Chapter 4. The Second Stage of the Civil War, April to mid-May 1948
American reaction to war: State department announcement
"Surprisingly, the first to get cold feet were the Americans. Already on 2 December 1947, Truman was gently cautioning the Zionists and their supporters: “The vote in the United Nations is only the beginning and the Jews must now display tolerance and consideration for the other people in Palestine with whom they will necessarily have to be neighbors.”2 A few weeks later, Secretary of State George Marshall put it more starkly when he reportedly told his staff that “he thought US Government may have made a mistake supporting partition.”3"
"But by February, the State Department seemingly had won over the president who, somewhat equivocally, informed Marshall that he approved “in principle this basic position”—that is, given the failure of a peaceful partition, to place Palestine under UN trusteeship.8 Inching toward trusteeship, Warren Austin, the US representative to the United Nations said that the Security Council was obliged to preserve peace, not force partition on the Arabs.9 The State Department may even have envisioned London remaining in control, with the British “keeping their troops in Palestine until a final and peaceful settlement is achieved,” in the words of James Reston of the New York Times.10 The Policy Planning Staff of the State Department argued that “the maintenance . . . of a Jewish state” was contrary to the American “national interest” or “immediate strategic interests.”11 During the following weeks, Truman may still have been wavering, but Marshall was under the impression that the president had plumped for trusteeship. He authorized Warren Austin to proceed with the formal announcement.12 Austin himself was somewhat reluctant13 but in the end acceded14 and on 17 March formally broached the possibility at the Security Council.15"
"The Arabs were jubilant. The Jewish Agency rejected Austin’s proposal as “a shocking reversal of [the US] position. . . . We are at an utter loss to understand the reason.” It was apparently a capitulation to Arab violence, said Abba Hillel Silver, a spokesman for American Zionism.18 The Soviets supported the Zionists. Truman himself appears to have been genuinely shocked and unhappy with Austin’s announcement. “The State Department pulled the rug from under me today,” he jotted down. “The State Department has reversed my Palestine policy. The first I know about it is what I see in the papers! Isn’t that hell? I am now in the position of a liar and a double-crosser.”19 But Marshall and the State Department later maintained that Truman had approved the Austin statement.20 Clearly there had been some crossed wires—but also, it appears, some crass insubordination. Truman’s strong reaction may also have been influenced by the immediate, adverse American press responses to Austin’s speech.21 In any event, Truman quickly reassured the Zionists that he stood by partition."
Haganah moves to the offensive: Plan Dalet
"Until the end of March, Haganah policy had been to defend the existing Jewish settlements and protect the convoys supplying them. Occasionally, its troops carried out retaliatory strikes against Arab militia units and bases. But no territory was conquered and no village—with two exceptions over December 1947–March 1948 (gArab Suqreir and Qisariya)—was destroyed. But henceforward, Haganah policy would be permanently to secure roads, border areas, and Jewish settlements by crushing minatory irregular forces and destroying or permanently occupying the villages and towns from which they operated. The Arab militias and their ALA reinforcements had to be crushed; the main roads had to be permanently secured; and the Haganah’s brigades had to be freed to deploy along the borders to fend off the expected pan-Arab invasion. In addition, the world, and particularly the United States, had to be persuaded that the Yishuv could and would win and establish its state. Victory over the Palestinian Arabs would assure the world community’s continued adherence to the decision to partition Palestine and establish a Jewish state"
"Glimmers of the prospective change in strategy were apparent in the first months of 1948. In January, planning in the Haganah Jerusalem District provided for “the destruction of villages . . . dominating our settlements or endangering our communications routes.”33 And in Tel Aviv, one senior officer recommended destroying Jaffa’s water reservoir “to force a large number of Arabs to leave the town.”34 But such suggestions or “plans” were not, in fact, activated before the implementation of Plan D in April and May. And Plan D itself was never launched, in an orchestrated fashion, by a formal leadership decision. Indeed, the various battalion and brigade commanders in the first half of April, and perhaps even later, seemed unaware that they were implementing Plan D. In retrospect it is clear that the Haganah offensives of April and early May were piecemeal implementations of Plan D. But at the time, the dispersed units felt they were simply embarking on unconcerted operations geared to putting out fires in each locality and to meeting particular local challenges (the siege of Jerusalem, the cutoff of the Galilee Panhandle from the Jezreel Valley, and so on). The massive Haganah documentation from the first half of April contains no reference to an implementation of Plan D, and only rarely do such references appear in the Haganah’s paperwork during the following weeks.
