CHAPTER SEVEN
The United Nations vote in favour of the partition of Palestine confirmed Arab fears, and seemed to presage the establishment of an alien and hostile Zionist state in their midst. As the West prepared to stand against Russian advances in Europe, the Arabs began to fight. Britain had decided to withdraw from Palestine: Zionist terrorism had eroded British morale and the government felt that the public would not allow the troops to stay. Bevin blamed Truman and the President’s concern for his domestic position. But at a time when oil was needed for Marshall Aid for Europe, election politics in the United States had to be balanced against other factors. And, for the first few months of 1948, it was the United States that had the power to determine what happened in Palestine. The Zionists made their position clear: on 23 March 1948 the Jewish Agency warned that the Jewish people in Palestine and the rest of the world would oppose any initiative designed to prevent or postpone the Jewish state.1
Influences on United States policy
In the United States the Zionists mounted mass public rallies, lobbied Truman, Marshall and congressmen and ran advertisements in the press.2 They were in a strong position: New York with its forty-seven electoral votes was seen as the key state in the forthcoming presidential election. There, in February, Henry Wallace, whom Truman had dismissed for anti-containment speeches, supported a candidate in a district where the Jewish votes counted for 55 per cent. They ran their campaign on a militantly pro-Zionist platform and won a resounding victory. Beeley commented to G. Lewis Jones of the American embassy in London that there was no need for Russia to change its attitude to Palestine: Russia’s policy had successfully embroiled the United States with the Arabs and ‘helped to win the Bronx for Wallace’.3 Truman’s electoral adviser was the young and elegant Clark McAdams Clifford. Initially, Clifford did not advocate the wooing of the Jewish vote through an appropriate Palestine policy. But, after the defeat in New York, Clifford changed the strategy.4
George Kennan and the policy planning staff warned that pressures for the United States to shoulder a major responsibility for the maintenance, and even the expansion, of a Jewish state in Palestine operated against major security interests in that area: it could mean the presence of communist troops and that the United States had been guided ‘not by national interest but by other considerations’. The joint chiefs of staff argued that partition would lead to Arab hatred, the loss of oil, Russian penetration in the area in the guise of enforcing the United Nations plan, and a call for American troops for Palestine.5 In the view of the State Department and the policy planning staff the presence of Russian forces in Palestine enforcing partition would constitute an outflanking of the American position in Greece, Turkey and Iran, and be a potential threat to the stability of the entire eastern Mediterranean. The United States should investigate the possibility of a federal state or trusteeship for Palestine.6 On 16 January 1948 the Secretary of Defense, James S. Forrestal, told the Cabinet that without access to Middle Eastern oil the Marshall Plan could not succeed, the United States could not fight a war or even maintain the peace-time tempo of its economy. He drew up a paper in which he argued that it would be ‘stupid’ to endanger permanently relations with the Muslim world or ‘stumble into war’ on the Palestine issue.7 Then, on 29 January, Kennan warned that British relations with the Arabs and the remaining British strategic positions in the Middle East were among the few ‘real assets’ the United States still had in the area.8
Washington began to move away from partition. On 19 February Truman told Marshall to pursue the right course and to ‘disregard all political factors’.9 Warren Austin, the American representative at the United Nations, said on 24 February that the Security Council’s action was ‘directed to keeping the peace and not to enforcing partition’.10 Senior Democratic leaders told Truman that only positive action by the administration for partition could keep New York state in the Democratic camp in the forthcoming November elections.11 On 28 February the Central Intelligence Agency reported that partiton could not be implemented and that its failure was already evident.12 American policy moved towards supporting trusteeship. Truman endorsed this change, but was not specifically informed when Austin was to announce it. The President was preoccupied with the Russian coup in Czechoslovakia.13 Clifford, at this time, advocated partition and a policy that coincided closely with the demands of the Jewish Agency.14 On 18 March, at Zionist instigation and through the intervention of the President’s old business associate, Edward Jacobson, Truman finally saw Weizmann. Weizmann impressed on the President the need for the future Jewish state of the Negev area.15 The next day Austin urged the Security Council to suspend its efforts to implement partition, and to establish instead a United Nations temporary trusteeship without prejudice as to the character of the eventual settlement.16
Britain, however, would not shift. The Cabinet, on 22 March, rejected American suggestions that order should be maintained in Palestine by joint forces from Britain, France and the United States. Instead it instructed the chiefs of staff to investigate accelerating the British withdrawal.17 Two days later Bevin instructed Sir Alexander Cadogan to maintain Britain’s line of abstention in the United Nations.18 That same day the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs offered an alarming assessment to Marshall: support for temporary trusteeship could lead to American troops in Palestine, and the shedding of American blood. Without full Anglo-American co-operation no Palestine policy could be successful. That would be difficult unless Britain were assured that the administration refused to be influenced by Zionist pressure; informal undertakings would be needed that Zionism and Palestine would not be an issue in the forthcoming presidential elections. There would also need to be a campaign to free many American Jews from the domination of Zionist extremists.19 But London told Marshall that there was overwhelming popular demand in Britain to get the boys back home from Palestine: the long experience of being shot at by both sides and being vilified by Zionists and by some countries had ‘so calloused that British conscience that it is insensate on this particular subject’.20 Then, under pressure from Niles and other Zionists, Truman, on 25 March, told a press conference that he remained in favour of partition at some future date. Beeley minuted that the President had ‘destroyed the possibility of Arab co-operation in discussions on the basis of trusteeship’.21
American overtures for British co-operation on the implementation of trusteeship were turned away. Bevin told Lewis Douglas, the American ambassador, on 15 April that any British statesman suggesting further British responsibility for Palestine would not survive a moment.22 Threats that this British attitude could have repercussions on Anglo-American co-operation throughout the world left Bevin unmoved. The Foreign Secretary told Douglas that troops might not be necessary if a firm decision were reached for the creation of a unitary state in Palestine. The problem would then be the breaking up of illegal organizations like the Stern gang and the Irgun, a possible task for organizations such as the American Federal Bureau of Investigation. Bevin felt that the fundamental difficulty over Palestine was that the Jews refused to admit that the Arabs were their equals: if the Jews could be brought to see that the principle of one man one vote applied in Palestine to Arabs and Jews alike as much as everywhere else the difficulties would be solved. Bevin wondered, as the Jews would be reluctant to fight Americans, whether the United States could not send troops into Palestine.23
