The war in 1948: A symbol of treason and misery

With the issuance of the resolution prepared by the United Nations which declared the partition of Palestine, a small group of young fighters and volunteers formed the core of the Palestinian resistance but the Arab states mentioned that they would send their military forces on condition that the British withdrew their forces.
The Palestinians began their campaign in the army of "holy war" led by Abdul Qader Al-Husseini and League of Arab States organized the "salvation army" of volunteers and Palestinians and Arabic and Islamic countries and there were also 250 Bosnian members in the army as well.
Although the rusty and disabled weapons and equipment sent from Arabic states for the Palestinians caused them to suffer great losses, but for a relatively long period of time, they caused a lot of fear in the hearts of Jews and despite the imbalance of power between them and the Zionists, they were able to maintain about 82% of the Palestinian lands from the Zionist occupation who were supported completely by the British until the arrival of the Arabic countries.
But the military intervention of the Seven Arabic countries, namely Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in this case, was itself a tragic and shameful story.
Regardless of the incompetence and the lack of commitment of the rulers of these countries, many of these states during World War II were very engaged in gaining and protecting their own independence and stabilizing their country's political system and were not prepared to enter or solve the Palestinian crisis.
Lebanon gained independence in 1943 and in 1945 Syria became an independent country too and, at this time, Iraq and Jordan were still under the tutelage and supervision of the British government and the Suez Canal was still in occupation of the Great Britain. Hence, the introduction of the trivial, less important, and precarious situation of these countries in the 1948 war was considered a great tragedy.
Because the Arab army:
1. Did not exceed 24 thousand in number, while the Jews have had seventy thousand trained fighters.
2. Lack of discipline and consistency which was necessary.
3. Did not correctly know the regional and strategic positions.
4. Weapons used by them were generally worn out and damaged "in a way that sometimes when firing the weapon was blown up in the user’s hand."
5. Instead of arming the Palestinians, they sometimes disarmed them.
6. The management and office was given to the Chief of the Jordanian army and things were under the command of "Gallup Pasha" who was English and of fifty operation officers in the army 45 were English!
In this war, the courage and actions of the Palestinian people and volunteers from the Islamic countries were much admirable and astonishing and the defense offered by these people was also very effective, but alas, that by the disloyalty and the betrayal and negligence of the political leaders, these faithful and sincere efforts were made ineffective.
Martyr, Hassan Al Bana who was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood mobilized about ten thousand youth volunteers and other groups in Egypt to defend the Palestinian territories, but the government of Egypt, narrowed the field of action for them and did not allow sending more than a few hundred people, but this limited number of volunteers created many original scenes of courage and sacrifice and exhibited courage in the Palestinian territories. It is said that after their return to Egypt, they were arrested and sent to prison and the Muslim Brotherhood organization was disbanded a year later (on February 11th 1949). Sheikh Hasan Al Bana was also assassinated and got martyred.
The operational plan of the Arabic countries was that they could use the military operations against the enemy using the forces of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. Then, they planned to join each other and unite their multi-axis attacks in the north and in the region "Alofuleh" in the heart of Palestine and move onwards and towards the Mediterranean coast, destroying the Zionist forces by disrupting them and then in Ashkelon and Majdal, they planned to join the Egyptian soldiers from the south and begin their operations.
But in this formal campaign, "he Egypt only limited its cooperation to deploying a brigade, and the others such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen, just by sending three hundred fighters, symbolically participated, and they were also directly under the command of the British army that was located in Jordan and with the progress made by just one kilometer, they were immediately ordered to retreat up to ten kilometers.
Each time that the Egyptian army made the slightest regress with weapons and extinguishing old and rotten weapons sold by the English, which were given to them after the Second World War, and also Jordan and Iraq, the Egyptian commander, Gen. Mohammad Najib received a call from Farooq by telephone and the order was given to him to withdraw his forces. And every time that the Iraqi forces were advancing, of Nuri al-Said, the commander in Iraq, Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem was given the order to withdraw.
On the other hand, Prince Abdullah, the King of Jordan and his prime minister, Tofiq Bo-Alahdi, had secretly agreed with the Zionists that the West Bank of the Jordan and the rest of Palestine belongs to the Jews!
Nevertheless, it is worth remembering that despite all the shortcomings and betrayals, the volunteer soldiers and Muslim fighters in this war, demonstrated their courage and strength in a manner that the Zionists were forced to retreat and Tel Aviv, this protected fort and the declared capital of the Zionist regime was subjected to siege and fall.
Thus, Britain and the United States of America that, contrary to their primary beliefs, saw that the situation is very dangerous for the Zionists, while putting some pressure on the Arab League for a ceasefire and negotiations and dialogue, tried to use the Security Council also to issue a resolution calling everyone involved to observe a ceasefire.
The Security Council cease-fire resolution was issued immediately! However, the League of Arab States saw that they are facing a dilemma:
"Decisive victory over the Jews "or" accepting a cease-fire."
It was also at this point that the acceptance of the cease-fire created a dark page in the history of their performance.
Thus, the first cease-fire was to take effect on the eleventh day of June for four weeks.
The resolution required the parties involved to make peace during the period of ceasefire and prevent the consolidation of their military positions and the transfer and strengthening of their forces were also among the things they had to refrain. Even those Jewish immigrants who had reached the age of military service did not have the right to enter Palestine, except with the specific approval of international mediation.
Although Count Bernadotte, the UN envoy, tried to persuade the parties of the conflict to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, during this time, the Israelis were secretly extending their powers and their military outfits and gained military supplies while this was done quietly and away from the eyes of the Arabs. So, a variety of light and heavy weapons and combat aircrafts were supplied from Europe and the United States of America and the Haifa port, after British forces had occupied it, was turned into a safe and reliable gateway sure to import and get whatever they needed.
