Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace

Summary

N. Israeli (Akiva Orr and Moshe Machover, writing under a joint pen name) argues, from material published in the Israeli press between 1948 and 1956, that Israel’s wars were not wars of “no choice”: the 1956 invasion of Egypt was a contrived war agreed in secret with Britain and France at Sèvres, preferred by David Ben-Gurion over a peace proposal from Gamal Abd al-Nasser, and the 1948 war’s decisive hidden facts were Britain’s covert direction of the Arab invasion through the Arab League and the secret Ben-Gurion–Abdullah accord that divided the territory of the projected Palestinian Arab state between Israel and Transjordan and prevented a Palestinian state from emerging (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.6-8). Part 1, read here, comprises the front matter of the English translation (the translator’s note, the authors’ 1999 “Second introduction”, epigraphs from Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau, the original 1961 title page and biblical epigraphs, and the Introduction to the first edition), all of Chapter 1, which argues from 1948-era statements by Chaim Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Golda Meir, Begin and the Hebrew press that the 1948 war was in essence a war of the Jews of Palestine against British rule, waged through Arab armies as British pawns, in which the Palestinian Arabs barely took an active part, and the opening of Chapter 2 (PDF p.44-62), which argues that Israel’s leadership abandoned reliance on the UN Partition Resolution before the Declaration of Independence, negotiated secretly with King Abdullah throughout the war and the Rhodes talks, recognized his annexation of the West Bank de facto in the 3 April 1949 armistice, and chose that bargain — Israel spreading over about 75% of Palestine instead of the 55% allotted to the Jewish state — over aiding the creation of the Palestinian Arab state (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.57-58). Part 2 (PDF p.63-119) completes Chapter 2 and opens Chapter 3: the May 1950 Knesset debate shows the government accepting Abdullah’s annexation de facto while refusing a UN appeal because, as Pinchas Lavon said, the UN could only judge it by the 1947 Resolution — which, in the authors’ gloss of his argument, would also judge Israel’s own annexation, the authors putting the shares at 54% of the Arab state’s territory annexed to Transjordan and 44% annexed to Israel; the Tripartite Declaration (1950) then substituted the three Western powers for the UN as guarantors of the status quo; and the refugee problem is traced not to Arab evacuation orders (W. Eytan’s “facts as they are”) but to Deir Yassin, Dalet Plan’s village-destruction clause of 10 March 1948, S. Yizhar’s Khirbet Khizeh, and expulsions continuing into 1950-1959, including Majdal in 1950. Chapter 3 argues Israel’s leaders held a pro-American orientation in private from 1947 — offering integration into a US “regional framework” — while publicly declaring “non-alignment” until the Tripartite Declaration and the January 1951 Korea debate ended it formally, a turn the book attributes not to any Soviet change (the USSR remained consistent on partition, and in 1948 only Czechoslovakia would sell Israel arms) but to the Abdullah collusion’s need for Western endorsement of the status quo (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.118). Part 3 (PDF p.120-177) concludes Chapter 3 and opens Chapter 4: the economic factor — Section 12 of the 1949 $100millionAmericanloanagreement,suppressedbythegovernment,and[[john-hagerty|JohnHagerty]{]}^{\prime }scontrolasdefactofinanceminister—endednon-alignmentassurelyastheAbdullahcollusiondid;the"Rockefellerletter"(aforgery,asthetranslato{r}^{\prime }sfootnoterecords,thoughthebooktreatsitswidepublicationascertifyingit)isquotedatlengthforthedoctrinethataidbuysmilitaryalliances;IsraelcourtedaUSregionalcommandandmilitaryaid—offering,throughtheAmericanZionistCouncilmemorandum,parallelaideventotheArabstates—yetreceivednoUSmilitaryaidatallin1950-1958(only$385,000, all in 1959) while Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon received tens of millions, because, in the book’s refrain, “a hooked fish needs no bait”; John Foster Dulles’s June 1953 speech then laid down an “impartial” policy of cultivating the Arabs, driven, the book argues, by oil (64% of Middle East reserves in American companies by the UN’s 1956 survey). The failure of the American orientation produced “activism” and, in 1955, the French orientation. Chapter 4 argues the Abdullah bargain rested on the disastrously shortsighted assumption that Western control of the Middle East would endure, against the collapse of the colonial system and the rise of Arab national liberation — a movement Israel positioned itself against, as its UN record shows: consistent votes with France against Algerian, Tunisian and African self-determination, condemned at Casablanca in January 1961 as “an instrument in the service of colonialism” (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.177). Part 4 (PDF p.178-234) concludes Chapter 4 — the Israeli UN delegation voting against its own Foreign Ministry briefing on China’s admission under American pressure, and Dayan’s “rock” mission restating Herzl’s “rampart of Europe against Asia” — and gives Chapter 5, “Reprisal Actions”: a case-by-case argument, from the 1951 Syria bombing through Qibya, al-Bureij, the Bat Galim affair affair, the Gaza raid (1955), the Czech-Egyptian arms deal, Operation Kinneret, the 5 April 1956 Gaza market shelling and the September-October 1956 Jordan raids, that the reprisals’ timing served Western pressure over the Baghdad Pact and Suez — Schocken’s 1951 “watchdog” thesis — whatever their stated motive (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.187, p.232). Part 5 (PDF p.235-294) concludes Chapter 5 — Britain’s camouflaged Cyprus broadcasting station inciting Arabs against Israel to smokescreen its Suez war preparations, and the Jordan waters as another Western pressure instrument — and gives most of Chapter 6, “The Third Kingdom of Israel”: Operation Sinai was launched on 29 October 1956 despite Ben-Gurion’s “a preventive war is madness” pledge of June 1956, proclaimed on 7 November as the resurrection of an ancient Hebrew kingdom over nearly 60,000 km², and disavowed some thirty hours later under world pressure; the Knesset that voted 88 to 3 for the war then voted, in January-February 1957, to keep the Gaza Strip under an “Israeli administration” and to defy the UN, the USA freezing $55 million in aid — with Maki alone, in Shmuel Mikunis’s and Moshe Sneh’s speeches, demanding return to the ceasefire lines and recognition that both peoples in Palestine have legitimate national rights (Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, PDF p.244, p.288-289, p.294).

What the file is

A book by Akiva Orr and Moshé Machover under the pen name N. Israeli, Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace (Israel and the Arabs 1948–1961), written 1957-1961 and first published in Jerusalem in 1961 by “Bokhan”; second publication, Jerusalem 1999, with appendices added and typographical errors corrected but the text otherwise unchanged as a historical document (PDF p.5-6). The file is the English translation by Mark Marshall (translation done 2009; translator’s note Toronto, July 2009, updated October 2011), downloaded from marxists.org (access basis: author-copy; the book’s own copying condition, PDF p.5, permits copying and distribution in any form on condition the publication is not for profit and the book’s name is mentioned in the citation). 581 PDF pages, about 202,788 words in the text copy. The text copy has === PDF p.N === markers for all 581 pages and is clean and readable; printed page numbers in this translation run 16 behind the PDF page numbers in the range read here (PDF p.17 = printed p.1). The map “How the Palestinian state was divided” (PDF p.59) is an image whose legend only is reproduced in the text copy (PDF p.58); PDF p.59 is otherwise blank in the text copy. Appendices 6, 7, 14, 15 and 16 are new to this translation (PDF p.3). Minor factual errors identified in the text, such as incorrect dates, were corrected in the translation, and one major error is acknowledged in the text itself: the “Rockefeller letter” of Chapter 3 was a forgery manufactured by the East German intelligence agency (PDF p.3; the passage itself is in a later part).

Section by section

• Translator’s note (PDF p.3-4 / printed p.iii-iv). Mark Marshall records the translation’s corrections and the Rockefeller-letter forgery, his practice of quoting original English texts (Weizmann’s Trial and Error, García-Granados’ The Birth of Israel) rather than re-translating from Hebrew, the frequency of citation of Knesset Records (Divrei haKnesset, Hebrew only), the provenance of the appendices, and explanations of the Hebrew press and party acronyms (Mapai, Mapam, Maki, aliyah).

• Dedication and publication data (PDF p.5 / printed p.v): the volume is dedicated to the memory of Tzvika Tamir [Lipsky] (1935-1995), a comrade and designer of the cover; first publication Jerusalem 1961, second publication Jerusalem 1999; the non-profit copying condition.

• Second introduction, after an interval of thirty-eight years (PDF p.6-10 / printed p.vi-x). The authors, mathematics students at the Hebrew University in 1957-1961, republish the book unchanged as a historical document although their views changed: at the end of 1962 they participated in founding the Israeli Socialist Organization (Matzpen) and developed a far more extensive principled critique of Zionism — they no longer see the 1948 war as an Israeli liberation struggle against British imperialism, as the book suggests, but as a continuation of the colonizing enterprise of Zionism, and their position on the Soviet Union became much more critical (PDF p.6). The original plan was to show the 1956 invasion was not a “war of no choice” but a contrived war integral to Ben-Gurion’s policy of preferring alliances with colonial powers over compromise with the Arabs; gathering material exposed the secret Ben-Gurion–Abdullah accord of 1948, which violated the Partition Resolution of 29 November 1947: Ben-Gurion robbed the Palestinians of half the area allocated to them, Abdullah the other half, and the accord was intended to prevent a Palestinian state (PDF p.6). The conflict started in 1897, when Zionism claimed Jewish sovereignty over a land whose majority had been Arabs for more than a thousand years; it is a conflict between political Zionism and Arab nationalism, foreseen by Ahad Ha’am in 1891 and acknowledged by Vladimir Jabotinsky in “The Iron Wall” (1923); in 1920 Palestinians numbered 600,000 against 60,000 Jews (PDF p.7). In 1956 Nasser, who had proposed peace with Israel at Bandung in 1955 on condition of compliance with the Partition Resolution, feared the Franco-British invasion plan; Ben-Gurion rejected the proposal as a “sanctimonious accusation” and preferred the secret Sèvres accord of 23 October 1956, under which Israel launched Operation Qadesh on 29 October 1956 and France and Britain would invade Egypt, depose Nasser and retake the Canal, Israel receiving French aircraft, tanks, artillery and air defences for Tel Aviv — and, a footnote added for the English translation records, a French agreement to build a nuclear reactor in Israel (PDF p.7-8). Ben-Gurion denied the collaboration to his dying day and Shimon Peres denied it for 30 years before celebrating it publicly in October 1986 (PDF p.8-9). The introduction restates the book’s root finding — the conflict lies between the Zionist settlement movement and the Palestinians over the lands and independence of Palestine, denied from 1950 to the 1987 Intifada by the Israeli establishment and public, who insisted “there is no Palestinian people” — lists the choices not taken (1936-1939, 1948, 1956, 1967, 1971, 1982, 1987), argues the compromises Zionism made were imposed by foreign powers (Sinai withdrawal 1956, peace with Egypt 1978, Oslo), and concludes that genuine peace requires Israel to change from the state of the Jews of the world to the state of its inhabitants, Arabs and Jews, calling the Oslo Accord an “apartheid” Bantustan-like fraud (PDF p.9-10).

• Epigraphs (PDF p.12 / printed p.xii): Herzl, The Jewish State (1896) — the Jews in Palestine would form “a portion of a rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism” and regulate Turkey’s finances; and Nordau’s Albert Hall speech of 12 July 1920, telling British ministers “We are to stand guard over the Suez Canal for you. We will be the sentry on the route to India” and demanding Britain let the Jews become strong enough for the mission: “Loyalty for loyalty! Faithfulness for faithfulness!”

• Original title page and biblical epigraphs (PDF p.13-14 / printed p.xiii-xiv): the 1961 Bokhan title page; Jeremiah 6:13-15, from which the title is taken, and Micah 3:5-8, against prophets who chant “Peace” while preparing war.

• Introduction [to the first edition] (PDF p.15-16 / printed p.xv-xvi; Tel Aviv, August 1961). Against Ben-Gurion’s attributed saying “What are newspapers? You read and you forget!”, the book assembles facts published in the Israeli press into a coherent picture; Israeli foreign and defence policy is “like an iceberg – nine-tenths are submerged under the surface” (PDF p.15), but what has been published suffices for the broad outlines; “In this book there is no disclosure of astounding secrets. Everything has already been printed, published, read … and forgotten” (PDF p.15). The problem of the Arab population in Israel is expressly left outside the project’s scope. A note explains that the authors’ comments inside cited texts appear in square brackets.

• Chapter 1: “Following Clayton’s Participation in the League’s Meetings” (PDF p.17-43 / printed p.1-27). The chapter asks who the camp against the Yishuv in 1948 was and from whom the war of liberation liberated the Jews. It first quotes the later textbook and official account — Avidor and Spivak (1954), Shiffman (1958), Razieli (1956), Kirschenboim (1957), and Ben-Gurion’s Government Yearbook 1960 foreword and his 15 November 1955 Knesset speech naming Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia as the aggressors — and U. Avnery’s rival formula of a national war between two nations in one country (PDF p.17-20). It then reconstructs the 1948 understanding of Britain’s role: Weizmann’s Trial and Error on the Mandatory’s refusal to admit the UN Committee, permit a Jewish militia or open a port, while Arab irregulars crossed the Allenby Bridge, and his “I shall never understand” — on which the authors comment that Weizmann, the cornerstone of whose outlook was collaboration with Britain (the Etzel and Lehi walls wrote “Down with Pétain Weizmann”), could not admit his outlook’s foundation had collapsed (PDF p.21-22). Ben-Gurion (Davar, 8/1/48) charged Britain with nullifying the Resolution by obstructing the Implementation Committee and encouraging Arab attacks; Haaretz (29/6/48) called the conflict artificial, incited by a third party dissociating itself by propaganda (PDF p.22-23). The authors divide the opponent’s war into three stages — Arab Higher Committee attacks after the Resolution; the Arab League-guided Liberation Army under Qawuqji invading from Syria (Tirat Zvi, Mishmar Ha-‘Emek); and the regular armies’ invasion of 15/5/48 — and quote Ben-Gurion’s 18/2/48 fundraising speech: following the Salah Jaber–Bevin accord and “Clayton’s participation in the League’s meetings”, the borders were opened; the war is “covert and two-faced and is being waged by mercenary forces” of a great power, the League its “pawn” (PDF p.23-25). Rozenblum (Yedioth Aharonoth, 13/5/48) wrote that military England was now waging the war with Arab encouragement, Abdullah’s Legion “even legally” a British army and Brigadier Clayton at the head of the Egyptian battalions; Sharett (Davar, 16/5/48) called the Legion a British military tool and the League an instrument of British influence; Meyerson (Davar, 28/3/48) held the British responsible for every drop of blood shed (PDF p.25-26). Sharett (Knesset, 20/6/49) reconstructed Britain’s UN gambit — expecting no partition decision, it planned to reply “Actually, I wanted to leave the country, but if I am imposed upon to administer, I will do so as I see fit”, followed by another White Paper or Morrison Plan — and Begin (Knesset, 3/5/50) described Abdullah, “on the command of Glubb and Clayton”, destroying Gush Etzion and storming Jerusalem so Bevin could “intervene” and put the surviving remnant into a ghetto (PDF p.27-28). The authors summarize the plan attributed to Clayton, worked out at the Arab Chiefs-of-Staff conference in Bludan: a Legion assault on the Jerusalem–Ramle–Lydda line, an Egyptian armoured column on the Gaza–Jaffa line, the columns meeting at the approaches to Tel Aviv, whereupon Britain would appear as saviour and renew its rule; the Partition vote itself was 33 in favour against 13 opposed, with 10 abstentions, the USSR and USA voting together (PDF p.28). That the war was not Arabs against Jews follows, the authors argue, because a war’s nature is set by the politicians who decide it — in 1948 the governments of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq could make no important decision without the British Foreign Office — and because much of the technical officer corps was British; they add the Ben-Yehuda Street bombing of 22 February 1948 (50 dead, hundreds wounded) attributed to British policemen, the blowing up of The Jerusalem Post’s presses, the freezing of Jewish sterling reserves, petroleum sabotage, and the Anglo-American arms embargo while Transjordan, Egypt and Iraq were supplied “for the purpose of defence against Communism” (PDF p.28-29). An Observer correspondent’s interviews with Israeli wounded (Davar, 22/6/48) and García-Granados’ account of his 26/4/48 prediction to Senator Warren Austin — Britain would “return through the back door on the skirts of Abdullah” — show the understanding was general (PDF p.30-31). The chapter then examines the Arab side: in Iraq, Asaf (Davar, 7/5/48) judged the “great war” on Zionism a complete failure as a diversion, and Cohen’s narrative of the January 1948 uprising against the Portsmouth (Salah Jaber–Bevin) treaty — Baghdad demonstrations of 19 January, the Regent’s repudiation, Jaber’s resignation thirty-two hours after his return on 26 January, hundreds killed and over 400 injured — shows the Iraqi people were preoccupied with imperialism and class exploitation, not with liberating Palestine (PDF p.32-34). In Egypt, Al-Gamahir (7/3/48) and Yusuf Hilmi’s 1955 leaflet describe the Palestine war as a British-plotted diversion from the movement to cancel the 1936 treaty and evacuate British forces, and record that the Egyptian democrats proclaimed the right of a democratic independent State of Israel to exist alongside a Palestinian state and were decimated by the king’s police (PDF p.34-35). The official History of the war of independence records Allon’s Falluja Pocket conversation with Col. Taha — “Do you not think that you have fallen victim to a foreign imperialist scheme supported by its allies in Egypt?” — and Taha’s excited reply that the Egyptians would soon remove the British too; Nasser’s Philosophy of the Revolution (“we were fighting in Palestine, but our dreams were centred in Egypt”; Ahmad Abdul Aziz’s “the biggest battlefield is in Egypt”) confirms the Egyptian officers’ dilemma, which the authors stress was in the mind of an Egyptian commander “and not of only one” (PDF p.37). The authors reject the diversion theory as distinguishing puppet from puppeteer: Faruq, Abdullah and Nuri Said ruled only by Britain’s grace; none of Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia or Yemen had a border dispute with Israel or was harmed by the Partition Plan; the party harmed was Britain, which lost its rule and strategic base in Palestine (PDF p.38). On the Palestinian Arabs, Ben-Gurion himself said twice (8/1/48; 18/2/48) that the majority of the Arabs of Palestine refused to participate despite incitement and coercion — “From Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem they sought peace” — and Shimoni’s Davar Annual survey confirms most village districts were quiet in the first two months; the change in spring 1948 is explained by Husseini incitement and lawlessness, armed self-defence and “error” attacks, the temptation of impunity, the faza’ alarm custom, and principally the widening maelstrom of the war itself (PDF p.39-41). Shimoni’s figures put the Liberation Army at about 8,000 men, of whom only 2,000 [!] were Palestinians — one soldier per 500 of the roughly one million Palestinians, the only people arguably harmed by the Resolution (PDF p.41-42). Avnery’s “backward society” explanation is rejected: Palestinians had been promised independence (45% of the area for about one million people against 55% for about 600,000 Jews); villages such as Araba and Sakhnin resisted Qawuqji’s army armed, the National Liberation League distributed leaflets condemning the invasion as imperialist and calling for a Palestinian Arab state beside a Jewish state (distributors threatened with hanging, and in Tarshiha hanged), and the Communist Parties of Iraq, Syria-Lebanon and Palestine jointly called on Arab soldiers to go home and fight their own leaders (PDF p.42-43). Conclusion: the judgment that the War of Liberation was a war between Jews and Arabs “is inaccurate and misleading, because it depends on the external-military aspect rather than on the internal-political content” (PDF p.43); in essence it was a war of the Jews of Palestine against British rule, so understood in 1948 by Jews and Arabs alike, and the chapter ends asking how these facts became surprising and Britain’s role invisible by 1950-1960 (PDF p.43).

