The Sword And The Olive

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The Sword And The Olive Page 6

by van Creveld, Martin


  These and other measures notwithstanding, the British were aware that they could not be everywhere at once. They therefore once again engaged Hagana in talks to see how the Yishuv might be made to do more in its own defense without, of course, endangering imperial rule. Various plans were discussed but, in the end, came to very little. The only measure actually taken was to distribute 585 rifles, each with 50 rounds, to various Jewish settlements throughout the country; considering that there were already well in excess of a hundred settlements, this didn’t amount to much. The rifles and rounds were contained in sealed boxes and, to make sure they were still there, inspected by British officers who came by once a year. The idea was that they should be used only in an emergency.

  Thus left to its own devices, Hagana set out to rebuild and expand its forces. Galvanized into action by the riot emergency, Zionist organizations abroad launched a fund drive. By the end of 1929 they had collected 800,000 Palestinian pounds, equivalent to the same sum in British pounds and to five times that sum in U.S. dollars (and this at a time when the average annual income of an Arab peasant family stood at 27 pounds).2 The money was well spent. Destroyed settlements were rebuilt and others fortified by adding patrol roads, fences, searchlights, shelters, and the like. Attempts were made to analyze the lessons of the recent events including, in particular, the need for better training, an efficient intelligence organization, and improved communications between Hagana headquarters and the settlements and among the settlements themselves.

  While the rest of the world was caught in the Great Depression, for the Jewish community in Palestine the early thirties were once again years of unprecedented economic and demographic growth. In 1924 the United States had imposed its immigration law, effectively closing the most important country in which Jews had been settling since the late nineteenth century. The shadow of national socialism was darkening Europe, and hundreds of thousands were leaving. Between 1931 and 1936 the Jewish population in Palestine grew from 175,000 to 400,000. Not only were the newcomers better educated and wealthier than their predecessors, but most of them were younger, with the result that the proportion of males of military age (fifteen to forty-nine) was actually larger than that among the Arabs.3 Eighty percent of the immigrants went to the three large towns of Haifa, Jerusalem, and especially Tel Aviv, which tripled its population to 150,000 and thus accounted for 40 percent of the total population.4 Outlying areas also benefited. Between 1920 and 1937 an additional 683,000 dunam of land passed into Jewish hands. Consequently all Jewish holdings combined now amounted to 1.33 million dunam, approximately 5 percent of the total area west of the River Jordan and perhaps 8 percent of the area that eventually would become the state of Israel.5

  In 1931, after a two-year hiatus, Hagana once more received a titular head in the person of Saul Avigur (originally Meirov). Russian-born like the rest, thirty-two years old at the time, he had been raised in Tel Aviv and gained his spurs by helping guard various northern settlements during the twenties as well as smuggling arms from Syria and Lebanon. He set up his headquarters in Room 33 of Histadrut’s main building on Allenby Street, Tel Aviv, a handy arrangement for communicating with other activists and for avoiding prying Britons. A list of members and an inventory of available resources were drawn up. It brought to light an incredible assortment of arms, many of them antiquated or in bad repair, with or without ammunition to match. Though regularly updated thereafter, the inventory even under the best circumstances was by no means complete. Many settlements concealed their assets not only from the British but also from their superiors in Hagana.6 This was not a surprising reaction, given Hagana’s recently demonstrated inability to move resources around the country or provide aid in an emergency.

