees

"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...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).88 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."

Haganah policy in early stages: Ending Havlaga

"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.”"

"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,”109 the Haganah decided, on 9 December, to shift from pure defense to “active defense, [with] responses and punishment.”110 The following month, the HGS decided to target individual Husseini military and political leaders111—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.”112 The Haganah informed its members: “There is no thought of returning to the policy of restraint [havlaga] that seemingly existed during the disturbances of 1936–39.”"

"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.1"

"But this description of Zionist policy requires several caveats. From the first, the IZL and LHI did not play along. Almost immediately, they responded to Arab depredations with indiscriminate terrorism (to the ire of the Haganah chiefs).1"

"the mainstream Zionist leaders, from the first, began to think of expanding the Jewish state beyond the 29 November partition resolution borders. As Shertok told one interlocutor already in September 1947, if the Arabs initiate war, “we will get hold of as much of Palestine as we would think we can hold.”131 He seemed to be referring particularly to the clusters of Jewish settlements left by UNSCOP outside the partition borders, such as that in Western Galilee, from which, even before 29 November, there was growing pressure on the Yishuv leadership for inclusion in the Jewish state.1"

Atrocities and reprisals

"Much of the fighting in the first months of the war took place in and on the edges of the main towns—Jerusalem, Tel Aviv–Jaffa, and Haifa. Most of the violence was initiated by the Arabs. Arab snipers continuously fired at Jewish houses, pedestrians, and traffic and planted bombs and mines along urban and rural paths and roads"

"Like most intercommunal wars, this one, too, was marked by cycles of revenge. On the morning of 30 December, an IZL squad threw bombs from a passing van into a crowd of casual Arab laborers at a bus stop outside the Haifa Oil Refinery, killing eleven and wounding dozens. In a spontaneous response inside the plant, Arab refinery employees (reinforced by laborers from outside), using “sticks, metal bars, stones, etc.,” turned on their Jewish coworkers, mostly white-collar employees, and, in an hour-long rampage, butchered thirty-nine and wounded another fifty. Several Arab employees protected Jews. The British refinery executives and security officers refused to intervene or give the Jews arms from the plant’s armory, though a number of British workers saved Jews. The massacre was halted by the arrival of British forces, who then allowed the Arabs to be bussed out. No one was arrested. The subsequent investigation by leading Haifa Jewish figures found that the massacre was spontaneous and triggered by the earlier IZL attack and that the Arabs had not planned the outbreak.136 But the HGS felt that the massacre could not go unpunished, whatever its trigger, and targeted the large village of Balad ash Sheikh and its satellite village, Hawasa, southeast of Haifa. Many of the refinery workers lived there. Indeed, an HIS report immediately named three Balad ash Sheikh villagers who had participated in the massacre.137 On the night of 31 December–1 January, the Haganah sent in a Palmah company and several independent platoons. The orders were to “kill as many men as possible”—or, alternatively, “100” men—and “destroy furniture, etc.,” but to avoid killing women and children. The raiders moved from house to house, pulling out men and executing them. Sometimes they threw grenades into houses and sprayed the interiors with automatic fire. There were several dozen dead, including some women and children. During the raids, nearby British and Arab Legion units fired from afar at the raiders. The Haganah suffered three dead and two wounded.138 Mapam leaders criticized the indiscriminate nature of the retaliation. Ben-Gurion responded that “to discriminate [in such circumstances] is impossible. We’re at war. . . . There is an injustice in this, but otherwise we will not be able to hold out.”"

"The Haganah made other mistakes. On the night of 5–6 January 1948, a squad of sappers penetrated West Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood and blew up part of the Semiramis Hotel, suspected of housing an Arab irregulars headquarters. Twenty-six civilians died, including the Spanish deputy consul, Manuel Allende Salazar y Travesedo. The explosion triggered the start of a “panic exodus” from the prosperous Arab neighborhood.145 Jewish sources later claimed that one or two of the dead were irregulars.146 Several JAE members criticized the Haganah,147 and the British were irate, calling in Ben-Gurion for a dressing down. He subsequently removed the officer responsible, Mishael Shaham, from command.148 But generally Haganah retaliatory strikes during December 1947–March 1948 were accurately directed, either against perpetrators or against their home bases or hostile villages and militiamen. Relatively few women and children were killed. In mid-May, HIS summarized the results of the Jewish reprisals of December 1947–March 1948: “The main effect of these operations was on the Arab civilian population . . . [leading to] economic paralysis, unemployment, lack of fuel and supplies because of the severance of transport. They suffered from the destruction of their houses and psychologically their nerves were badly hit, and they even suffered evacuations and wanderings. . . . [All this] weakened the Arab rear areas and made the operations of the militiamen more difficult, and also led to clashes between the Arab population that was hurt and the Arab combatants whom the civilian inhabitants saw as the source of the disaster. The Jewish attacks forced the Arabs to tie down great forces in protecting themselves. . . . The [reprisals also caused] . . . doubt about their own strength. This war of nerves had great value in undermining to a large extent the confidence of the enemy. But these are phenomena suffered by each side in the conflict and they did not yet reach the extent of decisively affecting the staying power of the Arabs and their morale.”"

"The occupants of one vehicle committed suicide with dynamite rather than fall into Arab hands. (Jews captured in convoy battles were normally put to death and mutilated.)"

Chapter 4. The Second Stage of the Civil War, April to mid-May 1948