Austin, speaking in the United Nations on 20 April, called for a truce in Palestine and the establishment of a trusteeship.24 The British military authorities in the Haifa area started withdrawing their forces on 21 April. The Zionists and the Arabs clashed. The Zionists won, and the Arabs started fleeing. Arab states complained that this British withdrawal was contrary to the understanding under which they agreed to refrain from intervention in Palestine until 15 May. They accused Britain of giving the Zionists an advantage.25 Nahum Goldman of the Jewish Agency was elated by the Zionist successes: the Haganah units had expert training. He did not see why the Zionists should accept an unfavourable truce when they were winning. The Zionists had 30,000 trained men in Palestine and that was likely to increase soon to 40,000. Shortly after 15 May there would be an additional 20,000 from outside Palestine. They faced only about 18,000 Arab troops.26 On 21 April Bevin told Douglas that Britain would not like any part in arranging or supervising a truce. In any case Douglas did not expect a truce: the Zionists with trained men and munitions were in a position to win with their goal in sight. Bevin thought that the Zionists might win initially, but that the fighting would be wider than anticipated. Britain had close bonds not only with the Arabs but with the Muslims generally. The whole Muslim world might be inflamed. This could go on for two or three years, but the real bloodshed might not come for some time. 27
Britain remained unco-operative. Dean Rusk threatened that this could lead to Russia using Palestine as a point of entry into the Middle East, and the United States would then have to reconsider the value of its commitments to Greece, Turkey and Iran. 28 Douglas saw Attlee and Bevin in the House of Commons on 28 April. The ambassador was worried about the threatened invasion of Palestine by Abdullah’s troops. Bevin retorted that Abdullah had little option. Transjordan’s entry to the United Nations had been blocked by Russia so the charter could hardly apply to him. Were the Jews to be allowed to be the aggressors on Abdullah’s co-religionists and fellow Arabs in the state of Palestine while he had to stand by idly doing nothing? The Foreign Secretary had the impression that American policy was to allow no Arab country to help their fellow Arabs anywhere, while the United States assisted the Zionists to crush the Arabs within Palestine and to allow the slaughter to continue, and then to ask the British government to restrain Abdullah. The Jews appeared to be aggressive and arrogant, and to disregard United Nations’ appeals. Bevin and Attlee insisted that any ‘little acts’ the Arabs had committed had been exaggerated: ‘After all, Palestine was an Arab country.’
The Prime Minister asked whether it was aggression for the Arabs to come into Palestine from their own countries, and non-aggression for Jews to come in by sea to the tune of thousands? He rejected Douglas’s protest that the Jews were unarmed: that was Hitler’s method. Hitler put people in as tourists, but they were soon armed once they got in. 29
On 28 April Truman, influenced by Niles and political considerations, appointed Hilldring as special assistant to the Secretary of State for Palestine affairs. A few days previously Hilldring had supported partition at a Zionist rally and told reporters that no man could say that the Jews should not be allowed to defend themselves or helped to defend themselves. The pro-Zionist press welcomed the appointment. Forrestal was disturbed. Henderson learnt of it from a wireless broadcast. In the end Hilldring never assumed these duties. 30 Truman, worried about the Russian factor, told Rusk: ‘Go and get a truce. There is no other answer to this situation.’ 31 The American delegation to the United Nations attempted this, but the prospects of a truce in Palestine receded. On 4 May Washington proposed a ten-day cease-fire and the extension of the mandate for ten days. Bevin refused: only a deadline would force the Zionists and the Arabs to negotiate. In any case the British Parliament had already passed the Palestine Act. 32 B. A. B. Burrows of the Foreign Office did, however, show Douglas the British intelligence reports: these suggested that many Arabs favoured a truce; the difficulty was ‘Jewish arrogance’. The Zionists’ ‘campaign of calculated aggression, coupled with brutality’ was ‘being carried through with thoroughness, and competence and with [a] close eye on British troop depositions’. The Zionists were reorganizing their administration, and reshaping their tactics to be ready for a possible war against Arab regular forces which they thought they would win. By 6 May the Foreign Office had reports of an estimated 50,000 Arab refugees who had fled from Palestine. It was felt that the Arabs would find it difficult to accept truce proposals while the Zionists were forcing them from their homes.33 Douglas had difficulty in getting permission to pass on to the Foreign Office information Washington had about Irgun plans to bomb British ships after 15 May. 34 Britain, however, did take an initiative in the United Nations, and the American and British delegations worked on a compromise proposal. This, however, was described as an ‘eleventh hour effort but too little and too late’. 35
Truman was visited by the owner of the New York Times, Arthur Hayes Sulzberger, on 8 May. The President said that he was bitter about the New York Jews and the British. Sulzberger asked Truman to ‘make that New York Zionists’ (making the distinction between ‘Zionists’ and ‘Jews’). Both Truman and Lovett were worried about the development of anti-Semitism in the United States as a result of Zionist activities. Sulzberger felt the President did not do much to offset that when he confused Jews with Zionists. 36 It was Truman’s birthday, and that evening Marshall proposed the toast: ‘I cannot recall that there has been a President in our history who has more clearly demonstrated courageous decision, and complete integrity in his decisions.’37
On 7 May Max Lowenthal, a White House consultant with Jewish Agency connections, and a close associate of Niles and Clifford, sent Clifford an eyes-only memorandum calling for the recognition of the Jewish state before 15 May. Such a move ‘would free the Administration of a serious and unfair disadvantage’ in the forthcoming November elections. The message was repeated five times over the next four days, sometimes through Clifford’s assistant, George M. Elsey. 38 At a meeting on 12 May with Truman, Marshall, Lovett, Niles and others, Clifford, using a memorandum prepared by Elsey and Lowenthal, urged Truman to give prompt recognition to the Zionist state after the termination of the mandate. This should be done to pre-empt Russia. Truman should make a statement of this intention the following day at a press conference. Marshall reacted: ‘This is just straight politics. “You wouldn’t get my OK.”’ Lovett objected that this was a transparent attempt to win the Jewish vote. The United States did not know what sort of state would be established, and there was no urgency. The Secretary of State argued that such a transparent ‘dodge to win a few votes would seriously diminish the office of the president’. If the President followed this policy Marshall would vote against him in the forthcoming elections. Truman replied that he knew the dangers and the political risks he would have to run. 39