Plan D called for securing the areas earmarked by the United Nations for Jewish statehood and several concentrations of Jewish population outside those areas (West Jerusalem and Western Galilee). The roads between the core Jewish areas and the border areas where the invading Arab armies were expected to attack were to be secured. The plan consisted of two parts: general guidelines, distributed to all brigade OCs, and specific orders to each of the six territorial brigades (gEtzioni [Jerusalem], Kiryati [(Tel Aviv], Givgati [Rehovot-Rishon Lezion], Alexandroni [the Coastal Plain], Carmeli [Haifa], and Golani [Jezreel Valley]). The preamble stated: the aim “of this plan is to take control of the territory of the Jewish State and to defend its borders, as well as [defend] the blocs of settlement and the Jewish population outside these borders against a regular enemy, semi-regular[s] [that is, the ALA], and irregulars.”"
"The plan called for the consolidation of Jewish control in and around the big Jewish and mixed towns (Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa), the sealing off of potential enemy routes into the country, the consolidation of a defense line along the borders, and the extension of Haganah protection to Jewish population centers outside the UN-sanctioned borders. In doing this, the plan called for the securing of the main interior roads, the siege of Arab towns and neighborhoods, and the conquest of forward enemy bases. To achieve these objectives, swathes of Arab villages, either hostile or potentially hostile, were to be conquered, and brigade commanders were given the option of “destruction of villages (arson, demolition, and mining of the ruins)” or “cleansing [of militiamen] and taking control of [the villages]” and leaving a garrison in place. The commanders were given discretion whether to evict the inhabitants of villages and urban neighborhoods sitting on vital access roads"
"Plan D has given rise over the decades to a minor historiographic controversy, with Palestinian and pro-Palestinian historians37 charging that it was the Haganah’s master plan for the expulsion of the country’s Arabs. But a cursory examination of the actual text leads to a different conclusion. The plan calls for securing the emergent state’s territory and borders and the lines of communication between the Jewish centers of population and the border areas. The plan is unclear about whether the Haganah was to conquer and secure the roads between the Jewish state’s territory and the blocs of Jewish settlement outside that territory. The plan “assumed” that “enemy” regular, irregular, and militia forces would assail the new state, with the aim of cutting off the Negev and Eastern and Western Galilee, invading the Coastal Plain and isolating Tel Aviv and Jewish Haifa and Jerusalem. The Haganah’s “operational goals” would be “to defend [the state] against . . . invasion,” assure “free [Jewish] movement,” deny the enemy forward bases, apply economic pressure to end enemy actions, limit the enemy’s ability to wage guerrilla war, and gain control of former Mandate government installations and services in the new state’s territory. The plan gave the brigades carte blanche to conquer the Arab villages and, in effect, to decide on each village’s fate—destruction and expulsion or occupation. The plan explicitly called for the destruction of resisting Arab villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants. In the main towns, the brigades were tasked with evicting the inhabitants of resisting neighborhoods to the core Arab neighborhoods (not expulsion from the country). The plan stated: “[The villages] in your area, which have to be taken, cleansed or destroyed— you decide [on their fate], in consultation with your Arab affairs advisers and HIS officers.” Nowhere does the document speak of a policy or desire to expel “the Arab inhabitants” of Palestine or of any of its constituent regions; nowhere is any brigade instructed to clear out “the Arabs.”"
"At al-Qastal, between 3 and 9 April, the Israelis had lost seventy-five men. The Arabs had lost ninety, but they included the Palestinian Arabs’ foremost military commander. And they had lost a crucial battle and a vital strategic position on the road to Jerusalem. The original operational order of 2 April for the conquest of al-Qastal had forbidden the Haganah troops from razing the village. In the same spirit, Yadin had initially instructed the Nahshon commanders to “occupy [sites], if possible, near villages and not to conquer them.”51 But the follow-up order, of 8 April, to recapture al-Qastal, specifically ordered the destruction of its houses. This was indicative of the radical change of thinking in the HGS. In line with Plan D, Arab villages were henceforward to be leveled to prevent their reinvestment by Arab forces; the implication was that their inhabitants were to be expelled and prevented from returning"
Deir Yassin: A tool for propaganda
"When the battle for al-Qastal erupted, the Jerusalem Haganah command asked the IZL for assistance. The IZL chiefs declined, saying they wanted to launch an independent operation. In the end, they proposed to conquer Deir Yassin, and David Shaltiel, the Jerusalem Haganah OC, agreed. But he demanded that the IZL afterward hold the site permanently. The prospective operation loosely meshed with the Nahshon objective of securing the western approaches to Jerusalem. In planning their attack, the IZL and LHI commanders agreed to expel the inhabitants; a proposal to kill all captured villagers or all captured males was rejected. According to Yehuda Lapidot, the IZL deputy commander during the battle, the troops were specifically ordered not to kill women, children, and POWs."
