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155 7 THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, 1947–1949 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The night of November 29, 1947, following the United Nations General Assembly vote partitioning Palestine, was marked by a spontaneous outpouring of joy. Crowds danced in the streets, the Hallel prayer of praise was o√ered up in synagogues opened specially in the middle of the night, and children garlanded sinister British armored vehicles with flowers. One who did not take part in the universal celebrations was David Ben-Gurion. Always the realist, he was aware of the bloody toll that the establishment of the Jewish state would exact. A year earlier, at the Twenty-second Zionist Congress, he had told the Yishuv’s security leadership that the Jewish forces must be held in check and confrontation with the British avoided, since the state would soon be declared and this would entail war not only with the Arabs of Palestine but also with the regular forces of the Arab states. At that time the member states of the Arab League, which had been created toward the end of World War Two to form a joint Arab front, were still a long way from passing any kind of resolution on military intervention in Palestine. BenGurion ’s assessment was based not on solid information but rather on an appreciation of the existing dynamics in Palestine and the Arab states, which would ultimately result in the latter invading Palestine. In July 1945 that same insight had led him to convene a conference of wealthy and distinguished Jews in New York and persuade them to make available to the Zionist Executive the funds necessary to purchase arms-manufacturing machinery from us Army surplus, which was being sold as scrap. The struggle in Palestine, he told them, would no longer be waged solely against Arab gangs but against Arab armies, and it was therefore crucial to establish a Jewish arms industry in Palestine. Jewish enthusiasm over the un resolution derived from the fact that the nations of the world had recognized the Jewish people’s right to a sovereign state in Palestine. But beyond that there was the feeling that ‘‘a great miracle happened here,’’ as the Hanukkah story says. This sense of a miracle, later extended to cover all the events of 1948—‘‘the year of miracles’’—prevailed because, contrary to British and Arab expectations, both Eastern and Western blocs supported the draft resolution. As we have seen, the Soviet Union and the Comintern virulently opposed Zionism and were hostile toward Jewish nationalism. In February 1947, when the British decided to leave Palestine, they assumed that the United Nations would not achieve a binding resolution on Palestine, which required a two-thirds 156 nation building majority, because of Soviet opposition. But the Soviets instead seized this opportunity to undermine Great Britain’s standing in the Middle East and expedite its removal from Palestine by supporting the establishment of a Jewish state. In April 1947 Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet permanent representative to the United Nations, delivered a speech supporting a resolution of the Palestine issue that would recognize the rights of the Jews, as well as the catastrophe that had befallen them in World War Two. Although he expressed a preference for a single binational state, he described the Jews as a nation worthy of a state of its own, and raised the possibility of partitioning Palestine and establishing two states in it, one Jewish, the other Arab. This speech heralded the change in the ussr’s position, and on November 29 the ussr and its satellites voted in favor of partition . This was the ‘‘great miracle’’ that stunned allies and enemies alike. The Jews were disposed to explain the change in the Soviet position as a consequence of the Holocaust; some even said that Stalin had apparently expressed his intention of supporting a Jewish state as reparation for what the Jews had endured during the war. Historical research has rejected this explanation. Neither moral principle nor historical justice motivated the Great Powers to vote for the partition resolution. Each was motivated by its own interests. What appeared to the Jews as a divine miracle, a sign that a global system of justice existed, was perceived by the Arabs as a flagrant wrong, a miscarriage of justice, and an act of coercion. They were being called upon to consent to the partitioning of a country that only thirty years earlier had been considered Arab, and to the establishment of a Jewish state in it. To them recognition...

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