1948 war different narratives[edit]

AlyFeldman2013p59^[1]

Arms[edit]

"Early in 1947...Czech weaponry might be available...personally approved by...Jan Masarik. Ideology played no role in these initial transaction. They were exclusively commercial" Sachar2010p56 ^[2]

Jaffa[edit]

p. 114) And rifts among the Jaffa Arabs from the beginning subverted all efforts at peacemaking. In February, Ben-Gurion wrote to Shertok that Heikal, through a British intermediary,was trying to secure an agreement with Tel Aviv but that the new irregulars’ commander, ‘Abdul Wahab ‘Ali Shihaini, had blocked him. …. According to Ben-Gurion, Shihaini had answered: ‘I do not mind [the] destruction [of] Jaffa if we secure [the] destruction [of] Tel Aviv. As in Haifa, the irregulars intimidated the local population, echoing the experience of 1936–1939. ‘. . . The inhabitants were more afraid of their defenders-saviours than of the Jews their enemies’, wrote Nimr al Khatib. (p. 115) But Arab notables, through British intermediaries, continued to press for a wider citrus agreement. … In the end, a formal agreement was never concluded. But neither was a complete blockade imposed on Jaffa, and the bilateral orange-picking and -exporting continued largely unhampered. Morris2004p114 ^[3]

The Arab states invasion[edit]

Morris 2008

p. 116: But the Haganah had had little choice. With the Arab world loudly threatening and seemingly mobilizing for invasion, the Yishuv’s political and military leaders understood that they would first have to crush the Palestinian militias in the main towns and along the main roads and the country’s borders if they were to stand a chance of beating off the invading armies.
p. 198 : during the civil war, the Jews felt that the Arabs aimed to reenact the Holocaust and that they faced certain personal and collective slaughter should they lose. Most Haganah troops had lost relatives in the Holocaust, a loss fresh in their minds, and they were imbued with boundless motivation and a measure of fury (“once more we are under attack and threat of annihilation”). …This gap in motivation was to tell on the battlefield, especially in May and June, when small Jewish units with rifles and Molotov cocktails staved off far larger Arab forces backed by armor and artillery (as in Kibbutz Nirim and Kibbutz Degania Aleph )
p. 401: the four armies that invaded on 15 May were far stronger than the Haganah formations they initially encountered, if not in manpower— where they were roughly evenly matched—then in equipment and firepower. The invaders had batteries of modern twenty-five-pounders, tanks, dozens of gun-mounting armored cars, and dozens of combat aircraft. The Haganah had virtually no artillery and initially made do with mortars, no tanks, and no combat aircraft (until the end of May), and its improvised armored car fleet was inferior in every respect.

Gelber (2006), p.137 :

"Despite the wild rhetoric that had preceded and accompanied the invasion, the invasion's goal was not and could not be "pushing the Jews to the Mediterranean". The purpose of this propagandist slogan was mobilizied domestic support from lame politicians who had undertaken a crucial decision and feared its consequences". Drawn into the war by the collapse of the Palestinians and the ALA, the Arab governments' primary goal was preventing the Palestinians' [sic] total ruin and the flooding of their own countries by more refugees. (by pluto)

Misleading:The Yishuv had a numerical superiority, with 35,000 troops of the Haganah
This sentence is misleading, as only Half of them were fighters. The home guard members could hardly guard their villages. see Morris 2008, p. 204 : "About half the Haganah’s manpower served in service, headquarters, and Home Guard units. On 15 May only 60 percent of Haganah troops had arms.108 But large shipments soon arrived, and by the start of June, according to Ben-Gurion, the IDF had “reached a saturation” in small arms,… The Haganah’s main problem during the first weeks of the invasion was a lack of heavy weapons."

^[4]

conclusions[edit]

In a war that involved five armies-Israeli, Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian and Lebanese - no more than 150,000 soldiers, nearly two-thirds of whom were Israelis, took part in the hostilities at their height. The soldiers' weapons and equipment were meager and often substandard. Both sides combined had only about 80 planes, most of them obsolescent and poorly maintained. Only a few dozen tanks took part in the fighting, and some of the Egyptian tanks lacked guns. The Israelis had fewer than a dozen tanks. From a military point of view it was as though the Second World War had never been fought and as though the tank had not become the main weapons system of modern armies.' David Tal,War in Palestine, 1948: Israeli and Arab Strategy and Diplomacy,p.3.