• Chapter 2: “Borders and Refugees” (PDF p.44-62 / printed p.28-46, continuing past this part). Of the conflict’s many faces — the Kinneret fishery, Jordan waters, Mount Scopus, Suez Canal passage, the Arab boycott, infiltration and retaliation — the territorial issue and the refugee problem have primary political importance (PDF p.44). Ben-Gurion opposed specifying borders in the Declaration of Independence (People’s Administration, three days before the declaration; decided 5 to 4 against): “if the UN is not consistent in this matter and launches a war against us, and we frustrate it, then we will get the western Galilee and both sides of the route to Jerusalem” (PDF p.44-45). Israel has no territorial conflict with Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon or Syria, whose ceasefire lines nearly match the Mandate borders; the Israel–Jordan ceasefire line, however, cuts deep into Mandate Palestine, in places about 15 km from the Mediterranean (PDF p.45). The settlers had come not to a desert but to a land populated by the Palestinian Arab people; the Partition Resolution allotted 45% to over a million Palestinian Arabs and 55% to the 600 thousand Jews, and of the two states projected, the Palestinian Arab state never emerged (PDF p.46). Under “After the meeting with Abdullah”, the chapter reconstructs the secret Israel–Abdullah negotiations: reported by Reuters, UP and the French agency during and after the war and vehemently denied by Israel until 1950, they were revealed a decade later by Eytan’s book, Abdallah al-Tal’s memoirs and Dayan’s observations in Yedioth Aharonoth (29/5/59) — meetings in Amman and at the King’s winter palace at al-Shouneh, attended by Eytan, Eliyahu Sasson, Dayan, Yehoshafat Harkabi and others, the envoys arriving in cars or aircraft disguised as British (PDF p.46-47). Al-Tal’s account of the night meeting of 11/12 May 1948: Golda Meyerson was brought to Amman by Muhammad al-Zubati wearing a keffiyeh and aqal; her demands were that the King proclaim peace and not send his army into Palestine, and send a governor to rule the Arab part in accordance with the Partition Resolution, in return for Jewish Agency agreement to the union of the Arab part with the Hashemite Crown; the King rejected the first demand but committed that the Jordanian and Iraqi armies would stop at the Partition Plan border and not cross it (PDF p.47-49). Eytan relates that during the Rhodes armistice talks the substantive negotiations were conducted secretly with the King at Shouneh while the Rhodes delegation performed for outward appearance (PDF p.49). The content, the authors state, was: Abdullah would make peace with Israel, and in return Israel would recognize the annexation of the Palestinian Arab state to Transjordan, not intervene militarily and not raise the matter at the UN — “The Palestinian Arab state had become a chip in Ben-Gurion’s and Abdullah’s bargaining” (PDF p.49). Ben-Gurion’s Knesset denial of 10/3/49 (in reply to Toubi) is quoted against the question who authorized Meir, Dayan and the others if the government never discussed it (PDF p.49-50). Under “‘Overcoming the partition’”: the 3/4/49 armistice was signed with the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” — a name Israel used a full year before the annexation was declared, and before even Britain used it — constituting de facto recognition of Abdullah’s rule over the West Bank; the Knesset debate the day after is quoted across the spectrum: Begin (Herut) on subjugation to Bevin; Bar-Nir’s and Riftin’s (United Workers’ Party/Mapam) motions on recognizing an unrecognized annexation and the lost pact with an independent democratic Arab state, against Ben-Aharon’s wish to move the border eastwards to the Jordan; Sapir (General Zionists) preferring an independent Arab state yet abstaining; Toubi and Vilner (Communist Party) accusing the government of a policy of active opposition to the independent Arab state and of neutralizing Arab forces fighting for it — including the Arab left prisoners found by the IDF in the Egyptian camp at Abu-Ageila, whose flyers had called for a joint Arab-Jewish war against imperialism, and who were transferred to an Israeli detention camp and held for nearly two more years (PDF p.50-55). Livneh (Mapai) replied that the goal of all was “overcoming the Partition” and counted the invader’s hinted abandonment of the 29 November 1947 borders as a political achievement of the negotiations; all non-confidence motions were defeated (PDF p.55). Under “‘The decisive question’”, Sharett’s Knesset statement of 20/6/49 is quoted: a separate Palestinian political unit was the desirable outcome, for contacts, security and freedom from the neighbouring state’s alliance tangle, but the government doubted its power to make it reality, made it no condition of the ceasefire or of peace, and proposed a referendum; the authors conclude that the government chose abandoning the 1947 Resolution and ignoring Palestinian self-determination in exchange for Abdullah’s promise of peace and recognition of the Israeli annexations: Israel spread over about 75% of Palestine and Abdullah annexed the remainder apart from the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip, with Ben-Gurion’s agreement (PDF p.56-58). The map “How the Palestinian state was divided” follows (legend at PDF p.58; image at PDF p.59). Under “Who is an adversary and who is a partner?”: the main problem is that of the Palestinian-Arab people, “whose right to self-determination was denied it by force and by subterfuge” (PDF p.60); the refugees are part of that broader problem; “Israel’s territorial conflict is not with the Arab states, but with the Arabs of Palestine. In the present situation Jordan is not an adversary to Israel, but a partner in plunder” (PDF p.60). Under “Palestine and the Palestinians”: between 29/11/47 and Abdullah’s annexation proclamation of 24/4/50 the Arabs of Palestine did not sit on their hands — the National Liberation League, at first condemned for supporting the Partition Plan, became the most influential body on the Arab street as Britain’s design became clear, with thousands at rallies under the slogans “Down with British imperialism and its servant Abdullah” and “Long live independent and democratic Palestine”; Abdullah’s stage-managed notables’ gatherings in Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron were answered by mass demonstrations; only 24% participated in his joint-parliament elections (French news agency, 12/4/50), and he appointed Palestinian deputies instead (PDF p.60-61). Under “A fateful and worrisome moment with regard to the future”: on 24/4/50 Abdullah proclaimed the annexation; four days later Britain recognized the annexation, extended its military alliance to the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” including the annexed territory, and recognized Israel de jure without recognizing the ceasefire lines as permanent borders, extending its patronage over an act it had covertly initiated (PDF p.61-62). The part ends inside the Knesset opposition debate on the annexation, in Sapir’s speech asking whether the Foreign Ministry’s months of silence meant agreement to the annexation even before its proclamation (PDF p.62).

• Chapter 2 continued: the annexation debate of 3/5/50 (PDF p.63-72 / printed p.47-56). Sapir concludes that the government’s position will be recorded “as one of the most worrisome fateful moments for the future” (PDF p.63); the authors agree the absence of peace is “a direct consequence of the collusion with Abdullah and the agreement to the annexation in 1950” (PDF p.63). Vilner (Maki) calls the annexation problem decisive “for many years to come”, unlike provisional questions dealt with in accordance with Israel’s peace and independence needs and the need to remove as far as possible from Palestine the invaders from the Arab states and the British invaders (PDF p.63). Sharett reads the Foreign Ministry line — the annexation “is not binding on Israel in any way”, the armistice will be faithfully implemented, the status of the areas west of the Jordan “remains an open one” (PDF p.64) — which Yellin-Mor dissects as de facto recognition: the announcement tells Abdullah “you can sleep quietly, we don’t intend to lift a finger”, and itself names the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” (PDF p.64-65). Z. Aren, for the government camp, opposes an independent Arab state absolutely — it would be economically dead, “a parasite on the body of the State of Israel”, likely Mufti-controlled, and its creation would bring pressure to return to the November 1947 borders, which Israel “would resist by military force” (PDF p.65-66). Three factions (General Zionists, Mapam, Maki) propose appealing to the UN; Pinchas Lavon answers that the UN “can be appealed to on the basis of only one document” — the 1947 Resolution — closing, “Where is the political logic in our inviting of our own free will a questionable third party and appointing it judge over all matters related to all the facts that have been created in this period, most of which are not in our disfavour?” (PDF p.67-68); the authors gloss his argument as the Security Council discussing not only the 54% of the territory of the Arab state that was annexed to Transjordan, but also the 44% that was annexed to Israel — the percentages are the authors’ words commenting on Lavon, not Lavon’s (PDF p.68). Sharett’s own June 1949 defence of 29 November (it got Israel the line to Eilat, and “said that in 1948 there should be an Arab state in Palestine!”) is set against Lavon’s warning, the authors noting that Sharett, when he has to, mentions that because of the Partition Resolution the State of Israel was created and the British left Eilat (PDF p.68-69). Under “The friendly enemies”: the New York Times (9/1/50) on Israel and Transjordan deciding everything jointly, their common front against Jerusalem’s internationalization, the London Times (24/11/49) on an agreement over the Holy City, al-Tal’s and Israelis’ mirror accusations over Jerusalem’s partition, and Churchill (27/4/50) naming Weizmann and Abdullah together as “loyal friends of Britain” (PDF p.69-70). The elegies for the assassinated Abdullah in the Israeli press, and the verdict under “Hoist with his own petard”: Israel helped prevent the Arab state and “did not receive peace (not even with Jordan!), nor international recognition of the ceasefire lines as permanent borders”, becoming “the bodyguard of the Hashemite regime” (PDF p.71); the Arab masses — who “do not sign any treaty, but it is their signature that determines the fate of every treaty” — made the bargain untenable, Britain advised proclaiming the annexation without Israel’s explicit agreement, and Dayan and Elath record the British vetoes (Kirkbride) behind the scenes (PDF p.71-72).

• Chapter 2 continued: Kirkbride, Dayan on Abdullah, and the land-purchase continuity (PDF p.73-74 / printed p.57-58). Alec Kirkbride, Britain’s ambassador in Jordan, “was in fact the leader of the state”, playing politically the role Glubb played militarily (PDF p.73). Dayan (Yedioth Aharonoth, 19/6/59) on Abdullah: stuck in a dead end, hated as a traitor sold to the British, “already a political casualty” when the carpenter from Jerusalem shot him in the al-Aqsa mosque on 20 July 1951 (PDF p.73). Faced with the choice, Israel chose the collusion with a king “who ruled at Britain’s pleasure and was hated by his subjects” over Palestinian self-determination (PDF p.73) — “a natural continuation of the Zionist policy of acquiring lands from the effendis with no thought for the peasants”, except that the new deal was national in scope: “whereas then many peasants were left without land, now an entire nation was left without political independence” (PDF p.73-74).

• Chapter 2 continued: “The three governments recognize that …” — the Tripartite Declaration (1950) (PDF p.74-78 / printed p.58-62). One month after the annexation, on 26/5/50, Britain, France and the USA declared they would act, within and outside the UN, against any violation of frontiers or armistice lines, and would weigh arms applications by the region’s defence needs (PDF p.74). Ben-Gurion received it with “special satisfaction” as quasi-recognition of the expanded borders (PDF p.75), although in 1948 he had told L. Frank “between a larger territory that we acquire by force of arms and a smaller territory that we are given … we choose the second path” and in 1949 admitted the UN had not approved the expanded borders (PDF p.75). The authors: by not appealing to the UN over the annexation Israel “lost the international organization as a guarantor for Israel’s borders” (PDF p.76); Britain initiated the Declaration to legitimize the status quo without conspiring alone, and Israel’s announcement mentioned nothing of the clause envisioning Israel in “a military alignment of the Western bloc in the Cold War” (PDF p.76); the Arab states rejected it on 25/6/50, Jordan among the signatories because, the authors note parenthetically, it “evidently could not evade signing” without appearing to stand against the whole Arab world (PDF p.76). Sapir analyses its negative side (a sphere of influence proclaimed without Israel as a party, an address that will act “in its time of need, and not in our time of need”) and its positive side (partial recognition of the status quo) (PDF p.77); Mapam and Maki attack the Cold War alignment, Herut the frozen borders, Lavon defends the Powers’ commitment to the existing borders (PDF p.78).

• Chapter 2 continued: the status quo undermines itself; Eden, Ben-Gurion and Nasser on the UN resolutions (PDF p.78-83 / printed p.62-67). The government’s assumption — the Western bloc decisive for years, millions absorbed, faits accomplis, the Arabs of Palestine forgetting their homeland — is answered by Bernstein (4/2/52): “the longer the existing situation continues the more the inclination to undermine it strengthens” (PDF p.78-79). contrary to the Israeli government’s assumption that time would heal the problem, it was the West itself, supposed to preserve the status quo under its declaration, that brought the discussion back to its starting point, with the intention of winning over the hearts of the Arabs, in Eden’s Guildhall speech of 9/11/55, which proposes a compromise between the ceasefire lines and the Partition lines (PDF p.79-80); Ben-Gurion, replying through a prearranged question (15/11/55), answers that what contradicts the UN resolutions is Egypt’s army in Gaza and Transjordan’s annexation of 6,682 km² — while his own 1960 Yearbook figures give Israel 20,662 km² against the 14,920 allotted, 4,912 taken by the IDF and 467 by the Transjordan accords, “forgot[ting] to mention the relationship between the annexation of 5,742 square kilometres to the State of Israel and these resolutions” (PDF p.80-81). Nasser (25/11/55) replies that Eden’s speech recognized the right of the Palestinian people whose land was robbed while it was under British occupation, and that no single Arab state may discuss the refugees separately (PDF p.81-82). Sharett (4/2/52) is quoted: reliance on the 1947 borders resolution or the 1949 Jerusalem resolution “is a sword-thrust into our flesh” (PDF p.83). Since 1958, after Suez and the Iraq revolution, Egypt and Iraq regularly raise a Palestinian state, army and government-in-exile; Israel’s plan remains conserving the status quo by settlement and Hasbara (PDF p.83-84).

