The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East from the War of Independence through Lebanon - Softcover

Herzog, Chaim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394717465 ISBN 13: 9780394717463

Publisher: Vintage Books, 1984

Synopsis

Herzog re-creates Israel's turbulent military history from the 1948 Civil War in Palestine to the 1982 war in Lebanon. 100 photographs, 50 maps.

About this title

About the Author:

Chaim Herzog was a major-general in the Israeli army and later President of Israel. He died in 1997.
Shlomo Gazit is the former head of Israeli Military Intelligence.

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

1

CONFRONTATION IN PALESTINE
As Britain prepared to withdraw her forces in May 1948, and as the
Jewish community in Palestine braced itself for the inevitable Arab
onslaught, there emerged a factor that was to influence Israel’s
military considerations throughout the initial part of the War of
Independence. The leadership of the British armed forces had expressed
itself in unequivocably hostile terms about the struggle of the Jewish
population. They controlled the country’s major arteries and
strongpoints; their ships patrolled the eastern Mediterranean and the
coast; and the Royal Air Force controlled the skies above Palestine.
Furthermore, their forces included two Arab elements, namely the Arab
Legion and the Transjordan Frontier Force. Both these units were to
play no small part in favour of the Arab forces during the ensuing
hostilities.

Israeli forces and dispositions

The most vulnerable aspect of the Jewish position lay in tenuous lines
of communications between settlements, and it was inevitable that these
would become the first targets for Arab attacks. The Jewish population
was concentrated mainly in long strips of agricultural communities in
eastern Galilee, across the valley of Jezreel and down the coastal
plain to the south of Tel Aviv. In many towns and areas there was no
clear dividing line between Jewish and Arab populations; the
institutions and offices of government and major utilities such as
electricity and oil refineries were common to both. Particularly
vulnerable were communications with the isolated settlements of western
Galilee and the Negev and the links between Jerusalem’s 100,000 Jews
and the coastal plain (not to mention those linking the outlying Jewish
Jerusalem settlements with the bulk of the Jewish population in the
city proper). Nor were the official frontiers secure. Controlled
primarily by units of the Arab Legion and the Transjordan Frontier
Force, the long land borders could not be closed effectively to the
passage of Arab forces and military supplies into Palestine. The Legion
numbered some 8,000 troops, while the Frontier Force was 3,000 strong;
in addition, the British Palestine Police numbered some 4,000.
Nominally, the British forces were responsible for law and order in the
country, but both Jewish and Arab irregulars were by now operating
freely within the areas under their respective control.

Over the years, the Jewish armed forces or militia had grown, sometimes
with the connivance and assistance of the British and sometimes
‘underground’, despite the British. At the outset, locally organized
defence units had been established throughout the country in order to
defend Jewish settlements, but these had gradually been amalgamated
into a national organization, the ‘Haganah’. The Arab revolt of 1936—39
brought into existence the field companies of the Haganah, which were
the first units activated on a national country-wide basis, to counter
the effects of the uprising and to protect the oil pipeline crossing
the valley of Jezreel on its way from Iraq to a terminal at Haifa. They
were inspired by a British Army Captain, Orde Wingate (later to become
famous as leader of the ‘Chindits’ in Burma during the Second World
War), who set up ‘Special Night Squads’ to fight against the Arab
guerrillas bent on sabotaging the pipeline. There also existed
auxiliary forces known as the ‘Jewish Settlement Police’, who assisted
in the defence of Jewish settlements and the maintenance of the lines
of communications between them. Numbering some 2,000 men, officered by
the British and financed by the Jewish Agency, they were organized in
sections and armed only with small-arms.