  The tendency to conceal arms reflected a deeper dilemma already familiar from Ha-shomer days, namely, whether Hagana was to be a countrywide, centralized, and disciplined organization under a single command or merely a loose coalition between local self-defense groups, each of which looked after the needs of its own settlement or town. Avigur, needless to say, stood for the former interpretation. In 1934 he drafted a document known as “The Foundations of Defense” (Oshiot Ha-hagana). In it he emphasized that Hagana was the sole organization responsible for Jewish self-defense as well as the need to combat any attempt to set up alternative groups. It was to be run along military lines, with a recognized chain of command, bottom-to-top accountability, and strict discipline.7

  However sensible these demands might be in theory, in practice they could not be realized. Not being a government in the formal sense of the word, the Zionist Agency did not have the authority to prevent other groups from organizing themselves; nor was the imposition of strict military discipline practicable under the prevailing conditions, in which the organization was semilegal at best. The root of the problem went deeper. Most of the leaders of Hagana and the Yishuv originated from eastern Europe, where they had lived under czarist rule. Jews traditionally regarded military service, indeed any kind of laws—enacted by governments usually bent on persecuting them—as things to be evaded by every possible means. Coming to Palestine, they took these qualities along; it is said that no recruits were ever as undisciplined as the volunteers for the Jewish battalions in 1917-1918.8 The tendency to play games with the law worked at crosscurrents with a penchant for self-help (made all the more necessary by Hagana’s lack of funds and the settlements’ isolation with an almost total lack of telecommunications in the countryside).

  These factors created a unique military lifestyle that, whatever the manuals might say, always combined a spirit of high enterprise with rather lax discipline. A typical example was Moshe Dayan—who during his lifetime was revered partly for that very reason. Born in 1915, he was a natural warrior possessed of exceptional courage under fire, a certain peasant cunning, and many excellent ideas about how to outwit and beat the enemy. However, he and his comrades-in-arms were also quite prepared to fill their stomachs by breaking into chicken coops belonging to the neighboring kibbutsim;9 indeed, “a tendency to disregard questions of law and order”10 was said to be characteristic of Hagana commanders down to the 1948 war and beyond. So long as motivation remained strong, as it was bound to be at a time when first the Palestinian Arabs and later the much larger and more populous Arab states constituted a mortal threat to the community’s very existence, this combination of qualities proved irresistible. Still, in principle one could foresee the day when, as the intensity of the threat and with it motivation diminished, it would become positively dangerous.

  During 1930-1935, though, such a situation was still very far in the future. Under its new leader, Hagana’s overriding purpose was to obtain additional arms. Agents were sent to Belgium, France, and Italy, the former two because controls were lax and the last because the fascist government was often prepared to overlook Jewish activities that it judged to be anti-British. (In 1935-1937 the port of La Spezia even hosted the first-ever course for naval personnel to be held by Hagana.) Arms and ammunition were purchased and packed into crates and suitcases as if forming part of the baggage of new immigrants; others were stored in barrels marked “cement.” Shipped to Jaffa and later to the new port at Haifa, they were smuggled through customs by Jewish officials who cooperated and by Arab ones who were bribed. From time to time there was a leak, either an accidental one as a case hit the floor and broke or when somebody noticed and told. The resulting interruptions were, however, seldom serious and did not halt the flow for long.

  All of the arms in question required maintenance. Others were in need of repair, and for others still no ammunition was available. These problems led to the first attempts to set up an independent arms industry, in reality little more than carefully concealed underground rooms where a handful—originally fewer than ten—of technically gifted men spent hours tinkering around and improvising solutions. Primitive hand grenades, bombs, and similar devices were also produced and tried out during the hikes that Hagana kept organizing for members. For
example, by 1935 more than a hundred grenades were being manufactured per day—first under primitive conditions in outlying settlements, then in a more comfortable if wellconcealed workshop in Tel Aviv. The arms thus produced or purchased had to be transported and stored in the slikkim, all under the nose of the British Central Intelligence Division (CID). The latter had a good general idea of what was going on but was unable to put an end to Hagana’s activities; in such a situation specific intelligence is everything, and specific intelligence was rarely forthcoming.