"In a follow-up report, Levy said that LHI participants later charged that IZL troops had “raped a number of girls and murdered them afterwards (we [that is, the HIS] don’t know if this is true).”54 The mukhtar’s son, who had been a Haganah agent, was among those executed. The IZL and LHI troopers systematically pillaged the village and stripped the inhabitants of jewelry and money.55 Altogether, 100–120 villagers (including combatants) died that day56—though the IZL, Haganah, Arab officials, and the British almost immediately inflated the number to “254” (or “245”), each for their own propagandistic reasons. Most of the villagers either fled or were trucked through West Jerusalem and dumped at Musrara, outside the Old City walls. The atrocities were condemned by the Jewish Agency, the Haganah command, and the Yishuv’s two chief rabbis, and the agency sent King gAbdullah a letter condemning the atrocities and apologizing57 (which he rebuffed, saying that “the Jewish Agency stands at the head of all Jewish affairs in Palestine”).58
But the real significance of Deir Yassin lay, not in what had actually happened on 9 April, or in the diplomatic exchanges that followed, but in its political and demographic repercussions. In the weeks after the massacre the Arab media inside and outside Palestine continuously broadcast reports about the atrocities—usually with blood-curdling exaggerations59—in order to rally Arab public opinion and governments against the Yishuv.60 Without doubt, they were successful. The broadcasts fanned outrage and reinforced the Arab governments’ resolve to invade Palestine five weeks later. Indeed, gAbdullah was to point to the massacre at Deir Yassin as one of the reasons he was joining the invasion and why he could not honor his previous assurances of nonbelligerency vis-à-vis the Yishuv (see below).61
The most important immediate effect of the media atrocity campaign, however, was to spark fear and further panic flight from Palestine’s villages and towns. The broadcasts may, in part, have been designed to reinforce Palestinian Arab steadfastness. Yet their effect was quite the opposite: hearing of what the Jews had done tended to sap morale and precipitate panic. Indeed, the IZL immediately trotted this out in justification of the original attack: Deir Yassin had promoted “terror and dread among the Arabs in all the villages around; in al-Maliha, Qaluniya, and Beit Iksa a panic flight began that facilitates the renewal of [Jewish] road communications . . . between the capital [that is, West Jerusalem] and the rest of the country.”62 “In one blow we changed the strategic situation of our capital,” boasted the organization.63 Menachem Begin, the leader of the IZL, who denied that a massacre had taken place, was later to argue that “the legend [of Deir Yassin] was worth half a dozen battalions to the forces of Israel. Panic overwhelmed the Arabs.”64
The IZL commanders, then and later, may have had an interest in exaggerating the impact of Deir Yassin. But they weren’t far off the mark. HIS officers around the country immediately reported on the fear- and flight-sowing impact of Deir Yassin.65 Ben-Gurion himself noted—probably not unhappily—that Deir Yassin had propelled flight from Haifa.66 British intelligence commented that “the violence used [at Deir Yassin] so impressed Arabs all over the country that an attack by [the] Haganah on [the Arab village of] Saris met with no opposition whatsoever.”67 Mapam’s leaders later assessed that Deir Yassin had been one of the two pivotal events (the other was the fall of Arab Haifa) in the exodus of Palestine’s Arabs.68 The HIS-AD, in summarizing the Arab flight to the end of June 1948, pointed to Deir Yassin as a “decisive accelerating factor.”6"
"But Deir Yassin was also, in an immediate, brutal sense, to harm the Jews. On the morning of 13 April, hundreds of militiamen from Jerusalem and surrounding villages, taking revenge for Deir Yassin and the death of gAbd alQadir, descended on the road running through the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which linked Jewish Jerusalem and Mount Scopus, and ambushed a ten-vehicle Haganah convoy carrying mostly unarmed Jewish lecturers, students, nurses and doctors on their way to the mountaintop Hadassah Hospital–Hebrew University campus. Ironically, the convoy was also carrying two IZL fighters wounded at Deir Yassin. During the previous months, the Arabs had left these convoys—which were often accompanied by British armored cars—alone. But on 13 April there was no British escort. Perhaps, as they later claimed, the British were shorthanded; perhaps they regarded revenge for Deir Yassin as fitting. It was a classic ambush: at 9:30 AM a large mine blew a hole in the road, halting the convoy. The attackers then let loose with light weapons and grenades. The six smaller, lighter vehicles managed to turn around and flee back to West Jerusalem. But the two armor-plated buses, packed with medical staff and students, and the two escort vehicles, were caught, able neither to advance nor to turn back. For hours the Haganah guards kept the attackers at bay while Haganah HQ pleaded with the British to intervene.
