Chapter 5. The Pan-Arab Invasion, 15 May to 11 June 1948

"Motto: “He said that the Arabs were not afraid of our expansion. They resented our very presence as an alien organism. . . . ‘Politics were not a matter for sentimental agreements; they were resultants of contending forces. The question is whether you can bring more force for the creation of a Jewish State than we can muster to prevent it. If you want your State, however, you must come and get it. It is useless asking me for the Negev. . . . You can only get your Negev by taking it. If you are . . . strong enough to do this, or if you enlist strong partners—Britain, America . . . —you may well succeed. If you cannot, then you will fail.’” — 'Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of the Arab League, September 1947"

"But the invasion, propelled by the combined momentum of their own rhetoric and pressure from below, went ahead. (As General John Bagot Glubb later recalled: “The Arab statesmen did not intend war. . . . But in the end they entered [Palestine] and ordered their commanders to advance as a result of pressure of public opinion and a desire to appease the ‘street.’”)3 The American Legation in Damascus described the mechanism thus: “Government appears to have led public opinion to brink of war and now unable to retreat. Demand for war led by students, press and Moslem religious leaders. . . . Manifestos of students and ulemas . . . alike uncompromising.”"

"Yet the momentum of Jewish victories, Palestine Arab defeats, and the minatory rumblings of the Arab street proved inexorable. Public opinion was “all in favor of the war, and considered anyone who refused to fight as a traitor.”13 As Muhsin al-Barazi, Syria’s foreign minister, put it in April: “[The] public’s desire for war is irresistible.”14 By May, Syrian leaders were hysterical; public opinion, they said, was “very excited,” and there was talk—at least for the benefit of Western diplomatic ears—that “the whole country might go Communist and . . . our [that is, Britain’s] friends would be swept away.”15 The same considerations applied in Baghdad, where the leaders looked both downward, at a turbulent politically involved middle class and an excitable “street,” and sideways, at fellow Arab leaders; a failure of militancy would enhance the position of the anti-Hashemite bloc (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria) in inter-Arab jockeying and rile the masses to the point of dangerous disturbances or worse.16 None could ignore the Palestinian Arab tales of massacre and exodus. Nor could the Arab leaders, especially Egypt’s, remain indifferent to the pressure of the Muslim religious establishment’s call for “the liberation of Palestine [as] a religious duty for all Moslems without exception, great and small."

"Around the Arab world, flights of fancy and boastful militant rhetoric were given their head. By the start of May, the Arab leaders, including gAbdullah, found that they were trapped and could do no other—whatever the state of their armies. “The politicians, the demagogues, the Press and the mob were in charge—not the soldiers. Warnings went unheeded. Doubters were denounced as traitors,” Glubb recalled.40 In most Arab states the opposition parties took a vociferous, pro-war position, forcing the pace for the generally more sober incumbents. From late November 1947 until mid-May 1948 the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad were awash with noisy “pro-intervention” demonstrations, organized at least in part by the governments themselves. The press, too, both reflecting and fashioning opinion, chimed in with belligerent rhetoric, growing in stridency as 15 May approached. The leaders found themselves ensnared in their own rhetoric and that of their peers. By 15 May, not to go to war appeared, for most, more dangerous than actually taking the plunge. gAzzam Pasha put it in a nutshell: “[The Arab] leaders, including himself, would probably be assassinated if they did nothing.”4"

"What was the goal of the planned invasion? Arab spokesmen indulged in a variety of definitions. A week before the armies marched, gAzzam told Kirkbride: “It does not matter how many [Jews] there are. We will sweep them into the sea.”42 Syrian president Shukri al-Quwwatli spoke of the Crusades: “Overcoming the Crusaders took a long time, but the result was victory. There is no doubt that history is repeating itself.”43 Ahmed Shukeiry, one of Haj Amin al-Husseini’s aides (and, later, the founding chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization), simply described the aim as “the elimination of the Jewish state.”4"

