Monday, July 13, 2015
13 July 1953, Creating Facts: The Israeli Foreign Ministry Moves to Jerusalem
In July 1953 the Israeli Foreign Ministry was about to move its offices to Jerusalem. Israel's leaders knew that this was a controversial move, since, on 9 December 1949, the UN General Assembly had passed Resolution 194 on the internationalization of Jerusalem under UN control. In 1947 Israel had accepted internationalization of Jerusalem as part of the Partition Plan. But after the Arabs rejected the plan and tried to prevent its implementation by force, Israel no longer felt bound by it.
On 5 December 1949 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared in the Knesset that Jewish Jerusalem was an organic and inseparable part of the State of Israel. At that time Israel agreed to international supervision of the Holy Places, most of which were in any case under Jordanian rule. We've already shown here the draft of his statement Ben-Gurion sent to Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, in which he threatened that Israel would leave the UN if the resolution was adopted.
On 5 December 1949 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared in the Knesset that Jewish Jerusalem was an organic and inseparable part of the State of Israel. At that time Israel agreed to international supervision of the Holy Places, most of which were in any case under Jordanian rule. We've already shown here the draft of his statement Ben-Gurion sent to Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, in which he threatened that Israel would leave the UN if the resolution was adopted.
After the resolution passed, despite opposition from Britain and the US, Ben-Gurion announced the transfer of the Knesset and the government ministries to Jerusalem. Sharett opposed the announcement and believed that there was no real danger of steps to carry out internationalization. He even threatened to resign – see his reaction here.
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| Ben-Gurion, Sharett and Minister Moshe Shapira in the first Knesset building in Jerusalem (Frumin House), 1952 Photograph: Wikimedia |
The Knesset and the Prime Minister's Office were transferred to Jerusalem immediately, but other government offices followed gradually. A complex of one storey bungalows in the Givat Ram area of Jerusalem was built to house the Foreign Ministry. Meanwhile Sharett ran the office from the Kirya government buildings in Tel Aviv. In May 1952 the move was announced, to be carried out in the summer of 1953.
In May 1953 the new US Secretary of State J.F. Dulles visited Israel as part of a tour of the Middle East. He hoped to organize an anti-Soviet defence organization similar to NATO but found little enthusiasm among the Arab states. During the trip he met Sharett, and, according to a letter sent to the secretary in July, the foreign minister told Dulles about the imminent move to Jerusalem, and the secretary did not protest. He asked that the move not take place while he was in the area, and suggested that Sharett repeat previous statements on Israel's attitude to the Holy Places. Sharett gave a statement in the Knesset recognizing Israel's obligations to protect the Christian Holy Places under its control.
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| Nuns crossing into Jordan at the Mandelbaum Gate Photograph: Fritz Cohen, Government Press Office |
On his return to the US, Dulles gave a radio speech on his tour. He said that the new Republican Administration should act to allay the fears of the Arabs and to restore the reputation of the US, which they believed was giving one sided support to Israel. He described his feelings on seeing Jerusalem, which was split into armed camps, but was above all a Holy Place. Dulles, son of a Presbyterian minister, said that the link to Jerusalem felt by religious groups all over the world was a claim preceding the political claims of Israel and Jordan. Headlines in the Israeli press claimed that he had supported the internationalization of the city, the return of some of the Arab refugees and the strengthening of the Arab League.
On June 7 the government discussed the speech. In Sharett's references to Jerusalem (pp. 5-9) he emphasized that there was no change in US policy. Israel could gain if the Holy Places were put under international control, as it might get access to the Western Wall and to Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem. He warned his colleagues against the illusion that unilateral action by Israel, and faits accomplis such as moving the government offices, could actually solve the problem of Jerusalem. The rest of the world, and especially the Catholic church, which had much influence in France and Latin America, did not accept Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The unclear situation could be exploited by the Arabs, even though they cared for the Holy Places "as the snows of yesteryear'. Ben-Gurion also commented on Dulles' speech but his comments centered on other issues.
In the guidelines he sent Israel's diplomatic representatives to explain the coming move, Sharett asked them to emphasize the practical reasons involved. He described at length the difficulties suffered by the Ministry staff, and especially the minister himself, in commuting between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and the harmful effects of their remoteness from the centre of decision making.