• Chapter 2 continued: the refugee problem — Eytan’s “facts” against the record (PDF p.84-92 / printed p.68-76). Sharett (7/12/53): “There are facts that penetrate deeply, which make an impression that no hasbara can conceal. … All the camps of Jewish displaced people have been removed, but camps have been set up for Arab refugees” (PDF p.84). Eytan (Between Israel and the nations, p.123, p.112) blames Arab propaganda and states “the facts as they are”: the Arab states ordered the villagers to leave until the storm passed, promising them the Jews’ houses; “The refugee problem would not exist at all if the Arab states had not gone to war in 1948 and if they had not ordered these people to leave their homes” (PDF p.85-86). The book’s counter-record begins with Amin-Salim Jarjora (spelled Jarjora here; Amin Jarjura) in the first Knesset (20/6/49): the refugees were “exiled from their neighbourhoods, Their lands and their homeland under conditions of fear, terror and the direct and indirect use of force”, and were expelled from Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberias, Acre and Beisan before 15/5/48, before the Mandate forces’ eyes (PDF p.86-87). Deir Yassin, 9 April 1948: Etzel and Lehi’s attack, “effectively a pogrom”, 200 residents slaughtered including about 150 women, children, babies and old people, survivors paraded through Jerusalem; the Hagana’s own announcement (Davar, 12/4/48) said the village had not attacked and the attack had “no military value”; Lehi’s paper boasted the terror flight it caused in Malha, Kolonia and Beit-Iqsa; the IDF history says the attack was an easy one in which the attackers nevertheless sustained losses, especially in the battle over the mukhtar’s house, and concedes about 200 killed and that Arab publicity of the massacre itself facilitated the flight (PDF p.87-89). Argov’s Knesset exchange with Ben-Eliezer (“How many Deir Yassins did you do?”) and Lehi’s reminders (Tubias, the Abu-Laban orchard, the Semiramis hotel, Wadi-Joz) follow (PDF p.89-90). Al Hamishmar (8/6/48) protested the Hagana’s planned expulsions and the treatment of the friendly village Zarnuqa like hostile Yavne — “not the action of “irregular” forces, but a calculated policy of the authorized Jewish institutions” (PDF p.91). Haolam Hazeh (15/8/59) quotes Dalet Plan of 10 March 1948: “The destruction of villages (burning, blowing up and mining the ruins) especially in settlements that we are not able to permanently control”, and discussion of expelling urban populations — “That order was given before the Arab armies invaded Israel” (PDF p.92).

• Chapter 2 concluded: Khirbet Khizeh and the expulsions of 1949-1959 (PDF p.92-98 / printed p.76-82). S. Yizhar’s story (fiction) is quoted at length: the operational order to “assemble the inhabitants … load them onto transports, and convey them across our lines; blow up the stone houses, and burn the huts”, the settler-to-come Moishe (“Immigrants of ours will come to this Khirbet what’s its name … and they’ll take this land and work it”), the narrator’s “We came, we shot, we burned; we blew up, expelled, drove out, and sent into exile. What in God’s name were we doing in this place!” and “The Spandau gun never gave us any rights”, and the expelled woman and child whose weeping, grown, “could only become a viper inside him” (PDF p.93-96, from the story’s 2008 English translation, pp.8-9, 101-104, 107-111). Yizhar the Mapai MK did not oppose the bills legalizing such actions, but “the child described in his story is now twenty years old. He and his friends did not forget … The Jews did not forget the Land of Israel during two thousand years of exile, so why should the Arabs forget it over thirteen years?” (PDF p.96). Under “They left of their own free will”: Fardi and Einan (about 500, mid-February 1949) and Kfar-Yasif (700, 28 February 1949) expulsions; Abu-Ghosh (7/7/50, a hundred residents to “an unknown destination”); Majdal, 17/8/50 — 2,000 residents, food and employment withheld, signed declarations of departure “of their own will”, the last expelled by force on 11 October; Eban telling the UN the residents “left of their own will” on the strength of those declarations; 13 villages between Wadi Ara and Umm al-Fahem (February 1951); Baqara and Ganan [Qanan] (30/10/56, 103 residents expelled to Syria, fields burnt, UN observers refused access); Bedouin expulsions in 1959 reversed only under UN pressure (PDF p.96-98). The chapter ends: flight in war and Husseinite, Higher Committee and Mandate propaganda are true but not the whole truth — “Were there not Deir-Yassins and Khirbet Hiz’ahs and General Staff orders with their known clauses? … Even if the Arab states alone were responsible for the creation of the refugee problem (and that is by no means true) does that nullify the right of the refugees to return to their homeland?” (PDF p.98).

• Chapter 3: “Israel and the Powers (1948-1955)” — the Powers in 1948 and the Czech arms (PDF p.99-105 / printed p.83-89). The chapter surveys Israel’s “orientation”. The USA supported partition and recognized Israel de facto, but on 19 March 1948 Senator Austin proposed suspending partition for a trusteeship — Weizmann: “fatal to our long nurtured hopes” (PDF p.99); Sharett (30/5/51) calls it a “180 degree turn” and “a very grave blow” (PDF p.100); Marshall warned Shertok not to come to the USA for help when it got hard, the USA threatened sanctions, and Shertok was ordered to counter-threaten that sanctions would push the Jewish state “into the arms of the Soviet Union” (PDF p.100-101, via Jon Kimche in Reynolds News, Yedioth Aharonoth, 9/5/48). France renewed the American arguments (Weizmann), withheld normal relations (Ben-Gurion, Davar, 4/8/48) and would not support Israel’s UN membership (Eban) (PDF p.101). “Thus in the spring of 1948 not only the British, but also the USA and France opposed the UN Resolution” (PDF p.101). Of the Powers supporting the November decision “only the Soviet Union still insisted on the assertion of the United Nations authority” (Weizmann), and Molotov was the first foreign minister to recognize Israel officially (PDF p.102). Under “The ‘miraculous’ weapons”: the US embargo “harmed only Israel” while Britain armed the Arab armies and France armed Syria; Sharett’s unanswered question — “who extended a hand to it in its time of hardship?” (15/6/49) — is answered by the Czech deal, signed on a commercial basis without political conditions (PDF p.102-103). Ben-Gurion’s preface calls the first shipment (night of 31/3, for Operation Nahshon) arrival “by a miracle”; the IDF history specifies Czechoslovakia, the ship Norah with 200 heavy machine-guns and 4,300 rifles, the “sky-train”, the ATG set up 1/7/48, Messerschmitts approaching 20, three Flying Fortresses acquired in America staged through Czechia, pilots trained there (PDF p.103-104). Dori called the Czech arms’ arrival the most impressive event of his term but did not name their source in 1960; the British Foreign Office reminded Eban of them on 13/10/55 (PDF p.104). The arms, negotiated with a decisive role for the Palestinian Communist Party, reached the illegal Hagana a month and a half before the State; the Czech government was “the only one that agreed, despite all the Western protests, to sell arms to the fledgling state, to train its pilots and paratroopers” — smuggled American bombers and American dollars from individuals are not Western government aid (PDF p.104-105).

• Chapter 3 continued: Western pressure — the Line 31 ultimatum and the Sinai withdrawal (PDF p.105-109 / printed p.89-93). The American “Line 31” ultimatum (Israel to concede the Negev south of the 31st Parallel, including Beersheva) nearly succeeded; Zizling (31/10/50) credits its rejection to practical dependence on the USSR at the UN and support from Poland and Czechia (PDF p.105-106). Yitzhak Sadeh’s testimony (20/2/51, in the Attorney General’s trial of Kol Ha’am): at the end of 1948 Al-Arish was undefended and the Egyptian army trappable; the Negev Brigade was ordered to withdraw 130 kilometres from Al-Arish and Abu-Ageila to Auja al-Hafir, “a withdrawal … that had no strategic basis”, and at the critical moment in the Rafah battle he was ordered to cease fire; brigade commander Nahum Sarig’s daily order said “the ceasefire rescued the enemy from complete defeat”, and Sadeh confirms the withdrawal twice saved the Egyptian enemy from complete defeat (PDF p.106-108). The reason, from US envoy James McDonald (My Mission in Israel 1948-1951, pp.116-124): Britain’s threat to invoke its 1936 treaty with Egypt and enter the war unless Israeli troops withdrew from Egyptian soil, transmitted and sharply backed by Washington in the President’s name (“grave consequences”, “review of our attitude”, “no desire to act drastically if”); Sharett took the paraphrase down word for word, white-faced; Ben-Gurion called the incursion a “tactical [!] operation”; the first withdrawal order was issued the day the cable arrived, and by Sunday, January 2nd, “not an Israeli hoof remained in Egypt” (PDF p.108-109).

• Chapter 3 continued: “An ally in a future world war” and “Non-Alliance” (PDF p.109-119 / printed p.93-103). The authors insist on the gap, from the State’s establishment to early 1951, between declared and actual policy (PDF p.109). The Zionist leadership’s pro-American line ascended during the Second World War — Asaf: “instead of England-Zion, came America-Zion” (Davar, 2/5/52) (PDF p.110). General Bradley’s memorandum, reported in Haaretz (6/4/1948), analysed the Hebrew Yishuv’s military potential “as an ally in a future world war” as part of “broader military forces”; a senior State Department official told Haaretz’s Gelblum (4/6/53) that in 1947 a memorandum in Ben-Gurion’s and the Jewish Agency’s name was submitted to Secretary of State Dean Acheson: if America supported a Jewish state, “that state would be willing to integrate itself into a regional framework” — “a synonym for General Bradley’s “broader military forces”, that is, the military alliances that the USA was striving to create in preparation for a “future world war”” (PDF p.110-111). Lavon (10/5/54): the tie with “the great democratic states of the world … will never be broken, there is no other tie with which we can replace this basic tie” — said openly in 1954, not 1949, because Israel still relied on Eastern-bloc support and public opinion was unripe for an anti-Soviet line (religious MK Goldrath in 1949 called friendship with Britain and the USA “heretical” and admitted “if not for Russia, the State of Israel would not have been born”; Mapam’s Hazan called the USSR “our second homeland”) (PDF p.111-112). Publicly the first government’s principles promised friendship “especially with the United States and the Soviet Union”, and Sharett defined the policy as “Non-participation in a bloc aimed against any one of the member-states of the UN; not to permit any state to establish bases in the territory of the State of Israel” (Kol Ha’am, 15/3/49) (PDF p.112-113); privately, a high official told McDonald’s Knox Israel “is oriented toward the West politically and culturally”, the State Council secretly declared “Israel sees itself as a Western nation and its fate is tied to the West” (Strellson, via Al Hamishmar, 18/4/49), and Ha-Dor backed joining the Western “Mediterranean Pact” (PDF p.113). The “double bookkeeping” embarrasses the government over guest Henry Morgenthau’s public call for a Middle East defence treaty against Soviet aggression (Vilner’s protest, 21/1/50; Ben-Gurion’s evasion that a guest’s opinions are “his private business alone”) and over Fred Harris, the American citizen serving as chief military adviser with access to all IDF information without an oath, whose service Ben-Gurion in writing called “a blessing” and refused to terminate — the question and answer omitted from Knesset Records and published via the Kol Ha’am trial pamphlet (PDF p.114-116). Under “The beginning of the “independent” policy”: the May 1950 Tripartite announcement began non-alignment’s end; the USSR had not changed — it remained consistent on partition and supported the December 1949 Jerusalem internationalization resolution, Tzarefkin calling for an independent Arab state in the other part; Sharett (4/1/50) explains Soviet support as its own interest, “to uproot the British regime from this country”, whose price “could exact a price from our friendship” (PDF p.116-118); Sharett’s point is that the support had positive value precisely because it was in the Soviet Union’s own interest, and that the Soviet Union did not invent partition but accepted it as the sole and shortest path to removing the British regime (PDF p.117-118). “It was none other than Israel that changed its position”: “the collusion with Abdullah, which crushed the rights of the Palestinian Arab people, forced the government to forsake the principle of partition and to replace it with the principle of conserving the status quo; to forsake the UN … and to replace it with the governments of the USA, Britain and France”, enlisting Israel, “not against its will!”, in the Cold War, and making it “the most conservative actor in the region, the Last of the Mohicans of the lost Western cause” (PDF p.118). Coalition members still declare neutrality (Nurock; Harari: “nearly 99% of its members are united in non-alignment”) (PDF p.118-119); non-alignment ended formally in the UN Korea debate at the end of January 1951 — Medzini and Gelblum in Haaretz record the backing away, and Gelblum (2/2/51) that the vote lost Israel “that degree of prestige and esteem that it had enjoyed up to now from the Soviet bloc” and strengthened the Arab claim “that we are foreigners in the East” (PDF p.119; Gelblum’s continuation falls in the next part).

• Chapter 3 continued: the end of non-alignment and the economic factor (PDF p.120-124 / printed p.104-108). Gelblum’s continuation (Haaretz, 25/2/51): two decisions ended non-alignment — Israel’s invitation to the “Free World” food-and-goods supply organization and General Sir Brian Robertson’s visit — beginning the “independent” policy under which Israel would consider its steps only in relation to the West; the authors gloss that “independence” as economic subjugation, the degree of participation in Western plans set by the extent of American assistance (PDF p.120). Gelblum (2/2/51): Israel could not diverge from the American line while taking US contributions, bond sales and a hoped-for Congressional gift double what India was refused, and might be asked to join a regional organization; leaders should prepare the people for “the bitter truth” (PDF p.121). Section 12 of the 1949 first American loan agreement ($100 million) obliged Israel, while notes were outstanding, to deliver detailed economic data — prices, wages, budgets, money printing, reserves in government and private [!] hands, balance of payments, debts — to the Import-Export Bank at intervals of no more than three months; “The government of Israel suppressed that section when it published all the other sections of the agreement” (PDF p.121-122). John Hagerty, head of the Aid Administration, whose signature was required to spend a cent of the money, is “in effect the real finance minister of Israel” and its real development minister (Davar, 10/2/58); Agriculture Minister Dayan had to ask him to raise the egg-and-poultry export quota, and US Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson refused the request in mid-1960 — “The request and its rejection embody the extent of Israel’s independence” (PDF p.122-123). The New York Forward (9/6/55) records that nothing in Israel was secret from the State Department and that the configuration of political forces in Israel mattered to Washington because its aid should fall “into the right hands”; Haaretz (26/10/53) protested presenting the grant as a mere market factor, and Davar (21/10/53) was caught out when Washington delayed the grant to force a halt to the Jordan Canal work demanded by UN observation chief General Benike [as printed] (PDF p.123-124).

• Chapter 3 continued: A hooked fish needs no bait — the Rockefeller letter (PDF p.125-129 / printed p.109-113). The book quotes at length the secret January 1956 letter attributed to Nelson Rockefeller to President Eisenhower, which reached Eastern-bloc intelligence, was photographed in Neues Deutschland, denied by Washington, and quoted by The Times, Le Monde and the BBC — “that fact alone suffices to certify the credibility of the document” (PDF p.125); the translator’s footnote on the same page records the letter “was subsequently revealed to have been a forgery, fabricated by the East German intelligence agency” (PDF p.125). As quoted (Kol Ha’am, 5-7/3/57): economic aid won access to Iranian oil and brought Iran’s foreign policy under US control and into the Baghdad Pact; military alliances must be consolidated because the USA’s rubber, magnesium, chrome, zinc, copper, oil, tin, aluminium and “super-strategic” materials (uranium above all) come from underdeveloped Asia and Africa; aid should flow through alliance channels, with modest conditions at first and political and military rewards later; Aswan financing would keep Egypt dependent for a long period; anti-communist governments already allied need mostly military grants — “A hooked fish needs no bait” — while neutral countries get civilian aid that will place key economic positions in US hands and lay foundations, through private investment in opposition groups, for a new orientation, and colonial dependencies get support for anti-colonial businessmen lest nationalism escape US control (PDF p.126-129). The authors place Israel in the classification: third type until 1948, second (“neutrals”) from 1948 to mid-1950/early 1951 (PDF p.129). Congressional hints of Israel’s intended role follow: McCormack (3/4/51) — Israel “can serve as a workshop to supply Western defence forces in the Middle East” — and Senator Paul Douglas (28/8/51) on the Israeli army fighting “more effectively for democracy” than anywhere dollars could go (PDF p.129-130).