The government reacted lackadaisically if not with utter cynicism. As a Jewish Agency official put it, “British soldiers witnessed at close quarters university professors, doctors and nurses being shot down or roasted alive in the burning vehicles without doing anything.”70 Ben-Gurion was to define the event as “an English massacre. They were there, didn’t lift a finger and prevented others from helping.”71 At around noon, a British officer, Major Jack Churchill, possibly on his own initiative, drove up but was unable to cajole any of the passengers to leave the buses and run for it to his armored car and an accompanying pickup; they preferred to await Haganah rescue. But the Haganah was warned off by the authorities and, in any case, lacked an effective relief force. Three Palmah armored cars that reached the area were hit and driven back by the ambushers. Distant Haganah outposts intermittently let loose with machine guns and mortars but to little effect."
THE BATTLES OF MISHMAR HAGEMEK AND RAMAT YOHANAN
"He demanded the kibbutz’s surrender and a handover of arms. When the Haganah brushed this aside, he proposed to withdraw—provided the Jews promised to desist from attacking the neighboring villages, which had served as his bases. The kibbutz responded with bravado: al-Qawuqji should compensate the kibbutz for the damage he had inflicted and must wheel his artillery pieces into the kibbutz and destroy them.93 More realistically, the local leaders said that they would have to consult Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, they “agreed to nothing,” as a Golani Brigade transmission put it.94
On 8 April, the ALA announced that Mishmar Hagemek had been conquered and that “the Arab flag” was now flying above its water tower.95 This was pure fantasy. Indeed, that day (or the next) a delegation of the settlement’s members, probably including Yagakov Hazan, Mapam’s coleader, traveled to Tel Aviv and pleaded with Ben-Gurion—according to Ben-Gurion—to order the Haganah “to expel the Arabs [in the area] and to burn the villages. . . . They said that they were not sure [the kibbutz could hold out] if the villages remained intact and [if] the Arab inhabitants were not expelled.” Ben-Gurion agreed. He recalled: “They faced a cruel reality . . . [and] saw that there was [only] one way and that was to expel the Arab villagers and burn the villages.”"
"A wide swath around Mishmar Hagemek was cleared of Arab inhabitants. Most simply fled, disheartened by al-Qawuqji’s defeat or demoralized by Jewish attack. The remainder were expelled, toward Jenin.104 A few prisoners were executed. The villages were then systematically leveled. According to the Mishmar Hagemek logbook, by 15 April “all the villages in the area as far as the eye can see [had] been evacuated.”105 The flight and expulsion of inhabitants around Mishmar Hagemek radiated panic farther afield, leading to flight from villages in the Hills of Ephraim and the Hefer Valley.106"
Haifa: Arab delegation orders evacuation
"Tens of thousands of the city’s original seventy thousand Arabs had fled during the previous months, and the Haganah had originally intended to occupy the Arab parts only when the Mandate ended. The Yishuv’s leaders were keenly aware of Haifa’s importance to the British—it was their main point of exit from Palestine—and realized that a premature offensive could result in Jewish-British clashes. In any case, once the British left, the town’s Arab neighborhoods, by then probably demoralized, would surrender or fall in short order."
"The constant mortar and machine gun fire, as well as the collapse of the militias and local government and the Haganah’s conquests, precipitated mass flight toward the British-held port area. By 1:00 PM some six thousand people had reportedly passed through the harbor and boarded boats for Acre and points north.