Members of the British, American and Canadian delegations to the United Nations met in the Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York and drew up a new plan for a truce, recommended to Washington by the American delegation. It was hoped this would be approved and formally introduced on the afternoon of 13 May. London authorized it that morning, but there was a delay on the American side. On 14 May the first committee adjourned to allow the General Assembly to meet at Flushing Meadows at 4.30 p.m. 40 Marshall prepared a statement on Palestine: the American representatives were using all their influence to secure a truce; a catastrophe could be avoided and there might be time to develop an acceptable solution. 41 Weizmann wrote to Truman on 13 May hoping that the United States ‘which under your leadership has done so much to find a just solution, will promptly recognize the Provisional Government of the new Jewish State’. 42
According to Clifford, Truman was convinced by the case of Marshall and Lovett, and agreed to postpone recognition. American sponsorship, the President thought, would increase American responsibility. It would also be a breach of propriety towards the United Nations. But then Truman thought there might be no government or authority of any kind in Palestine, and the title would be lying about for anyone to seize. The President began to think about recognizing the new state, but said he would have to wait for a request for recognition and for some definition of the boundaries. In the end, Truman refused to delay even for a day. In the repeated words of Clifford, the timing of the recognition was ‘of the greatest possible importance to the President from a domestic point of view’. There was no time for consultation with other governments, or even a chance to inform them. 43
Clifford worked with Epstein of the Jewish Agency on the afternoon of 14 May to ensure that the requisite request for recognition of the Jewish state was in front of Truman in good time. 44 Lovett sent the President a State Department memorandum reiterating the argument that had been accepted on 12 May. It appears that Clifford did not pass this on. 45 Throughout the afternoon Lovett argued against the recognition of Israel: the United States could ‘lose the effects of many years of hard work in the Middle East with the Arabs’. But Clifford could not even accept that there should be a delay so that the United States’ allies could be informed. Clifford was then in session with Truman until about 5.30 p.m. and could not be reached. Lovett finally contacted Clifford and pleaded for a delay, at least until the end of the General Assembly session around 10.00 p.m. A few minutes later Lovett was informed that the United States would recognize Israel immediately. 46
Around 5.45 p.m. Clifford told Dean Rusk that the state of Israel would be declared at 6 p.m. The United States would recognize it immediately. Rusk objected: this cut across what the American delegation at the United Nations had been trying to accomplish under instructions. At Flushing Meadows, Warren R. Austin, the head of the American delegation, left the floor and took the telephone call from Rusk. Austin decided he could not inform the other members of the delegation and departed by car. 47 As the news came over the ticker tape there was pandemonium in the General Assembly. Marshall told Rusk to go to New York to stop the American delegation from resigning en masse. But tempers cooled.48 Rusk complained that the recognition of Israel appeared to the General Assembly as a ‘case of conscious duplicity’. The Americans had just pushed through the Security Council the truce commission proposal which provided for no recognition. There was a major effort to push through the General Assembly on 14 May the final truce and mediation proposal, ‘everyone justifiably assuming that we had no intention of recognizing one party’. 49 Eleanor Roosevelt complained to Marshall about the procedure: it was unlikely that the United States could give a credible lead in the United Nations again. The Secretary of State replied that he was not ‘free’ to say much about it.50 Truman explained to Mrs Roosevelt that since there was a vacuum in Palestine, and as the Russians were anxious to be the first to do the recognizing, together with Marshall, Lovett and Rusk, he had decided to recognize the Jewish government promptly. 51 Truman lied. The overwhelming evidence is that Marshall, Lovett and Rusk all opposed American recognition of Israel to the last: they saw the move as one made entirely for domestic political gains and a concern for the Zionist vote.
On 21 May the policy planning staff advised that American policy threatened ‘not only to place in jeopardy some of our most vital national interests in the Middle East and the Mediterranean but also to disrupt the Unity of the western world and to undermine our entire policy towards the Soviet Union’.52 From London Douglas warned of the widening crevasse between Britain and the United States: the Palestine issue could jeopardize the foundation-stone of American policy in Europe – ‘partnership with a friendly and well-disposed Britain’.53
The British mandate over Palestine had ended on 14 May 1948. In the morning the Union flag was lowered at Government House, Jerusalem, to a tattoo of drums and a Highland lament on the bagpipes. Shortly after 11.30 that evening the seventh British High Commissioner, Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham, took the last salute on board HMS Euryalus. As the ship left Haifa Bay a band played ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and ‘God Save the King’. At midnight HMS Euryalus left Palestinian waters. It marked the close of an episode in imperial history. Britain was no longer the paramount power over the Zionists.54
At 4 p.m. on the same day, in a museum in Tel Aviv, David Ben-Gurion, under a portrait of Theodor Herzl, proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine to be called Israel. He signed the black scroll on which the dedication was to be inscribed. No place was reserved for Weizmann’s signature, a slight the gradualist never forgot. Concealed above, the Jewish Philharmonic Orchestra played the ‘Hatiqva’, the national anthem. Ben-Gurion noted in his diary that the fate of the new state rested in the hands of the defence forces. On 15 May various Arab armies entered Palestine: the Arab Legion went into the area allocated to the Arabs in Judea and Samaria; the Egyptian army moved through Gaza and Beersheba; the Lebanese went into Arab Galilee; the Iraqis eventually went alongside the Arab Legion; the Syrians were held near the border.55
The First Arab-Israeli War
In effect the First Arab–Israeli War was already being fought. It had started in November 1947 with the proclamation of a jihad or holy war by the Mufti of Jerusalem on the announcement of the United Nations partition plan. The Arabs refused to accept the partition of Palestine as they felt such a move went against 1,800 years of Palestine’s history. Furthermore, the partition gave most of the territory of the ancient Jewish states to the Arabs, and to the Jews most of the territory that had been non-Jewish. In 1947 the Jews owned less than 10 per cent of the land and were less than one-third of the population. Partition awarded them 55 per cent of the land area of Palestine.56 The Zionists, however, regretted that the partition plan did not give them control of Jerusalem.
