1949 the First Israelis - Softcover

Segev, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501183737 ISBN 13: 9781501183737

Publisher: Free Press, 2018

Synopsis

Renowned historian Tom Segev strips away national myths to present a critical and clear-eyed chronicle of the year immediately following Israel’s foundation.

“Required reading for all who want to understand the Arab-Israeli conflict...the best analysis...of the problems of trying to integrate so many people from such diverse cultures into one political body” (The New York Times Book Review).

Historian and journalist Tom Segev stirred up controversy in Israel upon the first publication of 1949. It was a landmark book that told a different story of the country’s early years, one that wasn’t taught in schools or shown in popular culture. Rather than painting the idealized picture of the Israel’s founding in 1948, after the wreckage of the Holocaust, Segev reveals gritty underside behind the early years.

The new country of Israel faced challenges on all sides. Day-to-day life was severe, marked by austerity and food shortages; Israeli society was fractured between traditional and secular camps; Jewish immigrants from Middle-Eastern countries faced discrimination and second-class treatment; and clashes between settlers and the Arabs would set the tone for relations for the following decades, hardening attitudes and creating a violent cycle of retaliation.

Drawing on journal entries, letters, declassified government documents, and more, 1949 is a richly detailed look at the friction between the idealism of the Zionist movement and the cold realities of history. Decades after its publication in the United States, Segev’s groundbreaking book is still required reading for anyone who wants to understand Israel’s past and future.

About this title

About the Author:

Tom Segev is one of Israel’s best-known historians. He is often cited as one of Israel’s New Historians who challenged the country’s traditional narratives. His books have been published in 14 languages and include 1949: The Other Israelis; One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate; The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust; and 1967: Israel, The War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1949 the First Israelis 1

THE GREEN LINE

ON THE EVENING of December 31, 1948, James McDonald, an American diplomat serving in Israel, dropped his preparations for the New Year’s party he was to throw the next day in Tel Aviv, and left posthaste for the Galei Kinneret Hotel in Tiberias, where David Ben-Gurion was vacationing. McDonald, subsequently America’s first Ambassador to Israel, carried an ultimatum from President Truman demanding that Israel withdraw the force which had crossed the international border with Egypt and penetrated into the Sinai Peninsula. The American initiative had come in response to a request from London and was strongly worded: if Israel refused to withdraw its forces from Sinai, the United States would “re-examine” its relations with Israel. Ben-Gurion read the letter slowly while the American envoy sat waiting for a reply. Finally the Prime Minister remarked that the tone of the communication was harsh, but he promised to pull his forces back to the Israeli side of the border, thereby forfeiting any chance of capturing the Gaza Strip.1

When word of McDonald’s visit reached his headquarters, the commander of the southern front, Yigal Allon, tried to save the operation in Sinai by rushing back to Tel Aviv to talk with Acting Chief of Staff Yigael Yadin, then with Foreign Minister Sharett, and finally with Ben-Gurion himself. Allon did manage to elicit the prime minister’s approval for one more operation—an attack on the town of Rafah—but the action failed, though they managed to cut off the Egyptian troops in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army now held the entire northern Negev, with the exception of the Gaza Strip and the so-called Faluja Pocket. A few thousand Egyptian soldiers were still trapped in that pocket, one of whom happened to be Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Israelis could not overcome them. “The Egyptians have learned to fight,” Ben-Gurion reported to the Cabinet, and that same day the ministers decided to accept a ceasefire.2 Ben-Gurion regarded this as a great accomplishment, despite the fact that Gaza and Faluja had not fallen. “This is an important stage in the achievement of peace and fortifying the position of the State of Israel,” he wrote in his diary. “If we reach an agreement with the Egyptians—and that ‘if’ is not lightly stated—it will be easier for us to reach an agreement with Transjordan and the others. . . .”3

One evening during that week, Ben-Gurion took the time to attend a showing of a Soviet war film, to which he had been invited by the Soviet minister Pavel Ivanowich Yershov. “In the midst of the bombing by the Soviet planes,” the prime minister later wrote, “an air-raid siren went off. Yershov, who was seated beside me, wanted to stop the showing. I objected, and the show went on. About half an hour later the all-clear sounded. But afterwards I learned that the airport at Lydda had been bombed and the mess hall of the 82nd Battalion was hit. One soldier was killed and two were injured. The film—pure propaganda.”4 That same week the port of Tel Aviv was shelled and Jerusalem was bombed from the air, causing the destruction of a wall of the Shaarei Tsedek Hospital and injury to a few pedestrians.5 Firing was still going on at the southern front, too, despite the government’s decision. “Yigael [Yadin] suspects our soldiers of not having stopped either, though Yigal Allon received an explicit order from him this morning,” Ben-Gurion wrote. “Yadin believes that when [Allon] got back down south, the members of the ‘clan’—[Itzhak] Rabin, Itzhak Sade, and others—told him to continue. . . .”6