"At the last minute, Lebanon decided not to participate in the invasion. The decision, taken on 14 May, no doubt shook the Syrians. But even more unsettling for the whole Arab coalition was Jordan’s last-minute announcement of changed intentions and objectives. That day Jordan informed its partners that its army was heading for Ramallah, Nablus, and Hebron, to take over the area later known as the West Bank; it had no intention of thrusting northwestward, toward Afula, or of driving westward, to the sea. The goal of the Arab Legion—the Arab world’s best army, as all acknowledged and as it emerged—was the (peaceful) takeover of the core Arab area of Palestine, not war with the Jews. As a result, Syria’s (and Egypt’s) war plans were, a t the last minute, radically and unilaterally altered.

From the first, King gAbdullah recognized Jewish strength and the limitations of his efficient but small army; and he knew, and despised and feared, his fellow Arab leaders and belittled their military capabilities. gAbdullah did not want Afula and did not really want his army operating in conjunction with the Syrians and Egyptians; he distrusted them. He wanted the West Bank, if possible including East Jerusalem. On 13 May, unilaterally changing plans, he instructed Glubb (and informed his Hashemite Iraqi allies) that the West Bank was the objective. He probably approved the one element in Mahmud’s plan that remained intact, the prospective Iraqi assault across the Jordan into Israel at Gesher, in the Jordan Valley."

"gAbdullah’s last-minute change of plans was not whimsical. It was deeply rooted in history—in decades of frustrated geopolitical hopes and in months of secret negotiations with the British and the Jewish Agency. Since arriving in the small village of Amman—population two thousand—in November 1920, the young Hashemite prince, son of Hussein Ibn gAli, the sharif of Mecca and king of Hijaz, had sought to rule a vast and important domain. Transjordan, awarded him by Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill in March 1921, was always too small for his britches. He wanted, at the least, to be king of “Greater Syria,” encompassing present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and Jordan. But the French, the British, and assorted Arab politicians were forever frustrating his expansionist ambitions. Then, in 1937, a way forward at last seemed to open up, as embodied in the Peel Commission partition recommendations, which posited the union, under gAbdullah, of Transjordan and the bulk of Palestine (side by side with a minuscule Jewish state in the remaining 20 percent of the country). If he couldn’t get “Greater Syria,” perhaps he could at least have a “Greater Transjordan.” But the Palestinian Arabs, backed by the rest of the Arab world, objected, and nothing came of the proposal. gAbdullah, however, remained enchanted with the idea of annexing Palestine, or parts of it, to his emirate; Palestine would accord his godforsaken desert realm some import and prestige."

"Of course, gAbdullah preferred to coopt all of Palestine, with the Jews receiving an “autonomous” zone (a “republic,” he called it) inside his expanded kingdom. He repeatedly offered this to the Jewish Agency. But the Jews wanted a sovereign state of their own, not minority status. So partition it would have to be. This was agreed in principle in two secret meetings in August 1946 in Transjordan between gAbdullah and Jewish Agency emissary Eliahu (Elias) Sasson.61 (Incidentally, gAbdullah and his prime minister, Ibrahim Hashim, believed—as had the Peel Commission—that such a partition, in order to be viable and lasting, should be accompanied by a transfer of the Arab inhabitants out of the area of the Jewish state–to-be.)62"

