Collier's Encyclopedia on Israel

Collier's Encyclopedia on Israel - Printable Version

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Collier's Encyclopedia on Israel - Purgetroy - 03-09-2004

Growth of the Yishuv. During the 1930’s the Jewish community in Palestine – called Yishuv – attained the minimum size and strength necessary to make the Zionist dream of an independent Jewish state in part or all of the country a realistic possibility. The rise to power of the Nazi party in Germany and a rising tide of anti-Semitism elsewhere in Europe left to a surge of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the Western democracies having effectively closed their doors to immigrants. Between 1933 and 1939 some 235,000 Jewish immigrants arrived legally, and thousands of others came by illegal means, doubling the size of the Yishuv. Many of the new immigrants brought needed skills and capital, and the Yishuv also benefited from the ha’avara (“transfer”) agreement negotiated in 1933 between the Zionists and the German government, which enabled some of the assets of the departing Jews to be transferred to Palestine.

The rapid growth in the size, economic base, and self-assurance of the Jewish community in the 1930’s shocked the Arab majority in Palestine into realizing that it would eventually be reduced to a minority in a Jewish-dominated state. Arab feelings of desperation left to an outbreak of Jewish-Arab clashes in 1936, which developed into a six-month general strike by Arabs and then an armed uprising in the countryside against British rule and the Zionist project it protected. The British authorities, with the collaboration of Jewish volunteer forces, were able to suppress the disorganized and poorly led Arab guerrillas by 1939 and restore control. Ironically, the Arab revolt strengthened the Yishuv by forcing it to become more economically self-reliant. But the strength of Arab opposition to Zionism, and Great Britain’s desire to secure the support of Arabs in Palestine and elsewhere in the war with Germany and Italy looking just over the horizon (World War II), led to a rethinking of British policy.

Tensions Between Britain and the Zionists. In 1937 a British royal commission investigating the causes of the Arab revolt had recommended that Palestine be partitioned into a small Jewish state in the coastal plain and the Galilee and an Arab state in the remained of the country. After bitter debate the Zionist movement tentatively accepted the proposal as an interim step, but the Arab leadership rejected it, demanding instead an independent Arab state in all of Palestine. After further unsuccessful negotiations among Britain, the Palestinian Arabs and the Zionists, Britain issued a new “white paper,” or official statement of policy, in 1939. It considerably limited the extent of British support for the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine. After a one-time admission of 25,000 Jewish refugees, Jewish immigration was to be restricted to 10,000 a year for five years, and after that immigration would be allowed only with Arab consent; restrictions were placed on land sales to Jews; and Britain envisioned the granting of independence to Palestine in ten years’ time.

For over two decades British support and protection had made it possible for the Zionist movement to lat the foundations of a future Jewish state in Palestine, despite escalating Arab resistance. Bit now the Yishuv had reached the stage where British rule was a hindrance to its future development. Zionist leaders rejected the 1030 white paper as a betrayal of the Balfour Declaration - in which Britain during World War I (while fighting the Ottoman Turks, who ruled Palestine) had promised British support for Zionist efforts to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine – and they organized to resist the new policy through illegal immigration and settlement. The Jewish Agency decided, however, to cooperate with the British in the war effort during World War II until Germany, the common enemy, was defeated. The military capacity of the Yishuv was enhanced in these years through the strengthening of the main Jewish armed force, the Haganah, members of which received training from the British, while disruption of the sea-lanes and war-related demand stimulated considerable economic growth in the Yishuv.

Postwar Conflict. The increased self-confidence of the Yishuv the realization that Britain could no longer be relied on to further Zionist aims, and reports about the ongoing extermination of European Jewry led the Zionist movement in 1942 to proclaim openly, for the first time, that its goal was the establishment of a Jewish state in all of Palestine. With the end of the war, conflict between the British and the Zionists over the future of Palestine again flared up. The Nazi murder of some six million European Jews seemed to demonstrate conclusively the validity and necessity of Zionism, which won unprecedented world sympathy for its goals. It was thus able to launch a political offensive to force Britain to open the gates of Palestine to Jewish immigration and create a Jewish state. Two small Jewish underground groups, the right-wing Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization, known to Americans as the Irgun), led by Menachem Begin, and its offshoot Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, usually called the Stern Gang after its founder), launched a campaign of violence to drive the British out of Palestine. Late in 1945 they were joined by the much later Haganah, controlled by the Zionist leadership and supported by the mainstream of the Yishuv. Armed conflict between the British and the Yishuv (with the Palestinian Arabs largely passive onlookers) was accompanied by an intensive political struggle on many fronts.