The Zionists had been preparing to fight for some time. In 1941 the Palmach (striking companies) were established under the Haganah, and in 1944 a naval company and air platoon were set up within the Palmach. During the Second World War 20,000 members of the Yishuv served with the Allied forces and were available afterwards in Palestine. By April 1948 the Zionists had about 30,000 men under arms, 10,000 others for local defence, with another 25,000 in a home guard. They were short, however, of heavy weapons, armour and aircraft. There were also 2,000 experienced terrorists in the Irgun by November 1945, and 800 in the Stern gang. The combined Arab forces committed to the fight amounted to around 40,000 men, but only the 10,000 in the Arab Legion had training to an equivalent level of the Zionist forces. Though deprived by the arms embargo of easy access to weapons, the Zionists organized an efficient clandestine trade. The day after the partition vote, Ben-Gurion sent Ehud Avriel to Europe to establish the organization for the purchase and shipping of the secret purchases of arms. Many of these came through communist sources in Czechoslovakia, and were paid for by tax-free contributions from American citizens at the height of the Cold War. Freddy Fredkens, a former pilot in the Royal Air Force, assisted in organizing an airlift of arms to Palestine. Haim Slavine did similar work in the United States, and from 1945, with the assistance of American Zionist leaders who were later dubbed as the ‘Sonneborn Institute’, collected and shipped an armament industry to Palestine, which was waiting for reassembly in kibbutzim throughout the new state of Israel.
Fighting broke out between Arabs and Jews throughout Palestine early in December 1947. The British forces tried not to get involved. The Zionists complained that the occupation army did little to restore order. But there was little sympathy: over the previous two years 127 British soldiers had been killed and 331 wounded by Zionist terrorists and guerrillas. British troops, however, did try to maintain order, but it became increasingly difficult as both Arabs and Zionists resorted to terrorist atrocities against each other. When, however, an irregular Arab force from Syria attacked a Jewish village on 10 January 1948, British forces assisted the settlers to repel the invasion. By the end of March Arab terrorists assisted by some British deserters, Yugoslavs, Germans and Poles had seriously hampered communications throughout Palestine. Each side had suffered at least 1,200 casualties. As hostilities increased in April, British forces at times arranged cease-fires to allow Zionist settlers to evacuate their children and wounded, at times helped Arab populations to leave some cities. On the whole the British commanders were even-handed and most interested in securing an orderly withdrawal of their troops. The Haganah utilized the information of one such withdrawal effectively to take control of Haifa, and under a British-arranged truce most of the Arab population of 100,000 left their homes. The Irgun, under Haganah’s command, attacked the Arab city of Jaffa at the end of April. British forces intervened against the Zionists in an effort to maintain the status quo, but when Jaffa officially surrendered on 13 May only around 3,000 of the Arab population of 70,000 remained.
On 9 April contingents of the Irgun and the Stern gang, under Haganah command, encountered strong Arab resistance in the village of Deir Yassin, and slaughtered 245 men, women and children, most of the inhabitants of the town and seemingly all the terrorists they could find. The massacre of Deir Yassin was thought by the Arabs to have been perpetrated with the approval of Ben-Gurion and the Haganah leadership to terrorize the Arab population into fleeing from their land. Begin later spoke of the ‘heroic’ acts of his men at Deir Yassin, and attributed the Arab flight from the new state of Israel to this incident. The Arabs retaliated on 13 April, and besieged a convoy of mainly Jewish doctors and nurses on the road to Mount Scopus: seventy-seven were killed. The convoy expected to be relieved by British troops, but these never appeared. As the British troops evacuated Jerusalem on 14 May the Israelis and Arabs seized appropriate positions in the city and prepared for battle.57 The Israelis had already secured a major strategic advantage: the face of the Samarian and Judean mountains facing west. 58
On the whole the Israelis fought the war with a united front. When, during the first cease-fire, the Irgun apparently defied the authority of the Israeli government and tried to bring in arms openly from the ship, Altalena, the official forces, initially led by Moshe Dayan, took action, and after a short engagement on 21 June, the Irgun withdrew. On 28 June the entire Israeli army took the oath of allegiance.59 Generally, the provisional government controlled the activities of the Irgun and the Stern gang. The Arabs, however, were torn apart by old rivalries. King Farouk of Egypt probably would have preferred not to be involved. But his opponents at home, the Muslim Brotherhood, were fighting, and if he did not join battle they could consolidate their appeal to the Egyptian population. Farouk was also conscious that his old adversaries, the Hashemite kings of Transjordan and Iraq, could strengthen their position in the Arab world if they intervened and he did not. The leaders of Syria also had designs on at least the Arab areas of Palestine and wanted to keep them away from King Abdullah of Transjordan. Syria tended to side with Egypt. Abdullah did not like the idea of an Arab Palestine under the Mufti. Abdullah wanted the Arab area for Transjordan. He indicated this to Golda Meir (then Myerson) at a meeting in November 1947. During the negotiations for a new treaty with Britain in the spring of 1948 the Prime Minister of Transjordan, Tewfiq Pasha, told Bevin that after the end of the mandate the Arab Legion would cross the Jordan River with the limited objective of occupying the portion awarded to the Arabs by the partition resolution. Not only were the Arab armies without a unified command, but they faced serious logistic difficulties. On 14 May 1948 Abdullah claimed the title of commander-in-chief but it had no meaning. 60
Even before the end of the mandate the morale of the Palestinian Arabs was seriously weakened by the death of its leaders, including Abd el Kader el Husseini. Their organization in the vicinity of Jerusalem disintegrated, and individual Arab fighters returned to their villages. In the early stages of the war the main battle was for Jerusalem. Principally it was a war between the Arab Legion under Glubb and an Israeli command under Yigal Allon, who, together with an American West Point graduate, Colonel David Marcus, fought to secure Israeli access to the city.61 At Lake Success Sir Alexander Cadogan proposed the appointment of a United Nations mediator. The Security Council endorsed this, and Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden was chosen. He arranged a four-week truce starting on 11 June. During these weeks the Israeli army turned itself into an efficient modern fighting force. With an airfield provided by the Czechoslovaks, Israel was also able to prepare a shuttle of arms, bombs and fighters from Europe. These were often illegally obtained in Britain and the United States. France sold weapons in large quantities to Israel. Abdullah refused Glubb’s request to make effective use of the truce, though other Arab leaders did something, and the number of regular Arab troops in Palestine grew to nearly 45,000. Bernadotte suggested a modification of the partition plan, but this was rejected by both sides.