But these were the last shots, and the war with the Arab states ended with two air battles in which five British planes were shot down; one British pilot was killed and two were taken prisoner. Israel claimed that the British planes had penetrated its airspace and were shot down over its territory, but that was untrue. Ben-Gurion copied into his diary the cable he received from the south stating that Allon had ordered the remains of the planes towed out of Egyptian territory and scattered over Israeli territory “for obvious reasons.”7 I

A few hours after this incident, Ben-Gurion returned to Tiberias in very good spirits. “It’s been a marvelous day,” he wrote in his diary. “Has the war ended today?”9 Four days later the Civil Defense Command cancelled the order requiring the windows and street lights in residential areas to be blacked out, and although the blackout remained in force in industrial and business establishments, the immediate danger had passed. In the Yellow Room of the Hotel des Roses in Rhodes, preparations had in the meantime been completed for the opening of armistice negotiations on the new border between Israel and Egypt, which was to become known as the Green Line.

David Ben-Gurion would have preferred to hold the armistice talks in Jerusalem, or on the Israeli-Egyptian border, or at sea, on board an American vessel flying the UN flag, rather than on the Island of Rhodes. However, he did not press the point.10 The northern cliff of the historic island still seemed to be haunted by the spirit of Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator who had been assassinated in Jerusalem four months earlier.11 The Swedish diplomat had set up his headquarters on the island, describing it as an ideal spot for peace negotiations, far removed from the hatred and gunfire, yet close enough to international lines of communication.12 Moshe Dayan, too, would one day recall it as a place where “thousands of butterflies of all sizes and colors fluttered among the bushes, as if it had been the scene for a fairy-tale. . . .”13 The Hotel des Roses was known for its rustic old-style atmosphere, an appropriate setting for journalists and diplomats, millionaires and spies to rub elbows over glasses of whisky and lemonade. Itzhak Rabin, then a Lt. Colonel who was flown to Rhodes straight from the battlefield in the Negev, would fondly recall the juicy steaks he ate there,14 and Director General of the Israel Foreign Ministry, Walter Eitan, would note the sweets which were flown in by the Egyptians from the famous confectioners, “Groppi” of Cairo.15 The UN mediator who conducted the talks was Dr. Ralph Bunche, a black American, brilliant and humane, whose achievements would later win him the Nobel Peace Prize. He and his aides occupied one wing of the hotel, while the Egyptians and the Israelis were assigned another wing, with the Egyptians occupying the floor above the Israelis. Violent winds and rainstorms greeted the visitors upon their arrival in Rhodes, Thursday, January 13.

Ben-Gurion was not in a conciliatory mood. He said during one of the discussions with his aides:

Before the founding of the state, on the eve of its creation, our main interest was self-defense. To a large extent, the creation of the state was an act of self-defense. . . . Many think that we’re still at the same stage. But now the issue at hand is conquest, not self-defense. As for setting the borders—it’s an open-ended matter. In the Bible as well as in our history there are all kinds of definitions of the country’s borders, so there’s no real limit. No border is absolute. If it’s a desert—it could just as well be the other side. If it’s a sea, it could also be across the sea. The world has always been this way. Only the terms have changed. If they should find a way of reaching other stars, well then, perhaps the whole earth will no longer suffice.16

In his diary Ben-Gurion laid down a more precise definition: “Peace is vital—but not at any price.”17

The first encounter between the Israeli and the Egyptian delegations was not very promising. At first the Egyptians tended to ignore the Israelis. Walter Eitan did notice, however, that some of them, overcome by curiosity, would turn their heads for a quick glance whenever they ran into each other in the hotel lobby. At first Bunche did not succeed in getting them to meet face to face. Finally, however, the Egyptians agreed to meet the Israelis in his suite. The mediator sat on a sofa with the delegations facing him—the Israelis to his right, the Egyptians to his left. The Egyptians made a point of addressing him, as though the Israelis were not there. Slowly but surely the atmosphere thawed as the delegates began speaking to each other in English and French, and affectionately showing one another snapshots of their families.18 Eitan headed the Israeli delegation, which included Reuven Shiloah, one of Ben-Gurion’s closest advisors and a pioneer of Israel’s Intelligence community, and Eliyahu (Elias) Sasson, director of the Middle East division at the Foreign Ministry. Sasson, a Damascus-born journalist and public figure, was one of the first diplomats of the Jewish Agency to visit Arab capitals, a regular caller at the palaces of their sultans and kings; he was both a man of peace and a dreamer. Acting Chief of Staff Yigael Yadin headed the military delegation, accompanied by Rabin and two other officers.

