5
Fighting Words in the First Arab-Israeli War
The mood in Tel Aviv on the afternoon of May 14, 1948, was celebratory. A private gathering of numerous officials would take place inside the Tel Aviv Museum at four in the afternoon, but people in the streets had all heard rumors of the meeting’s purpose. Inside the museum, David Ben-Gurion, leader of the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine, would declare the establishment of the new and independent State of Israel. Ben-Gurion’s proclamation spoke of a potential world where this Jewish homeland could coexist with its surrounding Arab states: “We offer peace and amity to all neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and reconstitution of the Middle East.”1
Such a world was the stuff of dreams. Within a day of Ben-Gurion’s speech, military forces from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria descended on Israel with the intention of eliminating it. So began the Arab-Israeli War.
This conflict is important with respect to wartime diplomacy for at least three reasons. First, it was only the second interstate war to erupt following the establishment of the United Nations in October 1945.2 Analyzing the moments right after the UN’s creation can help reveal the immediate impact, if any, of the high latent external pressures created by the post-1945 environment. Second, and on a related note, this conflict was the first to involve direct mediation efforts mandated by the nascent organization. As we will see, the advent of the United Nations mediator in Palestine represented an innovation in global affairs wherein the international community’s diplomatic heft and desire for peace were embodied in a single individual. The UN mediator could thus bring not only substantial but also sharp diplomatic pressure to bear. Third, this war between the Arab states and the State of Israel, while the first, would certainly not be the last. Tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors continue to be one of the more volatile situations for international affairs. Understanding the dynamics in play in fighting and negotiating in this past war thus has significant implications not only for conflict in general but also for modern-day manifestations of these violent rivalries in the Middle East.
Over eight months between May 1948 and January 1949, the Arab-Israeli War underwent three distinct phases of fighting that were punctuated by three UN mediation efforts. The first bout of hostilities proved difficult for the new State of Israel, as it struggled to fend off an assault on all fronts using a sparsely equipped paramilitary force. The second round, however, saw the battlefield decidedly tilt in Israel’s favor, and the third saw the Arab states suffer sizable territorial losses before Egypt became the first Arab state to negotiate a peace with Israel. This sequence of events raises three questions: What helps to explain Israel’s remarkable ability to turn the tides of favor in the conflict? Furthermore, why did the mediation efforts begin and end—and, thus, repeatedly fail—when they did? And what explains why the Arab states and Israel were finally willing to negotiate an end to the conflict?
My theory indicates that the answers to these questions are deeply intertwined. The combination of very high latent external diplomatic pressures and battlefield developments explains the timing and motivations behind each negotiation period, as well as the impacts each had on the subsequent trajectory of conflict. The opening phase of conflict saw a somewhat disorganized coalition of Arab states fight an inadequately equipped Israel, with both sides’ fighters quickly becoming exhausted. The intense and perpetual pressures produced by the UN mediator permitted both Israel and the Arab states to engage in diplomacy with insincere ends. Both sides exploited the first mediation effort to rest, rearm, and regroup in order to continue fighting more capably once negotiations ended. But as we will see, Israel had more to gain from stalling for time through diplomacy, as this allowed it to absorb a large influx of troops and weapons into its military. In other words, insincere negotiations gave Israel a chance to mobilize more of its latent military capabilities into actual power on the battlefield. These enhancements gave Israel an upper hand during the remainder of the war.
By the second mediation effort, the embattled Arab states became more sincere negotiators that harbored real, though still highly reluctant, desires to stop fighting. Conversely, Israel was buoyed by its recent successes and continued negotiating insincerely with the intention of planning military operations to definitively defeat the Arab states. It was only when Israel faced threats of intervention from Britain that it also saw poor prospects to continued fighting and chose to accept a diplomatic settlement. In sum, the Arab-Israeli War shows how changes on the battlefield produce different forms of negotiation in a setting with high latent pressures for peace. Side effects extracted from diplomacy helped the belligerents achieve goals and reshape the battlefield in ways that would have been far less tractable without third-party pressure to negotiate.
The remainder of the chapter expands on this argument. I first provide some background information on the “Palestinian Question” that was the precursor to the Arab-Israeli War, as well as a brief summary of the conflict itself. I next scrutinize the war in more discrete stages, highlighting connections with my hypotheses as appropriate. I then review the diplomatic strategies that played out over the course of the war and how they align with my theory of wartime negotiations.
Prelude to War
The end of the First World War brought many changes to global affairs. One distinct development was the dissolution of the centuries-old but waning Ottoman Empire. The Turks suffered painful losses to the Russians in two wars—the first between 1768 and 1774, and the second between 1877 and 1878.3 The Ottoman Empire officially collapsed with the conclusion of World War I. As European powers split the former empire up for themselves, the territory of Palestine, which the Ottomans had held for four centuries, was placed within a protectorate under Great Britain. This allocation fulfilled the terms of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British government voiced its support for the creation of a “national home” for the Jewish population in Palestine.4 The League of Nations formalized this arrangement in 1923. Disagreements quickly arose between the members of the Arab majority in Palestine, who had nationalist beliefs and hopes of an independent Palestinian and Arab state, and members of the Jewish minority in Palestine, who sought a Jewish state on the same land. Animosity only grew as Zionists continued to immigrate to Palestine in hopes of establishing this Jewish state. Internal strife tore Palestine apart multiple times over the next two to three decades and signaled that the British Mandate did not provide a long-term solution.
