Summary
The all-Arab volunteer force (Jaish al-Inqath, ‘Rescue Army’) established by the Arab League in December 1947, whose first significant unit entered Palestine on 9 January 1948 and whose divided command and defensive posture, in Pappe’s account, left the Palestinians effectively defenceless while providing the Consultancy a pretext for escalation.
Details
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The Arab League Council recommended in December 1947 the dispatch of arms to the Palestinians and the establishment of an all-Arab volunteer force, to be called the Arab Liberation Army (Jaish al-Inqath, literally ‘Rescue Army’), with a Syrian general at its head; small groups began trickling into Palestine later that month (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.78).
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About 1,000 volunteers had entered by February 1948, reaching 3,000 over the next few months; Eliyahu Sasson reported no more than 3,000 in total, all ‘poorly trained’, and that if not provoked they would remain idle (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.71, p.102).
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Units first entered on 9 January 1948 and engaged Jewish forces in small battles over routes and isolated settlements; the first significant unit crossed on 9 January, mainly into the areas allotted to the Arab state, adopting a defensive policy and organising fortification lines with the national committees and mukhtars (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.67, p.99).
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Command was divided — Fauzi al-Qawuqji in the north, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni in Jerusalem and Hassan Salameh in Jaffa — a division Pappe calls a farce, given al-Qawqji’s feud with the Husayni family and his loyalty to Syria and Iraq; in January 1948 the ALA decided not to operate in the cities but to attack isolated Jewish settlements (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.98-99).
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Its early attacks included Kefar Sold (9 January 1948) and Kefar Etzion (14 January 1948), where a convoy’s thirty-five Jewish troops were ambushed and killed, giving the ‘Lamed-Heh’ codename to later operations Pappe treats as pretextual (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.99-100).
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By February it had reached only a few villages, with no time or equipment to turn villagers into fighting men; its presence in some villages was more important psychologically than materially (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.102).
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In Pappe’s Chapter Five, Qawuqji’s 2,000 men were dispersed in small units forming inadequate defence forces; he sought a truce from January 1948 and at the end of March offered Yehoshua Palmon a non-aggression pact, which was rejected (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.146). British obstruction meant it supplied Tiberias with only about thirty volunteers (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.121), and at Safad its new Galilee commander Adib Shishakly replaced the able Ihasn Qam Ulmaz with an incompetent officer (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.127).
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In early April 1948, 500 of its Druze volunteers deserted to the Jewish forces after a staged battle near Shafa’Amr and a ‘treaty of blood’ (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.145).
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In June 1948 its 2,000 volunteers in the Galilee, most stationed around Nazareth, were hampered by poor weapons and lack of ammunition; the Hittin battalion’s commander reported its equipment unusable because of dirt, its single supply line from Syria often blocked — a telegram of 29 June 1948, intercepted by Israeli intelligence, reported no fuel to move supplies from Tarshiha to Rama (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.182).
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Its volunteers at Saffuriyya took fright and escaped from the girls’ school where they had been stationed, and its officer there advised Abu Salim and others to run away (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.185).
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In Nazareth its commander Madlul Bek, under orders from the Arab governments to stop expulsions to prevent more refugees entering their countries, turned back people already leaving, then, when the shelling intensified, surrendered the city on 16 July 1948 (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.203-204).
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In Operation Hiram in October 1948, its volunteers withdrew only after desperately fighting to defend the upper Galilee villages, quite often disobeying orders from their headquarters to leave; four hundred such volunteers lost their lives in those days (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.215).
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Manna uses the name Arab Rescue Army (also Arab Salvation Army) for Jaysh al-Inqadh, under Fawzi al-Qawuqji — the name al-Hawwari’s book uses in raining accusations on it (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.51). From January 1948 its hundreds of volunteers boosted morale, paralyzed street traffic and cut transport lines between Jerusalem and the coastal plain, holding Bab al-Wad briefly (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.58).
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Its attempt to occupy kibbutz Mishmar Ha’emek failed and a Haganah counterattack expelled several Marj ibn ‘Amir villages; by May 1948 it had become a butt of jokes for its unpreparedness and showy manoeuvres (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.61, 64).
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In the Galilee pocket during the 1948 cease-fire its relations with residents were complex: some Druze and Christian villages refused cooperation, others armed, fortified, fed its units and ran joint local committees; its officers admitted to residents they could not protect the area, and it arrested Sakhnin’s mukhtar for surrendering his village prematurely, jailing him at its Majd al-Krum police station (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.79-80).
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Its Nazareth unit under Madlul ‘Abbas withdrew before the city’s fall on 16 July 1948, but first asked residents to stay in their homes and posted soldiers briefly at al-Khannuq to make sure residents were not following them — a valuable service in Manna’s account (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.71). Compare the Nazareth page: Pappe names the city’s ALA commander Madlul Bek, who surrendered the city; the source page for Manna records the naming difference under Open questions.
Related pages
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Fauzi al-Qawuqji, Consultancy, Dalet Plan