A Palmah scout (disguised as an Arab) who had been in the Lower City during the battle later reported: “[I saw] people with belongings running toward the harbor and their faces spoke confusion. I met an old man sitting on some steps and crying. I asked him why he was crying and he replied that he had lost his six children and his wife and did not know [where] they were. I quieted him down. . . . It was quite possible, I said, that the wife and children had been transported to Acre, but he continued to cry. I took him to the hotel . . . and gave him £P22 and he fell asleep. Meanwhile, people arrived from Halissa.”139"
"Haifa’s Arab notables were ferried to the town hall in British armored cars. The meeting convened at 4:00 PM. The Jewish leaders, who included Mayor Shabtai Levy, Jewish Agency representative Harry Beilin, and Haganah representative Mordechai Makleff, were, in Stockwell’s phrase, “conciliatory,” and agreed to further dilution of the truce terms. “The Arabs haggled over every word,” recorded Beilin.146 The final terms included surrender of all military equipment (initially to the British authorities); the assembly and deportation of all foreign Arab males and the detention by the British of “European Nazis”; and a curfew to facilitate Haganah arms searches in the Arab neighborhoods. The terms assured the Arab population a future “as equal and free citizens of Haifa.”147 Levy reinforced this by expressing a desire that the two communities continue to “live in peace and friendship.”
But the Arab delegation, headed by Sheikh gAbdul Rahman Murad, the local Muslim Brotherhood leader, and businessmen Victor Khayyat, Farid Sagad, and Anis Nasr—a mixture of Muslims and Christians—declined to sign on and requested a break, “to consult.” The Arabs were driven to Khayyat’s house, where they tried to contact the AHC and, possibly, the Arab League Military Committee; they wanted instructions. Israeli officials were later to claim that the notables made contact and that the AHC had instructed them to refuse the surrender terms and to announce a general evacuation of the city.148 But there is no credible proof that such instructions were given, and it seems unlikely.149 Indeed, a few weeks later, Victor Khayyat told an HIS officer: “There are rumors that the Mufti, the Arab Higher Committee, ordered the Arabs to leave the city. There is no truth to these rumors.”150 It appears that beyond Syrian and Lebanese efforts to persuade the British to intervene, no response was forthcoming from the AHC or Damascus to the notables’ appeal.
When the notables reassembled at the town hall at 7:15 PM, they appear to have had no guidance from outside Palestine and were left to their own devices. The Arabs—now all Christians—“stated that they were not in a position to sign the truce, as they had no control over the Arab military elements in the town and that, in all sincerity, they could not fulfill the terms of the truce, even if they were to sign. They then said as an alternative that the Arab population wished to evacuate Haifa . . . man, woman and child.”151 Without doubt, the notables were chary of agreeing to surrender terms out of fear that they would be dubbed traitors or collaborators by the AHC; perhapsthey believed that they were doing what the AHC would have wished them to do. One Jewish participant at the meeting, lawyer Yagakov Solomon, was later to recall that one of the Arab participants subsequently told him that they had been instructed or browbeaten by Sheikh Murad, who did not participate in the second part of the town hall gathering, to adopt this rejectionist position.1
Be that as it may, the Jewish and British officials were flabbergasted. Levy appealed “very passionately . . . and begged [the Arabs] to reconsider.” He said that they should not leave the city “where they had lived for hundreds of years, where their forefathers were buried, and where, for so long, they had lived in peace and brotherhood with the Jews.” The Arabs said that they “had no choice.”153 According to Carmel, who was briefed, no doubt, by Makleff, his aide de camp, Stockwell, who “went pale,” also appealed to the Arabs to reconsider: “Don’t destroy your lives needlessly.” According to Carmel, the general then turned to Makleff and asked: “What have you to say?” But the Haganah representative parried: “It’s up to them [the Arabs] to decide.”
During the following ten days, almost all of the town’s remaining Arab inhabitants departed, on British naval and civilian craft to Acre and Beirut, and by British-escorted land convoys up the coast or to Nazareth and Nablus. By early May, only about five thousand Arabs were left
As the shooting died down, the Haganah distributed a flyer cautioning its troops not to loot Arab property or vandalize mosques.156 On 25 April, Haganah troops clashed with IZL men, who had moved into the (largely Muslim) neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas and were harassing the locals and looting, and ejected them. Two days before, several Haganah officers went down to Wadi Nisnas and Abbas Street and appealed to the inhabitants to stay,157 as, on 28 April, did a flyer issued by the Haifa branch of the Histadrut: “The Haifa Workers Council advises you for your own good to stay in the city and return to regular work.”158 American diplomats and British officials and officers, at least initially, reported that the Jews were making great efforts to persuade the Arabs to stay, whether for economic reasons (the need for cheap Arab laborers) or to preserve the emergent Jewish state’s positive image.1"
Jaffa: British intervention
"Palestine’s largest Arab city, Jaffa, was assaulted and largely depopulated a few days after Arab Haifa (though it finally passed into Jewish hands only on 13–14 May). Tens of thousands of Jaffans had fled during the preceding months, and by April, the remaining inhabitants were “insecure . . . and hopeless.”162 The town suffered from a multiplicity of militia groups, with no unified command. By mid-April, most of the local leaders had left.163 But at least two-thirds of the original seventy to eighty thousand inhabitants were still in place."