The rise of antisemitism prior to the Second World War, as well as the Holocaust during the war itself, resulted in a surge of Jews fleeing persecution and heading for Palestine. The 1930s alone saw Palestine’s Jewish population, or Yishuv, skyrocket from about 205,000 to 475,000.5 The British government attempted to prevent large influxes of Jewish immigration during the war itself, concerned that Arabs would further destabilize Palestine out of fears that they would soon become a minority. This decision attracted widespread opposition and condemnation. A notable source of international opprobrium was President Harry Truman, who supported the notion of allowing 100,000 Jews to immigrate to Mandatory Palestine. A growing contingent of disaffected Zionist insurgents also began orchestrating terrorist attacks against British government officials. On September 26, 1947, Britain declared that it would end its mandate over Palestine. The specific end date by which point British forces would exit was later announced as May 14, 1948. The monumental task of figuring out who or what would replace the British Mandate was then placed on the shoulders of the United Nations, which by that point was less than two years old.
The UN General Assembly passed its compromise proposal, Resolution 181 (II), on November 29, 1947. The resolution called for the partition of Palestine into two separate and independent states, one of which would be Jewish and the other Arab. The leftmost map in figure 5.1 depicts this proposal. The Holy City of Jerusalem, central to followers of both the Jewish and Muslim faiths, would be placed under an international regime. While members of the Jewish community were somewhat supportive of the proposal, leaders in the surrounding Arab states were highly dissatisfied with the idea of dividing territory and argued that it infringed on individuals’ rights to self-determination. The terms of Resolution 181 (II) did not come to pass. Palestine fell into a civil war shortly thereafter, pitting Arab militants in Palestine against the Haganah, the primary paramilitary organization of the Yishuv. Furthermore, Great Britain refused to enforce a deal that did not have the backing of both concerned parties.
Thus, by the last day of the British Mandate on May 14, Palestine faced a power vacuum. The vacuum was partially filled that afternoon when leaders of the Yishuv came together at the Tel Aviv Museum and declared that the new independent state of Israel would come into being at midnight on May 15. David Ben-Gurion, a renowned Zionist leader, would be both the first minister of defense and prime minister.6 The creation of a Jewish state was wholly unacceptable to the Arabs in Palestine as well as those in the Arab states, who were founding members of a regional organization called the Arab League, surrounding it. Foreseeing an imminent conflict, the UN General Assembly had passed a resolution on May 14 appointing Folke Bernadotte—a Swedish diplomat and former vice president of the Swedish Red Cross—as the United Nations mediator in Palestine. The role that Bernadotte assumed was the first of its kind, and he would face a significant challenge that erupted soon after this appointment. Hours after Israel came into being, the armed forces of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria simultaneously sprang into action and engaged in an attack on all fronts.
The War Itself
Bernadotte officially assumed his official capacity as UN mediator on May 20 and relentlessly attempted to open channels of communication between Israel and the Arab states. The UN and Bernadotte were able to establish two truces during the war, each of which was intended to allow for mediation to change the belligerents’ reversion outcomes and find a suitable settlement regarding the fate of Palestine. The first period was from June 11 to July 8, and the second began on July 18 and ended on October 15. Both diplomatic endeavors ran into significant resistance from the belligerents, neither of which was willing to accept the proposals made by the UN mediator.
Prior to the first mediation effort, battlefield activity firmly tilted in the Arab League’s favor. But in the moments following the first truce, Israeli forces seized the initiative and made significant territorial gains. The Jewish state’s battlefield advantages only mounted in the aftermath of the second truce. On January 7, 1949, Israel and Egypt agreed to an initial ceasefire agreement, paving a path to a more formal peace that they would sign on the Greek island of Rhodes by February 24. Agreements with the other Arab states would subsequently materialize and be signed through the rest of 1949. Each of these settlements would establish terms that were favorable for the state of Israel.
A notable aspect of the Arab-Israeli War is that Israel’s reversal of fortune began in the aftermath of the first failed mediation effort. My theory suggests that this is no mere coincidence; diplomacy was critical to explaining Israel’s ability to reshape the trajectory of battlefield activity. As I will demonstrate, strong and unrelenting international pressure for peace, generated by the incipient United Nations and personified in the role of the UN mediator, created an opening for both the Arab states and Israel to transition into more peaceful periods of diplomatic bargaining when it suited their strategic interests as dictated by the battlefield, and to do so without suffering the degree of political disadvantage they would face from seeking diplomacy without external motivation. The belligerents thus had greater liberties to exploit periods of mediation to further promote their war aims rather than search for a meaningful negotiated settlement.
Israel ultimately had more to gain from bouts of insincere diplomacy. By buying pockets of time, Israel secured valuable opportunities to translate more of its latent war-fighting potential into actual force that could be used against the Arab states. Each period of relative calm afforded a moment to rearm, reorganize, and regroup for hostilities. These respites paid off, enabling the new Jewish state to win the very begrudging acknowledgment of—and indirect right to exist alongside—its Arab neighbors.
To elaborate on this argument, we must walk through the war once again but in greater detail, elucidating the strategic environment in which the conflict began.
Israel’s Initial Disadvantages
In terms of raw troop strength, Israel and the Arab states were roughly even at the outset of hostilities. Israel wielded approximately nineteen thousand fighters against the Arab League’s twenty-three thousand regular military troops.7 Israeli forces had relatively better training and quicker lines of communication. Yet on most other dimensions, Israel began the war at a significant disadvantage against its rivals. Jewish leaders in Palestine had long realized that a declaration of statehood would invite Arab attacks, but the new State of Israel was remarkably underprepared for the assaults that began on May 15. Several factors contributed to Israel’s handicapped position.