  Meanwhile training and organization proceeded along lines already familiar since the 1920s. Hagana members—in Tel Aviv alone they now numbered around a thousand—continued to devote Saturday mornings and one evening a week. According to surviving accounts these were highly formal occasions; lacking real coercive authority, commanders sought to substitute by means of parades, salutes, and a show of secrecy that had as much to do with self-esteem as with the need to keep the British at bay.11 With the aid of foreign military manuals, a training course of 120 hours was devised. It included, besides drill—which accounted for one-quarter of the total—fieldcraft, minor tactics, weapons handling, and, by way of a supreme achievement, firing perhaps ten to fifteen rounds of ammunition each. Exercises were held with the aim of trying out covert approaches to outlying settlements that might require help in an emergency. In these “maneuvers,” no arms could be carried openly (yet a few were secretly carried as a precaution against the ever-present threat of marauders). So the burden of carrying a machine gun, for example, would be simulated by five bricks; enemy shots were simulated by the blowing of whistles, whereupon the men were supposed to take cover or disperse or assault the “enemy” as appropriate.

  Taking office, Avigur had brought with him a one-man team of accountants, who soon put order into Hagana’s funds, previously a weak point due to prevailing collectivist ideas making little distinction between the organization’s property and that of individual members. Regular if extremely limited funding—all salaries combined amounted only to some 2,500 British pounds a year—in turn permitted the establishment of a medical department, a legal department, an intelligence service, and a counterintelligence service (known as Sherut Zehirut, literally “Prudence Service”). In all these activities the Tel Aviv branch, incomparably larger and possessing greater financial means than the rest, took the lead. Others followed, with or without guidance from general headquarters.

  Hagana’s plans in regard to the future also showed some progress compared to the pre-1929 years. In the cities and the rural settlements the most important task remained the preparation of blocking positions that would be occupied in case Arab mobs emerged from their residential areas and tried to storm Jewish neighborhoods and settlements. During the early thirties a handful of so-called nodedot (patrols, literally wanderers) were set up.12 A typical nodedet consisted of perhaps a dozen men—the few surviving sources do not mention any women. With or without orders from general headquarters, they met every week to practice such activities as patrolling, minor tactics, river crossings, and the like. In Tel Aviv some of the members of the local nodedet even brought along private cars and motorcycles. As a result, the unit was considered highly mobile by the standards of the day.

  Throughout these years the Yishuv and its leaders failed to understand, or perhaps merely pretended not to understand,13 the intense hatred that their growing presence in the country seemed to inspire among the Arab population. Writing Altneuland, a utopian novel that contains a description of the future Jewish community in the land of Israel, Theodor Herzl addressed the question by introducing a sympathetic Arab character named Rashid Bey. No, Rashid explained to his newly arrived Jewish friends as he showed them around in his luxurious touring car, he did not mind more of them coming in. On the contrary, was not the arrival of immigrants from Europe precisely the factor that in a mere twenty years had turned the country from a neglected backwater into a bustling center of trade and industry? As to social differences between the two peoples, no problem either. Rashid’s “happy and contented” wife, Fatma, did not mind remaining at home, and all the party got to see of her was “a lovely feminine hand” waving a handkerchief.14

  So long as Ottoman rule lasted, and clashes with the Arabs were localized, it was possible to dismiss Arab resentment as occasioned by social and economic factors only. But the countrywide disturbances of 1919-1921 made it necessary to look for a new explanation. Some sought it in anti-Semitism, arguing that the “events” were merely local variations of the pogroms familiar in their native countries, with the British taking the place of the czar in refusing to protect Jews.15 Others thought that the Arab masses were being deliberately incited by their “feudal” masters, that is, the heads of clans, rich landowners, and “capitalists” who feared less their inferiors would become infected by the Jewish socialist community arising in front of their eyes.16 Blame was also placed on fanatical religious leaders out to conserve Islam’s traditional ways while consolidating their own positions.

  In this context, it should not be overlooked that many of Yishuv’s left-wing leaders were left-wing intellectuals, past masters in using history in order to bolster their theories and adapt them to shifting reality. The one possibility that most of them did not dare contemplate: that Arabs understood Zionism only too well; in other words, Arab resistance to the movement, far from being a by-product of some conspiracy or terrible misunderstanding that could be taken care of, was merely a mirror image of their own attempt to take over a country from its long-established inhabitants. To admit that the two sides were similar would be tantamount to saying that both of their causes (or none) were, objectively speaking, equally just. Better to close one’s eyes and go on with the self-imposed task of “building our country in the teeth of all those who seek to destroy us,” as the lyrics to one popular song went.