• Chapter 3 continued: the Joint Middle-Eastern Command, the Zionist memorandum and the 1952 military-aid accord (PDF p.130-141 / printed p.114-125). Israeli ministers announced readiness for a regional alliance before any invitation; Sharett justified a “Joint Middle-Eastern Command” by the region’s “absence of internal peace” and “remoteness of democracy” obliging concern “for the fate of the entire region in the event of a world war” (Knesset, 4/11/51) — the authors read both this and the Tripartite Declaration stance as bids for a guarantee of the status quo and recognition of the ceasefire lines as permanent borders (PDF p.130-131). The invitation was late: the State Department turned to the Arabs, especially Egypt, and passed Israel over, conditioning its participation on concessions — United Press reported Monnett Davis demanding the Negev, Eilat, the port of Haifa and border revision; Mikonis warned of this in the Knesset (4/11/51) and Ben-Eliezer (Herut) complained the Powers could make arrangements with Israel “in any case, the State of Israel is too dependent on them” (PDF p.132-133). Dulles told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 1956: “The USA never seriously considered a military alliance with Israel” and, if Israel attacked the Arab states, “it cannot count on the help of the United States” (PDF p.134). Ben-Gurion offered at Chicago (29/8/51): “We are the only nation south of Turkey that is willing and able to fight in the defence of human liberty” (PDF p.134). After the Command came to nothing, arms were sought through the American Zionist Council’s memorandum to Congress (Haaretz, 11/4/52; authorship attributed in Israel to Abba Eban), which proposed Israel’s services for Western military interests, defined Israel as an enemy of the Soviet Union, disclosed secret Israeli security-budget figures, and proposed parallel American aid to the Arab states; Nahum Goldmann confirmed the memorandum to the Zionist Executive in May 1952 and neither the Executive nor the government dissociated itself from it (PDF p.135-136). Sharett (30/7/52) said openly Israel had “requested, were requesting and would request military assistance from any possible source, including of course the government of the USA”; Ben-Aharon (27/8/52) set out the 23/7/52 accord (signed 1/7/52, in force 23/7/52, published only on 25/5/61): even arms bought for full price were under primary US jurisdiction as to use, Israel was obliged to supply third parties on request, and under the Mutual Defence Law the US Secretary of Defense would determine, control and station a military committee over the supplies and training — “The Secretary of Defense of the United States will be in control” (PDF p.136-139). The official US table submitted to the Senate by Senator Ellender (14/3/60) shows direct military aid transfers 1950-1959 of $49,761,000toIraq,$11,102,000 to Jordan, $7,050,000toLebanonand$385,000 to Israel, all of Israel’s in 1959 — “in the years 1950 to 1958, Israel did not receive … not even one cent of the American military aid”, yet its commitments remained in force and determined Eastern-bloc policy towards it (PDF p.140-141).

• Chapter 3 concluded: “A bomb and a request”, Bonds, Dulles and Byroade, the Lavon affair and the French orientation (PDF p.141-156 / printed p.125-140). After the February 1953 bomb at the Soviet embassy in Tel Aviv and the USSR’s break in relations, Eban appealed in Washington for material and spiritual [!] aid against the Soviet hostility campaign (Davar, 15/2/53); the break did not strengthen but rather weakened the Israeli bargaining position (PDF p.141-142). Sharett told the Sunday Times (26/1/53) Israel for the first time feared war with the Soviet Union more than a second round with the Arabs, and asked Britain and the USA to prepare its joining the proposed defense organization with strategic investments in roads, ports and airports (PDF p.142). Bonds propaganda addressed American Jews as patriots: the Chicago Sentinel (January 1952) argued Israel’s 200,000-man army defended Arab oil, African air bases and Belgian Congo uranium, saving American boys’ lives and dollars (PDF p.143-144). At the March 1953 Independence Loan conference Morgenthau said Israel would mobilize about 200,000 soldiers alongside the USA and Eban agreed he had underestimated the capacity; Kol Ha’am was closed for 10 days for its editorial, the story was never officially denied, and Ben-Gurion answered Sneh’s Knesset question (25/3/53) by calling the report a journalistic fabrication and saying of the British minister White’s similar 200,000 figure, “I am hearing of this for the first time” (PDF p.144-146); by September 1953 Morgenthau’s estimate had risen to a quarter of a million (PDF p.146). Dulles’s televised speech of 2/6/53 buried the Command plan, supported Jerusalem’s internationalization and the return of 800,000 refugees, and called for an “impartial” US policy; Le Monde (21/10/53) explained that, secure of the hooked fish, Dulles minimized aid to Israel and courted the Arabs, Israel having lost its balancing advantages when Soviet relations were cut (PDF p.147-148). Sharett replied that “Friendship with the USA … is one of the foundation stones of Israeli policy” (16/6/53) and obtained renewal of Soviet relations on 20/7/53 with a promise that “Israel will not be a partner in any alliance or accord directed against the Soviet Union” — credible, the authors note, only because the efforts to join such an alliance had failed (PDF p.148-149). Byroade (Dayton, April 1954, via Haaretz, 12/4/54) declared US policy simply “pro-American” and the Middle East strategically supreme because “without the Middle East’s oil our industry and that of our allies would be paralyzed”; the table of oil-production shares shows the USA rising from 13.9% (1938) to 59.0% (1952) against Britain’s fall from 79.6% to 33.0%, with 64% of reserves in American companies (UN survey, 6/7/1956) (PDF p.149-150). Sharett and Sneh sparred over the Karachi-Ankara axis and Baghdad (10-11/5/54); over Suez-base evacuation and US aid to Egypt, Sharett (30/8/54) could only denounce discrimination, and Begin answered that “Communism is not the reason for your policies – it is the pretext” for an American bid to remove Britain, proposing instead that “military operations are required while there is still time” (PDF p.151-154). The chapter points to the late-1954 “unfortunate affair” — the Lavon Affair, described in the translator’s footnote — as “a consistent, natural and contiguous extension of all the policies that preceded it”, citing Newsweek (9/1/61) because censorship barred detail (PDF p.154), and to Dayan’s uninvited, self-funded July 1954 US visit alongside the invited Arab chiefs of staff: “To us it feels more like spit” (PDF p.155). Failure of the American orientation produced two changes: “activism”, Herut’s line adopted by the government after Dulles’s visit and climaxing in Operation Sinai, and from 1955 the French orientation — France alone “no longer had anything to lose in the Arab world”, its North African war letting it profit by diverting Arab strength through Israeli activism (PDF p.155-156).

• Chapter 4: “Israel and Changes in the Arab World” — decolonization and the shortsightedness charge (PDF p.157-163 / printed p.141-147, continuing). The period from 1948 is one of far-reaching transformation: the deterioration and collapse of the colonial system, tabulated (Kol Ha’am, 21/10/57) in the wave of independences 1945-1957 from Vietnam, Korea and Indonesia through India, Pakistan, Israel (1948) to Ghana and Malaya (1957), a table already outdated when printed, and extended by states breaking colonialism’s economic ties (Cuba, Iraq) (PDF p.157-159). Mapai professor Baruch Azania had asked in the Knesset (5/11/51) how Israel could stand alone in a Western zone or replace the West’s influence and the Arab feudal leaders — spoken four months after Abdullah’s assassination, eight months before Egypt’s Free Officers revolution, less than five years before Suez nationalization and less than seven before the Iraqi revolution: “a political error fraught with disaster” (PDF p.159-160). The decision to forgo the Arab state, agree to its annexation to Abdullah’s puppet kingdom and substitute the Western Powers’ seal for the UN’s “could only be based on the assumption that Western control of the Middle East would continue for a long time”; in a colonial area, policy based on current reality is the most unrealistic policy — the Red Queen’s race in Through the Looking Glass (PDF p.160-161). Mikonis warned (4/11/51) that the government, “with disastrous shortsightedness, with an utter lack of national responsibility, is these days positioning the State of Israel against the movement for national liberation in the Middle East” (PDF p.161). Egypt’s (1952) and Iraq’s (1958) revolutions, unlike Syria’s 1948-1953 coups, were long-term popular struggles: a million demonstrated in Cairo on 14/11/52, and the 16 August general strike after Suez nationalization spanned Morocco to Iraq, stopping economic activity and the flow of oil; the fruit plucked in Iraq in 1958 took forty years to ripen, with uprisings every four or five years since the British takeover, until the army — the regime’s last prop — turned and struck those who clung to it (PDF p.162-163).

• Chapter 4 continued: “flawed aspirations”, the sidelines claim and Bandung (PDF p.163-167 / printed p.147-151). Liberation movements are bound to neutrality and refusal of the subjugating Powers’ strategic plans; Eban (Paris, 30/1/52) called Arab and Muslim national aspirations “flawed” for their “unwillingness to integrate into the network of international interests, including security arrangements” (PDF p.163). Ben-Gurion admitted (2/8/49) the East sees Israelis “as agents of subjugation and exploitation for the leaders of Europe”, a view he called a tragic “distortion”; half a year earlier (4/3/1949) he had declared: “It is not the business of the State of Israel to fight imperialism. Its business is to fight for its independence and growth” (PDF p.164-165). The authors: in this region the sideliner is seen as collaborating, and Israel did not in fact stand aside. At Bandung (April 1955, 29 Asian-African states) Israel was not invited and a Palestine resolution drafted by Nasser was passed (its treatment is deferred to another chapter); the Progressive Party’s Zmanim editorial (21/4/55), quoted at length, records the Foreign Ministry’s Western school defeating the Eastern school — Israel permitted itself to be “bad Middle Easterners” as long as it could be no less Western than the West itself, destined as vanguard [read: rearguard] of Western influence — and calls Bandung’s joint Asian position, the refugee problem’s centrality and Israel’s political and spiritual isolation a “grim lesson”: “Breaching the walls of isolation that have been erected around us is an imperative condition for the perpetuation of our existence in this region” (PDF p.165-167).

• Chapter 4 continued: isolation idealized, and the UN voting record (PDF p.167-177 / printed p.151-161, continuing past this part). Bandung’s spectacle repeated at Cairo’s Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference, Addis Ababa (June 1960) and Casablanca (January 1961); instead of breaking isolation, policy idealized it as “a people that dwelleth alone” — Ben-Gurion (Davar, 1/6/56) on Israel’s uniqueness and constant struggle with its neighbours, softened after Suez by redefining Israel as “a Mediterranean state” rather than only Middle Eastern, which the authors extend mockingly to an “Atlantic state” (PDF p.167-169). Ben-Gurion (Histadrut Council, 6/12/56) attributed Asian-African hostility to peoples “foreign to the Biblical tradition” and to a passing “childhood disease of youthful independence” — every white nation suspect — to be cured by personal contacts and cooperation; the authors answer that Israel’s aid (which does not appear in the government budget) is mostly “a kind of new camouflage for Western economic influence”, that contacts reach only Western clients, that Guinea’s 1959 UN party invited every delegation except Israel’s after Israel voted for the French Sahara atomic explosion, and that Israel’s delegations act on the maxim “Israel should be seen not as the western edge of Asia, but as the eastern edge of Europe” (PDF p.169-170). Under “Consistency and loyalty”: from the 1949 abstention on Indonesia (passive support for Holland, justified lest Israel anger the West) and the August 1961 non-vote on the Afro-Asian Bizerte motion, “a straight and consistent line” runs through votes against Tunisia (1952, 1953, with France and South Africa), against continuing the UN committee on racial discrimination in South Africa (1953, 1954 — the committee was dismantled), with France against Africans on Algeria (1956, 1958 — in 1958 one vote would have reversed the result), on the decisive 1957 Portuguese-colonies procedural vote, the 1958 abstention on Tanganyika and Rwanda-Urundi independence, the 1959 stand against Africa on Cameroon, and the 1959 vote with the minority against barring French Sahara atomic tests — after which Dayan sent a congratulatory telegram to General Challe (PDF p.170-172). Le Figaro’s special friendship edition (May 1960) counts 10 UN votes supporting the French position: “Israel has always been on the side of France in the important votes in the UN, and especially regarding Algeria” — loyalty, the authors comment, to French imperialism, not to France (PDF p.172). Israel also voted against Indonesia on West Irian (end 1954), and Sharett opposed Persia’s oil-concession struggle and Egypt’s Suez-evacuation struggle at the UN; Holland proposed a citation for Eban and Moshe Tov “for their work in the UN General Assembly for Holland and against the claims of Indonesia” (Maariv, 27/6/58) (PDF p.173). Riftin (30/11/53; 15/6/53) and Barzilai (18/10/55) protested a delegation “sometimes more Catholic than the Pope, it is more devoutly pro-Western than states that are members of in the Atlantic alliance itself” (PDF p.173-174). Ben-Aharon (Unity of Labour Central Committee, 21/4/58) criticized only the excess: Najjar’s Algeria speech supplied a colonial “philosophy” even Pinot did not use, and Israel voted against all the Indian disarmament amendments — Ben-Aharon supports the pro-Western line in principle and asks only for camouflage; Israel, the authors conclude, “willingly took upon itself the role of supplying a philosophy to justify the demands of the West” (PDF p.174-176). Most Israelis, despite a Carnegie Foundation study claiming public agreement, have no idea how their delegation votes; the Casablanca African summit resolution (UP, 7/1/61), signed by Nkrumah as well as Nasser, “condemns Israel as an instrument in the service of colonialism, not only in the Middle East, but also in Africa and Asia” — the part ends mid-argument against the claim that Nasser manufactured that verdict (PDF p.177).

• Chapter 4 concluded: the Casablanca verdict defended, the China vote, and “A rampart against Asia” (PDF p.178-181 / printed p.162-165). The Casablanca resolution states facts: Israel voted with France against Algeria, in favour of the Sahara explosion, and with the Belgians against Lumumba’s policy — “Is there no substance to these facts?” (PDF p.178). Sometimes Israel is itself tricked: in October 1952 it voted against putting Tunisia and Morocco on the General Assembly agenda at Acheson’s request, and the USA then changed its vote at the last minute to acquire prestige while preventing the discussion (PDF p.178). Under “Who gives orders to the delegation?”: on China’s admission the delegation voted in 1953-1954 against discussion, contrary to the Foreign Ministry’s own briefing (whose main point was not to vote against admitting the People’s Republic) and to what Mapai’s leaders had promised the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee; the Ministry’s announcement of 23/9/54 pleaded a changed “parliamentary situation”, and Maariv (17/8/59) supplies the mechanism — about 20 UN countries vote along US lines because “American diplomacy has sufficient means to persuade them” (PDF p.178-179). Occasional non-votes with the USA attest no independence, America giving its satellites freedom on unimportant issues (M. A., Davar, 14/3/52; PDF p.180). The chapter closes with the outlook’s essence: Dayan’s mission — the Jewish nation as “a rock in this part of the world, an extension of the Western world, on which the waves of Nasserite Arab nationalism will be smashed” (Haaretz, 12/12/58) — is Herzl’s 1896 “rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism” restated; the previous such outpost ended with the fall of Frankish Acre on 19/5/1291 (PDF p.180-181).

• Chapter 5: “Reprisal Actions” — the border, the causes, and the “watchdog” (PDF p.182-187 / printed p.166-171). The 591-kilometre ceasefire lines were never quiet: nightly patrols, refugees returning to harvest their own crops and visit families, smuggling, robbery, and Hefer’s popular song “The Patrols” — “our feet cross a little more” (PDF p.182-183). Ben-Gurion’s figures (Knesset, 2 January 1956) trace the focus shifting from Jordan (111 of 137 Israeli casualties in 1951; 114 of 147 in 1952; 124 of 162 in 1953) to Egypt (192 of 258 in 1955, by Fedayeen groups transferred to Gaza after the Suez conflict); the authors note the figures exclude casualties on the other side, and that such movement “can be only the result of initiative and planning”, its causes mainly political — a state can manufacture tension by concentrating forces or patrolling tanks without crossing the line (PDF p.183-184). Against the school-textbook account (Katan: Arab leaders brandish swords to divert the oppressed) and Ben-Gurion’s activist formulation of 2/11/55 (“If the ceasefire lines are opened on the other side to terrorists and killers, they will no longer be closed to defenders and guardians”), the chapter examines reprisals as political acts: a company-strength cross-border force with armour, artillery and sometimes aircraft is decided by the political echelon, and its timing must be politically appropriate — the “opportune moment” when a Power wants pressure on an Arab state (PDF p.185-186). Gershom Schocken (Haaretz, 30/9/51), quoted in full: the feudal regimes’ unreliability makes a strengthened Israel convenient to the West as a balance — “Israel is destined to play the role of a kind of watchdog” which will not act against America and Britain’s will but can be depended on “suitably to punish one or more of its neighbouring states, the lack of courtesy of which towards the West has transgressed the boundaries of what is permissible” (PDF p.186-187). Written more than three years before the large-scale raids culminating in “Operation Sinai”, the passage frames the chapter’s test: how far the reprisals expressed the government’s pro-imperialist position (PDF p.187).