First, the Arab states wielded the element of surprise in the opening stages of conflict. Arab forces also began on high ground, while much of the Jewish population was in the lowlands.8 The Haganah also had poor intelligence capabilities, precluding it from learning valuable information about its Arab rivals or their imminent plans.9
Second, serious discussions about preparations against the Arabs began only on May 11, mere days before the planned declaration of statehood.10 Ben-Gurion disagreed with his military leaders about overarching strategy. The prospective prime minister and defense minister wanted to throw all possible force into overtaking the area that linked Tel Aviv with Jerusalem, while military officials sought to keep some forces in reserve as reinforcements that would be deployed only once Israel observed how the Arab states would respond. While initial plans largely followed Ben-Gurion’s desires, both overall proposals were preoccupied with offensive plans to claim territory and said startlingly little regarding the establishment of any defenses against Arab invasions.
Third, the Haganah and other Jewish fighters had continuously fought a civil war against Arabs in Palestine since November 1947, leaving them both physically and materially exhausted compared to the Arab troops that were engaging in hostilities for the first time. To be sure, this meant that Israeli forces—many of whom had also fought for the Allies in World War II—had far more combat experience than the Arab states’ militaries, none of which, except for Iraq’s forces, had fought in the war.11 But this experiential advantage was materially outweighed by Israel’s lack of arms and heavy weaponry. Their fighters had no field guns, a couple of old tanks, a handful of modest planes, and a disorganized assortment of rifles and machine guns. Only three-fifths of all fighters were armed,12 and ammunition supplies were so low that, on average, each rifle was allocated fifty rounds and each machine gun had only seven hundred.13 In mid-April, Ben-Gurion noted that the Yishuv remained “quite far from having the force we need to meet the 15th of May. We lack almost half the necessary manpower, we lack 80 percent of the transport, and we lack the rest of the [necessary] equipment in no small measure… . There is no food, there is no fuel, and a thousand other things.”14 On the other hand, the Arab states’ lack of combat experience was offset by substantial weaponry that included at least 150 field guns, twenty tanks, and fifty fighter aircraft.15 On top of this, the Haganah was a decentralized paramilitary force, and one of many. Arab opponents had more traditional command structures. The unified Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was established only on May 28, thirteen days after the war began.
These deficiencies had a concrete impact on Jewish assessments of the imminent conflict. On May 12, Yigal Yadin, the director of Israeli military operations, was asked to provide an assessment of the military situation. His response was unpropitious: “I would say not that the chances are quite even. If I want to be frank I would say that their advantage is greater.”16
Yadin’s pessimism was not unjustified. The nearly simultaneous assault from every front was overwhelming. Troops from Lebanon and Syria would come in from the north, either to take the Sea of Galilee or to split Israel into pieces; those from Iraq and Jordan would come in from the east and move toward the city of Haifa; and those from Egypt would enter from the south toward Tel Aviv. Two days into the conflict, Ben-Gurion openly told his cabinet that “the situation is very grave. There aren’t enough rifles. There are no heavy weapons.”17
Opening Hostilities and Exhaustion
Israel’s plans of a heavy offensive against the Arab states were instead transformed into painful efforts to repulse numerous attacks with limited resources. On May 19, a group of individuals responsible for defending the kibbutz of Degania Alef from Syrian invasion arrived in Tel Aviv to request reinforcements in advance of an imminent attack. Ben-Gurion’s response reflected how grim the material situation remained: “There are not enough guns, not enough planes; men are lacking on all fronts. The situation is very severe in the Negev, is difficult in Jerusalem, in Upper Galilee. The whole country is a front line. We cannot send reinforcements.”18 On May 28, after about ten days of intense fighting, Jordan’s military forces managed to overtake the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and force the evacuation of all remaining Jews from the area. Teddy Kollek, who would become mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, later called this day “the blackest event in Israel’s War of Independence.”19
Meanwhile, attempts to take the offensive had limited success. This was certainly the case near Latrun, an area designated as part of the Arab state in the UN’s partition plan. It also included the old road that linked Tel Aviv with Jerusalem. Ben-Gurion believed Latrun to be so strategically important to Israel’s defense that he overrode his generals and ordered attacks on Arab troops there.20 In May and once in early June, Israeli forces attempted to take Latrun. They were repeatedly repulsed at great cost by well-prepared Jordanian forces and experienced the worst losses on a single battlefield that they would suffer until 1973.21
By early June, the Arab states had gained control over much of the territory that the United Nations partition plan had granted to Palestine. Israelis managed to push away a fair share of assaults, but about a third of the territory allocated to the Jewish state, most of which was in the Negev desert, was still occupied by Arab forces. Israel had managed to hold the Arab states at bay, but its forces were exhausted. Access to Jerusalem and the Jewish population there was incredibly tenuous, leaving people without reliable access to food, water, or medicine, and the Arab states continued to pose serious threats on basically every front.22 The middle map of figure 5.1 reflects the Israelis’ dire situation at this time.
The Arab states’ military forces were also deeply strained, and despite some successes, military leaders began to confront the reality that they were unlikely to eliminate the Jewish state wholesale. Politicians in the Arab League (with the exception of Jordan) continued to see decent prospects for gaining some advantage over Israel that could be framed as a victory, but the last month of fighting had left their soldiers and supplies drained. Jordan’s forces, the Arab Legion, faced significant issues. Having deployed all of its troops in the previous month, Jordan had no personnel reserves and had dwindling arms supplies.23
The First Mediation: Bernadotte’s Blitz
As the first phase of conflict intensified, the United Nations mediator sprang into action. Bernadotte received his official designation on May 20 and embraced the role with enormous devotion. UN Security Council Resolution 50, adopted on May 29, called for a four-week truce and made Bernadotte the key negotiator to lead this endeavor. Bernadotte had arrived in Cairo the previous day and began his mediation effort on May 30.