"One gold jeweler . . . curs ed the leaders and said that they had abandoned the Palestinians to stand alone against the Jews. . . . It were better to have accepted the partition agreement peacefully and not to surrender to the enemy in war.”"
"But, following Haifa (and Tiberias and Deir Yassin), Whitehall was seriously alarmed about Britain’s position in the Middle East. And the army was worried about the safe completion of the withdrawal from Palestine along routes that passed through Arab-populated territory;182 increased Arab antagonism might result in attacks. These considerations resulted in forceful British intervention in Jaffa. Here the British could stop the erosion of their image and position in the Middle East. Here they could vigorously demonstrate that they were not “pro-Zionist.”
When news of the IZL attack reached London, Bevin “got very excited . . . and [instructed] the CIGS . . . to . . . see to it that the Jews did not manage to occupy Jaffa or, if they did, were immediately turned out.”183 The British rejected Arab demands to allow Arab Legion units to help the embattled town184—or, more widely, to allow Arab armies to cross into Palestine to defend its Arab inhabitants. But they immediately dispatched reinforcements—in all, more than four battalions of infantry, armor, and naval commandos, from Cyprus, Libya, Egypt, Malta, and Iraq185—to Palestine, despite the general evacuation that was under way. The troop reinforcement was geared to freeing units already in Palestine to deploy in Jaffa (and, more generally, to facilitate the evacuation, which required covering infantry, air, and armored units).186 Such was Bevin’s fear of a reenactment of Haifa that he bypassed normal channels (the defense minister and the high commissioner) in prodding the army to act"
Treatment of POWs
"The killing of the prisoners was not unusual. Until April, neither side generally took prisoners, partly because they had no adequate facilities to hold them. The British, the country’s nominal rulers, would not have countenanced Haganah or Arab militia POW camps, certainly not in areas under their control. In practice neither side, after capturing enemy positions, houses, or traffic, kept prisoners. Captured combatants were usually shot out of hand or, less frequently, after a brief incarceration and interrogation, freed.198 During the first stage of the civil war, Jews probably killed more POWs than vice versa simply because Jews overran more Arab positions.
April and May were characterized by confusion and inconsistency. From the start of April onward, the Haganah captured villages and Arab urban neighborhoods and towns; and Arab combatants fell into Jewish hands in growing numbers, especially in Haifa. HGS ordered the brigades to set up temporary detention centers, and a number were established. But some units continued to shoot POWs or to release them for lack of holding facilities. Noncombatants almost invariably were freed.
In effect, prisoners were incarcerated in orderly fashion only from 26 May, when the Haganah set up a central POW camp in the abandoned village of Jalil al-Qibliya (Gelilot), just north of Tel Aviv. By 12 June, the camp held more than four hundred prisoners. From the Arab side, Jews captured before 15 May were often executed, though the large batch of POWs taken in the gEtzion Bloc by the Arab Legion (see below) were transferred to a camp in Jordan. After 15 May, POWs usually ended up in detention camps in Arab states, though a few were murdered before they reached them."
Jaffa falls: Empty
"1 Electricity, water, and fuel were in short supply, and the recently arrived ALA and irregulars, mostly Iraqis, subjected the dwindling number of locals to robbery and rape, and systematically plundered the abandoned houses, shops, and warehouses—a task that “was completed by British troops. All is permitted as there is no government.”202 One Arab commentator later wrote that, as daily convoys of refugees were departing for Gaza, the ALA troops “acted as if the town was theirs, and began to rob people and loot their houses. People’s lives became worthless and women’s honor was defiled.”203 Mayor Heikal fled on 4 May or just before, as did most of the other remaining notables."
"Jaffa’s agony ended on 14 May, when Haganah troops, accompanied by token IZL units, drove into the almost empty town; only about four thousand inhabitants remained. Ben-Gurion visited four days later and commented: “I couldn’t understand: Why did the inhabitants . . . leave?”205 The Haganah’s peaceful entry followed two days of negotiations between Kiryati Brigade OC Michael Ben-Gal and a handful of Jaffa notables. The Haganah promised that there would be “no military trials and acts of vengeance” and that peace-minded inhabitants who had fled would be allowed to return.206 In the formal agreement signed on 13 May, the Jaffa notables promised to hand over arms and keep the peace and the Haganah, to abide by the Geneva conventions and allow the return of women, children, and, after a security screening, males."
