1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (72 page)

The war of 1948 formally ended with the signing of armistice agreements between Israel and four of the Arab belligerents: Egypt (on 24 February 1949), Lebanon (23 March 1949), Jordan (3 April 1949), and Syria (20 July 1949). The Iraqis refused to enter into armistice negotiations.

The Israeli-Egyptian armistice talks opened on the Greek island of Rhodes on 13 January 1949-six days after the start of the cease-fire, three days after Israel pulled its troops out of Sinai and Rafah-and lasted six weeks. In the chair, effectively mediating between the two sides, was the United Nations acting mediator for Palestine, Ralph Bunche, Count Bernadotte's successor.

The negotiation was between unequal parties. The Egyptians sorely felt their disadvantage: their army had just been thrashed, and in the absence of an agreement, Israel might renew hostilities, conquer the Gaza Strip, and perhaps drive once again into the Sinai Peninsula. The expeditionary force, still strung out between El 'Arish and Gaza, was highly vulnerable, and the fate of the regime was linked to the fate of the army. On the basis of the previous months' experience, the Egyptians knew that they could expect no help from their fellow Arabs or, most likely, from the Great Powers. And a brigade-size force remained trapped deep in Israeli territory, at Faluja, at the mercy of the IDF. Its situation was highly embarrassing for Cairo.

But not all the cards were in Israeli hands. On the table, in terms of international diplomacy, perched the 1947 UN partition resolution, a fundamental reference point for most officials involved in solving the Palestine prob lem, and in a number of sectors, the IDF occupied land beyond the UN-earmarked borders of Jewish statehood. The Arabs, at a minimum, would demand that Israel withdraw to the 1947 lines. Moreover, the Israeli leadership and public profoundly desired peace; the troops, sick of the yearlong war, wanted to return to their loved ones; and the economy, starved of manpower, thirsted for their return. Masses of immigrants were pouring into the country, and the war-making hampered their absorption.' Peace was imperative.

Israel's leaders understood that an agreement with the Egyptians was crucial-"of far-reaching importance," in Walter Eytan's phrase'-in paving the way for similar agreements with the other belligerents. Politically, demographically, economically, and culturally, Egypt was the key Arab country. If it didn't sign, none would-leaving Israel embattled and mobilized, with the problem reverting to the UN Security Council for debate and resolution. The council would not necessarily rule in Israel's favor.3 An agreement with Cairo was seen as crucial to Israel's "acceptance" in the Middle East and in the international community (it was not yet a member of the United Nations).

The Israelis were represented at Rhodes by a mixed political and military team, headed by Eytan, director general of the Foreign Ministry. His subordinate, IDF chief of operations Yigael Yadin, and his aides, who included Yitzhak Rabin, Southern Front's operations officer, thought Eytan too conciliatory-and occasionally the generals back in Israel, including OC Southern Command Yigal Allon, Rabin's direct superior (and friend), pressed the negotiators with hard-line advice.' In the end, disagreements between the team members were settled by David Ben-Gurion or the full Cabinet, which ultimately authorized the successive compromises that made the agreement possible.

The Egyptian delegation was formally led by a military man, Colonel Muhammad Seif el Dine, but the man in charge may well have been 'Abd alMun'im Mustapha, a Foreign Ministry official.-' Several colonels, a handful of Foreign Ministry officials, and a representative of the Court, Ismail Sherine, rounded out the delegation. It is not clear whether King Farouk's court, the army general staff, or the prime minister or foreign minister were calling the shots.

Entering the talks, Israel's negotiating position was based on the military realities on the ground and the fact of Egyptian defeat; the Egyptian position, on the pre-Yoav and pre-Horev front lines and on the UN Security Council resolutions, which had called on Israel to withdraw to the 14 October lines. The withdrawal-promoting Security Council resolution of 4 No vember was buttressed by a memorandum by Bunche defining and endorsing the truce lines of 14 October.6

Israel initially demanded that Egypt withdraw from the areas its troops still occupied in Palestine-that is, the Gaza Strip and the Bethlehem area-and that the future armistice boundary between the two countries be based on the old international Egypt-Palestine frontier, agreed between the British Empire (effectively governing Egypt) and the Ottomans (ruling Palestine) in 19o6. The Egyptians initially sought what amounted to sovereignty over the central and southern Negev-partly in order to restore the historic territorial contiguity of the Arab and Islamic worlds-and demanded that Israel withdraw from the areas of Beersheba, Bir Asluj, and Auja. The southern Negev and Beersheba, they said, could be demilitarized. The Egyptians also demanded that Israel allow the evacuation of the Faluja Pocket-"which weighed on them most heavily of all," as one Israeli delegation member put it'-before anything else was discussed or settled. Israel refused.

The six weeks of talks consisted of formal and informal Israeli-Egyptian meetings and trilateral negotiations, with Bunche receiving Israeli and Egyptian proposals, passing them on to the other side, receiving each side's comments on the proposals, passing those on, occasionally with his own bridging suggestions, and so on. Bunche repeatedly tried to mobilize American pressure on Israel to soften its positions. But Israeli diplomats in Washington and Lake Success, New York, managed to parry the pressure and, in fact, elicited countervailing pressures by the United States on Egypt to reduce its demands, especially in relation to Beersheba.8

There were recurrent crises. The chief final stumbling blocks were the fate of Auja and strips of Israel-held territory on the northern and southern edges of the Gaza Strip, from which Israel in the end agreed to withdraw. The problem of Auja was solved, at Bunche's suggestion, by turning the village and its environs-all on the "Palestine" side of the international lineinto a demilitarized zone (DMZ).