"There matters stood until UNSCOP proposed partition—but between Palestine’s Arabs and Palestine’s Jews—as the preferred solution. Neither gAbdullah nor the Jewish Agency wanted a Husseini-led Palestinian Arab state as their neighbor; both preferred an alternative partition, between themselves. On 17 November 1947, twelve days before the passage of the partition resolution, Golda Myerson (Meir), acting head of the Jewish Agency Political Department, secretly met gAbdullah at Naharayim (Jisr alMajami), to reaffirm the agreement in principle of August 1946. gAbdullah at first vaguely reiterated his preference for incorporating all of Palestine in his kingdom, with the Jews enjoying autonomy. Meir countered that the Jews wanted peaceful partition between two sovereign “states.” The Jews would accept a Jordanian takeover of the West Bank as a fait accompli and would not oppose it—though, formally, the Jewish Agency remained bound by the prospective UN decision to establish two states. gAbdullah said that he, too, wanted a compromise, not war. In effect, gAbdullah agreed to the establishment of a Jewish state in part of Palestine and Meir agreed to a Jordanian takeover of the West Bank (albeit while formally adhering to whatever partition resolution the General Assembly would adopt). Both sides agreed not to attack each other. The subject of Jerusalem was not discussed or resolved. The assumption was that the holy city would constitute a corpus separatum under UN jurisdiction, in line with the UNSCOP recommendation. Or, simply, the subject was too sensitive and complex to resolve.63"

"Already in August 1947 Christopher Pirie-Gordon, the acting British minister in Amman, endorsed the attachment to Transjordan of “the Arab areas of Palestine. The advantages to Transjordan . . . are obvious” and it would “immensely strengthen [Britain’s] Hashemite Alliance.”64 In October, Kirkbride, the British minister, told visiting journalists that gAbdullah wanted “to rule Nablus and Hebron” and that “in his own view it was the logical solution” for the Palestine problem. Glubb also thought it was “the obvious thing” to do.65 Both men lobbied Whitehall directly and vigorously: “strategically and economically Transjordan has the best claim to inherit the residue of Palestine and. . . the occupation of the Arab areas by Transjordan would lessen the chances of armed conflict between a Jewish state and the other Arab states. . . . A greater Transjordan would not be against our interests, it might be in their favour,” argued Kirkbride.66 And Glubb, at a meeting with Britain’s director of military intelligence, Major-General C. D. Packard, laid out the Jordanian intentions more concretely: “The main objective of the invading force would be Beersheba, Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, with forward elements in Tulkarm and the area just south of Lydda.”67 gAbdullah was also keen on annexing the Negev or a large part of it, arguing that he “could not possibly agree to the Jewish State . . . cutting off Transjordan from Egypt” and, more widely, “the Arabs of Africa from . . . the Arabs of Asia.”68 In addition, Jewish possession of the Negev would threaten gAqaba, Transjordan, and the West Bank and would block the pilgrimage route to Mecca.69"

"Bevin, describing the meeting, said that, indeed, he had not replied, save for warning the Jordanians against any attempt to invade the Jewish-designated areas of Palestine. (Abul Huda had agreed.)71 The Jordanian understood, as Bevin had meant him to, that his silence signaled consent. But Glubb later recalled, possibly inaccurately, that Bevin’s response had gone beyond mere silence. Bevin, he wrote, had replied: “[Occupying the West Bank] seems the obvious thing to do. . . . [Bevin] expressed his agreement with the plans put forward.”72 Following the meeting, Abul Huda cabled gAbdullah: “I am very pleased at the results.”73 There was a green light. Jordan had won British consent to occupy of the West Bank with the termination of the Mandate—so gAbdullah, Abul Huda, and Glubb believed—and nothing the British did or said thereafter was to contradict this impression."

"It is clear that gAbdullah was far from confident of Arab victory and preferred a Jewish state as his neighbor to a Palestinian Arab state run by the mufti. “The Jews are too strong—it is a mistake to make war,” he reportedly told Glubb just before the invasion.79

gAbdullah’s aim was to take over the West Bank rather than destroy the Jewish state—though, to be sure, many Legionnaires may have believed that they were embarked on a holy war to “liberate” all of Palestine.80 Yet down to the wire, his fellow leaders suspected gAbdullah of perfidy (collusion with Britain and/or the Zionists). gAzzam reportedly told Taha al-Hashimi on 13 May that he “smells a rat in the policy of King gAbdullah. So he [gAzzam] will go to him and spur him on, saying . . . ‘Either you will attack the Jews like Saladin attacked the Crusaders, or the curse of the world will fall upon you.’”81"

