1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (73 page)

Operation `Uvda,ib the last military operation of the war, began on 7 March and ended on io March, when a makeshift flag-a white sheet with a Star of David inked in-was raised by the IDF over the abandoned police sta tion at Umm Rashrash, on the shore of the gulf across the way from Aqaba, where the port city of Eilat was built during the following years.

By courtesy of the Israel State Archives

Israel-Lebanon general armistice agreement lines, 30 March 1949

Operation `Uvda, Negev, 6 -io March 1949

Ben-Gurion-and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the Zionist movement as a whole-had for decades been obsessed with the Negev and its southern maritime outlet, the coastline of the Gulf of Aqaba. The empty wasteland was seen as the country's only relatively large stretch of land available for the absorption of a mass of immigrants, and many suspected that it harbored mineral riches. Ben-Gurion had visited what the Bible (occasionally) and he called "Eilat" (or "Etzion-Gaver") at least three times in the 192os and 1930s. In 1935 he had written to the pro-Zionist US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis of Eilat's "great significance," quoting the relevant biblical passage (1 Kings 9:26). "It is of the greatest economic and political importance that a Jewish settlement be established there as soon as possible, in order to create a political fait accompli." 17

The IDF conquest of the northern Negev in October-November 1948 rendered reaching Eilat practical. In late November 1948, the IDF began to inch southward along the Negev's eastern periphery, occupying Kurnub and `Ein Husub in the 'Arava (a patrol then drove as far south as Bir Maliha).II

But the Red Sea was what captivated the Cabinet's imagination. It held the promise of maritime links with Africa and Asia, helping to free Israel from the isolation imposed by Arab enmity. "And ... there is no need for a special permit to enter Eilat. The permit was already issued by the UN, and when we will be capable of entering Eilat ... we will have to do it," Ben-Gurion told the Cabinet in January 1949.19 In the IDF, rumors had been rife that the Israeli Foreign Ministry, always attentive to international pressures, was the main obstacle to the march southward; Moshe Sharett (Shertok) denied this.20 In truth, possible Egyptian intervention and serious logistical problems had always obtruded. The signing of the armistice with Egypt cleared away one obstacle. A succession of IDF reconnaissance patrols, the last of them in late February, to scout out possible axes of advance, resolved the second issue.21

On 7 March mechanized units of the Golani and Negev Brigades set out simultaneously from the Beersheba area-Golani taking the easterly route straight down the 'Arava (Wadi Araba), along the old Palestine-Transjordan frontier, and the Negev Brigade pushing down the physically more trying route through the middle of the Negev via Ras al-Raman and Wadi `Ukfi. Both reached Ummn Rashrash on the afternoon of io March, the Negev Brigade winning the race by two hours. Golani's troops repeatedly had had to work around Arab Legion units that had taken up positions on the Israeli side of the 'Arava line, at `Ein Arnr and `Ein Ghadian. Shots were repeatedly exchanged, but there were no casualties, and the Jordanians withdrew from each position as the Israelis approached or after they were outflanked. The Jordanians protested that the Israeli move was a violation of UN truce resolutions22 but, given the balance of forces, offered no serious resistance. Both governments had ordered their troops to avoid hostilities.23

Britain reacted by reinforcing its garrison in 'Aqaba and threatened both to engage the Israeli forces, under certain circumstances, 24 and to turn to the United Nations. But the following day, ii March, Israeli and Jordanian representatives signed a general cease-fire agreement .2-1,

In a separate move, on 7-9 March, a company of Alexandroni Brigade troops advanced from Beersheba, via Kurnub and 'Ein Husub (Hatzeva), to Sodom and then, by boat, northward to `Ein Gedi, occupying the area's springs as well as Masada, the hilltop site of the Jews' last stand against Rome during the Second Revolt, which ended in 73 CE. Thus, the central and southern Negev, down to the gulf coastline, and much of the western shore of the Dead Sea were physically joined to Israel, and without battle. Sharett called `Uvda "a brilliant victory which didn't cost us one drop of blood."26 "This is perhaps the greatest event in the past months, if not in the whole war of independence and conquest," Ben-Gurion, with his penchant for hyperbole, jotted down in his diary.27

The negotiation of the Israeli-Jordanian armistice agreement was drawn out and difficult. The talks, beginning informally on 26 December 1948, confronted the problems posed by long, unnatural, serpentine front lines; large Jewish and Arab concentrations of population, including refugees, close to the front lines; the presence of Iraqi troops in Samaria and Egyptian troops around Bethlehem; and the complex of issues raised by the divided city of Jerusalem and its holy sites. Israel's desire to widen its narrow "waist" by coopting strips of territory on the West Bank's western and northern fringes (parts of which had been included by the UN partition plan in Israel but had been occupied by Iraqi troops) and King 'Abdullah's desire to annex the West Bank and the southern Negev to his kingdom added to the complexity of the geopolitical context of the talks.

Jordan initially called for an armistice based on the partition plan boundaries as amplified by Bernadotte's proposals of September 1948, with Jordan taking over much of the territory earmarked for Palestinian Arab sovereignty. Israel sought an agreement based on the postbellum military-territorial status quo. Specifically, Jordan wanted Israel to cede Lydda and Ranila (or at least allow the repatriation of their inhabitants) and Jaffa and to give up the southern Negev. Jordan also sought an exchange of tracts of land in and around Jerusalem.

Israel, for its part, demanded the 1947 partition borders in the Negev, a cession of the western fringes of the area held by the Iraqi army in Samaria, and Jordanian withdrawal from the Latrun Salient. Israel also sought freedom of passage between West Jerusalem and Mount Scopus, the site of the Hebrew University campus and the (main) Hadassah Hospital, the Mount of Olives (with its large Jewish cemetery), and the Wailing Wall.