When the Arabs started fighting again, the Israelis implemented a series of carefully planned offensives. These were largely successful. Bernadotte suggested further peace plans, the last being one prepared on the island of Rhodes and submitted to the United Nations on 16 September: Jerusalem was to be an international city under United Nations control; the Negev would go to the Arabs together with Lydda and Ramle; in return Israel would get Galilee. Bernadotte stressed that the Arab refugees should have the right to return home. The following day Bernadotte was assassinated in Jerusalem, by members of the Stern gang acting on a decision taken by the three members of the Stern gang ‘Centre’, one of whom was Yitzhak Shamir. Ben-Gurion ordered the dissolution of the Irgun and the Stern gang. Over 200 were arrested, but eventually they were released without trial. Dr Ralph Bunche, an American, succeeded Bernadotte. London and Washington endorsed Bernadotte’s report. Ben-Gurion became alarmed, and decided on new decisive military victories. These were largely achieved against the Egyptians and through the tactics of Allon. The Israelis were helped by further divisions in the Arab world. To the fury of Egypt and other Arab states, Abdullah organized a ceremonial conference at Jericho where Palestinian and Transjordanian delegates favoured the joining of Palestine and Transjordan as an indivisible Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This was on 1 December 1948, the day the cease-fire arranged by Dayan and Colonel Abdullah al-Tel, the commander of the Arab Legion in Jerusalem, came into effect. For the King of Jordan the war was over. As Israeli troops under Allon implemented the plans of Yigael Yadin and drove into Egypt, the other Arab countries stood aside. The Syrians and Iraqis had had enough. The Muslim Brotherhood rioted in Egypt. Finally, on 29 December, the Security Council ordered a cease-fire.62
London was disturbed as there were British troops in Egypt. Under the terms of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty, Britain was obliged to assist Egypt in case of attack. On 30 December Sir Oliver Franks, the British ambassador in Washington, left a note with Lovett, then Acting Secretary of State, warning that unless the Israelis withdrew, Britain would fulfil its treaty obligations. There could arise out of this situation ‘the gravest possible consequences, not only to Anglo-American strategic interests in the Near East, but also to American relations with Britain and Western Europe’. London hoped that Washington would place pressure on the Israelis so as to make this step unnecessary. Washington obliged. 63 Ben-Gurion gave Allon orders to withdraw. 64 But, in the end, Allon was allowed to take the heights above the border town of Rafa. On 7 January the Israelis shot down five Royal Air Force planes which they claimed had strafed Israeli troops. London argued the planes were over Egyptian territory and that the attack was unprovoked. 65 Britain sent troops to Aqaba, and alerted its Mediterranean ships. The Israelis threatened to place this ‘intervention’ before the Security Council. 66 Egypt demanded evacuation of the Rafa heights before starting negotiations. London reminded Washington of the Middle Eastern talks of November 1947, and the implied support offered by the United States to maintain Britain’s position in the Middle East. Lovett warned that the position might arise whereby Britain would be arming one side in the dispute and the United States the other, with Russia the permanent beneficiary. 67 Ben-Gurion took a chance, and withdrew his offending troops. Aneurin Bevan attacked Bevin in Cabinet on 17 January: Britain could not maintain its position in the Middle East by supporting unstable and reactionary Arab governments. Britain should have relied on the friendship of the Jews. Bevin retorted, with the support of Attlee and the Cabinet, that the Commonwealth meant that Britain had a special position in the Muslim world: it had to support a fair deal for the Palestinian Arabs who had been in possession of the land for centuries. 68 On 24 February an armistice was signed at Rhodes between the Egyptians and Israelis. This was largely due to British efforts. Further agreements were soon signed with the Lebanon and Jordan, and finally with Syria. By these Israel gained 21 per cent more land than it had under the 1947 partition plan; indeed it covered almost 80 per cent of the area of the Palestine mandate. But it also acquired insecure frontiers. Britain, virtually the last Western country to do so, gave Israel de facto recognition after that country’s national elections in January 1949. 69
The Palestinian refugee question
The Arab League split: Egypt argued with the Hashemites, Syria with the Iraqis. Each country blamed another for not providing enough for the war. The real victims were the Palestinian Arabs. In April 1946, according to the Anglo-American commission, there were 226,000 Jewish refugees in Europe, of which 100,000 were in camps in Austria, Germany and Italy. In 1949 the legally certified number of Palestinian Arab refugees was almost 1 million. The American press hardly mentioned this new refugee problem.70 The new stateless went to Gaza, Jordan, 100,000 to the Lebanon, 70,000 to Syria and smaller numbers to Iraq and Egypt. By the late 1960s it is estimated that they had grown to 2 million. An Israeli Defence Force Intelligence Branch report stated that as of 1 June 1948 240,000 Arabs had fled from the area designated by the United Nations partition vote for the Jewish state, 150,000 Arabs had fled from the area designated for a Palestinian state and from Jerusalem, which was to have been internationalized. Some 70 per cent of the Arab exodus was attributed to ‘direct, hostile Jewish operations against Arab settlements’ by the Haganah, later the Israeli Defence Force, and the Irgun and Stern gang; 2 per cent was attributed to Jewish psychological warfare; and a further 2 per cent to ‘ultimative expulsion orders’. Evacuation orders by Arab leaders for local military reasons accounted for 5 per cent of the Arab exodus; general