Notes[edit]

^ Abdel Monem Said Aly; Shai Feldman; Khalil Shikaki (28 November 2013). Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-137-29084-7. 1948 war different narratives
^ Howard M. Sachar (24 March 2010). Israel and Europe: An Appraisal in History. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. pp. 56–. ISBN 978-0-307-48643-1. Early in 1947...Czech weaponry might be available...personally approved by...Jan Masarik. Ideology played no role in these initial transaction. They were exclusively commercial
^ Benny Morris (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. pp. 115–. ISBN 978-0-521-00967-6. (p. 114) And rifts among the Jaffa Arabs from the beginning subverted all efforts at peacemaking. In February, Ben-Gurion wrote to Shertok that Heikal, through a British intermediary,was trying to secure an agreement with Tel Aviv but that the new irregulars' commander, 'Abdul Wahab 'Ali Shihaini, had blocked him. …. According to Ben-Gurion, Shihaini had answered: 'I do not mind [the] destruction [of] Jaffa if we secure [the] destruction [of] Tel Aviv. As in Haifa, the irregulars intimidated the local population, echoing the experience of 1936–1939. '. . . The inhabitants were more afraid of their defenders-saviours than of the Jews their enemies', wrote Nimr al Khatib. (p. 115) But Arab notables, through British intermediaries, continued to press for a wider citrus agreement. … In the end, a formal agreement was never concluded. But neither was a complete blockade imposed on Jaffa, and the bilateral orange-picking and -exporting continued largely unhampered.
^ Charles Tripp (2002). A History of Iraq. Cambridge University Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-521-52900-6. . Iraq had dispatched 3,000 troops to the front in May and in the months that followed a further 15,000 troops were sent, making them the largest single Arab force in Palestine ( also- The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 edited by Eugene L. Rogan, Avi Shlaim, chapter at p. 125 to 149) {{cite book}}: line feed character in |quote= at position 238 (help)

[AlyFeldman2013p59-1] Abdel Monem Said Aly; Shai Feldman; Khalil Shikaki (28 November 2013). Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 59. ISBN 978-1-137-29084-7. 1948 war different narratives

[Sachar2010p56-2] Howard M. Sachar (24 March 2010). Israel and Europe: An Appraisal in History. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. pp. 56–. ISBN 978-0-307-48643-1. Early in 1947...Czech weaponry might be available...personally approved by...Jan Masarik. Ideology played no role in these initial transaction. They were exclusively commercial

[Morris2004p114-3] Benny Morris (2004). The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge University Press. pp. 115–. ISBN 978-0-521-00967-6. (p. 114) And rifts among the Jaffa Arabs from the beginning subverted all efforts at peacemaking. In February, Ben-Gurion wrote to Shertok that Heikal, through a British intermediary,was trying to secure an agreement with Tel Aviv but that the new irregulars' commander, 'Abdul Wahab 'Ali Shihaini, had blocked him. …. According to Ben-Gurion, Shihaini had answered: 'I do not mind [the] destruction [of] Jaffa if we secure [the] destruction [of] Tel Aviv. As in Haifa, the irregulars intimidated the local population, echoing the experience of 1936–1939. '. . . The inhabitants were more afraid of their defenders-saviours than of the Jews their enemies', wrote Nimr al Khatib. (p. 115) But Arab notables, through British intermediaries, continued to press for a wider citrus agreement. … In the end, a formal agreement was never concluded. But neither was a complete blockade imposed on Jaffa, and the bilateral orange-picking and -exporting continued largely unhampered.

[Tripp2002p73-4] Charles Tripp (2002). A History of Iraq. Cambridge University Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-521-52900-6. . Iraq had dispatched 3,000 troops to the front in May and in the months that followed a further 15,000 troops were sent, making them the largest single Arab force in Palestine ( also- The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 edited by Eugene L. Rogan, Avi Shlaim, chapter at p. 125 to 149) {{cite book}}: line feed character in |quote= at position 238 (help)

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