In the eventual compromise, signed on 24 February, each side promised to refrain from military action against the other, and the Egyptian force trapped in Faluja, was permitted to withdraw, with all its equipment, beginning the following day. The agreed Armistice Demarcation Line-which was not, the accord said, to prejudice the final borders delineated in any future political agreement-followed the exact contours of the 19o6 border, except for the inclusion on the Egyptian side of the Gaza Strip. The agreement allowed for continued Egyptian military occupation of the strip. Limitation of forces zones (allowing only "defensive forces") were instituted along the length of both sides of the border, on the Israeli side encompassing the west ern Negev and on the Egyptian side, the area to the east of the El Arish-Abu Ageila line. A mixed armistice commission (MAC), headquartered in the Auja DMZ, was established, manned by Israeli and Egyptian officers and chaired by a UN officer, to supervise the implementation of the agreement.`

The agreement-like the armistice agreements between Israel and the other Arab states that followed-kicked off with a Preamble that placed the document squarely, as Israel insisted, within the context of bridging between "the present truce" and the institution of "permanent peace in Palestine." But because of the Arab states' fundamental unwillingness to make peace with the Jewish state, the agreement proved to be not an introduction to anything deeper and wider but a segue assuring only nonbelligerency (which in any event was only partially delivered as, during the following years, the borders between Israel and its three main Arab neighbors seethed with Arab infiltration, terrorist strikes inside Israel, and Israeli counterstrikes, and with clashes-with Syria and Egypt-over the DMZs instituted by the armistice agreements).'° Nonetheless, the Egyptian -Israeli agreement was the first between Israel and an Arab country and may be seen as a forerunner to the first peace treaty between Israel and any of its neighbors, the Israeli-Egyptian accord of 1979.

The Israeli-Lebanese armistice talks, held in no-man's-land on the border near Rosh Haniqra (Ras al-Naqurah) on the Mediterranean coast, were a shorter and less disputatious affair. From the start, there was a friendly atmosphere. Indeed, as the Israelis reported, "the Lebanese [delegates] pretend/ say that they are not Arabs and that they were dragged into the adventure [that is, the war] against their will. They maintain that, for internal reasons, they cannot openly admit their hatred for the Syrians."11

The talks began on i March, the Lebanese having insisted on waiting until the Israeli-Egyptian negotiations had been successfully concluded, and lasted three weeks. The main problem on the agenda was the strip of villages occupied by the IDF at the end of Operation Hiram. Five of them, never permanently occupied, had been "relinquished" by Israel, as "a goodwill gesture," already in mid-January.'2

The delegations were headed by military men (Lieutenant Colonel Mordechai Makleff for Israel and Lieutenant Colonel Toufic Salem for Lebanon). The two sides agreed from the start that the international border, demarcated by France and Britain (the Mandatory rulers respectively of Lebanon and Palestine) in 1923, be reinstituted as the frontier between the two states.

The Lebanese demanded that Israel withdraw from their territory. Israel sought both a Lebanese withdrawal from the sole patch of Palestine they had occupied-several hundred square yards at Ras al-Naqurah-and the withdrawal of the Syrian army from the enclaves it had conquered west of the old Palestine-Syria border (chiefly the area around Mishmar Hayarden, north of the Sea of Galilee). The Israelis also sought minor changes in the eastern sector of the Lebanon-Israel border.

By courtesy of the Israel State Archives

Israel-Egypt general armistice agreement lines, z4 February 194-9

Henri Vigier, one of Bunche's assistants, who mediated, backed the Lebanese, who rejected both the Syrian "linkage" and any cession of territory. The Israelis eventually acquiesced-partly in the hope that agreement with Lebanon would clear the decks for a similar agreement with or, alternatively, military action against Jordan-but then insisted that Syrian troops stationed in Lebanon be withdrawn.13

The Lebanese countered that the presence of foreign (Syrian) troops in Lebanon was an internal Lebanese affair-but, in a separate undertaking to the United Nations, committed themselves to the withdrawal of Syrian troops to the "Tripoli-Aleppo line." This sufficed. Both sides agreed to limit themselves to "defensive forces" along the border.14 The Israel-Lebanon General Armistice Agreement, to be supervised by a MAC similar to the MAC provided for in the Egyptian-Israeli agreement, was signed on z3 March 1949, with the IDF withdrawing back to the international line during the following days and the Syrian army quietly leaving Lebanon thereafter.

Israel and Jordan were next, signing an armistice agreement on 3 April. But midway between the two previous signings (of the Israel-Egypt and Israel-Lebanon accords), Israel decided to occupy the central and southern Negev and establish itself on the Gulf of Aqaba (Gulf of Eilat). The area had been earmarked for Israeli sovereignty in the UN partition resolution, was almost completely unpopulated, and since October-November 1948 had been patrolled occasionally by Jordanian reconnaissance squads. The Israeli move was facilitated by the conclusion of the armistice agreement with Egypt, which obviated the possibility of Egyptian military intervention against the IDF's march south, designated mivtza `uvda (Operation Fact, or fait accompli). Jordan, more or less isolated in the inter-Arab context and militarily no match for the Israelis, understood that it was in no position to resist, and this was recognized by Israel.'-' The operation was timed to precede the conclusion of the armistice deal with Jordan: Ben-Gurion wanted to establish the fact of Israeli control before the armistice negotiations moved into high gear.