"From the start, the invasion plans had failed to assign any task whatsoever to the Palestinian Arabs or to take account of their political aspirations. Although the Arab leaders vaguely alluded to a duty to “save the Palestinians,” none of them seriously contemplated the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state with Husseini at its head. All the leaders loathed Husseini; all, to one degree or another, cared little about Palestinian goals, their rhetoric notwithstanding. It was with this in mind that Jordan, on the eve of the invasion, ordered the ALA out of the West Bank83 and subsequently disarmed the local Arab militias."

"It was all farce. Responding with alacrity in Amman, gAbdullah on 30 September convened the “First Palestinian Congress” as a counterweight; indeed, the “Congress” immediately denounced the Gaza “Government.” The Egyptians, for their part, on 6–7 October bundled Haj Amin back to Cairo. In reality, the Gaza “Government” and “Council” did not long outlast his departure. Though most Arab governments rapidly recognized the hastily put-together, skeletal administration, it carved out no real fiefdom. Under tight Egyptian military administration, it had no real powers or funds and ruled no lands. Moreover, most of the small territory nominally under its control (that is, the area of Palestine occupied by the Egyptian army) in midOctober was overrun by the Israel Defense Forces in Operation Yoav. The Arab Legion, meanwhile, disarmed the Arab militiamen in the West Bank. The Egyptians hastily sent the few “ministers” left in Gaza back to Cairo. Within weeks, the farce was over, the Palestinian “government’s” only achievement having been to print fourteen thousand Palestinian passports (which no one recognized). The “All-Palestine Government” maintained a paper existence as a subdepartment within the Arab League until 1959, when Nasser disbanded it.85"

"If Arab war aims were disparate, the Yishuv’s initial goal was clear and simple: to survive the onslaught and establish a Jewish state. This was the chief aim both when Palestine’s Arabs attacked and when the Arab states invaded. But gradually, from December 1947 onward, one and possibly two aims were added. The first is unarguable and clear: to expand the new state so that it emerge from the war with more defensible borders and additional territory. The second was, at least among some of the leadership, to reduce the number of Arabs resident in the Jewish state"

"The Yishuv’s expansionism was driven at first by survivalist, military considerations. The key problem was West Jerusalem, with its hundred-thousand-strong Jewish community. As the war unfolded, the community came under siege and mortal threat, and the historic attachment to Jerusalem—religious and nationalist—came to the fore. By April, the Haganah, while trying to lift the siege, was in fact pushing to attach the city to the Coastal Plain.

The Zionist leadership initially was chary about violating the UN partition borders, lest this bolster the Arabs’ more general desire to overturn the resolution or give offense to the international community. The Zionist shift from unreserved adherence to the UN borders to expansionism was slow and hesitant. The pan-Arab invasion of mid-May ended the hesitancy: if the Arabs were defying the United Nations and were bent on destroying the Jewish state, the Jews would take what was needed for survival, and perhaps a little more. As Moshe Shertok put it on 16 June 1948: “It is clear that it would be good if we could achieve two things: (A) Not to give up an inch of the land within the borders of 29 November [1947]. . . . (B) To add to this territory those areas we have captured and not out of a desire merely to expand, but under pressure of bitter necessity. That is, those areas that bitter experience has taught us that we must dominate in order to provide the state with protection . . . (Western Galilee, the road to Jerusalem and Jerusalem itself).”8"

The Yishuv prepares: Obtaining money and arms

"During 1947–1948 the Haganah scoured the globe for arms. It was a massive effort, involving locating the needed arms, purchase (and, in the case of aircraft, training the crews), and shipment to Palestine (before 15 May circumventing the British blockade and after 29 May in defiance of the UN embargo). The effort involved Haganah agents and networks of Zionist officials and sympathizers, subterfuge and chicanery, dummy companies and counterfeit letters of authorization and accreditation, and large sums of money. The world was awash with decommissioned armaments from World War II. The arms were bought from both states and private dealers.

