Palestine under the British 1939-47

Palestine under the British 1939-47

By 1939 about 275,000 German Jews had fled Nazi rule, and as many Jews had left Poland, Hungary, and Rumania. Jews had become 29% of Palestine’s population. Four days before World War II began on September 1, Chaim Weizmann sent a letter to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain promising that the Jews would stand by Britain. On September 9 Italian planes bombed Tel Aviv, killing 107 Jews, and in the next two years they would kill hundreds by bombing Palestinian cities. Some Arab leaders turned to the German and Italian Axis powers. The exiled Mufti Hajj Amin went to Baghdad in October. He sent Naji Shawkat to Ankara with a letter to the German ambassador Franz von Papen offering to Hitler that the Arab people would like to collaborate with his country. Amin sent another emissary in August 1940, and on October 23 statements from Berlin and Rome offered sympathy for Arab independence. Amin flew to Rome and met with Mussolini on October 27. Then he went to Berlin and met with Hitler on November 30, offering to recruit an Arab legion.
The Jewish Agency mobilized Jewish support for the British war effort. Tilled soil was increased by 70%, and four hundred new factories were built within a year. By 1943 about 63% of the Jewish work force was employed in defense-related occupations. In September 1939 the Va’ad Le’umi began recruiting volunteers for national service. On September 6, 1940 Weizmann was invited to a private lunch with Winston Churchill, who assured him that he would support a Jewish army project. However, this was opposed by Foreign Secretary Halifax and blocked by the new colonial secretary, Lord Moyne. It was not until early 1942 that 11,000 Jews were serving with the British army in the Mideast. Unofficially the Haganah had established the Plugot Machaz Strike Companies (Palmach) by May 1941. Prior to the Allied invasion of Syria on June 8 Palmach volunteers provided reconnaissance of Vichy positions. After Montgomery’s Eighth Army stopped Rommel’s forces at al-Alamein in July 1942, the British closed the Palmach training bases in the fall, making Haganah illegal again.
Jews came clandestinely from central and eastern Europe, but on February 28, 1940 Colonial Secretary MacDonald banned land sales to Jews except along the coast. About 1,900 refugees were on the Patria in Haifa harbor when an explosion on November 25 caused it to sink, killing 240 Jews and 10 British police. Later an investigation showed that the Haganah sabotaged the ship. A few weeks later the SS Salvador was ordered to go back to Bulgaria, but it sank in the Turkish straits, killing another 280 refugees. On February 24, 1942 the Turks ordered the Struma to leave Istanbul harbor, and its sinking lost 428 men, 269 women, and 70 children.
On May 11, 1942 the American Zionist Organization met in New York and approved the Biltmore Program proposed by Ben-Gurion that called for a Jewish state in all of Palestine, a Jewish army, and unlimited immigration into Palestine. Although moderate Jews objected, the Zionist Organization’s General Council endorsed the program on November 10. In 1943 the American Zionist Emergency Council began its successful lobbying campaigns. As Prime Minister Churchill tried to implement some of Weizmann’s suggestions, on December 20, 1943 the Morrison Committee proposed a Jewish state, a Jerusalem territory under the British, and a Greater Syria that would include Syria, Transjordan, southern Lebanon, and Arab Palestine. On July 12, 1944 Churchill sent a memorandum to the war secretary to organize a Jewish army group. After recruiting and training, a combat brigade of 3,400 was shipped to Italy. Jewish immigration continued and by the end of the war about 560,000 Jews made up 32% of Palestine.
The Polish Jew Avraham Stern had organized a paramilitary group during the Arab insurrection of the late 1930s, and in 1941 he contacted the German emissary Otto von Hentig in Vichy Syria, but he was ignored. Stern’s Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lech’i) robbed banks to raise funds, and in January 1942 their bomb killed two Jewish police inspectors. A few weeks later the British police shot Stern dead. Nathan Friedmann-Yellin and Dr. Israel Scheib led the violent Lech’i in an effort to drive the British out of Palestine. They tried to murder High Commissioner Harold MacMillan on August 8, 1944, and on November 6 they assassinated Baron Moyne in Cairo. The two youths who did it were hanged after a trial on January 10, 1945. Terrorist attacks by the Stern group and the Irgun alienated the British.