• Chapter 5 continued: the Syria bombing of 1951 and al-Bureij (PDF p.188-191 / printed p.172-175). The first major reprisal, 5/4/51: the air force bombed Syrian army positions in the demilitarized zone after 7 Israeli policemen were murdered; Gelblum (Haaretz, 11/4/51) reported the impression abroad — “the childish and ostentatious deployment of a small number of airplanes”, Israel having opposed bombing Manchuria while voting China an aggressor, and the parallel with French bombings in Arab countries (PDF p.188-189). The authors weigh the drama’s political motivation: UP’s Beirut correspondent reported the incident strengthened Khaled al-Azm’s unstable, pro-American government, at the moment Israel abandoned non-alignment; the West refused Israel’s appeal to mediate under the Tripartite Declaration, and Washington’s condemnation may have been lip-service meant to drive Syria’s opposition towards the USA (PDF p.189). Al-Bureij refugee camp, Gaza Strip, 28/8/53: Egypt alleged 19 refugees killed (7 women, 4 children) and 18 injured; the IDF spokesman denied the army’s hand; the ceasefire committee condemned Israel but spoke of “armed people who came from Israeli territory”, and the Israeli authorities did not publish its decision — Haaretz (2/9/53) protested a public that hears only its own side: “injustice done by us is still injustice and that the death of her children hurts the heart of an Arab mother just as it hurts the heart of a Jewish mother” (PDF p.190-191). If Egyptians claimed their rising toll (50 Israeli victims in 1954 against 26 in 1953) was reprisal for al-Bureij, the authors ask, what justification was there for the Israeli attack? (PDF p.191).

• Chapter 5 continued: Qibya (PDF p.191-197 / printed p.175-181). Qibya: on 14 October 1953 about 50 civilians, including women and children, were killed. Ben-Gurion (Kol Israel, 19/10/53) blamed Jordan’s government, attributed the attack to border settlements after the Kfar Yahud murders, and “emphatically rejects the foolish and fantastical account according to which 600 men of the IDF participated” — no unit was missing from its base (PDF p.192). The government’s January 1960 Hasbara pamphlet nevertheless lists Qibya among “an entire series of IDF reprisal actions”; “either the government Hasbara Administration is distributing “foolish and fantastical accounts”, or the Prime Minister is knowingly lying” (PDF p.193). MK Bader interrupted the regrets with “Not me!” (30/11/53; PDF p.193). The raid changed nothing measurable: 1954 Jordanian-inflicted casualties were 5.6% below 1953, the post-raid quarter’s 12 Israeli victims identical to the preceding quarter’s, reported Jordanian violations up from 36 to 315 (UN annex, 1/3/54; PDF p.193). Le Monde (21/10/53) read Qibya as drawing Western attention and compelling the USA to reverse Dulles’s tour policy; instead the Security Council condemned Israel most harshly (24/10/53), and a month later Ben-Gurion resigned to Sde Boker with, in Kol Ha’am’s words, “the mark of Qibya on his forehead” (PDF p.194). Kesse (Mapai, 1/12/53) revealed the fury at the West — Churchill praising Israel when quarrelling with Egypt, Eden heading the attack when propping up Jordan — while refusing to burn bridges to the West (PDF p.195). The Maaleh Akrabim bus attack (17 March 1954, 12 passengers killed; its senders “shrouded in heavy fog to this day”) was followed by raids on Nahalin (10 Arabs killed) and Hussam [Husan] (PDF p.196). The section closes with Jordan’s internal storm 1951-1954: West Bank deputies’ memoranda (May and July 1952) against emergency regulations, censorship and discrimination in projects, jobs and army recruitment; demands to dismiss Glubb and cancel the British treaty; King Saud’s June 1954 visit and Saudi dollars pulling Jordan towards the Egyptian-Saudi bloc; seven governments announced from April 1950 to spring 1954 (six listed), and Hussein’s dissolution of the legislature on 22 June 1954 (A. Cohen, PDF p.196-197).

• Chapter 5 continued: “Who is interested, and in what”, and the Bat Galim affair (PDF p.198-201 / printed p.182-185). The simple diversion explanation is only part of the truth: Israel was not indifferent to Arab internal changes, because the status quo depends on Jordan’s internal situation and Western influence. IDF actions against Jordan consistently produced: (1) the King and Legion appearing as the West Bank’s leaders, enhancing the rickety kingdom’s cohesiveness and stabilizing the status quo Israel wanted; (2) Britain declaring willingness to defend Jordan, proving its presence vital to its clients; (3) Iraq offering to deploy its army in Jordan — detested in Jordan and not the Jordanian government’s preference, Iraq having signed no ceasefire agreement with Israel (PDF p.198-199). “Ben-Gurion and the Hashemite house essentially were natural allies, “friendly enemies”” linked by maintaining the post-1948 status quo, and the reprisals “usually came as “manna from heaven” to Hussein” (PDF p.199). The Bat Galim episode: Egypt barred Israeli ships from Suez despite the Security Council’s 1 September 1951 order; Britain, controlling the Canal and its bases, made no effort to ensure passage; Israeli policy opposed evacuating British forces from the Canal Zone, Flash (General Zionists) warning (4/2/52; 14/6/53 as printed) against defending lost Western causes and distinguishing passage from the base — “there is a base, but there is still no free passage” (PDF p.199-201). The ship was sent just as British ratification of the 27/7/54 evacuation agreement faced Conservative opposition, in the surmised expectation of detention; British journalists seized on the detention (26/9/54) to argue against transferring the Canal — hypocrisy, there having been no navigation freedom for Israel under British control; the agreement was signed within three weeks, evacuation set for 1956 (PDF p.201).

• Chapter 5 continued: the Gaza raid and Gaza-Baghdad (PDF p.202-206 / printed p.186-190). The Gaza raid (1955) (28/2/55) — 38 Egyptians and 8 Israelis killed — is, following Wint and Calvocoressi, Middle East Crisis (1957), “one of the most fateful dates in the history of the Middle East”, Egypt having until then had fewer incidents with Israel than Syria or Jordan, and the first important link in the chain to “Operation Sinai” (PDF p.202). The official version (Davar, 2/3/55) — an Egyptian unit penetrated, was expelled and pursued by an Israeli patrol — is dismantled by Maariv’s 1959 detailed account: the paratroops commander briefed “We are going to attack [!] the Egyptian enemy”, the Chief of Staff awaited the unit and read the Defence Minister’s praise for “planning and execution”; the article was never denied (PDF p.202-204). Even the term “Fedayeen” was unknown to most Israelis then; the first large-scale penetration came at the end of August 1955 (PDF p.204). The dates: Ben-Gurion retook the Defence portfolio on 17/2/55; the Baghdad Pact was signed on 24/2/55, Egypt refusing to join; the raid came on 28/2/55 — “in that sequence can be traced the outline of the policy of “reprisal”” (PDF p.204-205). The West explained the lesson: Turkey used the incident to press Arabs to unite under its leadership; on 9/3/55 the USA halted arms deliveries but offered Egypt free arms for joining a regional defence pact, and Byroade (12/3/55) promised Nasser weapons and support “against Israel” on that condition, adding Israel would not be attached to a regional alliance — while the Western powers unanimously condemned Israel in the Security Council (PDF p.205-206). The authors clarify: reprisals were not executed at a specific foreign request, but generally served the West as an instrument of pressure, which “played an important part” in Israeli politicians’ calculations (PDF p.206). Deterioration followed: local commanders’ talks stopped 22/8/55, Fedayeen penetrations, the Khan-Younis raid (31 August) and the move into the Nitzana demilitarized zone (22 September) (PDF p.206).

• Chapter 5 continued: the Czech-Egyptian arms deal and the way out (PDF p.207-216 / printed p.191-200). American pressure used even the impression of an impending US-Israel defence treaty as leverage on the Arabs (Haaretz, 20/6/55; PDF p.207). “This time the strap was pulled too tightly”: the Baghdad Pact embodied hated colonial control; for Nasser joining was political suicide; Egypt turned to the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, the Pact having completed the USSR’s encirclement and given Soviet policy urgency to break out behind the “northern tier” (PDF p.207-208). Nasser called the Gaza raid “the turning point” — “Until that moment,” said Nasser later, “I felt the possibility of real peace was near” (Time, 27 August 1956; PDF p.208). His 27 September 1955 Radio Cairo announcement of the Czech-Egyptian arms deal is quoted: conditions-wrapped Western answers rejected, “for we do not want to equip the army at the expense of our independence and freedom”; Czechoslovakia supplied commercially, payable in cotton; the agreement “is not the beginning of Russian penetration but of the end of the influence that controlled us for a long time” (PDF p.208-209). The New York Herald Tribune (29 September 1955): “US Middle East strategy has sustained a serious setback”; Allen was dispatched to Cairo and Henry Byroade was later transferred from his post as US ambassador in Egypt (PDF p.209). In Israel: indescribable uproar, the Defence Fund (citizens’ last pennies; later converted into a regular tax), preventive-war calls, and Ben-Gurion’s claim Czechoslovakia knew Egypt bought “with one single purpose: to eradicate the State of Israel and its people” (2/11/55; PDF p.210). Begin exposed the hypocrisy — the balance was upset when Britain sent Egypt its first Centurion and America sent Iraq $100millionofarms;theCzechconsignmentwasabout$70 million, and the West “compensated” Israel by arming Iraq (18/10/55; PDF p.211); Rimalt, Argov and Sneh make parallel points, Sneh recalling the memorandum asking the State Department to arm the Arab states and Israel together against the “Communist danger” (PDF p.211-212). Even the Suez base transfer (£500 million of installations) had produced no such storm, and there had never been equality in the arms balance (PDF p.213). The deal’s real blow was political: the USSR never recognized the status quo, its reappearance made the Tripartite Declaration “an insignificant piece of paper” and returned Israeli policy to the 1947 Resolution (PDF p.213-214). The way out espoused in activist circles was preventive war — Begin: “we must conduct operations to prevent the war of destruction” (18/10/55) — but the USA chose pressure and seduction of Egypt, moving closer to Egypt and sacrificing Israel; Dulles announced (12/10/55) no security treaty with Israel, Barzilai quoting The Times and Le Monde on the West’s preference for Arab oil and air-base territories (PDF p.214-216). France, hoping a strike at Egypt would help suppress the Algerian rebellion, began supplying Israel — while still supplying Egypt too, Pinay confirming France supplied both sides (Davar, 28/11/55; PDF p.216).

• Chapter 5 continued: al-Sabha, Operation Kinneret, the balance of blood and the Gaza market shelling (PDF p.217-227 / printed p.201-211). Reprisals became more frequent in late 1955 (Kuntila, 28 October). On 2 November Ben-Gurion presented his “government of renewal” (Mapam and Unity of Labour participating) and declared himself “prepared to meet with the prime minister of Egypt… as soon as possible” for a settlement without preconditions; that night the al-Sabha battle in the Nitzana area killed 50 Egyptian soldiers and captured 49, and Nasser told Tom Little it was “decisive proof that Ben-Gurion was not honest in his proposal for peace”; the authors assume the attack order was already on Ben-Gurion’s desk when he spoke (PDF p.217-218). Operation Kinneret (11 December 1955): 56 Syrians killed, 30 captured, no preceding reported provocations; public reproach centred on the “timing”; Haaretz (13/12/55) noted the fishery harassment had drawn only “small headlines”, from which the authors infer the “guided” press’s role in preparing other reprisals (PDF p.218-220). Dayan, three years later: “We received arms from France for the very purpose of reprisal actions of the severest kind – after Operation Kinneret… They gave us arms because we fought” (Davar, 16/11/58); France still voted to condemn Israel (19/12/55), and Ben-Gurion had decided the operation alone, government members learning of it from the newspapers — “dangerously close to a Prime Ministerial dictatorship” (Haaretz, 16/12/55; PDF p.220). Ginai (Yedioth Aharonoth, 14/12/55) spelled out the raid’s treaty reverberations — testing the three-week-old Syria-Egypt treaty, strengthening Lebanon’s anti-treaty camp and the Baghdad Pact camp in Syria and Jordan — and Cohen’s Syria survey shows the pressure coinciding with Turkey’s army concentrated on Syria’s border; the authors trace the underlying fishing conflict to the ceasefire line leaving the whole lake to Israel and the shore’s Arab fishermen watching others take their fish (PDF p.221-223). “The balance of blood”: UNTSO’s 1955 tables (S/3685) — Israel-Egypt incidents: Israelis 47 killed, 118 wounded, 3 captured; Egyptians 216 killed, 188 wounded, 80 captured; Israel-Syria: Israelis 6 killed, 15 wounded; Syrians 62 killed, 26 wounded, 40 captured (figures computed from the table’s soldier/civilian rows as printed; the book cautions they are close to, not completely, the truth) (PDF p.224). On 5 April 1956 Israeli artillery shelled the Gaza refugee camp and market square on the main market day; I. F. Stone’s report (reprinted Al Hamishmar, 4/6/56) gives some 40 killed and 100 wounded, the authors’ bracket the UN figures of 66 killed and 127 wounded, all civilians; Stone calls the shelling “a cynical and murderous business”, asks whether hurting Nasser’s prestige was worth the price, and — marked [!] by the authors — calls the retaliatory Fedayeen atrocities “fortunate” for Israel (PDF p.224-226). The authors ask why the country did not get angry and “Where was S. Yizhar, the author of Khirbet Khizeh?” (PDF p.227). The section ends with the Suez nationalization of 26 July 1956 — the West’s hardest Middle East blow, all its pressure failing because the Eastern bloc could now sustain a state that sought its help; England and France chose force, and war plans began to be devised in secret (PDF p.227).

• Chapter 5 continued: “An opportune moment” — the 1956 Jordan raids (PDF p.228-234 / printed p.212-218, continuing past this part). As Suez war plans were devised, tensions passed from the Egyptian to the Jordanian line: four raids in September-October 1956 — Rahawa, Jarandal, Husan and Qalqilya — amid Jordan’s fundamental transformation (PDF p.228). The long Cohen survey (pp.177-180) is quoted: Templer’s December 1955 mission offering Jordan, for joining the Baghdad Pact, a 65% Legion augmentation, £6.3 million of heavy arms, an air force and a new treaty; the four Palestinian ministers’ resignations (14/12) and al-Majali’s pro-Pact government’s fall after a week of unrest, consulate attacks and a general strike; Hussein’s dissolution of parliament (19 December); the January 1956 rulings and governments; Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia offering to replace the £12-13 million British subsidy; Legion officers forcing John Glubb’s removal on 1/3/56 with several dozen British officers, Kirkbride’s urgent missions, the officers’ threatened mutiny against Iraqi forces entering Jordan, and the 9 May 1956 Jerusalem assembly against the Pact and for Algeria; parliament dissolved again 26/6/56 with elections announced (PDF p.228-231). Israeli activist circles demanded seizing the moment to “liberate the occupied territories of the Homeland” from the “artificial creation” of Jordan; the government refrained from preventive war, but the four raids came as elections (22 October) approached; a London dispatch (R. Waltch, Haaretz 14/10/56) reported Britain wanting to prevent a pro-Egyptian coup, the Qalqilya attack appearing “as a gift from heaven to all who seek Iraqi control over Jordan”, and London’s agreement that Jordan’s government was struggling to thwart infiltrators, not responsible for them (PDF p.231-232). The authors generalize: the Bat Galim, Gaza, Kinneret and Qalqilya actions were each “a gift from heaven” to a Western pressure campaign; even granting the activists’ premises, the timing points to a deliberate process, and Asia and Africa will inevitably see such coordinated actions as colonialist “divide and conquer” pressure (PDF p.232). Arab responses quoted: al-Sha’ab (Radio Cairo, 15/9/56) calling Jarandal “part of an elaborate plan that was prepared in London, Paris and Tel Aviv against all the Arabs”; Syria’s chief of staff Nizm al-Din on imperialism pressing the Jews to provoke the Arabs to distract from Suez; Radio Cairo after Husan (28/9/56) on Ben-Gurion as an instrument of the West (PDF p.233). The part ends inside the section on the Cyprus “Near East Broadcasting Station” (Mahattat al-Sharq al-Adna) — Arab-named, Arabic-language, the most extreme anti-Israeli broadcaster, whose 21/9/56 and 26/10/56 broadcasts (the latter five days after Jordan’s elections, three days before Operation Sinai) are quoted; its post-Rahawa/Jarandal broadcast falls in the next part (PDF p.234).