In the United States, Ben-Gurion in 1945 had secretly recruited eighteen Jewish millionaires, organized as, and misleadingly titled, the Sonneborn Institute, to help provide the Haganah’s needs in money and equipment, including machine tools needed for the Haganah’s embryonic arms industry. The group hired dozens of experts for the acquisition or transport of equipment or for establishing particular contacts (with Latin American dictators or underworld dealers). Many of the group’s activities were illegal; it operated outside the framework of the official Zionist organizations. The Institute created and used dummy companies, such as the New England Plastic Novelty Company. But much of the equipment it purchased failed to reach Palestine because of intervention by the American authorities, who on 14 December 1947 imposed an embargo on all arms shipments to the Middle East. Thereafter, the Federal Bureau of Investigation regularly arrested Institute and Haganah agents and impounded purchases. The Institute’s most ambitious project, handled by Haganah agent Yehuda Arazi, was the purchase of the decommissioned aircraft carrier Attu—for $125,000—on which Arazi hoped to load hundreds of armored vehicles, artillery pieces, and aircraft and convey them en masse to Palestine. The plan fell through, for reasons of expense and American interference, and the carrier was sold as scrap metal. The Institute’s major successes were providing the Haganah with machine tools for making ammunition and with field communications equipment that became the backbone of the brigades’ communications from May 1948; and (through Al Schwimmer, a Trans World Airlines engineer) the provision of a cluster of C-46 Commando cargo planes, four B-17 bombers, several Harvards, and a lone serviceable Mustang, and more than five hundred thousand gallons of (also embargoed) aviation fuel.96"

The balance of military forces

"Just as the Arabs tended to exaggerate Jewish strength, the Jews tended to exaggerate Arab strength—and Yishuv strategy cannot be understood without taking account of this. Jewish fears of defeat and possible annihilation were very real, and they began to dissipate only after the Arab armies proved to be much smaller and, by and large, less competent than anticipated.111 On paper, according to Haganah estimates, the Arab states possessed"

"Following the invasion, both sides substantially increased their forces, the Israelis handily winning the manpower race. In 1948, twenty-to-forty-four year-old males constituted a full 22 percent of the Jewish population. In the end, Israel proved able to put 13 percent of its population into uniform.120 By mid-July, the IDF was fielding sixty-five thousand troops; by October, eighty-eight thousand; by January 1949, 108,000.121The Arab armies, joined by contingents from Yemen, Morocco, Saudi Arabia,122 and Sudan, probably had forty to fifty thousand troops in Palestine and Sinai by mid-July and sixty-eight thousand in mid-October,123 the numbers perhaps rising slightly by the end of winter."

Impact of embargo on each side

"A major reason for the relative decline in Arab strength in the course of the war and the concomitant increase in Israeli strength, which by September and October 1948 resulted in clear Israeli superiority, was the Israeli “victory”—and Arab “defeat”—in the handling of the international arms embargo. In line with the UN Security Council decision, the international community imposed a blanket arms embargo on all the combatants from 29 May 1948 until 11 August 1949. (This followed the unilateral American embargo, imposed already from 14 December 1947, and the British curtailment of arms and munitions exports to the Middle East that began in February 1948.)124 The embargo was applied with great rigor by the United States, as well as by Britain, the traditional supplier of Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan, and France, the traditional supplier of Syria and Lebanon. As it turned out, the embargo had an asymmetrical effect—badly hurting the Arabs but hurting the Yishuv only minimally. This was a major factor in the gradual, steady decline of Arab military power and the relative, steady increase in Israeli military power.