In June 1945 the Jewish Agency demanded that Britain issue 100,000 immigration certificates for the survivors of Hitler’s concentration camps; but the new foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, did not approve. On August 25 the Foreign Office offered only 2,000 unused immigration certificates and a monthly quota of 1,400 if the Arabs agreed. The Zionists were shocked and continued their illegal immigration efforts that brought about 40,000 more Jews to Palestine by 1948. In October 1945 weapons were used to free a few hundred illegal immigrants from a British detention camp. In November the leaders of Haganah and Etzel, which included Irgun and Lech’i, agreed to cooperate in attacks on British installations under the Jewish Resistance Movement led by Ben-Gurion. The Irgun attacked two British police stations, killing nine, and in April 1946 a Stern gang murdered seven British soldiers. By the end of 1947 these two groups claimed that they had killed 373 people, including 300 civilians.
In the fall of 1945 an Anglo-American Committee began an investigation, and the reconstituted Arab Higher Committee testified at hearings in March 1946, opposing Jewish immigration, the Mandate, the Balfour Declaration, and recognizing a Jewish state. The Anglo-American report issued on May 1 described the condition of the Jewish survivors in Europe and recommended authorizing 100,000 immigration certificates. The group rejected partition and proposed moderate Jewish immigration. On the same day US President Harry Truman announced his approval of the immigration. The British asked the Americans to help pay the costs of the Committee. Histadrut leader Golda Meir participated in a hunger strike by 15 Zionist leaders, and on May 8 a ship of refugees was allowed to sail for Palestine.
On June 17, 1946 several Haganah units destroyed ten of the eleven bridges that connected Palestine to other countries. The British response on Saturday, June 29 was called Black Sabbath by the Jews as the British began searching Palestine. They detained many Jewish Agency officials except for Weizmann, who issued a statement on behalf of those arrested. Lech’i continued to commit murder and sabotage with more than a hundred incidents in the next two years. Etzel also began to use killing as a tactic. They had about 2,000 militants led by the intellectual Menachem Begin, who had been in a Siberian labor camp, enlisted in the Anders army, deserted in Palestine, and became Etzel’s commander in December 1943. On July 22, 1946 armed Etzel saboteurs placed explosives in the kitchen of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem that killed 91 people. Ben-Gurion changed his position and repudiated this, ordering Jews to turn in Etzel members.
Meanwhile many thousands of displaced Jews from Europe were trying to get to Palestine. Between 1945 and 1948 the British intercepted 58 of the 63 refugee ships and interned 51,700 displaced persons on Cyprus. In late June 1946 President Truman sent a committee led by Dr. Henry F. Grady to London. The British won them over, and on July 31 the Morrison-Grady Report proposed resettling most of the displaced persons in Europe. They advised changing the mandate to a trusteeship with separate Jewish and Arab provinces and the Negev and Jerusalem remaining under the British, but the Jewish province would have only 17% of the land with 43% in the Mandate and 40% for the Arabs. Jewish and Arab representatives were invited to London to negotiate in September; but the Jews objected, and the Arabs refused to attend as long as the Mufti was banned. So the conference began with only the British and Arabs representing other nations.
On October 6, the Day of Atonement, eleven kibbutz settlements were started. The British replaced General Evelyn Barker on October 22 for having made an anti-Semitic remark, and two weeks later they released more than a hundred Jews who had been detained since June. The 22nd Zionist Congress met at Basle in December. Weizmann urged an end to the use of violence against the British, saying, “If you think of bringing the redemption nearer by un-Jewish methods, if you lose faith in hard work and better days, then you commit idolatry and endanger what we have built.”⁶ However, Ben-Gurion won over the Mapai moderates, and Weizmann was replaced as president.