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| The Foreign Ministry moves in, 9 July 1953. Photograph: Yehuda Eisenstark , Israel State Archives |
Sharett knew that the embassies would not leave Tel Aviv but did not expect any particular problem with official visits to the Ministry in Jerusalem. Arab protests were loud, as can be seen below.
Gradually the ban was relaxed, and on Independence Day, 1954, most of the diplomatic corps attended the president's reception in Jerusalem.
Most diplomatic representations in Israel remain in the Tel Aviv area, but today all official visits by heads of state are received at the Foreign Ministry . The ministry remained in the hut complex for 50 years, until an impressive new building was opened in 2003 near the Supreme Court in Givat Ram.
Most diplomatic representations in Israel remain in the Tel Aviv area, but today all official visits by heads of state are received at the Foreign Ministry . The ministry remained in the hut complex for 50 years, until an impressive new building was opened in 2003 near the Supreme Court in Givat Ram.
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| The Foreign Ministry today Photographs: The Israeli Association for Diplomacy |
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Jerusalem or the United Nations? Jerusalem.
Here's a document which has been around for a while, even online, but which doesn't seem to have got the attention it's worthy of. It was December 1949, and the General Assembly of the United Nations was discussing Israel, not for the first nor the last time. One of the ideas being discussed was to force Israel to relinquish its hold over its part of Jerusalem. (I don't know if the assembly was also mooting the divestment of Jordanian control over the Old City - that would be a worthy subject to look into). On December 4th 1949 Ben Gurion sent a terse cable to Moshe Sharett, the Foreign Minister, who was in New York:
Convening the cabinet tomorrow morning.
Will propose a declaration in the Knesset that the State of Israel will refuse to accept any form of foreign rule over Jewish Jerusalem or tearing the city from her rule, and should we be faced with the choice between leaving Jerusalem or the UN, we will prefer to leave the UN.
Ben Gurion
Here's a document which has been around for a while, even online, but which doesn't seem to have got the attention it's worthy of. It was December 1949, and the General Assembly of the United Nations was discussing Israel, not for the first nor the last time. One of the ideas being discussed was to force Israel to relinquish its hold over its part of Jerusalem. (I don't know if the assembly was also mooting the divestment of Jordanian control over the Old City - that would be a worthy subject to look into). On December 4th 1949 Ben Gurion sent a terse cable to Moshe Sharett, the Foreign Minister, who was in New York:
Convening the cabinet tomorrow morning.
Will propose a declaration in the Knesset that the State of Israel will refuse to accept any form of foreign rule over Jewish Jerusalem or tearing the city from her rule, and should we be faced with the choice between leaving Jerusalem or the UN, we will prefer to leave the UN.
Ben Gurion
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Jerusalem and the United Nations (II) Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit
Here's some background to the story we posted the other day about Ben Gurion cabling Moshe Sharett to declare that if forced to choose between Jerusalem and the UN, Israel would choose Jerusalem. In the Israel State Archives' collection of documents in memory of Israel's first Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister, Moshe Sharett, you can see the different points of view of Sharett and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion as to how Israel should react to the General Assembly decision to internationalize Jerusalem.
Sharett, who was at the UN in New York, thought Israel should simply declare the resolution unenforceable. Pushed by the Catholic Church, it had passed as a result of a chance combination of circumstances, such as the upcoming elections in Australia and the Catholic vote. There were no practical plans to carry it out, and Transjordan, at which the resolution was also directed, had no intention of giving up East Jerusalem. He wrote on 12 December to the director-general of his ministry: "My line is …..to hasten peace with Transjordan if possible….in Jerusalem itself sit tight, do nothing."
Meanwhile in Israel the public was greatly alarmed. Ben-Gurion feared that the USSR, which supported the resolution, might send forces to Jerusalem, and felt decisive action was needed. In a defiant speech in the Knesset, then still in Tel Aviv, he declared that it would be transferred, together with the government ministries, to Jerusalem, Israel's capital.
Sharett wanted to resign, as he had failed to foresee the success of the resolution and his advice had been rejected. Although they would later quarrel bitterly, Ben-Gurion replied: "Your request cannot possibly be accepted…..Those who carried out [the establishment of the state on] May 14 should not be parted."