• Chapter 5 concluded: MacMichael’s station, and “Water and blood” (PDF p.235-240 / printed p.219-224). The Near East Broadcasting Station’s nature, and a hint of British intrigues, were revealed by Voice of Cairo (15/9/56) quoting al-Sha’ab: Lebanese authorities had exposed British agents inciting against Israel to distract Arab opinion from Suez, through camouflaged organizations — the Cyprus station, the Arab News Agency, the “Arab World News Office”. Nahum Goldmann made the same accusation in New York (4/10/56), naming Sir Harold MacMichael, the wartime High Commissioner, as a station manager — his descent “symbolizes the path taken by British imperialism in the region” (PDF p.235-236). A “secret station” calling Nasser “Haim Jamalov” and Egyptian papers’ reports of British agents paying journalists complete the picture; against Britain’s public Suez-navigation concern for Israel, the authors conclude the contradiction is purely formal: “Its policy was and remains colonial”, aimed at shoring up Jordan and smokescreening war preparations, and Israel’s reprisals against Jordan helped both goals (PDF p.236-237). Under “Water and blood”: Eric Johnston threatened (reported Sawt al-‘Arab, 6/10/55) that if the Arabs rejected his plan the Jews would divert the Jordan’s waters with US non-intervention — “It was no transgression! It was the point of Johnston’s mission”; MacMichael’s station’s 6/8/56 Huleh-dam report and Syria’s Salah al-Bitar calling it Western pressure show the instrument at work a month after Suez nationalization (PDF p.237-238). Any Jordan-waters use requires all riparian states’ agreement; the Arabs rejected Western division plans “with justice!” as colonial control of a pressure-point, Israel recognized the West’s authority and bargained only over its allocation, then created faits accomplis; even by short-sighted calculation the coordination fails, since the declining West would sacrifice Israel’s interest to restore Arab influence — as France will once Algeria is free (PDF p.239). The chapter closes by asking whether reprisal achieved security, improved relations or brought peace closer, “Or was it nothing but an unfortunate policy that was rife with disaster?” (PDF p.240).

• Chapter 6: “The Third Kingdom of Israel” (29/11/56 – 7/3/57) — “Pulling their chestnuts from the fire” and “Madness” (PDF p.241-245 / printed p.225-229). September-October 1956: tension peaked on the Jordan line (the four raids), Britain hinting it would “defend” Hussein under its treaty, an Iraqi entry into Jordan in prospect; Ben-Gurion told the Knesset (15/10/56) Eden’s compromise proposal perhaps aimed only to divert Arab attention from Suez to Israel (PDF p.241). The Unity of Labour paper Lamerhav (9/7/56) called Jordan “an artificial and arbitrary creation” of the British Colonial Office and the West Bank annexation a crime added to Churchill’s theft; the Foreign Minister (21/10/56): if Iraqi armies enter Jordan “We consider ourselves free to act in accordance with our security needs” (PDF p.241-242). Mobilization at October’s end convinced citizens, reserves and army that war with Jordan and occupation (“liberation”) of the West Bank were imminent; Egypt was calm and few believed Israel would intervene against Egypt over Suez — it should not “pull the West’s chestnuts out of the fire”, a phrase Radio Cairo (3/8/56) welcomed from Davar’s “HY” article as a first sign of Israeli thinkers Israel part of the Middle East, not a West-moved pawn (PDF p.242-243). Against the preventive-war proposals of General Zionists, Herut and Unity of Labour, Ben-Gurion: “we have never initiated and we never will initiate a war against anyone… A preventive war is madness” (19/6/56), and on 15/10/56 rejected it again — “if we are attacked, we will fight with all our strength to the end” — the authors’ three conclusions if Sinai was a preventive war: “never” means four months; the government does not fall when its commitments are violated; Qadesh’s initiators “should be confined to an insane asylum” (PDF p.243-244). Ben-Gurion’s later self-quotation of the “decisive and fateful events” sentence as a Qadesh hint shows the speech’s double purpose; his 17/10/56 “mad advice” summary turns on the word “every” — not every time is opportune for war and conquest, “but evidently there are such times” (PDF p.245).

• Chapter 6 continued: “An effective instrument”, the invasion and the ultimatum (PDF p.245-249 / printed p.229-233). I. F. Stone, weeks before nationalization, saw what Israeli opinion did not: Britain would like to use Israel as one that “might be a handy instrument for inflicting a serious loss of face on Nasser, perhaps even for overthrowing him”, then settle at a weakened Israel’s expense for Nuri Said’s benefit; Russia, having backed partition and arms in 1947-1948 to expel Britain, now backed Nasser for the same reason and might intervene (I. F. Stone’s Weekly, 30 April 1956, via Al Hamishmar, 1/6/56) (PDF p.245-246). The IDF announcement of 29 October — Fedayeen struck at Ras al-Naqab and Kuntila, positions captured “near the Suez Canal” — was followed on 30 October by the first Anglo-French UN vetoes, aimed at the non-intervention clause, and on 31 October by the ultimatum: withdrawal 10 miles from the Canal and temporary Anglo-French occupation of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez within 12 hours; Egypt rejected it, Israel accepted, not yet within 10 miles — “no less than an invitation to continue advancing” (PDF p.247-248). Bombing from Cyprus and carriers began 1 November; Egypt declared war on Britain and France, Syria broke relations, the Iraqi pipeline was blown up in Jordan on 2 November (oil had been flowing through it to Haifa), Egypt blocked the Canal, and Nasser withdrew from Sinai to defend the Canal area; by 6 November the IDF held Sinai and Gaza while the Anglo-French invasion failed under worldwide anger (PDF p.248-249).

• Chapter 6 continued: “One thousand four hundred years ago” and the seven points (PDF p.249-254 / printed p.233-238). At the 6 November Sharm al-Sheikh parade Dayan read Ben-Gurion’s telegram to the 9th Brigade: “the greatest and most glorious military operation in the history of our people”, Exodus 15 quoted, Eilat again the main Hebrew port, “and Yotvat, called Tiran, that until one thousand four hundred years ago was an independent Hebrew state, will once again become part of the Third Kingdom of Israel” (Davar, 7/11/56) (PDF p.249-250). The Knesset first debated the war on 7 November: Ben-Gurion claimed a territory of nearly 60,000 km², insisted “Our army did not strike Egyptian territory” — Sinai and Egypt being, for him, separate things, a question (“to whom does it belong?”) he passes over in silence — and built his title on Procopius’ Greek testimony on Iotabe and Exodus 19 (“for all the earth is mine”) (PDF p.250-252). His seven points: the Egypt ceasefire accord “is dead and buried and will not be revived”; the ceasefire lines “have breathed their last”; no conflict with the Egyptian people; readiness for direct negotiations without preconditions or coercion; adherence to the other accords while the other states hold to them; “Israel will not agree to any condition requiring the stationing of any foreign force, whatever it may be called, within its territory or in any of the territories held by Israel”; no war unless attacked (PDF p.253). The authors answer with the Yarkon counterfactual — an Egyptian army on its banks extending its hand for peace — and with Micah 3, the book’s epigraph, quoted in full (PDF p.254).

• Chapter 6 continued: what replaces the dead lines; “City of our fathers”; Yaari (PDF p.255-260 / printed p.239-244). Mapai’s March 1957 pamphlet “What we fought for, why we withdrew, what we achieved” — authored by Ben-Gurion — contains no word of the Third Kingdom, Procopius or the no-foreign-force stance (PDF p.255). Begin (7/11/56): “there remains yet very much land yet to be possessed”; if Gaza is a liberated “city of our fathers”, “then what is Jerusalem, what is Hebron, what is Bethlehem?” — the authors reply that the pretext serves Palestine’s Arabs better against Begin, and that Gaza was the Philistines’ city; Bernstein (General Zionists) took satisfaction in territories “returned to the Homeland” (PDF p.256). On the merits: Gaza was inhabited by other peoples in antiquity, permanently by Palestinian Arabs in our period, allotted to their state by the Partition Plan, and never annexed by Egypt, whose administration was declared temporary — “Israel has no moral, political, historical or other right to annex the Gaza Strip” (PDF p.257). Meir Yaari (Mapam) nevertheless celebrated “the liberation of the Gaza Strip” removing “a stinging thorn”, promised the now nearly half-million Arab minority security and “human and civil sovereignty” as the path to neighbours’ hearts, and denied any treaty with Britain and France on Eden’s own testimony — against his own 28/9/56 Al Hamishmar conditions against finding Israel “de jure nor de facto” on the imperialists’ front lines (PDF p.257-260).

• Chapter 6 continued: the 7 November debate concluded — Levin, Idov Cohen, Mikunis and the 88:3 vote (PDF p.260-265 / printed p.244-249). Rabbi Yitzhak Meir Levin (Agudat Israel) attributed the war to “the hand of Supreme oversight” — God hardened Nasser’s heart and entangled the British against their will; “This was the LORD’s doing” — the authors ask where God was during the withdrawal, and quote L’Humanité that no Bible passage can justify an invasion for oil interests and a Canal Company that did not exist when the Bible was written (PDF p.260-261). Idov Cohen (Progressives) praised the operation’s timing and a policy “moderate, cautious, lacking in emotional pathos” — too quick by thirty hours, or better three months, to specify the lesson (PDF p.262). Mikunis (Maki): the war “does not serve any Israeli national interest, but endangers Israel”; conquest is “a two-edged sword”; Fedayeen murders justify no aggressive war and the system licenses counter-war after Qalqilya; he renewed the 29 October non-confidence motion (PDF p.262-264). The “Sinai Coalition” formed “from wall to wall”, Mapam to Herut including Mapai’s Arab factions; Sneh read Maki’s motion (attack on Egypt, service to enslaving colonialism, setting back peace, isolating Israel, endangering its future) — 3 in favour, 88 against — and Guvrin’s all-factions motion blessing the IDF “from Dan to Yotvat” passed 88 to 3, the session ending with the anthem sung standing, a Knesset first (PDF p.264-265).

• Chapter 6 continued: “With a quavering voice” — the 8 November turn and the two motions (PDF p.266-270 / printed p.250-254). Some thirty hours after the festive vote, after midnight on 8 November, Ben-Gurion’s “broken and quavering voice” announced the political pressure forcing agreement in principle to withdraw from Sinai — while restating the operation’s three aims: destruction of the forces lying in wait, “The liberation of territory of the Homeland that had been seized by the invader” (Gaza’s annexation), and navigation freedom in the Eilat Strait “and also in the Suez Canal” (PDF p.266). Next morning Davar printed Alterman’s poem instead of an editorial (“We do not covet land, but / Possession of that lofty mountain / Is written in the chronicles of the Hebrew people”); fearing army and public resentment, and with Herut rising, the government postponed the debate (PDF p.267). Sneh’s motion the following week charged the attack with presenting Israel as aggressor to east and west and “as a vanguard of colonialism in the Near and Middle East” to Asia and Africa, and demanded complete evacuation, Ben-Gurion’s consent having excluded Gaza; Argov had it removed from the agenda 76 to 3 (PDF p.268-269). Ben-Eliezer’s (Herut) “parliamentary claim” — the Knesset-ratified declarations annulled overnight without consultation; “the army was victorious on the field of battle – the government retreated in the war of nerves” — drew Ben-Gurion’s reply that Ben-Eliezer should rather have asked why the Knesset was not consulted before the campaign was launched, “and he knew about that before the launching of the campaign”; the Prime Minister’s resolution passed 66 to 13 (PDF p.269-270).

• Chapter 6 continued: “65:1”, “Before the whole world” — the UN and world reaction (PDF p.271-277 / printed p.255-261). The General Assembly (2 November) called for ceasefire 65 to 2 (Britain and France against, 7 abstentions); on 7 November it created the emergency force and voted 65 to Israel’s sole 1, with 10 abstentions, for immediate evacuation — “There had never been such a dramatic vote in the history of the UN” — on the very day the Knesset rejected withdrawal (PDF p.271). Eban’s recollection: “we were standing isolated as never before since the birth of Israel… We found ourselves isolated before the whole world, and we had completely isolated ourselves by one fateful decision” (Yedioth Aharonoth, 25/9/59) (PDF p.272). The formerly colonized saw Israel “as a foreign body in Asia, as a dangerous bridgehead of imperialism”; Rangoon demonstrated before the Israeli embassy (10/11/56); Nehru telegraphed Moscow his “terrible shock”; Davar’s H. Isaac recorded the “tripartite conspiracy” suspicion destroying Israel’s moral position (PDF p.272-273). Sweden’s prime minister called the attack “Israel’s aggression – and no milder word is possible”; Gaitskell warned that Israel seen as “stooges” of Britain and France, “a kind of advance guard of Western imperialism”, gravely endangers any peaceful settlement; Crossman wrote Israel needs “a completely different leadership” to not lose the peace; Goldmann told the Zionist Executive American Jewry had been assured Israel would never launch a war — “The Jews are not puppets that can be pulled this way and that”; Sulzberger: the government “has no allies and evidently does not have even one friend” (PDF p.274-275). Against this, Israel’s press intoxication: Yoeli’s “unique historical chance” (Davar, 2/11/56), Haaretz’s gratitude for the “most convenient political conditions” (4/11/56), Davar’s “Seldom in history have politicians prepared the ground on such a scale for the soldiers” — printed in the very issue reporting the withdrawal, the editorial replaced at the last minute by Alterman’s poem: “From a high peak to a deep pit” within hours (PDF p.276-277).

• Chapter 6 continued: “We will not let them return” — holding Gaza, January 1957 (PDF p.277-282 / printed p.261-266). The 8 November agreement was not unconditional: Sinai’s evacuation was to be conditioned on Suez navigation guarantees and did not apply to Gaza. Bar-Yehuda (26/11/56): “the Gaza Strip is indeed a part of the State of Israel and that there can be no concessions over it”; Ben-Gurion (19/12/56): Israel “will not agree by any means to the return of the Egyptian invaders to that Strip”, and to Hanson Baldwin, “We will not let them return”; Mapam’s political committee (21/12/56) pursued “the annexation [!] of aza to Israel” [as printed]; Ben-Gurion (Davar, 11/1/57): “the status quo ante will not return” — “Indeed, it is dangerous to be a prophet – especially a false one” (PDF p.277-278). On 19/1/57 the Assembly, on the Afro-Asian resolution, noted “with regret and concern the failure of Israel to comply” (clauses passing 68 to 2, France and Israel against) and in its entirety every state but Israel and France supported it, Costa Rica and Batista’s Cuba abstaining — Britain voting against Israel for the first time (PDF p.279). Ben-Gurion replied that Israel cannot be faithful to resolutions “that run counter to our vital interests” (21/1/57), while Davar recorded the already-applied US freeze of $55millioningrantandsurplusfoodandahalted$75 million loan (PDF p.280). His device (23/1/57): “Israel has no desire to maintain an army inside the Gaza Strip”, but the Strip must “remain in Israel’s hands” under an Israeli administration arranged with the UN, which could solve its security, economy and refugee problems — declarations made knowing its 300,000 mostly-refugee residents were a heavy burden; under two months later the same pamphlet explains he opposed annexation from the first moment because Israel cannot digest “this Gaza along with its refugees” (PDF p.280-282).

• Chapter 6 continued: “Gaza and Nazareth”, “The last line of defence” — the 23 January debate (PDF p.282-288 / printed p.266-272). Begin charged political defeat (the al-Arish–Abu-Ageila–Kusseima line abandoned, a-Tur and al-Arish left) and warned Ben-Gurion not to rely again on their secret eve-of-Sinai conversations: “He knows, and we remember, what he said to us about the future of the Sinai Peninsula” — Dayan’s diary (21/10/56) has “the old man” searching the Bible in Peres’s office “to prove to us the ancientness of our right to the approaches to Eilat” (PDF p.282-283). Begin’s Nazareth argument: “What is the difference between Nazareth and Gaza?… We liberated Nazareth in contravention of a United Nations resolution” — evacuating “liberated” Gaza today licenses demanding Nazareth tomorrow (PDF p.284). Bernstein affirmed “we must not withdraw any more” despite sanctions threatening “complete paralysis, far-reaching paralysis of our entire economy”; Ben-Aharon urged digging into “the last line of defence behind which there is no more withdrawal”; Raphael (ha-Mizrahi) held the liberated Strip would never be detached, “Just as we will not cede any part of the Galilee”; the Progressives owned the “incalculable hardships and dangers” of keeping Gaza against the UN; Riftin restated Mapam’s programme of including the Strip in Israel with its refugees rehabilitated inside Israel, and appealed to the socialist states to back direct negotiations without preconditions (PDF p.284-286). Argov asked who had imagined the global intervention; Vilner answered “Yes” — the Communists had warned from the start (PDF p.286-287). Mikunis: if al-Arish is madness, Sharm al-Sheikh and Gaza are madness; guarantees are sought from imperialists “who have abandoned you more than once”; Israel is harnessed “to the chariot of the colonialists” (PDF p.287-288). Maki’s and Herut’s motions were both rejected and a Coalition motion passed attacking the 19 January resolution (continuing PDF p.289).