fear for 10 per cent; and local factors for between 8 and 9 per cent. On 16 June 1948 Ben-Gurion told his Cabinet that the return of the Arabs should be prevented. They would have to bear the consequences of declaring war on Israel. When Bernadotte asked Ben-Gurion to allow the Arabs to return, the Israeli leader, on 1 August 1948, mentioned conditions that made any such event unlikely in the foreseeable future. Israeli encouragement for Jews in the Middle East to settle in their new homeland fired Muslim suspicion of those communities which for centuries had lived in their midst under the toleration of Islamic law. Between 1948 and 1957 567,000 Jews left Muslim countries in North Africa and the Middle East, and most settled in Israel. As a result the population of Israel rose from 1,174,000 in 1949 to 1,873,000 in 1956. Few American, or indeed European, Jews who were not refugees settled in Israel. Rather the state was formed through a massive shift around of the population of the Middle East on religious lines. 71
On 26 January 1949 there was a debate in the House of Commons. When Churchill interrupted Bevin’s history of the Palestine problem he was told by the Foreign Secretary: ‘over half a million Arabs have been turned by the Jewish immigrants into homeless refugees without employment or resources’. Bevin later went on to describe the tide of Arab nationalism that was ‘running high’ and had bitten deep into the ordinary young Arab: ‘They consider that for the Arab population, which has been occupying Palestine for more than twenty centuries, to be turned out of their land and homes to make way for another race is a profound injustice.’ The Foreign Secretary wondered how the British people would feel if they had been asked to give up a slice of Scotland, Wales or Cornwall to another race. He marvelled that the conscience of the world was so little stirred by the tragedy of the Arab refugees: ‘I think that the driving of poor innocent people from their homes, whether it is in Germany by Hitler, or by anybody else, and making the ordinary working people of the place suffer, is a crime, and we really ought to join together to stop it if we can.’ Bevin explained what he saw as having been one of the principal determining factors of the prevailing situation: American interests – ‘the whole question of who should be elected to certain offices in the United States turned on this problem’ of Palestine.72 Churchill argued that the coming into being of a Jewish state had to be seen in the perspective of 2,000 or even 3,000 years.73
The creation of the state of Israel undermined British paramountcy in the Middle East. Until the end of the Second World War the story of the Palestine mandate was an episode of imperial history. Then a new determining factor emerged: American domestic politics. The Zionists utilized this. At the time of the joining of the Cold War Britain managed to isolate the Palestine issue from the deepening current of the Anglo-American special relationship, and even made Washington aware that it was in the interests of the West that Britain be helped to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East. But Truman’s concern for the Zionists’ vote undermined this overall strategy. After the recognition of Israel, Marshall managed to secure a bipartisan approach to foreign policy in the run-up to the presidential election. Late in the campaign, however, Truman gave way to Zionist pressure. The President, after his unexpected victory, told Lovett: ‘Haven’t I just proved to you that you shouldn’t pay any attention to the newspapers’; that also applied to the ‘damned politicians’ and the Palestine pressure groups. 74
The state of Israel came into being because, in the end, two of the Great Powers, Russia and the United States, for conflicting reasons, strategic and domestic, thought it would be in their interests. Britain, concerned to maintain its paramountcy in the Middle East, opposed the move. British morale was eroded by a combination of Zionist terrorism and a feeling that the American President dictated a policy in the interests of Zionism and his re-election, despite the fact that it led to the deaths of British troops. In any case this was the period of the twilight of the British Empire and the replacement of the pax Britannica by the pax Americana. After 15 May 1948 the situation in the Middle East was not determined just by Great-Power politics, but by a local fight for possession of land. Britain’s imperial position there, established between 1917 and 1923, was eroded.
References
1Joint Chiefs of Staff Leahy Records, Folder 57, US/A/AC.21/13, Statement by the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the National Council of the Jews of Palestine, 23 March 1948.
2See John Snetsinger, Truman, the Jewish Vote and the Creation of Israel (Stanford 1974), pp. 74–75, 169.
3New York Times, 18 Feb. 1948; RG 59, Decimal Files 1945–49, Box 6749, 867N.00/31648, Jones to Merriam, 16 March 1948; Enclosing Memorandum of Conversation between Lewis Jones and Beeley, 16 March 1948.
4Clifford Papers (Truman Library, Independence), Clifford to Truman, Memorandum on the Politics of 1948, 19 Nov. 1947; Snetsinger, op. cit., pp. 88–89.
5Policy Planning Staff (National Archives Washington), PPS/23, Review of Current Trends in United States Foreign Policy, 24 Feb. 1948; Kenneth W. Condit, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, Vol. II, 1947–1949 (Marshall Library, Lexington) (Joint Secretariat Joint Chiefs of Staff, 22 April 1976), f. 93.
6Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter cited as FRUS), 1948 (5), pp. 545–554, Report by Policy Planning Staff, 19 Jan. 1948.
7Forrestal Diaries (Princeton University Library, Princeton), Box 4, Vol. 9, f. 2026, Cabinet, 16 Jan. 1948; Walter Millis (Ed.), The Forrestal Diaries (London 1952), pp. 340–345, Diary, 6 Jan.–21 Jan. 1948.
8FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 573–581, Kennan to Lovett, and Annex, 29 Jan. 1948.
9Ibid., p. 633, Marshall to Lovett, 19 Feb. 1948.
10Ibid., pp. 651–654, Statement of Austin, 24 Feb. 1948.
11FO 371, E2773/1078/31, Inverchapel to Bevin, 21 Feb. 1948.
12FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 666–675, Report by Central Intelligence Agency, 28 Feb. 1948.
13Ibid., pp. 728–729, Marshall to Austin, 16 March 1948; p. 746, Notes dated 4 May 1948.
14Ibid., pp. 687–689, Memorandum by Clifford, 6 March 1948.
15Harry S. Truman, Years of Trial and Hope (New York 1956), pp. 160–161; Christopher Sykes, Crossroads to Israel (London 1965), pp. 410–412.
16FRUS 1948 (5) pp. 742–744, Statement by Austin before Security Council, 19 March 1948.
17Cab 128, 12, f. 107, Cab 24 (48) 6, 22 March 1948.
18FO 371 68648, E3726/1078/31G, Bevin to Inverchapel, 25 March 1948.
19FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 756–757, Memorandum prepared in the Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, undated.
20Ibid., pp. 758–759, Gallman to Marshall, 24 March 1948.
21FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 756–760, Marshall to Embassy in Egypt, 25 March 1948; FO 371, 68648, E3900/1078/31, Inverchapel to Bevin, 25 March 1948; Minute by Beeley, 27 March 1948.
22FO 371, 68649, E4796/1078/31G, Bevin to Creech Jones, 16 April 1948; FRUS 1948 (5), p. 826, Douglas to Marshall, 16 April 1948.
23FRUS 1948 (5), p. 837, Douglas to Marshall, 20 April 1948.
24Ibid., p. 835.
25Ibid., p. 838.
26RG 84, Entry 59A543 part 5, Box 1032, 800 Palestine 4/20, Douglas to Marshall, 20 April 1948; Douglas passed this information on to Michael Wright at the Foreign Office.
27FO 371, E5020/1078/31G, Bevin to Inverchapel, 21 April 1948 (draft); FRUS 1948 (5), p. 847, Douglas to Marshall, 22 April 1948.
28FO 371 68649, E5344/1078/31G, Cadogan to Bevin, 27 April 1948.
29Ibid., E5751/1078/31G, Roberts to Inverchapel, 30 April 1948; FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 876–877, Douglas to Marshall, 29 April 1948.
30FO 371, 68649, E5546/1078/31, Inverchapel to Bevin, Telegrams Nos. 2074–5, 30 April 1948; E5986/1078/31, Hadow to Mason, 2 May 1948.
31FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 877–879, Memorandum by Rusk, 30 April 1948.
32FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 896–897, Douglas to Marshall, 4 May 1948.
33RG 84, Entry 59A543 part 5, Box 1032, 800 Palestine 5/11, Douglas to Marshall, Telegrams Nos. 2036 and 2052, 11 May 1948.
34Ibid., 800 Palestine 5/5, Douglas to Marshall, 5 May 1948.
35FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 970–971, Austin to Marshall, 10 May 1948.
36Arthur Krock Papers (Princeton University Library), Box 1, Black Note Book, Book I, ff. 199–200, Memorandum by Sulzberger of Interview with Truman, 8 May 1948.
37George C. Marshall Papers (Marshall Library, Lexington), Box 81, Substance of a Toast by Marshall, 8 May 1948; Marshall to Mrs Truman, 10 May 1948.
38Clifford Papers (Truman Library, Independence), Box 13, Lowenthal to Clifford, 7 May 1948; 9 May 1948; 11 May 1948; 12 May 1948; 12 May 1948.
39FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 972–978, Memorandum of Conversation by Marshall, 12 May 1948; Elsey Papers (Truman Library, Independence), undated Notes on White House Meeting of 12 May 1948; Statement presented by Clifford at the White House Meeting of 12 May 1948, undated.
40CO 537, 3924, The Last Days of the Palestine Mandate at Lake Success, undated.
41George C. Marshall Papers, Box 158, File 32, Statement re Palestine and the United Nations, not used.
42FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 982–983, Weizmann to Truman, 13 May 1948.
43FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 1005–1007, Memorandum by Lovett, 17 May 1948.
44Elsey Papers, Notes on Events of Friday, 14 May, undated.
45Clifford Papers, Box 13, Humelsine to Clifford, 14 May 1948; Memorandum by Ernest A. Gross, 13 May 1948.
46FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 1005–1007, Memorandum by Lovett, 17 May 1948. For Clifford’s version see Clark M.Clifford, ‘Factors influencing President Truman’s decision to support partition and recognize the state of Israel’, in Clark M. Clifford, Eugene V. Rostow and Barbara W. Tuchman (Eds), The Palestine Question in American History (New York 1978), pp. 24–45; Clark M. Clifford, ‘Recognizing Israel’, American Heritage, XXVII (1977), pp. 4–11; Papers of Jonathan Daniels (Truman Library, Independence), Notes for The Man of Independence, Part 1, ff. 46–47, Interview with Clark Clifford. See also Alfred W. Lilienthal, The Zionist Connection (New York 1975), p. 790, Lovett to Lilienthal, 3 Oct. 1977.
47FRUS 1948 (5), p. 993, Rusk to Franklin, 13 June 1974; Warren R. Austin Papers, Box 69, Appointment Book 1948, 14 May 1948.
48Jorge Garc’ia-Granados, The Birth of Israel (New York 1948), pp. 287–290; Philip C. Jessup, The Birth of Nations (New York 1974), pp. 290–291.
49RG 59, Palestine Reference Book of Dean Rusk, Box 3, Rusk to Hickerson, 18 May 1948.
50Ibid., Decimal Files 1945–49, Box 6, Eleanor Roosevelt to Marshall, 16 May 1948; Marshall to Eleanor Roosevelt, 18 May 1948.
51Eleanor Roosevelt Papers (F. D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park), Box 4560, Truman to Eleanor Roosevelt, 20 May 1948.
52FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 1020–1021, Kennan to Marshall, 21 May 1948.
53Ibid., p. 1031, Douglas to Marshall, 22 May 1948.
54New York Times, 15 May 1948; Bernard Postal and Henry W. Levy, And the Hills Shouted for Joy (New York 1973), pp. 3–27; Zeev Sharef, Three Days (New York 1972), pp. 256–267.