On February 14, 1947 British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin announced that he was submitting the Palestine problem to the United Nations. On April 2 they gave it to the UN General Assembly, which appointed delegates from eleven nations to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The Arabs asked that the problem of displaced persons be separated from the Palestine issue, but this request was rejected. Meanwhile the Mufti Hajj Amin had escaped to Switzerland in the spring of 1945, and then in December he used a disguise to take a plane to the Levant. He was given shelter in Cairo, and in May 1947 the UN General Assembly accredited the Higher Committee as the official representative of the Palestinian Arabs. As the UNSCOP group arrived in Palestine, the Mufti’s followers held anti-Zionist demonstrations in the major cities. Azzam Pasha suggested that Jewish communities in other Mideast countries might be in danger, but this convinced the UNSCOP members that a Jewish minority must not be left under an Arab administration in Palestine.
On May 4, 1947 Etzel reacted to the hanging of four of their men by attacking the prison at Acre and freeing 251 prisoners. Some were recaptured and hanged in July, and two days later in retaliation Etzel hanged two British sergeants. An old American ferry loaded with 4,500 refugees was renamed the Exodus-1947 and fought off a British raiding party. The listing ferry was towed into Haifa harbor. Bevin ordered the refugees returned to Europe, and they were taken to internment camps in West Germany, where 250,000 Jews were living in camps administered by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA). On August 1 Earl G. Harrison published an American report that showed that most of the displaced Jews in Europe wanted to go to Palestine. Funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Hebrew schools in the camps were educating about 10,000 children.
UNSCOP issued its report on August 31, recommending independence soon with democratic states and economic unity with security and access for holy places. The General Assembly was to solve the problem of the 250,000 Jewish refugees in Europe. Seven nations voted for partition, but India, Iran, and Yugoslavia proposed federation. Britain was to administer Palestine for two years beginning in September, and the economic union was to be maintained for ten years by a customs and currency treaty. The Jewish Agency was cautiously satisfied with the report, but the Arabs were passionately opposed. On September 16 the Arab League’s Political Committee met at Sofar in Lebanon and voted for economic sanctions against Britain and the United States and to supply men and weapons to the Palestinian Arabs. The next day the Arab League threatened war if the United Nations approved either of the UNSCOP reports. On October 13 the Soviet representative, Semyon Tsarpkin, endorsed the UNSCOP partition. That month Jewish Agency Chairman Ben-Gurion visited the refugee camps with General Dwight Eisenhower, who agreed to set up a temporary haven for them in the American Zone of Occupation. A UNRRA poll found that 97% of the Jews wanted to go to Palestine. Yet the British Labour government was still trying to prevent this.
On November 25 the Palestine Committee approved an amended partition plan by a vote of 25-13. The Arab state would have 725,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews in 4,500 square miles, and the Jewish state would have 498,000 Jews and 407,000 Arabs in 5,500 square miles of which more than half was the Negev Desert. The Permanent Trusteeship around Jerusalem would have 105,000 Arabs and 100,000 Jews. The Jewish state was to pay the Arab state an annual subsidy of £4 million. On November 29 the UN General Assembly approved the partition resolution by a vote of 33-13, giving it the needed two-thirds majority. The next day Arabs reacted to the resolution by burning 300 Jewish homes and 11 synagogues in Aleppo, killing 76 Jews at Aden, and by attacks on the Jewish quarters in Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa. They proclaimed a three-day general strike in Palestine for December 2-4. The British continued to enforce their embargo against Jewish immigration, but they did not use any of their 50,000 troops to stop Arab infiltration. The Iraqi general Taha Hashimi reported in his War Memoirs (Mudhakkarat ‘an al-Harb) that the British informed Arab leaders of their evacuating police stations of the Safed and Nebi Yusha so that they could be quickly occupied by Arab irregulars. Iraqi prime minister Salih Jabr called a meeting of Arab premiers on December 12 in Cairo, and they decided to intervene directly in Palestine.

Israel and War 1948-50

The British were to evacuate Palestine by February 1, 1948, but this was changed to August 1 and then to May 14. In late January mercenary Arabs began infiltrating into Palestine, and the Liberation Army commander Fawzi al-Qawukji moved his headquarters to Tiberias. On February 6 the Arab Higher Committee of Palestine announced that they would resist in self-defense the oppression by Jews or any power trying to establish a Jewish state in Arab territory. By the end of March they had about 7,000 men in northern Palestine. Most of the 5,000 in the central region were the Higher Committee’s irregulars led by Abd al-Qadr al-Husseini, the Mufti’s nephew. In the south about 2,000 Muslim Brotherhood volunteers came from Egypt. The Jewish forces consisted of about 3,000 youths in the Palmach, 5,000 poorly armed Etzel fighters, and some 900 Lech’i members. The 21,000 Haganah reserves were not yet trained and were not well equipped. Ben-Gurion in 1945 had raised several million dollars to buy surplus American parts that were hidden in kibbutz warehouses underground; but they could not be assembled until the British were gone.
