By April 17, 2008 Read More →

Palestine Battle; Jewish-Arab Situation – The 49th Day, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 18, 1948.

Arabs and Jews Fighting in 1948Click here to view the original article.

JERUSALEM, Jan. 17 (AP)-Forty-nine days after the bitterly disputed U. N. decision to divide Palestine nearly 1000 persons have been killed. The hospitals are choked with wounded.

Jews are on the offensive.

The British are evacuating some of their heavy armament.

The Holy Land’s war threatens to become international.

That, in brief, is the situation.

The Arabs are still in the stage of guerrilla warfare. Individual gangs carry on sniping, killing and pillaging. Leadership of the Palestine Arab fighters so far has been on the “sheikdom” basis, with the venerated leaders in each community taking the lead in organizing, arming and directing his people.

FIRST ROUND

For lack of guns, money and over-all leadership, which have been slower in coming “than was expected,” some Arabs admit they already have lost the first round. They look to Syria, Iraq and Egypt, their neighboring Arab nations, for these requisites. But, said one Arab military man, “In a matter of weeks we shall begin to resist.

“That it cannot be quicker may cause us to lose more men, women and children to Jews and to suffer more defeats. But we shall not lose the war.”

The Jews, on the other hand, have come into full scale military status. They conduct organized hundred-men attacks, bomb houses suspected of being enemy head-quarters or sniping hideouts, mine their roads and man road blocks.

Jewish military leadership is unified and efficient except for a continuing stalemate in negotiations for the welding of Hagana, the Jewish agency militia, Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern gang.

This leadership consists mainly of colonels, majors and captains who trained and served in the British army or in various European undergrounds.

INTERNATIONAL PHASE

Some Jewish spokesmen admit they may be unable to hold the borders of the Jewish state as delineated by the United Nations. But they look to friendly big powers, particularly the United States, either to lead the United Nations into sending an international police force or to supply arms and money for the Jews’ own fight.

That is where the international phase comes in.

The formal participation of neighboring Arab states in what so far has been a fight of band against band and village against village might speed the dispatch of an outside force.

If the United Nations left it to the United States to enforce partition, many observers believe it is hardly likely any American troops would come here without Soviet troops showing up, too. If an international force were sent, Russia could be expected to have considerable say in that.

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