55David Ben-Gurion, Israel: A Personal History (London 1971), pp. 92–93, Diary, 14 May 1948; Dan Kurzman, Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (London 1972), pp. 250–251; John Glubb, Britain and the Arabs. A Study of Fifty Years 1908 to 1958 (London 1959), p. 288.
56For a map of the United Nations partition plan see Trevor N. Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars 1947–1974 (London 1978), p. xxiv.
57Dupuy, op. cit., pp. 3–40; Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem! (London 1973), pp. 3–395; Kurzman, op. cit., pp. 3–258; Ben-Gurion, op. cit., pp. 65–93; Yigal Allon, The Making of Israel’s Army (London 1970), pp. 1–29. Edward Luttwak and Dan Horowitz, The Israeli Army (London 1975), p. 34, point out that no consistent and comprehensive figures of the Israeli forces have been published: they cite Ben-Gurion’s diary which gives a figure of 29,677 men in the Haganah forces on 15 May 1948. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Cambridge 1987), pp. 113–115, writes that Deir Yassin was a joint operation mounted by the Irgun and the Stern gang ‘undertaken with the reluctant, qualified consent of the Haganah commander in Jerusalem’. Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians: The Making of a People (Cambridge, Mass. 1994), p. 151, cite a study by a team of researchers at Bir Zeit University, published in 1987, to the effect that the number of Arabs killed at Deir Yassin probably did not exceed 120.
58Glubb, Britain and the Arabs, pp. 287–288.
59Shabtai Teveth, Moshe Dayan (London 1972), pp. 147–149; Moshe Dayan, The Story of my Life (London 1972), pp. 72–74.
60John Bagot Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs (London 1957), pp. 62–96; David Downing and Gary Herman, War Without End. Peace Without Hope. Thirty Years of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London 1978), pp. 26–29; Howard M. Sachar, Europe Leaves the Middle East (London 1972), pp. 530–542; Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan. King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (Oxford 1988); Ilan Pappé, Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948–51 (London 1988), pp. 1–21. Shlaim’s account has been criticized in Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History: The ‘New Historians’ (London 1997), pp. 69–107; see also the reply by Benny Morris, ‘Review essay: refabricating 1948’, Journal of Palestine Studies, XXVII (1998), pp. 81–95, and Ritchie Ovendale, ‘Review article: past or present Middle East?’, International History Review, XX (1998), pp. 618–632. Yoav Gelber, Jewish-Transjordanian Relations 1921–48 (London 1997) is also critical of Shlaim but sees the ‘entente’ between the Zionists and Abdullah as being the culmination of a process that had been developing since 1921. See also Joseph Nevo, King Abdallah and Palestine: A Territorial Ambition (London 1996).
61Dupuy, op. cit., pp. 41–66; Allon, op. cit., pp. 30–37; Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs, pp. 105–172; Kurzman, op. cit., pp. 343–443.
62Amitzur Ilan, The Origin of the Arab-Israeli Arms Race: Arms, Embargo, Military Power and Decision in the 1948 Palestine War (New York 1996); Dupuy, op. cit., pp. 67–111; Glubb, A Soldier with the Arabs, pp. 175–217; Kurzman, op. cit., pp. 444–678; Allon, op. cit., pp. 40–42; Pablo de Azcárate, Mission in Palestine 1948–1952 (Washington 1966), pp. 80–135; Alec Kirkbride, From the Wings: Amman Memoirs 1947–1951 (London 1976), pp. 67–69; Abba Eban, An Autobiography (London 1977), pp. 128–136; Ben-Gurion, op. cit., pp. 127–318; Amitzur Ilan, Bernadotte in Palestine, 1948 (London 1989), pp. 194–196; Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940–1949 (London 1995), p. 252.
63FRUS 1948 (5), pp. 1701–1703, Memorandum by Lovett, 30 Dec. 1948; Annex, Note Verbal by the British Embassy; p. 1704, Lovett to McDonald, 30 Dec. 1948; pp. 1705–1706, McDonald to Lovett, 31 Dec. 1948.
64FRUS 1949 (6), pp. 594–595, McDonald to Acheson, 1 Jan. 1949.
65Ibid., p. 627, McDonald to Acheson, 7 Jan. 1949; pp. 627–628, Memorandum by Satterthwaite, 8 Jan. 1949.
66Ibid., pp. 645–647, Memorandum by Lovett, 12 Jan. 1949.
67Ibid., pp. 658–661, Lovett to Embassy in London, 13 Jan. 1949.
68Cab 128, 15 Cab 3 (49), 17 Jan. 1949.
69Sachar, op. cit., pp. 568–579.
70William R. Polk, The United States and the Arab World, 3rd edn (Cambridge, Mass. 1975), p. 233; J. Rives Childs, Foreign Service Farewell (Charlottesville 1969), p. 152.
71Zachary Lockman and Joel Beinin (Eds), Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation (London 1990), pp. 190–191; Morris, op. cit., pp. 61–196; Shabtai Teveth, ‘The Palestinian refugee problem and its origins’, Middle Eastern Studies, XXVI (1990), pp. 214–249; Kimmerling and Migdal, op. cit., p. 147, suggest that it is impossible to give a precise figure for the number of Palestinians who became refugees. They cite Arab estimates as varying between 750,000 and 1,000,000. The Israelis suggested 520,000, and the British thought that there were between 600,000 and 760,000 refugees. Sachar, op. cit., pp. 552–554; Harold Wilson, The Chariot of Israel, Britain, America and the State of Israel (London 1981), pp. 241–242; Benny Morris, ‘Falsifying the record: a fresh look at Zionist documentation of 1948’, Journal of Palestine Studies, XXIV, 3 (Spring 1995), pp. 44–62.
72United Kingdom Parliamentary Debates House of Commons, 460, cols 933–5, 26 Jan. 1949.
73Ibid., col. 952.
74Snetsinger, op. cit., pp. 124–132; George C. Marshall Papers, Box 74, File 39, Lovett to Marshall, 8 Nov. 1948.