"Observers understood the grim logic behind the Haganah operations: the Jews, complained Arab League secretary-general 'Azzam, were “driving out the inhabitants [from areas] on or near roads by which Arab regular forces could enter the country. . . . The Arab armies would have the greatest difficulty in even entering Palestine after May 15th.”274 He was right."
"The inhabitants fled the village as the Haganah troops entered; on the road out to Qalqilya the ALA extorted five Palestine pounds from each fleeing refugee.2"
Tantura
"Somewhat belatedly, on the night of 22–23 May the Thirty-third Battalion also conquered the large fishing village of Tantura, which lay northwest of Zikhron Yagakov along the Tel Aviv–Haifa coast road. The village had spurned Haganah demands to surrender. During the nightlong battle, the villagers put up stiff resistance, killing thirteen Alexandroni troops and a sailor before giving up. More than seventy villagers died. In the 1990s Arab journalists charged that the Israeli troops had carried out a large-scale massacre of disarmed militiamen and villagers in the hours after Tantura fell, a charge expanded in a master’s thesis by an Israeli student, who, on the basis of Arab oral testimony (and the distortion of testimony by Alexandroni veterans), argued that up to 250 villagers had been systematically murdered.280 Although some Alexandroni veterans hinted at dark deeds, most flatly denied the massacre charge. Documentary evidence indicates that the Alexandroni troops murdered a handful of POWs—and expelled the inhabitants—but provides no grounds for believing that a large-scale massacre occurred.281"
Acre
"Some officers suggested that Acre’s inhabitants be expelled.295 But this was never acted on. Four soldiers of Carmeli’s Twenty-second Battalion raped an Arab girl and murdered her father (they were later sentenced to three years in jail).296 Otherwise, the Israeli military government rapidly reorganized the town’s services and a substantial population stayed put, becoming Israeli citizens"
"Elsewhere, at a number of sites, Haganah Home Guard units readied for the prospective invasion by disarming or clearing out neighboring villagers. They feared that the villages would help the invaders and serve as bases for attack. Thus, on 13–14 May gEin-Gev, an isolated kibbutz on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, demanded that neighboring Arab Argibat (Nuqeib), whom the Jews had earlier persuaded to stay put, accept Jewish rule and hand over their weapons. But the villagers opted for evacuation, probably fearing Arab charges of treachery if they stayed. The kibbutzniks demolished their houses.301 A fortnight later, the kibbutz evicted the Persian Zickrallah family, who owned a large farm just south of the kibbutz, along with their thirty Arab hands. “In war, there is no room for sentiment,” explains the gEinGev logbook. The Zickrallahs were later resettled in Acre.302"
Kfar Etzion Massacre
"The bulk of the defenders, more than a hundred men and women, assembled in an open area at the center of Kfar 'Etzion. Arab soldiers “ordered [us] to sit and then stand and raise our hands. One of the Arabs pointed a tommy gun at us and another wanted to throw a grenade. But others restrained them. Then a photographer with a kaffiya arrived and took photographs of us. . . . An armored car arrived. . . . When the photographer stopped taking pictures fire was opened up on us from all directions. Those not hit in the initial fusillade . . . ran in various directions. Some fled to the [central] bunker. Others took hold of weapons. A mass of Arabs poured into the settlements from all sides and attacked the men in the center of the settlement and in the outposts shouting wildly ‘Deir Yassin.’”318 Almost all the men and women were murdered. All witnesses agree that the militiamen who poured into the settlement looted and vandalized the buildings, “leaving not one stone upon another.”319 (Afterward, they did the same in the three other settlements: they apparently were driven by a desire for revenge and “a desire to prevent the Jews’ return to the bloc.”)320 Not all the Legionnaires participated in the massacre. Indeed, the Legion subsequently variously denied that there had been a massacre or ascribed the slaughter to the local militiamen.321 One officer saved and protected “Aliza R.,” a Haganah radiowoman who had jumped into a trench during the initial fusillade. Two Legionnnaires who heard her scream pulled her out and took her aside and (apparently) tried to rape her. A Legion officer shot the two with his tommy gun and led her to an armored car and safety.322 In all, only a handful of the defenders survived: three were saved by Legion officers; another managed to reach Massugot Yitzhak, still in Jewish hands. The rest, 106 men and twenty-seven women, died in the battles that day or were murdered in the slaughter that followed. Another twenty-four defenders had been killed on the first day.323 In the two-day battle, the Legionnaires apparently suffered twenty-seven dead and the local militiamen, forty-two dead"