What followed was a furious week and a half of shuttle diplomacy, during which time Bernadotte and his staff traveled to Cairo, Tel Aviv, Amman, and Beirut to speak with each respective government. Collecting their thoughts, he attempted to identify key areas of disagreement and to offer proposals for truces in a take-it-or-leave-it format.24 A significant breakthrough took place on June 5, when Bernadotte essentially presented an ultimatum regarding terms of a truce; discussions had come to a standstill over definitions of “military personnel” and “men of military age,” both of which were part of Resolution 50. The belligerent states accepted the proposal, and a formal arrangement of a four-week truce was completed by June 9. The four-week ceasefire, which would be spent engaging in further mediation efforts to reach a more durable agreement, officially came into effect on the morning of June 11. While the ceasefire certainly reduced the intensity of hostilities compared to the previous month, compliance was inconsistent. Upward of five hundred ceasefire violations were reported during the first truce.25 Given the highly limited number of UN observers that were available to supervise the belligerents’ adherence to peace, many other infractions were likely not documented. This truce nonetheless opened the door to more substantive discussions that would ideally result in a mutually acceptable agreement regarding Palestine.
It is important to note that this mediation effort and associated drawdown in hostilities would likely not have occurred without the direct interposition of the United Nations and the mediator in Palestine. Both were critical to lowering the relative costs of negotiation for all belligerents. In early June, the Arab states were exhausting their military reserves but were unwilling to directly interact with Israel, as doing so would confer legitimacy to a state that it not only refused to recognize but hoped to eliminate.26 The government in Tel Aviv, seeking international recognition, was more open to diplomacy for the exact same reason, but it also could not freely make direct offers to negotiate for fear of looking weak.27 As such, one month into the war, both sides wanted to temporarily stop fighting but could not reasonably initiate a unilateral ceasefire without emboldening the enemy, sparking furor at home, or inviting the imposition of an unfavorable arrangement by the United Nations. Outside diplomatic pressure from the UN, major powers, and Bernadotte himself provided each side the necessary justification and political cover to pause hostilities without triggering as much blowback.28 In support of the ideas behind Hypothesis 2 (and, implicitly, Hypothesis 1), increased external pressure to negotiate played a critical part in getting parties to come to the table.
Substantiating Hypothesis 4, the period of mediation featured lower levels of hostilities compared to moments without diplomacy. Of course, this was a consequence of the formal truces imposed by the UN, but we also see evidence that the ceasefires were constantly violated. These repeated infractions attest to the external nature of the truce and mediation, which occurred when neither side harbored a genuine desire to strike a negotiated agreement.
Exploiting a Respite
My theory predicts that low costs to diplomacy will enable belligerents to engage in insincere negotiations that are not meant to terminate hostilities and may even attempt to extend them. The sequence of events that occurred during this first ceasefire and mediation confirms this claim. A weeks-long respite was exactly what both sides desired by early June, and each party was given a chance to extend and reshape hostilities compared to a situation where the war continued with no formal interruption.
A central tenet of the truce, and one that Bernadotte stressed, was that it would not be used to change the state of military affairs or grant either side a military advantage.29 The four weeks were meant to create room for dialogue that could lead to a more permanent peaceful arrangement. While both Israel and the Arab states entertained Bernadotte’s diplomatic efforts, it is now clear that neither side expected or really wanted a diplomatic peace. Each belligerent instead seemed more interested in exploiting negotiations and the associated lull in battlefield hostilities to promote the aims that triggered the war in the first place.
For the Arab states, the four-week period provided valuable time to resupply themselves with varying degrees of success. According to a secret commission of inquiry in Iraq, the government managed to ship substantial arms and ammunition to forces in Jordan and Palestine by disguising these shipments as food and clothing. Iraqi forces at the front had been boosted to ten thousand. Egypt reinforced its troops, replenished its ammunition (though Arab forces continued to face issues on this front), and repaired its planes for further combat. Both Egypt and Syria launched a massive recruitment effort to increase their numbers as well.30
Yet the party that had more to gain from the pause was Israel. In a document dated June 11, 1948, a British official stationed in Haifa argued that the first truce “would certainly be exploited by the Jews to continue military training and reorganization.”31 Iraqi chief of staff General Salah Saib al-Jaburi also reported to his own government that Israel would be much more militarily capable following the truce.32 These assessments proved to be correct. Moshe Carmel, a military commander who would later become minister of transportation, called the military pause “dew from heaven.”33 The four weeks were vital for reorganizing the new IDF force, replenishing supplies, giving soldiers time to rest, and addressing grievances that troops had about the lack of support for their families.34
Beyond refreshing the forces already on the ground, having extra time would also allow Israel to gain additional troops and weapons that would significantly augment the country’s military power. The continuing influx of Jews, many of whom were veterans of World War II, into Israel provided a significant boost to recruitment efforts. While Israel had approximately thirty thousand fighters at the war’s opening, the number expanded to sixty-five thousand by the middle of July.35 Israelis eventually had a three-to-two advantage in terms of troops in Palestine.36