The Arab states had not expected the embargo and had failed to prepare large stockpiles of weaponry, ammunition, and spare parts before 15 May. Nor had they nurtured alternative sources of supply from Eastern Europe or from private arms dealers or an independent capability to buy and ship arms to the Middle East clandestinely. Once the UN embargo was imposed, the Arab states, for lack of funds and an appropriate procurement apparatus, proved by and large unable to purchase weapons, munitions, and spare parts. And, after expending vast quantities of munitions in the invasion weeks of May and June, the Arab armies, from July onward, increasingly found themselves short of war matériel. For example, in October 1948 the Egyptian air force, which nominally had thirty-six fighters and sixteen bombers, was able to fly less than a dozen fighters and only three or four bombers, and these with ill-trained aircrews and inadequate munitions.125

The embargo also had a dire psychological effect on the Arab world. As gAzzam put it, “The Arabs [felt that they] were in fact without a friend in the world.”126

By contrast, the Haganah,—an underground organization well versed in the clandestine arts—fashioned secret arms procurement networks in Europe and the Americas during 1947 and early 1948. Yishuv fundraisers managed to raise some $129 million, in cash and pledges, from Jews abroad to bankroll the war effort. The Yishuv spent some $78.3 million of this on arms purchases between October 1947 and March 1949.127 As we have seen, these networks concluded a series of deals with Czechoslovakia, which was hungry for American dollars, and with private dealers, and shipments began to arrive in Palestine from the end of March 1948, the bulk of the arms, including heavy weaponry, arriving after Israel’s declaration of statehood. The arrival of the Czech light weapons in March through May and of artillery pieces and armored vehicles in May through July proved crucial to the Haganah/IDF victories both over the Palestinian Arabs and the invading armies. Obversely, the failure of the Arab states to obtain additional armor, aircraft, guns, and ammunition, particularly for its artillery and mortars, proved crucial in the Arab shift after May and June to the defensive and to the subsequent Arab defeats. Similarly, the embargo-violating arrival in Israel of thousands of trained Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers from abroad, including hundreds of air and ground crew, was not matched by a similar increase in expert military personnel in the Arab armies. (More than three hundred Americans and Canadians—mostly with World War II experience—served in 1948 in the IAF, 198 of them aircrew.)128 By the last months of 1948, the IAF had far more trained aircrew than were needed; the Arabs had far too few. Thus, in October 1948 the Israel Air Force, flying only a dozen or so fighters, proved able to gain immediate air superiority against the Egyptians, flying in Operation Yoav some 240 missions to the Egyptians’ thirty to fifty missions. The surfeit of experienced personnel and the availability of spare parts and munitions made all the difference."

The Jordanian Front

"The army the Yishuv (rightly) feared most was the Arab Legion. The Jews had come to respect it during the months its units had served with the British army in Palestine. It was professional and efficient. Its strength in May 1948 was around nine thousand, of whom some twelve to thirteen hundred were tribal auxiliaries.129 The Legion was highly mechanized, with effective service units, and was led by a complement of some fifty to seventy-five experienced British officers and noncommissioned officers, mostly seconded from the British army or mercenaries.130 They included Glubb, the Legion’s commander, and most of the senior staff—his deputy, Norman Lash, the brigade commanders Teal Ashton and Desmond Goldie, and most battalion OCs. The Legion—officially renamed the Jordan Arab Army—had a highly professional artillery arm"

"The Legion was short of ammunition, especially for its artillery and mortars, and suffered severely from the British arms embargo.135 A large, lastminute supply of artillery shells and mortar bombs—altogether some 350 tons—was confiscated by the Egyptians at Suez on 22 May.136 But during the initial weeks of the invasion, the Legion’s officers, perhaps unaware of the supply problem, were profligate in their use of artillery and mortars. On 30 May, the Fourth Battalion, fighting in Latrun, ran out of artillery shells.137 During the following months, especially in the fighting in mid-July, Glubb pleaded with Whitehall for resupply, only to be rebuffed with the argument that if Britain violated the embargo, the Americans would do likewise and supply arms and ammunition to Israel in even more significant quantities. Nonetheless, during September and October Britain surreptitiously supplied the Legion with limited quantities of spare parts and ammunition, including artillery shells.139"