The US State Department feared the coming war and tried to get the United Nations to postpone or cancel partition and adopt a trusteeship. Chaim Weizmann met with President Truman on March 18 and convinced him that he had done the right thing in supporting the founding of Israel. The next day Warren Austin asked the UN Security Council to consider suspending the partition. At the Security Council meeting on March 30 Austin suggested a truce between Arabs and Jews that was accepted, but he no longer argued for a trusteeship. On May 3 the UN General Assembly dropped the American plan and appointed a neutral authority to administer the partition of Palestine. A committee representing several Jewish parties appointed a provisional Zionist Council of State with Ben-Gurion as chairman. They agreed to collect taxes in the Jewish sector as before. They took over offices in north Tel Aviv as a temporary capital and authorized a national loan. They even began printing stamps and paper money.
By the end of March about 25,000 Arabs had left Haifa for Damascus and Beirut. As officials, mayors, and judges departed, thousands of fellahins and urban dwellers left also. Another 20,000 fled in early April. On April 1 the Haganah commander Yigael Yadin met with Ben-Gurion, and they decided to go on the offensive to capture vital Arab towns and high positions. That day a Dakota plane brought weapons from Czechoslovakia to southern Palestine. Qawukji wanted to exclude all Palestinian Arabs from his army, and he came into conflict with the Husseinis, whose troops acted on their own without orders from the Arab League. The Zionists had 1,500 Haganah troops to try to break the Arab hold on the Jerusalem highway, and they used the Czech weapons. Qawukji refused to give arms to Abd al-Qadr, who was killed while surrendering to Jews taking a village. The Haganah was able to send 250 vehicles to Jerusalem to relieve the Jewish population. On April 9 Menachem Begin led an attack on the village of Deir Yasin that killed about 250 people. The Israeli government arrested the Etzel officers responsible, and the massacre was later condemned as a crime by the British historian Arnold Toynbee. Arabs retaliated on April 12 by killing 77 doctors, nurses, teachers, and university students traveling in a convoy to Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital.
The British were planning to leave Haifa on April 18, and both sides prepared to fight for the city of 150,000. Several hundred Jewish troops attacked from the Carmel Heights, and nearly 30,000 more Arabs fled from the city. On April 27 Haganah and Etzel signed an agreement to cooperate with the Zionist Council. As the British withdrew from Galilee, Jewish farms became vulnerable to Arab attacks. Haganah commander Yigal Allon led an attack on the night of May 9 before the Arabs could take Safed, and the more numerous Arab irregulars fled with the Arab inhabitants. Abdullah of Jordan proclaimed himself commander in chief of the Arab forces, and on May 12 the Arab League promised him £3 million. On May 14 Jews captured Jaffa as 70,000 Arab civilians fled. During the last few weeks of the Mandate about 175,000 Arabs left Palestine.
The Jewish cabinet voted 6-4 to reject the truce proposed by the Americans and to declare independence. At 8 in the morning on May 14 the British lowered their flag in Jerusalem, and fighting erupted throughout Palestine that afternoon. At 4 p.m. in a radio broadcast from the Tel Aviv Museum the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel was proclaimed by David Ben-Gurion. The new state of Israel was to be open to all Jews and would extend social and political equality to all citizens regardless of religion, race, or sex, and they promised to guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, education, and culture to all. President Truman announced recognition of Israel at 6:10 in Washington. The next day the British released those detained in the camps on Cyprus, and several hundred of them had been trained by Haganah. On May 16 the Soviet Union also recognized Israel. On May 20 the UN Security Council appointed the president of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte, as the UN mediator for Palestine.