Israel’s most critical weakness—its comparatively paltry supply of weapons—was also addressed during this lull in hostilities. The United States had imposed an embargo on arms sales to Palestine and neighboring states in December 1947 as part of its commitment to the partition plan laid out in UN Security Council Resolution 181 (II).37 Resolution 50, which had sought a four-week truce, instituted a global arms embargo against all belligerents during the ceasefire. Zionist leaders failed to change the Truman administration’s policy despite Truman’s support of the Jewish cause, and the global embargo appeared to be generally upheld.38 Yishuv leaders, however, had made numerous large orders of weapons, aircraft, and ammunition from Latin America, Western Europe, and Czechoslovakia in the months immediately following the partition plan and before the first truce. Illegal purchases in the United States also boosted Israel’s capabilities.39 A steady stream of fifty million bullets, twenty-five thousand rifles, five thousand machine guns, and numerous tanks arrived in Israel and were incorporated into the IDF before the global arms embargo began.40 The Israeli Air Force also came into being in late May but obtained more modern aircraft only as the conflict progressed. Ben-Gurion was eager to take advantage of this respite to engage in more war planning. Flouting the terms of the truce, he demanded that military production increase and that Israelis establish new stronghold settlements (yishuvei mishlat) that would consolidate Israel’s control over its newly won territory.41
Conspicuously, Bernadotte was oblivious to the dramatic expansion of Israeli military capabilities over the truce period. He and his team intensified their interactions with the belligerent governments, but these efforts occurred under the misguided presumption that both sides’ forces remained relatively even.42 Some of these misconceptions may have made their way into the initial proposal he made to the concerned parties on June 28, 1948. A central provision of this plan was the creation of a “Union, comprising two Members, one Arab and Jewish,” each of which would have political autonomy but share an economic union. The document offered several suggestions about how territory that was in dispute during the war would be allocated between the two autonomous territories.43 Bernadotte also proposed an extension of the truce by an additional month to create more time for his proposal to elicit dialogue. UN Security Council Resolution 53, adopted on July 7, reiterated this appeal for “the prolongation of the truce.”44 Despite Bernadotte’s assurances that these ideas were only preliminary and offered in hopes of extending the truce for further dialogue, both sides were extremely displeased with the proposal and perceived it to be too concrete for comfort.45
On June 30, while discussing Bernadotte’s first plan, Ben-Gurion and his cabinet considered but subsequently rejected the idea of launching a premature attack. Ben-Gurion believed that the Arab states would reject the deal and refuse to keep talking, thus creating an opening for Israel to launch its offensives after setting up the Arab states as the recalcitrant party.46 In general accordance with Ben-Gurion’s prognosis, the Arab League took public actions that appeared more belligerent. The Israelis dismissed the specific terms in his proposal but expressed openness to a longer truce. On July 6, the Arab states unanimously declared their opposition to both the proposal and a ceasefire extension.47
Renewed Hostilities
The Egyptians ended the truce a day early on July 8, hoping to exploit the element of surprise for an advantage on the battlefield. The hostilities that unfolded in the second phase of violence are retrospectively called the “Ten-Day Battles,” reflecting the relatively brief bout of violence before another ceasefire and mediation effort came into effect. The nature of combat fundamentally changed compared to the more indeterminate state of hostilities before the first truce: the strengthened Israeli military now seized the initiative. In the North, Operation Dekel (July 8–18) captured a series of Arab villages, including the symbolically significant town of Nazareth.48 On the central front, Operation Dani (July 9–19) claimed territory near Tel Aviv and created a vital bridge to the Jewish soldiers and civilians who were isolated in Jerusalem. Consistent with the implications of Hypothesis 5, hostilities immediately following failed negotiations resulted in a battlefield that reduced levels of imbalance on the battlefield by neutralizing many of the Arabs initiators’ gains in the first month of hostilities.
Israel’s new offensives did not accomplish all of Ben-Gurion’s goals. For example, Operation Dani fell short of its objective of securing Latrun—a constant struggle for the Israelis. An effort to retake Jerusalem also did not materialize. Nontrivial resistance by Arab forces inflicted significant losses on the IDF, leading it to adopt more limited territorial aims.49 Leaders in the Arab states were nonetheless startled to see how dramatically their fortunes had turned. Over ten days, Israel gained nearly four hundred square miles of territory, while the Arab states had cobbled together only about thirty.50 The Arabs’ defenses in key locations such as Latrun and Jerusalem had held, but only barely and with few resources left to repeat the process.
The Second Mediation: Bernadotte’s Demise
Eight days into fighting, on July 15, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 54, which ordered all belligerent states to cease fire and resume cooperation with Bernadotte. Unlike the first truce, this demand was not predicated on the idea of negotiations leading to a quick agreement, nor did it come with a finite time limit. The ceasefire and mediation were intended to continue indefinitely until a deal could be made, but such an arrangement would be conditional on the parties’ continued cooperation.51
The Arab League collectively informed UN secretary-general Trygve Lie of their acceptance of a truce on July 17, with numerous conditions attached. Even the initially hawkish politicians now realized that they had likely achieved all they could and that future hostilities would probably lead to losses. In a meeting of Arab League leaders, the prime minister of Jordan reported that his country’s military had completely run out of ammunition.52 Negotiations therefore presented the only practical path to consolidate the gains made thus far from fighting and to attempt to impel Israel to make a deal before it managed to take more ground. Even if Arab leaders recognized that talks could prove unsuccessful, they saw the costs of uninterrupted fighting as too high to simply accept.