  Not that closing one’s eyes was easy during those years. Even at its best, Palestine under British rule remained a mildly violent country with occasional attempts at cattle rustling, attacks on isolated individuals, ambushes of cars driving on deserted roads, and the like. For example, on April 5, 1931, three members of Yagur, a kibbuts not far from Haifa, were waylaid and murdered. Similar attacks took place on January 16, March 5, May 1, and December 22, 1932. Some of the assailants were hunted down and put on trial, others not (and no wonder, given that the Palestine police was itself made up of Arabs who formed an absolute majority among the personnel). In October 193 3, Jaffa and Nablus even witnessed small-scale repetitions of the events of 1929, except that this time the British authorities were ready and put down the disturbances at the cost of several dozen Arab dead. In November 1935, British forces hunted down and killed Sheik Izz a-Din al Kassam, a Haifa schoolteacher-turned-terrorist who, some fifty years later, was destined to become the patron saint of the Hamas fundamentalist organization. 17 All these clashes took place against a continuous background of smaller incidents as members of both communities sought to prevent the other from plowing land, uprooted or burned citrus trees, blocked wells, destroyed agricultural equipment, and the like.

  Sunday, April 19, 1936, was an ordinary working day, what with the Muslim weekly holiday falling on the previous Friday and the Jewish one on Saturday. Signs of rising tension had been multiplying for some time as both sides attacked individuals belonging to the other. Nevertheless Jewish workers, many of them employed in the port, went to Jaffa as they always did. Just what happened next has never been thoroughly investigated. 18 Apparently there was a rumor that Jews had killed a woman and three Choranis (laborers originating in the Choran, a district of Syria), who, as usual, were clustering around the port in search of work. Rioting started, and by the end of the day sixteen Jews had been killed and dozens wounded; some of the corpses were so mangled they could not be identified. Six Arabs had also been killed, all of them by police.19 As news of the riots spread, Palestinian Arab leaders met in Nablus. On April 25 they set up their first countrywide leadership in the
form of a ten-member Supreme Arab Committee. Its president was Amin al Hussayni, whom we have already met.

  On May 15 the committee declared a general strike among the Arab community. It was to last for 172 days and serve as the background for many terrorist attacks. Throughout the country, roads were blocked, railroads cut, agricultural workers waylaid, and urban targets attacked with rocks, knives, firearms, and homemade bombs; British police stations were also targeted. Fauzi al-Kauji, an Iraqi officer of Syrian descent, was invited by the committee to take charge. He brought along three companies—approximately 200 men made up of Iraqi, Syrian, and Druze volunteers; once in Palestine he set up a fourth company of locals. Lacking any logistic organization, they installed themselves in the villages of Samaria, whose inhabitants were made to feed the warriors and provide additional arms—whether they wanted to or not, it should be added. From there they attacked British convoys making way toward Nablus and other cities.20

  These were the days before the British army, and the armies of other imperialist countries, had learned that their roles were to proceed from one defeat to the next. Over the next few months some 20,000 British troops were dispatched to Palestine and took charge. They returned fire, blew up the houses of suspected terrorists, and, aided by spotter aircraft, systematically hunted down rebel gangs in their mountain hideouts. By October 1936 hundreds of Arabs must have been killed; among the Jews there were 80 killed and 400 wounded.21 Militarily and economically the Arab Palestinians were at the end of their tether. “At the request of the Arab Kings”—there were three at the time—the Supreme Arab Committee met and called off the strike. Kauji and most of his men were able to withdraw to the Jordan and leave the country unmolested, though whether this was part of some secret deal is unknown.

 

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