"On the morning of 14 May, as the leaders in Tel Aviv were putting lastminute touches to the new state’s Declaration of Independence, a Red Cross convoy reached the bloc. The Legion had pulled back a few hundred yards. But thousands of militiamen surrounded the three settlements. Firefights broke out; a number of disarmed Jews were murdered. Another massacre loomed. But the Red Cross representatives, aided by Arab policemen from Jerusalem, negotiated the entry of small Legion units into the settlements to effect an orderly submission. Revadim, then gEin Tsurim, then Massugot Yitzhak surrendered. At each site the arms were handed over to the Legion, and the defenders were loaded onto trucks. Firefights broke out between the Legionnaires, bent on protecting the Jews, and the militiamen, who wanted to kill and loot. In the end, the Legionnaires loaded 357 POWs onto trucks and ferried them to Transjordan, where they remained until war’s end. The Legion violated the surrender agreement by not releasing the females and the wounded, who were to have been transported to Jewish Jerusalem. But Chaim Herzog, the senior Haganah liaison officer with the British, reported that “the behavior of the Arab Legion vis-à-vis the prisoners from the gEtzion Bloc was exemplary [hayta lemofet]. They displayed great civility and obstructed the Arab mob’s attempts to harm them.”325"
Trusteeship and truce
"As the struggle for dominion between the Haganah and the Palestine Arab militias was winding down, the political and diplomatic struggle over the emergence of the Jewish state was reaching a crescendo. Following Warren Austin’s Security Council declaration calling for a “temporary trusteeship” for Palestine, the Americans engineered a UN Security Council resolution on 1 April 1948 calling for (1) a truce in Palestine and (2) the convocation of a “special session” of the General Assembly to discuss “the future government of Palestine.”
Both the Arab states, egged on by Palestine’s Arabs—who were “vehemently opposed to even a temporary solution on these lines”326—and the Zionists rejected trusteeship. To be sure, many Arabs regarded the American proposal as “a considerable victory.”327 But this did not translate into support of the idea. The Arabs sought immediate independence and sovereignty over all of Palestine, not a prolongation of international rule, as embodied in an open-ended trusteeship; the Zionists were focused on declaring state hood on the termination of the Mandate, in line with the November 1947 partition resolution. They submitted a series of detailed rebuttals of trusteeship and mobilized for diplomatic battle. One overeager Jewish Agency official in New York, Dorothy Adelson, proposed to Shertok that a number of “brown, black or even coffee-colored Jews (the hue of an Egyptian could do)” be added to the Zionist delegation to the General Assembly, where the “non-white group” had nineteen votes, some of which could be mobilized to vote against trusteeship. This would “provide a visible answer to the canard that we are ‘white aggressors,’ that we are the servants of white imperialism, or that we are currying favor with the western world by hiding our dark-skinned oriental component.”328 It is unlikely that Shertok acted on the advice."
Declaration of independence
"From the last week of April, the State Department focused on obtaining a deferment of a Jewish declaration of statehood, arguing that the declaration would precipitate an invasion. The consensus in the US government departments was that the Arab states would attack the Jewish state and persist in a guerrilla war for as long as it took: “It is extremely unlikely . . . that the Arabs will ever accept a Zionist state on their doorsteps.” Without “diplomatic and military support” from at least one Great Power, the Jewish state would go under within “two years,” they believed. Their advice against American intervention in support of a Jewish state was unequivocal.3"
"“The Thirteen,” as the People’s Administration was called—and only ten were present that day (two were stuck in besieged Jerusalem and one was in New York)—then turned to the questions of the truce and the declaration of statehood. Most spoke out against both the general truce proposals and a limited truce in Jerusalem alone. The matter was decided by a vote of six to four.346 As to declaring statehood, Ben-Gurion was adamant about not defining the new state’s borders, arguing that if “our strength proves sufficient,” the Yishuv will conquer Western Galilee and the length of the Tel Aviv—Jerusalem road—and, it was implied, coopt West Jerusalem—“and all this will be part of the state. . . . So why commit [ourselves to a smaller state?]”347 By a vote of five to four it was decided not to define the borders; the name, “Israel,” was decided by seven votes to zero. The text of the declaration was approved unanimously. No vote was apparently taken on a postponement; it was clear that Ben-Gurion, backed by Shertok, enjoyed majority support"