In a testament to how the UN Security Council lowered the relative costs of negotiation, the Arab League also took clear advantage of Security Council Resolution 54 to create political cover for themselves. Local media lambasted Western states and the Security Council for imposing a truce and mediation efforts, simultaneously broadcasting false stories about Arab victories to placate their citizens.53 Foreign officials in these states became victims of attacks on the streets. Diplomats surmised that the Arab governments had steered public outrage toward the West in order to deflect criticism from their own shortcomings in Palestine and their voluntary accession to the truce. Iraq publicly rebuffed the truce proposal but privately admitted to the British that the Iraqi prime minister had simply “seized an opportunity for increasing his political stature in Iraq, where public opinion was strongly in favor of continuing the fighting.”54
The Israeli government, very aware of international pressure for peace, accepted the ceasefire a day before the Arabs did. But their underlying motivation for doing so was markedly different. Seeing success on the battlefield, Israeli leaders wanted to use this second round of diplomacy as yet another break in advance of renewed hostilities. Ben-Gurion’s lack of interest in a negotiated settlement was almost immediately apparent, at least behind closed doors. On July 19, only one day into the truce, Ben-Gurion met again with Director of Military Operations Yigal Yadin to ask when Israeli forces would be prepared to resume fighting. Ben-Gurion then spent a cabinet meeting on August 1 making the case for the eventual resumption of hostilities.55 He also mandated that each soldier undergo at least one month of training and be discharged to get rest before having to fight again. While Israel had enjoyed new victories in the ten days of hostilities, Arab forces had not been driven out of Palestine and appeared unwilling to take any action—a situation that Ben-Gurion found unacceptable for Israel’s longer-term security. The prime minister thus started reviewing plans to stage offensives that would lay waste to the Arab states and obliterate their interest in any future hostilities.56 Military decisions made in Tel Aviv were not responsive or connected to diplomatic activities taking place simultaneously, largely because officials concluded that the Arab states would never withdraw troops from Palestine of their own accord.57 As such, Israel entered the new mediation effort with truly insincere intentions. Ben-Gurion did not expect or want agreement, but rather sought time to prepare for an assault that would break the Arab states’ backs.
Between late July and mid-September, Bernadotte resumed another aggressive round of shuttle diplomacy between the belligerent states. Discussions mainly revolved around issues of territorial control—with special emphasis on Jerusalem, the Negev, and ports in Haifa and Lydda—and the status of Arab refugees who had been driven out of their homes during the conflict. Notably, leaders in each Arab government now begrudgingly accepted the existence of an independent Jewish state, even if they would refuse to formally recognize it.58 This was a significant political concession, but it did not translate into an acceptable deal. Egypt indicated that it would accept only a peace settlement that reverted to the military situation from early June, which would negate all gains Israel had made after the first truce was prematurely ended by Egyptian forces.59
Bernadotte released his second plan on September 16, 1948. The revised proposal now recognized the existence of an independent and fully autonomous State of Israel. Rather than placing Jerusalem in Arab Palestine, the new plan put the Holy City under UN control, much as was outlined in the UN resolution from November 29, 1947. The disputed ports in Haifa and Jaffa were to be freely accessible to Arab states—an idea the Israelis could not accept. The Negev, which the 1947 partition plan had designated as part of a Jewish state, was now to be allocated to the Arabs. While these represented improvements from Israel’s perspective, the proposal outlined an Israel that would constitute only one-fifth of the original Mandatory Palestine.60 Finally, the plan’s stipulation that Arab refugees would have the right to return to their homes meant that hundreds of thousands of Arabs would be allowed to freely reenter the small Jewish state.
On September 17, Bernadotte was assassinated by Zionist militants from a group called Lehi. The so-called “second plan” would become Bernadotte’s final act and testament. Ralph Bunche, Bernadotte’s highly trusted assistant and adviser, assumed the role of acting mediator from this point forward. While Bernadotte's death placed additional weight on the proposal, both Israel and the Arab states voiced objections to it in the following week.61
The Third Phase and Mediation: Bunche’s Peace
By early October 1948, the Israeli government grew impatient with foundering mediation efforts. The time had come to take action and employ the forces that had been renewed and replenished over the last three months. While the first truce permitted Israel to grow to sixty-five thousand troops, this number had now ballooned further to more than ninety thousand.62 A cabinet meeting on October 6 coalesced around a plan to break through on the southern front against Egypt with the apparent aim of opening the road to the Negev.63 The desert as a whole was largely uninhabited, but Ben-Gurion saw the vast open space as being necessary for Israel’s growth. The Israelis would try to make as many gains as possible in a few days before the Security Council could press for another ceasefire. This would proceed through separate campaigns, and Operation Yoav would be the primary assault.
Operation Yoav (also known as Operation Ten Plagues), from October 15 to 22, was ruinous for the Egyptians. After provoking Egyptian forces into firing shots that could serve as a pretext for a broader response, Israeli planes destroyed Egyptian airfields while ground forces split Egyptian troops into smaller clusters that could not support one another or receive reinforcements. Israeli forces were able to overtake a series of Arab villages, as well as the city of Beersheba, which was the largest city in the Negev and the key to controlling the rest of the desert.64 A large contingent of four thousand Egyptian forces was isolated in the village of al-Faluja.65 Conspicuously, the other Arab states were weary of fighting and did not offer any support to Egypt.66 On October 19, the Security Council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire. After a day of delay, Ben-Gurion decided to accept this appeal and also believed that doing so would help to prevent an Egyptian counterattack.67 A localized ceasefire went into effect on October 22.