• Chapter 6 continued: “The essence of our security”, “Dependant to a great extent”, “The outer limit” (PDF p.289-294 / printed p.273-278, continuing past this part). The 23 January resolution’s operative clauses: “Israel will keep the Gaza Strip and will itself be responsible for the internal and external security of the Strip”, developing an autonomous residents’ administration and helping UNRWA continue; and the IDF “will not evacuate the coast of the Eilat Straits” before navigation freedom is ensured with substantial guarantees agreed with Israel; the press headlined it “The essence of our security” (Lamerhav) and “Vital goals that Israel must achieve” (Haboker), and the government organized mass demonstrations — about 150,000 in Tel Aviv alone (9/2/57) (PDF p.289). Herut’s consistency against the workers’ coalition’s half-measures is an “objective lack of capacity”: under Herut the Third Kingdom “would have ended with the destruction of the Third Temple” (PDF p.290). On 3 February the Assembly’s US-India resolution regretted Israel’s non-compliance and called for withdrawal “without further delay”: 74 in favour including Britain, only Israel and France against; Dulles: “Israel’s very existence is dependent to a great extent on the good will of many nations” (PDF p.290). Kesse (22/2/57) rejected the US President’s moral authority — “Is it not basically oil-interest politics under the cover of great and lofty platitudes” — words the authors call “correct and on the mark”, while analysing America’s real 1956 calculus: the nationalization did not touch US interests, Dulles chose pressure and the Users’ Association over intervention (the Mossadegh precedent), and the conspiracy was hidden from Washington precisely so Dulles could exploit his allies’ failure and pose as defender of aggression’s victims (PDF p.291-292). Allon: “better to be killed than to transgress!” — his faction could not support a government deciding further withdrawals (PDF p.292-293); Hazan: the Gaza civil administration is “the outer limit of our concessions” (PDF p.293); Vilner: “in Palestine both Israel and the Palestinian Arab people have legitimate national rights… To insist on our legitimate rights while denying the legitimate rights of the other people will not bring peace” (PDF p.293-294). Ben-Gurion’s summary (25/2/57) — Egypt must never be permitted to return to the Strip — “endured for a very long time – exactly two weeks”; the part ends as the narrative turns to the American pressure and the speech worked on collaboratively with Washington (PDF p.294).

Key passages

• “By signing that accord, Ben-Gurion robbed the Palestinians of half of the area allocated to them by the Partition Resolution. Abdullah robbed them of the other half. The Palestinians were left with nothing.” (PDF p.6)

• “The Israeli-Arab conflict did not begin in 1967, or even in 1948. It started in 1897, at the moment when Zionism claimed Jewish sovereignty over a land in which the majority of inhabitants had been – for more than a thousand years – Arabs.” (PDF p.7)

• “As long as Israeli policy is based on the principles of Zionism, genuine peace with the Palestinians will remain impossible.” (PDF p.10)

• “Israeli foreign and defence policies are like an iceberg – nine-tenths are submerged under the surface, concealed from the eyes of the citizen.” (PDF p.15)

• “The simple truth is that the war of 1948 was a national war – a war between two nations who lived in one country.” (U. Avnery, Haolam Hazeh, 19 August 1959, quoted at PDF p.19)

• “Following the accord between Salah Jaber [the Iraqi Foreign Minister] and Bevin and following Clayton’s participation in the League’s meetings, the borders were opened for the invasions of Syrians, Iraqis and others.” (Ben-Gurion, Davar, 18/2/48, quoted at PDF p.24)

• “When a puppet’s strings are pulled by a puppeteer, it is hard to speak of the independent interest of the puppet.” (PDF p.38)

• “we were fighting in Palestine, but our dreams were centred in Egypt.” (Nasser, Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution, quoted at PDF p.37)

• “The Palestinian Arab state had become a chip in Ben-Gurion’s and Abdullah’s bargaining over the conditions of the desired peace, in conspicuous contradiction to the Partition Resolution.” (PDF p.49)

• “Abdullah and Ben-Gurion divided the state of the Arabs of Palestine in nearly equal measures among themselves.” (PDF p.57-58)

• “Israel’s territorial conflict is not with the Arab states, but with the Arabs of Palestine. In the present situation Jordan is not an adversary to Israel, but a partner in plunder.” (PDF p.60)

• “The absence of peace today is a direct consequence of the collusion with Abdullah and the agreement to the annexation in 1950.” (PDF p.63)

• “The UN can be appealed to on the basis of only one document.” (P. Lavon, 3/5/50, quoted at PDF p.68)

• “They do not sign any treaty, but it is their signature that determines the fate of every treaty.” (PDF p.71-72, on the Arab masses)

• “whereas then many peasants were left without land, now an entire nation was left without political independence.” (PDF p.74)

• “There are facts that penetrate deeply, which make an impression that no hasbara can conceal.” (M. Sharett, 7/12/53, quoted at PDF p.84)

• “The refugee problem would not exist at all if the Arab states had not gone to war in 1948 and if they had not ordered these people to leave their homes.” (W. Eytan, Between Israel and the nations, p.112, quoted at PDF p.86)

• “We came, we shot, we burned; we blew up, expelled, drove out, and sent into exile.” (S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh, fiction, quoted at PDF p.93)

• “not an Israeli hoof remained in Egypt.” (J. McDonald, My Mission in Israel 1948-1951, pp.123-124, quoted at PDF p.109)

• “the collusion with Abdullah, which crushed the rights of the Palestinian Arab people, forced the government to forsake the principle of partition and to replace it with the principle of conserving the status quo” (PDF p.118)

• “A hooked fish needs no bait” (attributed to Rockefeller letter, quoted at PDF p.127)

• “Friendship with the USA and ongoing efforts to strengthen and to nurture that friendship – that is one of the foundation stones of Israeli policy.” (M. Sharett, 16/6/53, quoted at PDF p.148)

• “Communism is not the reason for your policies – it is the pretext.” (M. Begin, 30/8/54, quoted at PDF p.153)

• “There are some in Israel for whom that reply is a timely rain. To us it feels more like spit.” (PDF p.155, on Dayan’s US visit)

• “Israel has always been on the side of France in the important votes in the UN, and especially regarding Algeria.” (R. Massip, Le Figaro special edition, May 1960, quoted at PDF p.172)

• “The Conference condemns Israel as an instrument in the service of colonialism, not only in the Middle East, but also in Africa and Asia.” (Casablanca Conference resolution, UP 7/1/61, quoted at PDF p.177)

• “Israel is destined to play the role of a kind of watchdog.” (G. Schocken, Haaretz, 30/9/51, quoted at PDF p.187)

• “Ben-Gurion departed with the mark of Qibya on his forehead.” (Kol Ha’am, quoted at PDF p.194)

• “We are going to attack [!] the Egyptian enemy.” (paratroops commander A., Maariv, 11/10/59, quoted at PDF p.203)

• “Until that moment,” said Nasser later, “I felt the possibility of real peace was near.” (Time, 27 August 1956, quoted at PDF p.208, on the Gaza raid as “the turning point”)

• “They gave us arms because we fought.” (M. Dayan, Davar, 16/11/58, quoted at PDF p.220)

• “The Israeli attack on Jarandal is merely part of an elaborate plan that was prepared in London, Paris and Tel Aviv against all the Arabs.” (Al-Sha’ab, via Radio Cairo, 15/9/56, quoted at PDF p.233)

• “A preventive war is madness.” (Ben-Gurion, Knesset Records 20/2067, 19/6/56, quoted at PDF p.244)

• “will once again become part of the Third Kingdom of Israel.” (Ben-Gurion telegram to the 9th Brigade, Davar, 7/11/56, quoted at PDF p.250)

• “The ceasefire accord with Egypt is dead and buried and will not be revived…” (Ben-Gurion, Knesset Records 21/199, 7/11/56, quoted at PDF p.253)

• “Israel has no moral, political, historical or other right to annex the Gaza Strip.” (PDF p.257)

• “The Jews are not puppets that can be pulled this way and that.” (N. Goldmann, 12/11/56, quoted at PDF p.275)

• “better to be killed than to transgress!” (Y. Allon, Knesset Records 21/1148, 22/2/57, quoted at PDF p.292)

• “in Palestine both Israel and the Palestinian Arab people have legitimate national rights.” (M. Vilner, Knesset Records 21/1151, 22/2/57, quoted at PDF p.293-294)

Evidence the work relies on

• In this part, declaredly only material published in the Israeli press between 1948 and 1956 and other published sources (Introduction to the first edition, PDF p.15; Second introduction, PDF p.8): Israeli school textbooks (Avidor and Spivak 1954; Shiffman 1958; Razieli 1956; Kirschenboim 1957), the Government Yearbook (Shenaton ha-Memshalah) 1959/1960 and 1960, and Knesset Records (Divrei haKnesset) Vol.1 (10/3/49, 20/6/49 and the April 1949 armistice debate) and Vol.5 (3/5/50).
• Hebrew press quoted: Davar (Ben-Gurion 8/1/48 and 18/2/48; Sharett 16/5/48 and 20/6/48; Meyerson 28/3/48; Asaf 7/5/48; the Observer correspondent 22/6/48; Shimoni in the Davar Annual 1948-1949), Haaretz editorial 29/6/48, Yedioth Aharonoth (Rozenblum 13/5/48; Halmish and Dayan 29/5/59; the Abdallah al-Tal memoirs 29/5/59), Haolam Hazeh (Avnery, 19/8/59), Kol Ha’am (14/3/48, quoting Al-Gamahir 7/3/48; 2/12/55, quoting Yusuf Hilmi’s leaflet).
• In part 2, additionally: Knesset Records Vol.5 (the 3/5/50 annexation debate and the 31/5/50 Tripartite debate), Vol.11 (4/2/52), Vol.15 (7/12/53), Vol.9 (30/5/51), Vol.16 (16/7/54, 10/5/54), Vol.7 (31/10/50), Vol.4 (21/1/50), Vol.3 (4/1/50) and Vol.2 (2/8/49, 2/8/49); the Tripartite Declaration’s English text from the Israeli MFA’s “Foreign Relations: Historical Documents: 1947-1974”; the New York Times (9/1/50) and London Times (24/11/49); UP/Reuters (27/4/50); Maariv (9/12/60); Al Hamishmar (8/6/48 editorial; 18/4/49); Haolam Hazeh editorial (15/8/59) on Plan Dalet; Haaretz (6/4/1948 on the Bradley memorandum; 4/6/53, 29/5/51 and 2/2/51, Gelblum and Medzini); Ha-Dor (18/2/49); Reynolds News via Yedioth Aharonoth (9/5/48); Lehi’s Lohamei herut yisra’el, Documents, Vol.2.
• In part 3, additionally: Knesset Records Vol.10 (4/11/51, 5/11/51), Vol.12 (30/7/52, 27/8/52), Vol.13 (25/3/53), Vol.14 (15-16/6/53), Vol.15 (30/11/53), Vol.16 (10-11/5/54, 30/8/54), Vol.19 (18/10/55), Vol.2 (2/8/49), Vol.1 (4/3/1949); Haaretz (25/2/51, 2/2/51, 11/4/52, 16/5/52, 9/3/53, 26/10/53, 12/4/54, 27/8/54 reports, 28/9/53); Davar (15/2/53, 26/1/53, 21/10/53, 10/2/58, 29/8/51, 1/6/56, 6/12/56); Maariv (11/4/60, 27/6/58); Forward (9/6/55); Kol Ha’am (5-7/3/57 for the Rockefeller letter; 21/10/57 for the independence table); Le Monde (21/10/53); Chicago Sentinel (January 1952); Zmanim editorial (21/4/55); Le Figaro special edition (May 1960); Yedi’ot, Unity of Labour Central Committee bulletin (21/4/58); UP (17/7/54, 7/1/61); Section 12 of the 1949 US loan agreement; the US Mutual Defence Law as quoted by Ben-Aharon; the 1/7/52 Israel-US exchange of letters (published 25/5/61); official US military-aid data in the Congressional Record (14/3/60, p.4983, submitted by Senator Ellender); the UN economic survey of the Middle East (6/7/1956); Newsweek (9/1/61) cited for the Lavon affair; Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, quoted at PDF p.160-161.
• Books quoted in part 2: W. Eytan, Beyn yisra’el la-‘amim [Between Israel and the nations] (pp.112, 123); the IDF History Department’s Toledot milhemet ha-qomemiyut [History of the war of independence] (pp.112-113, 117, 282, and Ben-Gurion’s introduction, p.49); S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh (fiction; in the 2008 Ibis Editions English translation by Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck, pp.8-9, 10, 101-104, 107-111); J. McDonald, My Mission in Israel 1948-1951 (Simon and Schuster, 1951, pp.88, 116-124); Weizmann, Trial and Error (pp.472, 474); the Government Yearbook (Shenaton ha-Memshalah) 5720 [1960] introduction (pp.ii, viii); General Yitzhak Sadeh’s trial testimony of 20/2/51 in the Attorney General’s trial of Kol Ha’am, and the pamphlet “Kol Ha’am vs Ben-Gurion” (June 1951) for the omitted Harris question and reply.
• Memoirs and books quoted: Weizmann, Trial and Error (1949); García-Granados, The Birth of Israel: The Drama As I Saw It (1948); Nasser, Egypt’s Liberation: The Philosophy of the Revolution (1955); the IDF General Staff History Department’s History of the war of independence (Maarachot, 1959), including its Falluja Pocket record and Ben-Gurion’s preface; A. Cohen, Political changes in the Arab world (Hebrew); W. Eytan, Between Israel and the nations (Hebrew); Abdallah al-Tal’s memoirs as published in Yedioth Aharonoth; Herzl, The Jewish State (1896) and Nordau’s 1920 Albert Hall speech as printed in Zionist Writings (1961/62).
• In part 5, additionally: Knesset Records Vol.21 (15/10/56, 17/10/56, 7/11/56, 14/11/56, 19/12/56, 23/1/57, 22/2/57, 25/2/57); Davar (3/8/56 “HY” article, 2/11/56, 4/11/56 via Haaretz editorial, 7/11/56, 9/11/56, 14/11/56, 11/1/57, 21/1/57, 29/10/59 for Dayan’s diary); Lamerhav (9/7/56); Al Hamishmar (1/6/56, 28/9/56, 21/12/56); Radio Cairo (3/8/56, 15/9/56, 7/10/56) and Sawt al-‘Arab (6/10/55); Near East Radio (21/9/56, 26/10/56); I. F. Stone’s Weekly (30 April 1956, quoted directly per the translator’s footnote); Yedioth Aharonoth (25/9/59, Eban’s recollections); The New York Times (Sulzberger, 14/11/56; Baldwin interview, 19/12/56); Daily Mirror (9/11/56); L’Humanité; the UN General Assembly resolutions of 2, 4 and 7 November 1956, 1120/1123 of 19 January 1957 and the US-India resolution of 3 February 1957 (English texts from UN websites per the translator’s footnotes); the Gaitskell speech of 31 October 1956 retrieved from a Hansard website per the translator’s footnote; Mapai’s Hasbara pamphlet “What we fought for, why we withdrew, what we achieved” (March 1957); Nathan Alterman’s poem as cited to Laor and Tlamim, Israel Studies 4/2 (Fall 1999).
• In part 4, additionally: Knesset Records Vol.19 (2/1/56, 18/10/55, 2/11/55, 3/11/55, 6/1/56), Vol.15 (30/11/53, 1/12/53), Vol.11 (4/2/52), Vol.14 (14/6/53 as printed); Haaretz (11/4/51, 30/9/51, 2/9/53, 13/12/55, 16/12/55, 20/6/55, 14/10/56, 12/12/58); Davar (2/3/55, 4/10/55, 28/11/55, 16/11/58); Maariv (17/8/59; 2 and 11/10/59); Yedioth Aharonoth (18/12/55, 14/12/55); Le Monde (21/10/53); Al Hamishmar (4/6/56, reprinting I. F. Stone); Time (27 August 1956); New York Herald Tribune (29 September 1955); The Jerusalem Post (4/10/55 report; April 18 1956); Die Welt (April 17 1956); Radio Cairo (3/11/55, 15/9/56, 28/9/56), Radio Ramallah (15/9/56) and Near East Radio (21/9/56, 26/10/56); the Hasbara Administration pamphlet “Upon your departure and your arrival” (January 1960), p.20; the UNTSO report of 19/1/56 (Security Council Official Records no. S/3685, Appendices X-XII, p.95); the UN observers’ chief of staff report annex of 1/3/54; G. Wint and P. Calvocoressi, Middle East Crisis (Penguin, 1957), p.57; A. Cohen, Temurot politiyot ba-‘olam ha-‘aravi [Political changes in the Arab world], pp.138, 170, 177-180; M. Katan, Toledot ha-yehudim [History of the Jews], p.229.