As the war began, there were 1,320,000 Arabs and 640,000 Jews in Palestine. The Haganah had about 30,000 men and women. Poised to attack the new Jewish state on five fronts were about 10,000 Egyptians, 4,500 Arab Legionnaires from Jordan, 8,000 Iraqis, 7,000 Syrians, and 3,000 Lebanese. The Arabs also had better guns and air forces which Israel lacked. On May 14 the Iraqis tried to cross the Jordan River with 3,500 combat troops but failed. Their commander, General Tahir, withdrew his 8,000 men to the Samaritan triangle, where they were protected by Qawukji’s irregulars on Mount Gilboa. On May 16 the Syrians invaded Galilee with two hundred armored vehicles, and they attacked Jewish settlements on both sides of the Jordan River. On May 28 Jews broke through the protection in the northern mountains, and five days later they attacked the Iraqis at Jenin but were driven back.
The Egyptian forces gathered at al-Arish. Muhammad Naguib led the Second Brigade toward Gaza and Tel Aviv while General Abd al-Aziz moved the Fourth Brigade toward the Hebron hills, taking Beersheba on May 20 and on May 22 being given Bethlehem by the Arab Legion. Then they attacked the Jewish part of Jerusalem. Yadin pulled 2,000 men from the Jerusalem highway to stop Naguib’s 5,000 troops from taking Tel Aviv. Naguib’s men had trouble fighting the Yad Mordecai kibbutz and Negba. Yadin had his reinforcements attack them on the night of May 29. He put out a press release that they had overwhelmed Egyptian supply lines. The Egyptian commander believed this story and ordered Naguib to halt. The Egyptians had also occupied the Negev Desert.
Jordan’s King Abdullah wanted to extend his realm west of the Jordan River, and he aimed for Jerusalem. The English general John Bagot Glubb commanded the Arab Legion, but he overestimated the Jewish defenses. On May 19 Jewish troops fought their way into Jerusalem to defend the Old City from an attack by the Arab Legion. Glubb’s 2,000 Legionnaires moved against the city from the north. After ten days of fierce fighting the Jewish quarter surrendered, and Glubb called off his attack. In less than a month more than 10,000 shells hit Jerusalem, destroying 2,000 buildings and causing 1,200 civilian casualties.
On May 20 the UN Security Council ordered a one-month truce to begin on June 11 that was proposed by the British representative Alexander Cadogan. Additional weapons were banned, and young men were to gather in United Nations camps; but both sides ignored these provisions. In less than a month of fighting another 75,000 Arabs had fled from Palestine. About 240,000 Arabs moved into the sector now controlled by the Arab Legions, and about 60,000 crossed the Jordan River into Abdullah’s Hashemite kingdom. About 180,000 Arabs took refuge in the Gaza area; 100,000 went into Lebanon and 70,000 into Syria. The Iraqis made the Egyptian General al-Muawi commander in chief. Abdullah objected even though heavy casualties had discouraged him from fighting. However, the Iraqis, Syrians, and Egyptians increased their forces, and the Arab forces grew from 32,000 to 45,000 by July. Egypt’s Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha was afraid his government would fall if the cease-fire was extended.
Convoys brought food and medicine to Jerusalem, and Israel also increased its forces considerably. The Czechs had given them an airfield on May 20, and Dakota transports flew back and forth bringing weapons and equipment. English and Americans flew planes to Israel illegally, bringing thousands of tons of ammunition and supplies. The French sold weapons to Israel. Etzel had bought an LST vessel Altalena that sailed to France loaded with 5,000 rifles, 450 machine guns, millions of bullets, and hundreds of Jewish fighters from Europe and North Africa. Ben-Gurion approved its landing on June 20; but when Etzel demanded 20% of the arms, he refused. Etzel attacked the regular forces as the ship tried to land north of Tel Aviv. The ship caught fire, and twelve of the crew were killed. Some cargo was lost, and the French stopped arms shipments. The Israeli cabinet ordered the arrest of some Etzel leaders and abolished its Etzel units. The truce enabled Israel to increase its forces to 60,000 soldiers with much European and American equipment.