Operation Yoav succeeded in claiming Beersheba by the time the latest ceasefire began. Yet much of the Negev still had to be secured. The good news from Operation Yoav encouraged Israel to continue pushing out Arab forces and claiming territory as expeditiously as possible before international pressure would tie its hands. On October 28, Israeli forces initiated Operation Hiram, engaging in sixty hours of fighting against Arab forces situated in Galilee. Approximately eight hundred Arab casualties were killed or captured, and the Upper Galilee was seized by Israelis before another local truce was established. On November 4, the Security Council adopted Resolution 61, which called for all sides to withdraw back to positions held on October 14 (before Operation Yoav) and to work with the UN mediator to establish “permanent truce lines.”68 Israel continued its attacks regardless of this resolution, attracting a wave of criticism and building momentum for Resolution 62, which would reiterate the appeal for an armistice and negotiations.
When Resolution 62 was adopted on November 16, Israel had not yet completed its objective of securing the Negev. Moshe Sharett, the first minister of foreign affairs, demurred and bided his time by offering a series of insubstantial concessions regarding control over the coastal strip, all with the intention of buying more time for Israel to consolidate its control.69 Israeli diplomatic activity in the face of high international pressures and low relative costs of fighting were insincere—explicitly designed to delay in hopes of advancing Israel’s war aims rather than end them.
Resolution 62 also went unheeded but bought political time and space for Israel to press the war slightly further. One additional and final major Israeli effort, Operation Horev, began on December 22 with the intention of pushing all Egyptian forces out of Israeli lands. By New Year’s Day 1949, international opposition to the Israelis’ campaign became significant, but IDF forces made one final push to take the town of Rafah, which would grant them high ground and also trap many Egyptian forces. On January 6, the Egyptians relented and declared their willingness to enter mediation to forge an armistice with Israel. With the British applying some pressure on Ben-Gurion, Israel accepted a January 6 ceasefire and brought hostilities to an end.
Delegations from Israel and Egypt met in Rhodes on January 12. The two parties, with the assistance of Ralph Bunche, signed a formal armistice agreement on February 24, 1949. The settlement established a temporary demarcation line that tabled the ultimate question of what to do about Palestine. Israel would have to withdraw troops from several cities and allow Egyptian troops trapped in al-Faluja to go back home, but these concessions were not too significant compared to Israel’s gains. Beersheba and the Negev, both part of the proposed Arab state in the 1947 partition plan, would now go to the Israelis. Over the next several months, Israel would sign a series of armistice agreements with the remaining Arab states, largely on terms that recognized the state of the battlefield and Israel’s military superiority. As seen in the right-most map in figure 5.1, the new state came to possess almost four-fifths of the former Mandatory Palestine,70 which was about 22 percent more than what the partition plan had originally envisioned.71
Reviewing Wartime Diplomacy
The Arab-Israeli War underwent two periods of mediated and external negotiation before Israel and Egypt undertook steps to sign an armistice agreement in a third mediation.72 The first negotiation period ensued when both Israel and the Arab states were exhausted from initial hostilities but saw value to fighting as long as they could have an opportunity to reorganize and replenish themselves. The UN mediator, backed by a series of Security Council resolutions, decreased the relative costs of negotiation and thus enabled all belligerents to participate in diplomacy more freely. As both parties believed they could find success on the battlefield after a brief respite, they acceded to the efforts of Folke Bernadotte but harbored very little interest in making any concessions to their opponent. Nearly all states instead focused on rearming and recruiting more soldiers to join the war. The first mediation effort therefore proved to be borne of insincere intentions on both sides, and each belligerent realized that its opponent would use these inorganic talks to improve its military capabilities.
The strategic calculus changed slightly during the second truce and mediation. Israel continued to believe—and had now seen evidence—that it could amass more territory with limited resistance if it kept fighting. With the relative costs of negotiation being low but the relative costs of future fighting being even lower, Israel sought to stall for time through negotiations and to rearm yet again for another series of offensives to claim the Negev. Ben-Gurion entered talks with insincere motives. On the other hand, members of the Arab League began to see that future hostilities would yield grave outcomes and sought to lock down their battlefield gains through a negotiated settlement before Israel could wrest away those gains militarily. The Arab states’ willingness to acknowledge Israel’s existence marked a significant shift that was reflective of their updated beliefs. All the same, the Arab states were not yet ready to make major policy concessions regarding Palestine and indeed offered proposals involving a return to prewar conditions, which did not get much traction. With the relative costs of future fighting being high, the Arabs states’ negotiation strategies were now more sincere.
By late 1948, Egypt knew its fortunes were grim and wanted to stop the conflict. Indeed, in the early days of 1949, King Farouk of Egypt had his personal plane standing by in case he needed to flee Cairo.73 Diplomatic documents suggest that Egypt had in fact made numerous peace overtures in the late months of 1948, only to be ignored by the Israelis.74 The combination of low relative costs of negotiation and high relative costs of fighting resulted in a more sincere negotiation effort from Egypt. Even so, the government did its best to minimize public ire by dissembling and portraying the decision as an accession to international pressure. Prime Minister Ibrahim Abdel-Hadi was quoted in the January 27, 1949, issue of the state-owned magazine Al-Musawar as saying that Egypt had ceased hostilities “because the Security Council so decreed,” even though the nation’s “armed forces were at their zenith in discipline and strength”75—a patently false claim.