At the beginning Bunche alone was aware of the two delegations’ basic positions, and he would make sure to present them to each side gradually and with the utmost care. Bunche made each side believe that agreement was imminent. Thus the Israelis gained the impression that the Egyptians might be willing to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, provided the local population was not placed under Israeli rule. Later it was learned that the distance between the two parties was much greater than had been realized. Israel insisted that Egypt give up the Strip, and the Egyptians demanded that Israel give up Beersheba. This was especially important to the Egyptians, because they had never admitted that the town had fallen to the Israelis; the Egyptian public was yet to hear about it from its government. The two parties rejected each other’s counterproposals with nerve-racking stubbornness. Bunche tried everything to bring them closer. At one point he invited both delegations to his suite and showed them ceramic plates which he had especially ordered in a local factory, with the inscription, “Armistice Talks, Rhodes, 1949.” “If you come to an agreement,” he said, “you’ll each receive such a plate as a souvenir. If you don’t—I’ll smash them on your heads.” Eitan reported to Foreign Minister Sharett that “it was a most extraordinary occasion,” and promised a further report on what he termed “the comic aspect of it.” As for the Egyptians’ stubbornness, he wrote that it made him want to scream.19 II

As negotiations proceeded, the Israeli government decided to give up the demand that the Egyptians leave Gaza, but refused to give in with regard to the area around the archeological site at Auja al-Khafir, which the Israelis called Nitsana. Giving up Gaza was not easy. The army and MAPAM, the left-wing opposition, viewed it as a humiliating and dangerous concession, and so, of course, did Herut, the right-wing opposition. There had, indeed, been little hope that Egypt would willingly vacate the Strip, and the Israeli government therefore preferred to face reality rather than risk the collapse of the talks.

The next two weeks in Rhodes were taken up by haggling over details, and finally, on February 24, the agreement was signed. Ben-Gurion wrote: “After the creation of the state and our victories in battle—this is the great event of a great and marvelous year.”20

The armistice agreement with Egypt was based primarily on the existing military situation. Israel had to agree to an Egyptian military presence in the Gaza Strip, and to withdraw her own forces from the area of Beit Hanoon and the sector near the Rafah cemetery. However, she was allowed to keep seven outposts along the Strip. The Egyptian brigade which had been surrounded in Faluja was released, and the area was turned over to Israel.III Israel was obliged to agree to demilitarize the area around Nitsana, but her demand that the demilitarization extend to both sides of the border was accepted. Nitsana was to serve as the seat of the mixed armistice commission, but Israel objected to the area being placed under UN jurisdiction. The Egyptian demand that Beersheba be part of the reduced troops area was rejected; however, Revivim, a kibbutz 25 kilometers south of Beersheba, was included in it. The signing of the armistice agreement with Egypt greatly improved the prospect of signing similar agreements—and possibly even peace treaties—with other Arab states. Itzhak Rabin commented, “I believed that we were moving forward to peace. We all believed it.”21 IV

Some four weeks after the agreement with Egypt, a similar one was signed with Lebanon. The negotiations that led up to it were not difficult. Some informal talks had been held before, but the Lebanese did not want to be the first. “Reach an agreement with one of the other Arab states first,” they told the Israelis: “Lebanon will be the second.” The negotiations were held on the border between the two countries, near Rosh Hanikrah. They would meet alternately in the customs house on the Lebanese side, and in the police station on the Israeli side. The two buildings were some 500 meters apart, situated on rocky cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean—a breathtaking view; the road between the buildings wound through mine fields.

The two delegations often talked to each other in Arabic. The Israeli delegation was headed by Lt. Colonel Mordehai Makleff, later the third Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, who was accompanied by Yehoshua Felmann (Palmon) and Shabtai Rozen from the Foreign Ministry. The UN representatives, Henri Vigier and William Riley, were not called upon to intervene as much as Bunche had to in Rhodes. “The site tends to encourage personal relations between the delegations,” Rozen reported. “Since one acts as the host and the other as its guest, the talks are accompanied by lavish refreshments, as is customary in the East, and people get to know each other.”23 Rozen drew a lesson for the future from this encounter—direct talks are preferable to mediated negotiations. When alone with the Israelis, he wrote Sasson, the Lebanese would act as if they were not Arabs, and had been drawn into the war against their will. “For internal reasons—so they say—they cannot openly avow their hatred of the Syrians and their objection to the presence of a Syrian army in their country, but they are eager to have the agreement restrict the free movement of the Syrian army in Lebanon. . . . I believe that as soon as a convenient opportunity presents itself they will propose renewing trade relations with us.”24

When the negotiations began, the Israeli army was in control of a narrow strip in Lebanon, just west of the northern Galilee, which enclosed fourteen villages, the northernmost of which was not far from the Litani River. There were hardly any disagreements between the negotiating teams. The two states agreed that the international border would serve as the armistice line, and that as soon as th...

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1501183737
• ISBN 13: 9781501183737
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432