Before the truce expired, the Egyptians led by General Naguib attacked Negba on July 8. Negba had been reinforced, and the Jews counter-attacked, forcing the Egyptians back. In the lower Galilee mountains Qawukji’s irregulars attacked, and the Jews fought them off in a week of heavy fighting. The Jews then overran Nazareth and Arab villages. On July 11 Lt. Col. Moshe Dayan’s mechanized infantry captured the Lydda airport and Ramle. Flying fortresses coming from America dropped bombs on Cairo while on the way to Israel.
Cadogan urged an immediate truce, and the UN Security Council approved it unanimously on July 15. The United Nations mediator Bernadotte got this second truce imposed on July 18 with the threat of economic sanctions, and he made an appeal for Arab repatriation. Bernadotte had a staff of 310 European and American military observers and technicians for eighteen planes, four ships, and hundreds of vehicles. The mediator proposed that the two independent entities in Palestine become part of the kingdom of Jordan. He recommended unlimited immigration for two years, and he wanted all Palestinian Arabs to return to their homes. Bernadotte’s plan enraged both the Arabs and the Jews, and he abandoned his schemes. On August 1 Ben-Gurion announced that a peace treaty with Israel could provide for the long-term interests of the Arab and Jewish populations and the stability of Israel. The mediator’s final report on September 16 recognized Israel as “a living, solidly entrenched and vigorous reality.” The next day Bernadotte and a staff member were shot dead by three Jewish soldiers while riding in cars in a neutral zone. The killers were not found, but four hundred Sternists were arrested with their leader, Nathan Friedmann-Yellin.
In late September an All-Palestinian Government was organized at Cairo and set up in Gaza. There the National Palestinian Council elected Mufti Amin as president. Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq recognized this government within two weeks. Egyptians tried to consolidate their gains by reinforcing them with 15,000 new troops and heavy weapons. Israel had planes bring in arms and equipment to an airstrip in the northern Negev. Yigal Allon brought 30,000 troops from the north by October, and the United Nations approved Israel’s bringing provisions to the settlements across the Faluja crossroads. To create a pretext, Israeli troops blew up their own trucks so that Allon could attack. The Israeli air force bombed the Egyptians in the Sinai. Allon’s men invested Huleiqat on October 20, but the British quickly asked for a cease-fire in the UN Security Council. Allon sent three brigades to Beersheba, where the Egyptians quickly surrendered. During the UN truce the Egyptians withdrew from the western Negev. The Muslim Brotherhood instigated violent demonstrations in November, and Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha ordered their property confiscated; but he was murdered on December 28 by a Brother. The next day the UN Security Council ordered a cease-fire in all of Palestine.
General Glubb sent an Arab Legion to Bethlehem and Hebron for Jordan, and they replaced the Egyptians. Israel’s Moshe Dayan and Jordan’s Col. Abdullah al-Tel met in November and agreed to a cease-fire that began on December 1. Jordan’s government in Amman refused to recognize the government in Gaza, and demonstrations urged King Abdullah to annex sectors occupied by the Arab Legion. A conference of delegates at Jericho accepted the uniting of Palestine with Jordan on December 1, and Abdullah appointed Sheikh Hassan Muhyi al-Din al-Jarallah as Mufti of Jerusalem to replace Amin. On December 10 Egypt’s King Farouk condemned the Jericho conference.
By the end of 1948 Israel had 100,000 troops with many weapons and heavy equipment, and they had pushed the Egyptians back to al-Arish. The danger of the British invoking their 1936 treaty with Egypt persuaded the Israeli leaders to order Allon to withdraw from the Sinai on January 2, 1949. Five days later Israeli Messerschmitts from Czechoslovakia shot down four British fighters. On January 12 the Egyptians demanded that Israel withdraw from the Rafa heights, and Ben-Gurion ordered Allon to pull back. The United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees was organized on January 1, and they worked with the American Red Cross and the American Friends’ Service Committee until May 1950 when the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East was founded.
