Plowshares into Swords: From Zionism to Israel by Arno J. Mayer

Author:Arno J. Mayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso

Buber appealed to the leaders of all nations to “extend their help” to the governors of Israel and the Arab states to achieve “an agreed solution to the Arab refugee problem as a first step toward a real peace in the Middle East.”

May 15, 1948, marked a new defeat for the Palestinian resistance. The Arab Higher Committee’s campaign to defy the U.N. prescript of November 29 had failed. The Committee continued to be torn by feuds, and as Palestinian members rushed into exile, there was a leadership vacuum. A lack of a command structure and overall strategy meant their thrusts against the Zionists were essentially local, and therefore relatively easy to fend off. Thousands of Palestinian irregulars took to arms and blocked roads, but they fought as members of ill-trained, undisciplined, poorly armed, and uncoordinated militias; their raids could harass but not overwhelm isolated kibbutzim and moshavim, let alone towns. In a sense they were pre-political primitive rebels without a prophetic or utopian ideal. Barely touched by the rising anti-Zionist nationalist movement, theirs was, to borrow the words of Eric Hobsbawm, an “improvised, archaic, spontaneous” popular resistance still smarting from the repression of 1936–9. The few volunteers from the wider Arab world who joined them during the next intifada added little muscle. But the mass exodus of 350,000 Palestinian Arabs before May 15 was surely the most dramatic and stigmatizing measure of their powerlessness, made more acute by the knowledge that there was no Great Power to intercede on their behalf.

There remained one hope: the intervention of the five Arab neighbors whose forces were substantial and relatively well-trained and equipped, though in want of a military doctrine. Yet even their military heft was considerably compromised. Except for Egypt, they were rudimentary states. Their coalition was divided and incoherent. With competing interests, they could not agree on common war aims, harmonize their diplomatic policies, or coordinate military plans and operations. Jordan was the most problematic of them all: it combined a pivotal adjacency to Palestine with a disproportionately large and battle-worthy army—subsidized and commanded by the British. And the transparent territorial and dynastic designs of King Abdullah were not necessarily incompatible with the long-range plans of Israel. Its leaders continued the Zionist policy of courting him while turning to good account the diplomatic and military discordances in the Arab camp.

By contrast the Yishuv—as ancient Israel redivivus and supported by post-Judeocide Jewry—was a juggernaut. The battle for national existence and individual survival dissolved ideological and partisan divergences into a solid union sacrée . On the left, the Marxist–Zionist Mapam and Hashomer Hatzair parties went out with the tide, while on the right the Revisionists rallied to the Ben-Gurion-dominated government, though they were free to press their maximalist program. Morale was only one of the Zionists’ advantages during the struggle of foundation. In terms of potential manpower, their fighting forces were way outnumbered, but they had long ago started to compensate for this fearsome handicap. By June 1948 the Hagana and Palmach were the mainstay of Tsahal (the Hebrew acronym for the Israeli Defense Forces), formed on May 31, 1948.

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