While Israel continued to enjoy military success on the battlefield, Ben-Gurion saw two reasons why future fighting would not be profitable. First, at the domestic level, the Israeli public was sick of the war and largely felt they had been successful against the Arabs.76 Second, at the international level, Britain threatened to intervene militarily in accordance with the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty if Israel refused to withdraw its forces from Egypt. A concurrent message from Washington, DC, on December 30 warned Ben-Gurion that this British threat was serious.77 Ben-Gurion interpreted these signals as ultimatums, which would be deeply unfavorable for Israel if triggered.78 With discouraging prospects from continued fighting, Israel ordered its IDF units to pull out of the Sinai, and Israeli representatives entered talks at Rhodes days later.
The mediation at Rhodes was difficult and almost came apart at least once. Nonetheless, both parties were now sincere in their negotiation behavior and made concessions regarding the division of Palestine. Unlike the two previous diplomatic efforts, which had invited insincere motivations, the discussions at Rhodes succeeded in codifying a set of concrete proposals regarding the demarcation and demilitarization of the former Palestinian mandate.79 The demarcation lines and demilitarized zones were meant to be temporary arrangements that would lead the way to more formal talks within the next year. But as we have seen, these developments did not come to pass, and the hundreds of thousands of Arab refugees created by the conflict would have significant ramifications that resonate to this day.
It is worth noting that ripeness theory does not provide an effective explanation of diplomacy during this war. Scholars have written about the utility of ripeness theory in addressing the more protracted multidecade conflict between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab states,80 but far less is said about this particular war in isolation. The three rounds of talks during this inaugural conflict took place in periods of high battlefield movement—not moments of costly stalemate. Intense third-party efforts to facilitate negotiations and identify ways out of fighting instead enabled belligerents, who still had not had sufficient opportunity to ascertain the bounds of a viable bargaining range, to buy time and extract side effects that they hoped would improve their war-fighting prospects. Ripeness theory does not systematically recognize this possibility, nor does it address the conditions in which negotiations are more likely to be exploited insincerely. The argument and evidence I have presented do address the causes and effects of these critical diplomatic maneuvers that, in the end, actualized Israel’s existence.
The Limits of Diplomatic Pressure
Over the course of the war between May 1948 and January 1949, the UN Security Council adopted at least eleven resolutions related to “the Palestine Question,” many of which explicitly called for ceasefires and diplomacy. Israel selectively acceded to only two resolutions, resulting in two mediation efforts, and did so when it suited its strategic interests. The new Jewish state thus demonstrated a definite awareness of how third-party diplomatic pressures could be exploited for additional gains.
Israel faced existential trouble in the first month of its war against neighboring Arab states.81 Considered on their own, the inauspicious results from the battlefield could have compelled Israel to consider terminating hostilities. But Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and other decision-makers around him knew that having more time would prove crucial to translating more of their latent capabilities into actual force on the battlefield. The four-week mediation period in June and July 1948 afforded such an opportunity. The UN’s intense diplomatic pressure campaign decreased the relative costs of negotiation. As Hypotheses 1 and 2 together suggest, such pressure enabled negotiations at higher rates than would have occurred without outside intervention, but these talks did not facilitate settlement. Both belligerents instead engaged in insincere diplomacy aimed at preparing for additional combat. In line with Hypotheses 4 and 5, talks were associated with reductions in active hostilities, and the end of failed mediation was quickly followed by sudden changes in battlefield trends. Israel may have continued bolstering its military capabilities even in the absence of UN mediation, but the historical record shows that the monthlong diplomatic undertaking created an indispensable avenue for Israel to ready itself for conflict. Commander Moshe Carmel’s description of this period as “dew from heaven” underscores the importance of the pause for Israel’s military fortunes. The more Israel’s advantages materialized on the battlefield, the more both sides were willing to contemplate settlement. The context and consequences of the three rounds of negotiations during this war are consistent with expectations derived from Hypothesis 3.
Both Israel and the Arab states believed that the first mediation would help them fight more effectively in the near future. Yet ultimately, we see that Israel had more to gain from buying time, and this advantage only grew over the course of hostilities. The Israeli government’s activities throughout the war illustrate an awareness of how much international opinion and pressure could be obstacles but also assets in accomplishing its overall goals. At the terrible cost of six thousand deaths, or about 1 percent of the population at the time, Israel secured its existence and grew by approximately 2,500 square miles compared to the hypothetical Jewish state that the United Nations had proposed in November 1947.82 Insincere negotiations helped realize these accomplishments.
Diplomacy remains deeply relevant in the contemporary iteration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, numerous peace initiatives have been launched to devise a long-term resolution to the territorial dispute, which was exacerbated by Israel’s significant gains in the 1967 Six-Day War. A common theme across the majority of these efforts, however, is that they have been spearheaded by external actors that often cajoled Israeli and Palestinian representatives to even come to the table. For instance, direct talks that took place sporadically throughout 2010 were the result of President Barack Obama’s address in Cairo in June 2009, as well as intense monthslong pressure by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.83 An additional round of negotiations in 2013 and 2014 was championed by the next secretary of state, John Kerry, who met with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu approximately one hundred times over nine months.84 My theory emphasizes that talks borne of such pressures are likely to fail or even be abused. Indeed, both Netanyahu and Abbas eventually agreed to participate in (and later abandoned) renewed dialogue in 2013 and 2014 only because they worried about hurting their long-term relationships with the United States and facing international ire for rejecting diplomacy outright.85 As a New York Times article concerning Kerry’s relentless diplomatic mission noted, third parties “cannot force an agreement if the parties are unwilling.”86 Tragically, whatever diplomatic efforts do occur to address this conflict, their likelihood of success in forging a somewhat stable peace will hinge not simply on the prudence of outside actors but also on the degree to which all parties absorb terrible truths from carnage.