Representatives of Egypt and Israel began meeting on Rhodes in January, and the American mediator Ralph Bunche helped them negotiate an armistice agreement signed on February 14 that left the Negev in Israel and the Gaza strip occupied by Egyptian troops. This prepared the way for Bunche to mediate Israel’s agreements with Lebanon on March 23, with Jordan on April 3, and with Syria on July 20. On March 1 Jordan and Israel agreed on armistice lines in Jerusalem. The agreements gave Israel 21% more land than allotted by the partition. The war killed about 6,000 people and wounded about 30,000 with military costs estimated at $500 million. The official estimate of the Arabs displaced needing relief was 940,000. On December 11, 1949 the United Nations General Assembly established the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC) to preserve the rights of refugees and their property.

A committee of the Jewish Agency Executive and the Va’ad Le’umi had begun working on a legal code and a constitution in October 1947. The Provisional Council of State was established on March 1, 1948 and two days after independence was declared they elected Chaim Weizmann its president on May 16. Israel held its first elections on January 25, 1949. On February 2 Ben-Gurion declared that Jerusalem was no longer occupied territory. That month Israel passed a fundamental law giving workers the right to organize and strike. The Constituent Assembly met on February 14 and elected Weizmann president of Israel, but the practical leader of the government was Prime Minister Ben-Gurion of the Mapai Party. His cabinet and program were accepted on March 8 by the Assembly which was named the Knesset. To avoid battles of cultural issues such as making the Talmud the law, they postponed adopting a constitution and passed organic laws instead.
The first elected government was installed on March 10. Twenty-one parties competed for 120 seats in the Assembly, and 440,000 voters were 87% of those eligible. The Labor parties won 57 seats, the Center-Right parties 31, and the Religious parties 16; the Communists won four seats, and only three non-Jewish Arabs were elected. The UN Security Council approved Israel’s application for membership on March 11, and Israel became a member of the United Nations in May. On September 1 the PCC divided Jerusalem into the two zones under Israel and Jordan with local authorities responsible for administration with a UN commissioner to protect holy places and prevent immigration that would change the balance.
In the Arab portion of Palestine voter turnout was even higher than in Israel except in 1949 when it was 79%. The four Arab Labor parties received 52% of the vote; the Communists got 22%; Asian Jews got 11% and Mapai 10%. In 1950 about 600,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees. About 100,000 went to Lebanon, 80,000 to Syria, between 5,000 and 10,000 to Iraq, between 115,000 and 150,000 to the Gaza strip, and between 250,000 to 325,000 to Jordan. The Lausanne Conference took up the refugee issue in late July 1949 and considered allowing 100,000 Palestine Arabs to return, but in early 1950 Israel’s UN ambassador Abba Eban told the General Assembly that Israel rejected the Lausanne proposal. In May the United States, Britain, and France issued a Tripartite Declaration that they might act with or without the UN to prevent a violation of the armistice lines. In April 1950 Jordan annexed the Palestinian territory on the West Bank of the Jordan River which had 420,000 refugees.
On January 1, 1950 the government of Israel moved to Jerusalem, and on January 23 the Knesset proclaimed that Jerusalem had always been their capital. Israel established a civil service commission, and in March they passed a law to encourage capital investments. On May 3 Israeli forces used weapons to drive 12,000 Arabs out of two villages near Hebron so that Jewish settlers could cultivate the area. A Law of Return provided a homeland for all Jews who wanted to come back from the Diaspora. By September about 47,000 Jews came from Yemen. Iraqi Jews had to fly to Cyprus first, but by the end of 1951 about 113,000 had come to Israel, leaving less than 4,000 Jews in Iraq. Jews coming from Egypt had difficulty, and most went to Europe; but about 7,000 made it to Israel. By 1950 about 33,000 Jews came from Turkey. The Jews coming from Muslim countries were 14% of the immigrants in 1948, 47% in 1949, and 71% in 1950.

Notes

1. Peel Report (1937), p. 25 quoted in A History of Palestine by Gudrun Kramer tr. Graham Harman and Gudrun Kramer, p. 154.
2. Quoted in The Arab Awakening by George Antonius, p. 268.
3. Peel Report (1937), p. 25 quoted in A History of Palestine by Gudrun Kramer tr. Graham Harman and Gudrun Kramer, p. 153.
4. Quoted in A History of Israel by Howard M. Sachar, p. 45.
5. Ibid., p. 109.
6. Quoted in Israel: A History by Martin Gilbert, p. 139.