In May 1941, the Haganah created a full-time military force known as
the ‘Palmach’ (from ‘Plugot Mahatz’ or ‘shock troops’). This force was
under the exclusive control of the Haganah, and was led initially by
Yitzhak Sadeh, a large and flamboyant Haganah leader who, by
personality and example, was a major driving force in its creation.
(Later, with the establishment of the Israel Defence Forces, his record
as a military leader in conventional operations did not live up to the
promise of these early years.) He gathered around him a group of
youngsters destined to be the leaders of Israel’s armed forces–indeed,
many of the men who were later to lead Israel’s army into battle
received their first training in the ranks of the Palmach–men such as
Yitzhak Rabin (later Chief of Staff and Prime Minister), Chaim Bar-Lev
(later Chief of Staff and a minister in the Israeli Government), David
Elazar (Chief of Staff in the 1973 Yom Kippur War) and many others. It
was in one of the first operations of the force, acting with the
British to oust the Vichy French from Syria, that Moshe Dayan (later to
become Chief of Staff, Minister of Defence and Minister of Foreign
Affairs in various Israeli Governments, and to command Israel’s army in
the 1956 Sinai Campaign) lost an eye. In command of one of two select
reconnaissance units of the Palmach sent to secure a bridge across the
River Litani, his binoculars were hit by a French sniper’s bullet as he
was surveying the bridge. In command of the second unit that day was
Yigal Allon, later to become commander of the Palmach and subsequently
Deputy Prime Minister and a minister in several Israeli Governments.

During the Second World War, many Jews had volunteered for service in
the British armed forces, either as individuals or in Palestinian
units. In 1944, a Jewish Brigade Group was established and saw action
in Italy against the Germans. The wartime experience acquired by some
30,000 volunteers, in all arms of the British forces, later proved to
be invaluable in the creation of the Israel Defence Forces, providing
as it did much of the organizational, training and technical background
that hitherto had been absent in the Haganah. By the time that Rommel’s
army–which had threatened to overrun Egypt and enter Palestine–had been
defeated by the British in 1942, the Palmach under Yitzhak Sadeh
comprised a force of over 3,000, including some 2,000 reserves. In
1947, at the time of the United Nations Partition Resolution, the
Palmach numbered over 3,000 men and women with approximately 1,000 on
active reserve who could be called up at a moment’s notice. (In 1944, a
naval company, ‘Pal Yam’, and an air platoon had been established
within the Palmach organization.)

In mid-1947, David Ben-Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency for
Palestine (which was, in effect, the government of the Jewish
population in Palestine), began preparing the Haganah for the expected
war. By six months before the outbreak of hostilities, he had created
military districts or commands astride the possible invasion routes of
the Arab armies, established brigades on a territorial basis and set
out the guidelines for the acquisition of arms and the training of
forces. Thus, by February 1948, the ‘Golani’ Brigade was operating in
the Jordan valley and eastern Galilee; the ‘Carmeli’ Brigade covered
Haifa and western Galilee; the ‘Givati’ Brigade the southern lowlands;
the ‘Alexandroni’ Brigade the Sharon central area; the ‘Etzioni’
Brigade the Jerusalem area; and the ‘Kiryati’ Brigade covered the city
of Tel Aviv and its environs. In the course of the following months,
three other Palmach brigades were created out of the independent
Palmach battalions: the ‘Negev’ Brigade in the southern lowlands and
the northern Negev; the ‘Yiftach’ Brigade in Galilee; and the ‘Harel’
Brigade in the Jerusalem area.

It is well to recall that, when one talks about brigades and military
units, one is not depicting a normal military line-up. The entire
Haganah operation was an underground one, and its military organization
and deployment had to be carried out under the vigilant eyes of British
troops and police in the full knowledge that the possession of weapons
was a crime punishable by death. Moreover, British soldiers carried out
raids on Jewish villages and towns from time to time, revealing secret
storage dumps of weapons. Ingenious, devious means of transporting and
storing weapons were an essential facet of Haganah skills. The Arabs
did not suffer from this disability, because they were less in
confrontation with the British forces and often moved around freely in
the areas under their control openly armed. In this respect, they
benefited considerably from the active support of the units of the Arab
Legion, which were part of the British forces. A modest domestic war
industry was created in which small-arms such as Sten guns and hand
grenades were manufactured, but the disadvantage with which the Jewish
forces set out to do battle is emphasized by the fact that the total
armament at the Haganah’s disposal in 1947 consisted of 900 rifles, 700
light machine-guns and 200 medium machine-guns with sufficient
ammunition for only three days’ fighting–even the standing force, the
Palmach, could only arm two out of every three of its active members.
At this stage, heavy machine-guns, anti-tank guns and artillery were
but a dream: not one existed in the Jewish forces.

The total Jewish force that could be mobilized from an overall Jewish
population of 650,000 was some 45,000, but these included some 30,000
men and women whose functions were limited to local defence,
particularly in the...

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0394717465
• ISBN 13: 9780394717463
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480