However, on the other side, the Arabs were subject to the provisions of the resolution and, with frequent contacts and talks with Count Bernadotte, the United Nations staffs apparently showed goodwill towards peace!
In the ninth July 1948, with a deadline to cease fire being close to a draw, suddenly the war began again with Israeli air strikes on the cities of Cairo, Damascus and Amman.
In the last phase of the war, the Zionists had no combat aircrafts, but by this time when their air attacks were done, the Arabs were totally surprised and were forced to retreat and defend the borders of their own countries.
During the raids, the occupying regime occupied and brought new parts of the Palestinian land under its control and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to leave their homelands.
The security Council issued another ceasefire resolution which reinforced peace once again and the parties engaged in battle consented to it but during the time when the ceasefire was observed, the Zionist regime, as in the past, began to boost and strengthen its forces and consolidated its positions and then occupied new areas and all the regions within Baer Sa’ab and Al-Naghab.
Here, a brief mention of the Zionist assassination of United Nations representative is not without some merit. After Count Folk Bernadotte of the United Nations as selected as a mediator and an international observer in the Palestinian case, he wrote in his report that:
This is contrary to the principles of the United Nations that the innocent victims are to be prevented and prohibited from returning to their country. While the number of the Jewish immigrants to Palestine is on the rise. This will allow the immigrants to replace the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for many centuries.
Bernadotte, in his report, also takes note of the brutal and wild attack of the Zionists against the villages for which no military justification can be provided.
The report was prepared on the sixteenth of September 1948 and in the days after September seventeenth, Count Bernadotte and his French assistant (Serot) were assassinated and murdered in the occupied part of Jerusalem.
The occupying regime, under the pressure coming from the world public opinion, arrested Nathan Friedman Elaine, the Commander of the Shetren group and condemned him to five years in prison, but soon released him in 1950 and he was elected to the Israel's parliament!
In July 1971, Baruch Nadel (the leader Shetron group in 1948) praised the assassination of Bernadotte and confessed that he had given the order for his assassination.
However, in November 1948, by virtue of another resolution by the United Nations Security Council, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria agreed to negotiate separately with the state of Israel, under doctor Bench’s supervision, who has replaced Bernadotte as the representative of the United Nations to establish a permanent cease-fire.
With the victory of Israel in the war of 1948, the new and emerging regime was faced with two main problems: The first is that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents of the territories could not remain quiet and silent against the Jewish state that had violated their rights and had occupied their lands.
Second, the Palestinians were virtually the owner of 93% of the land areas and this was considered a major obstacle to the realization of the "Greater Israel”.
That is why the religious leaders of the Jews, in accordance with the teachings of the Torah, were determined to expel all Palestinians from their land and drive them out of Palestine.
But, from another perspective used by the Zionists, the final solution of the Palestinian problem was:
Mass expulsions, massacres and organized assassinations.
In the meantime, the Palestinians who their fathers and forefathers had across many generations born and had lived in this land were now surrounded by the Israeli armed gangs and were driven out of Palestine. The refugees, who were told that they have no right to return to their homeland and were not allowed to carry anything with them other than the clothes they were wearing and those who refused to leave their houses were shot dead by the Israeli military.
Thus, performing this brutal and violent behavior against Palestinians was part of the Israel’s political and military strategy.
By announcing the establishment of the Zionist state, the return of approximately 630 thousand Palestinian men, women and children to their farms and homes was also banned and only 170 thousand Palestinians remained in the occupied territories.
Moshe Sharett- Shertok, the first foreign minister and the second prime minister of Israel, in his private notes, which were written from the ninth of October 1953 to 28 November 1957, recorded a lot of hidden facts and the secret policies of the occupying regime.
Because these Notes, unlike many "private notes", were not prepared for publishing and editing, therefore, we may rule out the possibility of any change and exaggeration in its content.
Despite intense pressure from the Israeli government to prevent its publication or attempts made to censor it, the notes from Moshe Sharett were finally published by Jacob Sharett who was the son of Moshe Sharett in Hebrew and in eight volumes, containing over 2400 pages that were complete and without abridgement.
In 1980, an Italian who was originally Palestinian named Livia Rocach, in collaboration with the daughter of the minister of the interior cabinet of Sharett, published a book entitled as “The Holy Terrorism of Israel”, based on less than one hundredth of the notes provided by Sharett. The book was published in English by the Alumni Association of Arab University graduates in America.
The aforementioned book is available and was translated and into Persian by Morteza Assadi in 1365.
Releasing these notes revealed many shocking, criminal and violent plans of the Zionist regime in about four years, which were the years when the most sensitive times were seen since the occupation of the Palestinian lands.
However, the circumstances and fate developed like this in a way that the links of the chain of the international conspiracy were fitted together and formed the Zionist regime in Palestine and, as in the next step, the process was completed and the regime was also accepted as a member of the United Nations. The new state was placed at the heart of the Islamic nations like a poisoned dagger.
Thus, the Jews who lived miserably over the centuries, with the shame and humiliation imposed on them, in the deep, black, and stinking dungeons of "ghettos" and were subject in many period of history to all kinds of deprivations, oppressions, torture, degeneration, humiliation and displacement were later shown a change of fate and a bright light of existence. The objectives of the colonial policies of the world powers were coordinated with their interests and well-being and in the warmth of the hot flame of wealth and power they found new life and were revived. All of a sudden, the obsessions, complexes and desires that were thousands of years old and had been inserted deep in their souls were given physical and tangible form under the auspices of Zionism. Thus, they took their old vengeance, for whatever hardship they had gone through at the time of misery, over many centuries living in the West. They targeted the poor, impoverished and innocent Palestinians that did not stop helping and showing mercy and hospitality for the Jews at the time when they were homeless and persecuted poor souls!