After abortive negotiations, Britain decided in February 1947 to turn the question of Palestine over to the United Nations. The UN Special Committee on Palestine, after months of hearings, recommended that the British mandate over Palestine be terminated and that the country be partitioned into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem to be internationalized. The Jews, with one third of the country’s population, were assigned about 56 percent of Palestine’s land area. With strong Soviet and U.S. support, the UN General Assembly voted by a two-thirds majority to approve the partition plan on Nov. 29, 1947. The Arabs rejected partition, arguing that the United Nations had no right to give away most of Palestine to a minority and that they should not be made to pay for Europe’s crimes against the Jews. The Zionist leaders accepted the partition plan, although they retained hopes that the borders of the Jewish state could be expanded.

Civil War in Palestine. Immediately after the UN vote fighting erupted in Palestine between Jews and Arabs, as the British abdicated responsibility for maintaining order and began to withdraw from the country. Armed Palestinians, aided by volunteers from other Arab countries, launched attacks on Jewish communications and settlements. But the Arab community had never fully recovered from the suppression of the 1036-1939 revolt, and the Palestinian military effort was poorly organized and poorly led. Although some settlements were cut off, the Jewish military forces, especially the Haganag, soon took the initiative and gained the upper hand in most regions. The Yishuv was highly organized and united, with its own institutions of self-government and the nucleus of an effective army. By May 1948 the Yishuv had more than 50,000 men under arms, and large quantities of weapons and ammunition had begun to arrive from Czechoslovakia. The best-trained men were concentrated in special Haganah units, the elite Palmach brigades.

Proclamation of the State of Israel. On may 14, 1948, one day before the British mandate for Palestine ended, the National Council, which led the Yishuv, proclaimed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel. A provisional government quickly assumed power, with David Ben-Gurion as prime minister and Dr. Chaim Weizmann as president of the state council. The new state was granted de facto recognition by the United States that same day and de jure recognition by the Soviet Union on May 18.

The Arab-Israeli War. With the Palestinian Arabs facing defeat, the government of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon decided to intervene militarily to prevent partition, which they rejected as an injustice. On May 15, 1948, Arab military forces entered Palestine. The Israeli forces, which in June were consolidated into the Israel Defense Forces, were able to block the Arab advance, however, and later took the offensive. The Arab forces were often poorly trained, equipped, and led, and because of rivalries among the Arab governments their commanders often worked at cross-purposes. Efforts by a UN-appointed mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, to end the fighting and achieve a negotiated settlement failed, and Bernadotte himself was assassinated by Jewish extremists in September. In a series of successful campaigns separated by periods of truce, the Israelis defeated the Arab forces and by the end of the fighting January 1949 had extended their area of control to almost 77 percent of Palestine, essentially the whole country except for the central hilly districts (the West Bank and East Jerusalem, occupied by troops from Transjordan) and a narrow strip along the coast near Gaza. Between February and July 1949 armistice agreements negotiated under UN auspices were signed between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. The United Nations, to which Israel was admitted in May 1949, had earlier set up a truce supervisory organization staffed by foreign military personnel and a Palestine Conciliation Commission to seek a final peace settlement.