Analysis

The method is documentary collage: the argument is built almost entirely from attributed quotations — textbooks, Knesset speeches, editorials and memoirs — arranged so that the 1948 actors’ own words contradict the later official memory. The strongest evidence in this part is contemporaneous (the February–June 1948 Davar, Haaretz and Yedioth Aharonoth statements on Britain’s role) and semi-official (the General Staff history’s Falluja record; Eytan’s and al-Tal’s accounts of the Abdullah negotiations, whose authors Dayan and Eytan praise for honesty). The limits are those the book itself declares: it works only from published material, the secret files being closed (PDF p.15), and its Chapter 1 thesis — that the Arab governments could decide nothing important without the British Foreign Office — is asserted from the puppeteer premise rather than documented decision by decision. The 1999 introduction itself flags a changed standpoint: the authors no longer hold the book’s framing of 1948 as a liberation struggle against British imperialism, seeing it instead as a continuation of Zionism’s colonizing enterprise (PDF p.6), so the book’s Chapter 1 framing and its authors’ later position stand in a recorded tension. The work’s declared scope excludes the Arab population inside Israel (PDF p.15). Part 2 extends the collage to fiction: Khirbet Khizeh is quoted at length and expressly labelled a story in the text, used as literary expression of “actions and folklore that were widespread” (PDF p.96), with the documentary expulsions of 1949-1959 listed after it as fact. Part 2’s Chapter 3 thesis — a private pro-American orientation behind public non-alignment — rests in places on reported speech at second hand (Bradley’s memorandum as reported in Haaretz; a State Department official’s 1953 remark; Strellson’s report of a secret State Council session), a weaker evidential tier than the Knesset and memoir quotations surrounding it, which the notes record as reported.

Part 3’s Chapter 3 evidence is again mostly Knesset and press quotation, but its centrepiece — the Rockefeller letter, quoted for five pages as the doctrine of American aid — is a document the book authenticates only by its wide publication, and the translator’s footnote on its first page records it was an East German intelligence forgery; the analysis built on it therefore rests on a fabricated text, a limit the book’s own text does not acknowledge. The military-aid table (PDF p.140) and the oil-share table (PDF p.150) are the part’s hardest figures, both from official or UN sources as cited. Chapter 4’s UN voting catalogue (PDF p.170-173) is specific and checkable vote by vote, while its claim that the Casablanca verdict expressed the opinion of most Africans is asserted rather than evidenced. Part 4’s Chapter 5 is the book’s most circumstantial argument: no document orders a reprisal from Washington or London, and the authors say so expressly (PDF p.206) — the case rests on timing (17/24/28 February 1955; Kinneret amid the Syria treaty struggle; Qalqilya before Jordan’s elections), on admissions against interest (Dayan’s “They gave us arms because we fought”; the 1960 Hasbara pamphlet against Ben-Gurion’s Qibya denial; Maariv’s 1959 Gaza account against the 1955 communiqué), and on contemporary commentators (Schocken, Gelblum, Ginai, Le Monde) who stated the watchdog reading at the time. Its weakest links are the surmises it flags as such — Washington’s “secret” satisfaction in 1951 and the Bat Galim senders’ presumed expectation of detention. The UNTSO casualty tables (PDF p.224) are the part’s hardest figures and cut against any simple self-defence reading in scale, though the book itself cautions they are only close to the truth.

Part 5’s Chapter 6 rests on the Knesset record itself, quoted at unusual length and in sequence, so that the government’s own words — “madness” in June, the Third Kingdom telegram, the seven points, the 88:3 anthem, the quavering retraction, the January resolutions — carry the argument with minimal commentary; its interpretive moves (the Delphic “every”, the Yarkon counterfactual, the March 1957 pamphlet’s omissions) are flagged as readings rather than documents. Two of its framings rest on inference: that the intervention plan was withheld from Dulles lest he frustrate it is asserted with “much evidence to that effect, but no further proof seems necessary” (PDF p.292), and Stone’s pre-war analysis is endorsed (“saw with a keen eye”) rather than tested. The Gaitskell and UN-resolution quotations in this part come, per the translator’s footnotes, from websites consulted for the translation, not from the book’s own Hebrew-era sources.

People, organizations, places and events

Akiva Orr, Moshe Machover, Matzpen, Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Weizmann, Moshe Sharett, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Menachem Begin, Ernest Bevin, Brigadier Clayton, John Glubb, Amir Abdullah, Abdullah al-Tal, Walter Eytan, Gamal Abd al-Nasser, Fauzi al-Qawuqji, Nuri al-Said, Vladimir Jabotinsky, Arab League, Arab Liberation Army, Arab Higher Committee, National Liberation League, Transjordan, West Bank, Gaza, UN General Assembly Resolution 181

Part 2 adds: Pinchas Lavon, Alec Kirkbride, Anthony Eden, James McDonald, Fred Harris, S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh, Tripartite Declaration (1950), Deir Yassin, Dalet Plan, Czechoslovak arms deal, Operation Nachshon, Haganah, Yitzhak Sadeh, Amin Jarjura, Majdal, Maki

Part 3 adds: Abba Eban, John Foster Dulles, John Hagerty, France, Algeria, Lavon Affair, Bandung Conference

A later fix under the What-gets-a-page rule adds: Soviet Union, United States, Line 31 ultimatum; a further such fix adds Britain Part 4 adds: Qibya, Baghdad Pact, Czech-Egyptian arms deal, Gaza raid (1955), Operation Kinneret, Bat Galim affair, Fedayeen, I. F. Stone

Part 5 adds: Operation Sinai, Meir Yaari, Harold MacMichael, Moshe Sneh

Concepts

Zionism, Imperialism, Self-determination, Two-state solution, Settler Colonialism

Part 2 adds: Right of Return, Transfer, Hasbara, Non-alignment Part 4 adds: Watchdog state

How it relates to other sources

• With The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine: both centre the secret Ben-Gurion–Abdullah understanding of 1948 and the prevention of a Palestinian state; Pappe’s account of the January-February 1948 unwritten agreement and the 13 May meeting in Amman parallels al-Tal’s account of the 11/12 May 1948 meeting as presented here, while this book, written in 1957-1961 from published sources only, presents the accord as a bargain against Britain’s design as well, and frames the 1948 war itself as directed by Britain — a framing Pappe does not adopt.
• With Palestine: A Socialist Introduction: Chapter 2 of that collection takes its “watchdog” name for Israel’s role from Schocken’s Haaretz passage; this book, by two of that chapter’s intellectual predecessors, quotes the same passage in full (PDF p.186-187) and builds Chapter 5 as a case-by-case test of it against the 1951-1956 reprisals — see Watchdog state.
• With Nakba and Survival: Manna’s National Liberation League — which opposed the Arab armies’ entry and united with Maki in October 1948 — is the same organization this book presents as the most influential body on the Arab street in 1949-1950, campaigning for an independent democratic Palestine against Abdullah’s annexation (PDF p.61); this book adds the Abu-Ageila prisoners, League-aligned Arab leftists held by the IDF for nearly two more years after their release from the Egyptian camp (PDF p.54-55).
• With Palestine: A Socialist Introduction: Chapter 4 of that collection rests on Orr and Machover’s later (1969) Matzpen analysis; this book is the same authors’ earlier work, whose 1999 introduction records the break between the two positions on 1948 (PDF p.6).
• With The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine: Kanafani’s Abdullah, the British-made ruler whose regime frustrated the 1936-39 revolt, is the same Abdullah who here partitions Palestine with Ben-Gurion; both works treat the Arab regimes of 1948 as dependent on Britain, though this book extends the claim to the war’s direction itself.

Open questions

• The text copy reproduces only the legend of the map “How the Palestinian state was divided” (PDF p.58); the map image on PDF p.59 is not legible in the text copy, so the map’s own labels and boundaries are recorded from the legend only.

• Chapter 1 gives the Partition vote as 33 in favour against 13 opposed with 10 abstentions (PDF p.28); the figures are recorded as printed.

• Shimoni’s Liberation Army figures as quoted give “2,000 [!] Palestinians” among about 8,000 men (PDF p.41), the bracketed exclamation being the authors’ own comment in the text.

• The 1999 introduction’s account of Nasser’s 1955 Bandung peace proposal and of the Sèvres terms (PDF p.7-8) is the authors’ later framing; the 1961 text’s own treatment of 1956 falls in later parts of this ingest.

• Weizmann’s Trial and Error is cited to the 1949 New York (Harper & Brothers) edition at pp.470, 472-473 (PDF p.21-22); García-Granados is cited at p.277 of the 1948 Knopf edition (PDF p.31).

• Ben-Gurion’s 10/3/49 denial that the government had discussed or decided the annexation bargain (PDF p.50) stands in the text against Eytan’s and al-Tal’s accounts of the negotiations; the book poses, and does not answer from documents, the question of who authorized the envoys.

• The authors’ percentages commenting on Lavon (PDF p.68): the 54% and 44% figures are the authors’ words, not Lavon’s. The authors gloss his argument as the Council discussing “not only the 54% of the territory of the Arab state that was annexed to Transjordan, but also the 44% that was annexed to Israel” — the two figures sum to 98%, and the Gaza Strip’s share is not accounted for in the passage as printed.

• Ben-Gurion’s area figures as quoted (PDF p.81): 14,920 km² allotted to the Jewish state; 20,662 km² now held, of which 4,912 km² occupied by the IDF and 467 km² added in the Transjordan accords; the authors then speak of “the annexation of 5,742 square kilometres to the State of Israel” (PDF p.81). That figure is not unexplained: 20,662 − 14,920 = 5,742 (computed from Ben-Gurion’s own totals as quoted), so the authors’ figure matches Ben-Gurion’s totals; the mismatch is between that gain and his rounded components, 4,912 + 467 = 5,379 (computed from the quoted figures). All figures recorded as printed.

• Deir Yassin toll as given in this part (PDF p.87-89): 200 residents slaughtered, including about 150 women, children, babies and old people; the IDF history quoted gives “about 200 of its people were killed”. The figures are recorded as this book prints them.

• The Czechia refuelling complaint (PDF p.104-105): the text says the USA lodged a complaint with Prague on 28/7/48 over smuggled planes that landed in Czechia “on 30/9/48” — a landing date after the complaint date as printed; recorded as printed.

• This book spells the first-Knesset speaker both “Amin-Salim Jarjora” (PDF p.86-87) and “Jarjoura” (PDF p.87); his existing page, from Nakba and Survival, uses “Amin Jarjura”. All three spellings are recorded on Amin Jarjura, with Jarjora and Jarjoura among its aliases. The book likewise spells the Yizhar village both “Khirbet Khizeh” (PDF p.92-96) and “Khirbet Hiz’ahs” (PDF p.98); both spellings are recorded on Khirbet Khizeh, with the variant among its aliases.

• Chapter 3’s Bradley/Acheson memorandum evidence (PDF p.110-111) rests on a Haaretz report of 6/4/1948 and on a State Department official’s remark reported by Haaretz’s correspondent in 1953; the memorandum itself is not quoted in the text.

• The Rockefeller letter (PDF p.125-129): the book’s text treats the letter as authentic — its wide publication “suffices to certify the credibility of the document” (PDF p.125) — while the translator’s footnote on the same page records it was a forgery fabricated by the East German intelligence agency. The quotations and the three-type classification built on the letter are recorded as the book prints them.

• The US military-aid table (PDF p.140): the translator notes the original’s footnote #3 (“financed with partial credit”) has its marker nowhere in the main body, so only four footnotes appear; the table’s column headings as reproduced (Programs 1951 / 1950-59 / 1960; Transfers 1959 / 1950-59 / 1960 estimate) are recorded as printed.

• The independence table (PDF p.158): the text copy duplicates the Jordan, Israel and Ghana rows, gives China’s territory as “9.898” and several territories (Vietnam 330, Korea 221) in figures that read as thousands of km² under a heading of square kilometres; all recorded as printed in the text copy.

• Spellings and names as printed in this part: the Knesset speaker “S. Mikonis” (PDF p.132, p.161) is the “Shmuel Mikunis” of Shmuel Mikunis; “Georgi Melnikov” in the Haaretz Independence Loan report (PDF p.144); “General Benike” for the UN observation chief (PDF p.124); the “United Arab Commonwealth” among the Casablanca participants (PDF p.177); Davar’s “estern powers” for Western powers (PDF p.141). All recorded as printed.

• Ben-Aharon’s disarmament passage as quoted (PDF p.175) reads “it would be morally impossible to oppose it in principle politically impossible to accept it”, without punctuation between the clauses; recorded as printed.

• Operation Kinneret’s Syrian wounded are given as 9 in the raid’s first account (PDF p.218) and as 6 in the later summary (PDF p.223); the UNTSO table (PDF p.224) gives 20 Syrian soldiers and 6 civilians wounded in all 1955 Israel-Syria incidents. All figures recorded as printed.

• The Kinneret raid is dated 11 December 1955 at PDF p.218 (with the Security Council condemnation on 19/12/55 at PDF p.220), but the authors’ “gift from heaven” catalogue dates it “(19/12/55)” (PDF p.232) — apparently the condemnation date; recorded as printed in each place.

• The Jordan governments list (PDF p.197) announces seven governments from April 1950 to spring 1954 and names six (the two al-Mufti, al-Rifa’i, two Abu al-Hoda, al-Mulki governments); recorded as printed, following A. Cohen as cited.

• The 1956 Jordan raid names are spelled “Rahawa” (PDF p.228) and “Harawa” (PDF p.234), and “Hussam” (PDF p.196) for the village called Husan elsewhere (PDF p.193, p.228); all recorded as printed.

• Flash’s second Suez speech is headed with the date 14/6/53 in the text while its citation reads Knesset Records 15/6/53 (PDF p.201); recorded as printed.

• Ben-Gurion’s 1955 casualty figures (PDF p.183-184) and the UNTSO 1955 tables (PDF p.224) are different measures (Ben-Gurion’s “casualties” by year and origin; UNTSO’s incident casualties by side) and are recorded separately, not reconciled.

• Ben-Gurion’s 15/10/56 Knesset reply is described at PDF p.241 as responding to “Aden’s ‘statement’” proposing a Partition/status-quo compromise — apparently Eden (compare Eden’s Guildhall speech, PDF p.79-80); recorded as printed.

• The vote rejecting the withdrawal call on 7 November 1956 is given as 87 to 3 at PDF p.271, while the debate’s own votes at PDF p.264-265 are recorded as 88 to 3 on both motions; recorded as printed in each place.

• Idov Cohen’s Knesset citation is dated “7/14/56” (PDF p.262) in a speech of the 7/11/56 debate; recorded as printed.

• Spellings and slips as printed in this part: the Voice of Cairo date “15/9/568” (PDF p.235); Mapam’s “annexation [!] of aza” for Gaza (PDF p.278); Yaari’s “niether de jure nor de facto” (PDF p.260); the footnote “Pslams 118:23” (PDF p.261); the UN text’s “Requestions the Secretary-General” (PDF p.279); “Dependant to a great extent” (PDF p.290); Riftin’s “The State of Israel is not cannot accept” (PDF p.285); and “what they does not want to annex” (PDF p.283). All recorded as printed.

• The Anglo-French veto of 30 October 1956 is described as exercised “for the first time in the history of the UN” (PDF p.247); recorded as the book prints it.

Coverage

PDF p.1-294 of 581, read in parts 1-5 of 11. Remaining: part 6, PDF p.295-349; part 7, PDF p.350-406; part 8, PDF p.407-464; part 9, PDF p.465-521; part 10, PDF p.522-574; part 11, PDF p.575-581.