Nothing had been finalized by the start of the formal Israeli-Jordanian talks that began in Rhodes on 4 March, with Bunche once again mediating. Heading the Israeli delegation was Reuven Shiloah (Zaslani), a Foreign Ministry man with deep roots in intelligence work (two years later he would found and direct the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service), who was flanked by Lieutenant Colonel Moshe Dayan (IDF chief of general staff, 1953-1958) and Lieutenant Colonel Dan Lanner. The Jordanian delegation was led by Colonel Ahmed Sudki al-Jundi, who was backed by a team of Legion officers. In parallel, secret direct Israeli-Jordanian negotiations-where the real decisions were discussed and reached-were conducted in sites in Jordan, in effect sidelining Bunche.

In mid-March, after failing to reach agreement on Latrun and Jordanian and Israeli free passage to the sites in and around Jerusalem, the two sides decided to postpone discussion of all the territorial questions relating to the city and its environs until after the armistice was signed.

In the background, throughout, hovered the threat and possibility, in the absence of an agreement, of unilateral Israeli military action to alter the front lines-already roughly hinted at by `Uvda, launched three days after the start of the formal negotiations, and by the Israeli occupation in mid-March of a series of positions in the foothills of western Judea.28 In mid-March the IDF had been poised to conquer part of the West Bank but had been halted by Ben-Gurion in part because of warnings by Abba Eban about Washington's possible reaction.29 Israel threatened to conquer the western foothills of Samaria if Jordan did not agree to cede them through diplomacy. At one point, Israel presented a twenty-four-hour ultimatum.30 Abdullah feared that if the IDF reopened hostilities, Israel would take the whole of the West Bank, not merely the strip of territory on its northwestern periphery. He made a last-minute effort to mobilize British and American support. But neither power was willing to guarantee the existing lines as international frontiers or, indeed, Jordanian control of the West Bank.31 Britain was unwilling to extend its defense pact guarantee beyond the East Bank.

Abdullah's fears were not unfounded. The IDF had prepared a plan, Operation Shin-Taf-Shin, "to rectify the border with `the Triangle' in several places"-specifically, to conquer the Jenin basin, Wadi 'Ara, and the line of foothills southward to Bartaa32-and began to deploy its forces.-3 This meshed with the widespread regret over not having conquered Judea and Samaria in the course of the war and with the latent desire, still strong in IDF staff circles, to do so in the f iture.34 Operationally, such a limited offensive could well have snowballed into a full-scale conquest of the West Bank, as both Abdullah and many IDF officers understood.

Officers such as Allon, OC Southern Command, felt that the IDF during the war had missed the opportunity to establish a secure, natural frontier along the Jordan River. Allon, bypassing channels, took the unusual step, a moment before the conclusion of the Israeli-Jordanian armistice agreement, of urging Ben-Gurion to order the conquest of the West Bank. He wrote (saying he was conveying the thinking of "most of the army's senior officers"): "There is no need for a perfect military education to understand the permanent danger to the peace of Israel from the presence of large hostile forces in the western Land of Israel-in the [ Jenin-Nablus-Tulkarm] Triangle and the Hebron Hills." The area could be conquered easily and "relatively quickly," given the balance of forces. And gaining the first line of foothills peacefully, through the prospective armistice agreement, "cannot be seen as a solution to the problem." Israel needed territorial "depth," argued Allon. He feared the long-term possibility of a Jordanian-Iraqi lunge, perhaps assisted by British troops stationed in the West Bank, across Israel's narrow waist to the sea, which would cut the state in half. Israel's strategic border should be along the Jordan River. Such a line, he argued, would also give Israel the added benefit of hydroelectric power, which could be derived from the river, and additional water for the development of the Negev. Britain, he assured Ben-Gurion, would not intervene to safeguard any area west of the river. "Time is working against us," he cautioned. Allon expected that "a large part" of the West Bank's population, refugee and permanent, would flee eastward across the river in the event of such an onslaught.35

'Abdullah (and John Glubb) were acutely aware both of this drift in IDF thinking and of the IDF's preparations in the third week of March to unleash Shin-Taf-Shin. Abdullah sought both a face-saver and a measure of mutuality. He demanded that Israel also cede some territory-in the southern Judea foothills-and issue guarantees for the inhabitants living in the territory he was about to give up.

Israel nominally agreed to a token cession (apparently of territory it was not actually holding).36 The two sides signed an in-principle agreement on 23 March and finalized it at Rhodes on 3 April.37 In the Israel-Jordan General Armistice Agreement, the two sides agreed to limit their forces to a depth of six miles on both sides of the armistice line, including in Jerusalem. Jordan agreed to cede a continuous strip of territory, about three to five miles wide, running from just southwest of Qalqilya northward to Wadi 'Ara and from there eastward to a point just north of Jenin. Israel agreed to cede to Jordan a far smaller patch of territory south of Hebron, near Dhahiriya. Included in the Jordanian-ceded strip (known henceforward in Israeli historiography as "the Little Triangle") were fifteen or sixteen villages, adding some twenty thousand Arabs to Israel's minority population. Jordan agreed that Iraq's troops in Samaria would be withdrawn eastward, across the Jordan. The agreement provided for the establishment, in addition to a MAC, of a (bilateral) "Special Committee" that would work out the free- passage arrangements around and in Jerusalem and solve the Latrun Salient dispute. (It met during the following months but failed to reach agreement on any important issue. Jews were unable to reach the Wailing Wall or to reactivate the Mount Scopus campus and hospital; Arabs were barred from using the Jerusalem-Bethlehem road, which ran through West Jerusalem; the salient remained in Jordanian hands and Israel built a bypass road, while the Jordanians built a bypass road linking East Jerusalem and Bethlehem.)