The Arab Refugees. Soon after the outbreak of violence at the end of 1947, small numbers of Palestinian Arabs. Mainly from the middle and upper classes, began to leave their homes for more secure areas in Palestine or in neighboring Arab countries, despite Palestinian nationalist and official Arab exhortations to remain. This trickle turned into a flood in the spring of 1948. Many people, mostly peasants but also urban dwellers, left their villages and towns as they were threatened by, or fell to, Jewish forces, simply to get away from the fighting. Later, Panic gave rise to mass flight as news spread of the massacre of several hundred Arab civilians b rightwing Jewish forces in the village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, on Apr. 9, 1948. Deir Yassin was attacked as part of a broader campaign, known as “Plan Dalet,” to extend the Jewish-controlled area and if necessary expel the Arab population. From the summer of 1948 deliberate expulsions of Arab by Israeli forces became more frequent, reflection an unspoken by widely shared view that Israel should have only a small Arab minority. Israel would later argue that the Palestinians had left on orders of the Arab governments, but no evidence for this has been produced. By the end of the fighting some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs had fled or been expelled from their homes and become refugees either in territory controlled by Jordan (60 percent), in Egypt-controlled Gaza (20 percent), or in Lebanon and Syria (20 percent). The UN Relief and Works Agency was created to provide aid for the dispossessed Palestinians, most of whom ended up in refugee camps. Only 160,000 Arabs remained within Israel.

Development of the State. As the war wound down, the new state turned to internal problems. Almost immediately after Israel’s establishment, a flood of immigrants – first survivors of the Holocaust, then Oriental Jews – began pouring in. The Law of Return, enacted in 1950, gave every Jew an automatic right to settle in Israel, and by the end of 1951 the Jewish population had more than doubled. The government was hard-pressed to feed and house the new immigrants, much less find jobs for them all. An austerity regime accompanied by rationing was instituted to confront the crisis. Israel also received substantial aid from Jewish communities abroad, and the United States provided a $100 million load in January 1949, followed by a series of aid grants. In 1952, after bitter political controversy, Israel decided to accept reparations payments of $750 million from the West German government as partial restitution for the Nazi theft of Jewish property; individual survivors also received reparations. The massive influx of aid made it possible for Israel to maintain a strong army while initiating economic and social development projects, including especially many new agricultural settlements (mainly moshavim) for the recent immigrants. The great majority of the new settlements were on lands that belonged to Palestinian refugees. The urban properties of the Palestinian refugees were also taken over by the state for Jewish use.

Arab-Israeli Tensions. The armistice agreements of 1949 did not open the way to comprehensive peace settlement. The Arab states insisted that all the Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homes as a precondition for negotiations, while Israel at first agreed to accept only 100,000 as part of a comprehensive settlement and later refused to admit any of them except through a limited family reunion program. King Abdullah of Jordan, who had annexed the West Bank in 1949, held secret talks with Israel but was assassinated in July 1951 by a Palestinian nationalist. In general, the Arab states refused to accept the consequences of their defeat in 1948, continued to regard the establishment of Israel as an injustice, and imposed a political and economic boycott on the new state.

Tensions rose along the borders as Palestinian refugees, individually and in small groups, began infiltrating into Israel from the West Bank and Gaza and attacking people and property. Although Jordan and Egypt trued to suppress such raids, which gradually took on a political character, Israel held the Arab governments responsible and launched retaliatory raids on a much larger scale. The ensuing cycle of violence, in which numerous Israeli and Arab civilians and soldiers were killed, escalated and encompassed Syria as well. Conflicts also arose over control of demilitarized zones along the border and over Israeli projects to divert Jordan River water.

Indirect Arab-Israeli contacts continued nonetheless, especially with the new regime of Colonel Gamal Abd al- Nasser in Egypt. Israeli Prime Minister Sharett (1953-1955) believed a political settlement with the Arabs to be possible and favored a moderate approach. However, others within the Israeli civilian and military leadership, including Ben-Gurion and his protégé, army chief of staff Moshe Dayan, wanted to pursue a more aggressive strategy of massive punitive raids intended to intimidate the Arabs; they also envisioned further territorial expansion. Sharett often found himself unable to control the activist faction. Nasser’s initial reluctance to get too caught up in Palestine problem was undermined in 1954 when his police uncovered an Israeli spy ring that had planted bombs in U.S. and British facilities in Egypt in order to sabotage improving U.S. and British relations with Nasser. Exposure of this secret operation caused a major scandal in Israel (the Lavon Affair, after defense minister Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign), as high officials sought to deny responsibility for ordering it. Lavon’s resignation opened the way for Ben-Gurion to return to the cabinet as defense minister and signaled the triumph of the hard-line faction.