"Captain Mahmud al-Ghussan, a staff officer in the Legion’s Fourth Regiment, for example, later recalled that the inhabitants of Amman had virtually ignored the troops as they passed through on their way to Palestine “in order to save it from the Zionists and the West.”142 But others came away with different recollections. Magan Abu Nowar, another young officer, recalled that “emotions ran high. . . . I remember my father and mother among the crowd. . . in Amman. As I was passing by in my GMC light armoured car, my mother shouted: ‘God be with you, my son. Don’t come back. Martyrdom my son.’ I was shocked, not because my mother wished me to be killed . . . but because her head and face were bare. . . . In Jordan, conservative and devout women like her did not usually appear in public without a scarf covering their heads and faces.”143"

"The fears of the quarter’s inhabitants proved groundless; the Legion had learned its lesson from Kfar gEtzion. The Legionnaires deployed in force and protected the Jews from the wrath of the gathering Arab mob. The soldiers shot dead at least two Arabs and wounded others as they guarded the Jews. One POW recalled: “We were all surprised by the Legion’s behavior toward us. We all thought that of the soldiers [that is, Haganah men] none would remain alive. . . . [We feared a massacre. But] the Legion protected us even from the mob, they helped take out the wounded, they themselves carried the stretchers. . . . They gave us food, their attitude was gracious and civil.”193

The Legionnaires took prisoner 290 healthy males, aged fifteen to fifty— two-thirds of them, in fact, noncombatants—and fifty-one of the wounded. The other wounded and twelve hundred inhabitants were accompanied by the Legionnaires to Zion Gate and freed.194 The quarter was then systematically pillaged and razed by the mob.195 The fall of the Jewish Quarter, an important national site, dealt a severe blow to Yishuv morale."

The Egyptian invasion

"By the end of that first day, one Negev Brigade officer, Haim Bar-Lev (IDF chief of general staff, 1968–1971), concluded that “the outcome of the war had been settled, because if 45 defenders had withstood about 1,000 [sic] Egyptians, who were aided by fighter aircraft, artillery, and armor, and beat them—then the whole Yishuv would hold out in the war.”255"

"The Egyptians prevented their local auxiliaries from massacring the POWs. One hundred and five Israelis surrendered.291 Three or four were subsequently murdered by the Egyptians or irregulars. Among them were Avraham Schwarzstein, the settlement OC, and his radiowoman, Mira Ben-Ari. The two, carrying a white flag, had left their bunker and walked toward a group of Egyptian officers. One Egyptian, gAbd al-Mungim Khalif, drew a pistol and emptied it into Schwarzstein. Ben-Ari shot Khalif dead, and the other Egyptians then shot Ben-Ari.292"

The Iraqis

"Apart from helping to crush the Jewish state, the Iraqis appeared interested in reaching Haifa, on the way conquering the area on either side of the length of the Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline that conveyed oil from fields near Mosul through the Lower Galilee to Haifa.300"

The Syrians

"The Syrian invasion got off to a poor start because of the last-minute change in the Arab war plan and because of the army’s low “work standards” (as one Israeli observer was to put it: “The Syrians would generally fight in the morning. During the afternoon they would take a light siesta, and at night they would go to sleep in orderly fashion”).322"

"Back in February, Syrian politicians apparently told the visiting Palestinian leader Musa al-gAlami—in line with traditional “Greater Syria” ambitions— that they were interested in gaining control of “all Palestine” or at least its “Arab areas.”324 But by mid-May, their ambitions appear to have been reduced substantially. On 18 May, the British minister in Damascus reported that the “combined Syrian-Iraqi objective is Tiberias.”325 To judge from the Syrians’ actions, he may have been right (at least as regards Syria)."

Chapter 6. The First Truce, 11 June to 8 July 1948, and the International Community and the War