Here's some background to the story we posted the other day about Ben Gurion cabling Moshe Sharett to declare that if forced to choose between Jerusalem and the UN, Israel would choose Jerusalem. In the Israel State Archives' collection of documents in memory of Israel's first Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister, Moshe Sharett, you can see the different points of view of Sharett and Prime Minister Ben-Gurion as to how Israel should react to the General Assembly decision to internationalize Jerusalem.
Sharett, who was at the UN in New York, thought Israel should simply declare the resolution unenforceable. Pushed by the Catholic Church, it had passed as a result of a chance combination of circumstances, such as the upcoming elections in Australia and the Catholic vote. There were no practical plans to carry it out, and Transjordan, at which the resolution was also directed, had no intention of giving up East Jerusalem. He wrote on 12 December to the director-general of his ministry: "My line is …..to hasten peace with Transjordan if possible….in Jerusalem itself sit tight, do nothing."
Meanwhile in Israel the public was greatly alarmed. Ben-Gurion feared that the USSR, which supported the resolution, might send forces to Jerusalem, and felt decisive action was needed. In a defiant speech in the Knesset, then still in Tel Aviv, he declared that it would be transferred, together with the government ministries, to Jerusalem, Israel's capital.
Sharett wanted to resign, as he had failed to foresee the success of the resolution and his advice had been rejected. Although they would later quarrel bitterly, Ben-Gurion replied: "Your request cannot possibly be accepted…..Those who carried out [the establishment of the state on] May 14 should not be parted."
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
December 9th, 1917 - General Edmond Allenby marches into Jerusalem
We promised to bring more posts on concerning the centenary of the First World War, and here's the first one – How the British army conquered Jerusalem on December 1917.
The Palestine theater of war (there was another battle zone in the Middle East – the war in Mesopotamia/Iraq in which the British suffered one of their worst defeats –the siege of Kut el-Amara) was secondary to the European war (especially the western front, but also the eastern front) but on the other hand, it was a more dynamic and fast going war, unlike the static and indecisive war on the western front.
Turkey entered the war on November 2nd 1914, after concluding a secret pact with Germany. The war in the Middle East started at the end of that month, when a British force, sent from India, landed in Basra and conquered it. On February 1915, a Turkish force (under German command) attacked the British-controlled Suez Canal - and was repulsed. The British decided that the best way to defend the Strategic Canal was by capturing the Sinai Peninsula and advancing on Palestine. On January 1917 the British took Rafah and on March and April tried to capture Gaza (the gate to the land of Israel since ancient times) and failed.
After the failure in the second battle of Gaza (in which the British used Gas and Tanks), the British commander, General Archibald Murray was recalled and replaced with General Edmond Allenby. Allenby, a veteran cavalry officer, had commanded the 3rd British army on the western front and commanded the Arras offensive in France in the spring of 1917. Although the initial stages of the attack were successful (relatively for the western front) the battle soon deteriorated into regular static trench warfare. Allenby was removed from his command and was returned to Britain.
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| (Wikipedia) |
Allenby received the command of the Palestine front in the summer of 1917 and started preparing for another attack on Gaza, but this time in another fashion: He made the Turks and the Germans believe that he was about to attack Gaza again but instead attacked Beersheba. Australian, New Zealand and British cavalry (The Palestine front saw the deployment of large cavalry forces – including French and Indian cavalry units – something that the western front's trench system and fire power did not allow) and conquered it after a fierce fight. From there Allenby's forces moved north from Gaza to outflank the Turks. The Turks retreated towards the Yarkon River and Jerusalem. The British moved towards Jerusalem in the end of November 1917 in three main routes – north of Jerusalem (today's Route 443 – the ancient road to Jerusalem), the main highway to Jerusalem (today's Route number 1) and from the south – via Hebron and Bethlehem.
At the beginning of December 1917 the Turks began to retreat from Jerusalem (the Germans managed to dissuade the Turks from their plan ofexpelling the Jews of Jerusalem, as they did to the Jews of Tel Aviv and the neighboring towns) and on December 9th the mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein el Husseini, went out with a group of dignitaries to present to the British the surrender of Jerusalem. With them came an American photographer, a member of the American colony in Jerusalem, named Lewis Larson. According to SimonSebag-Montefiore in his book "Jerusalem – the biography", the delegation met two British soldiers, cooks of a commander in the60th Division (a 'Cockney' unit from east London) who were in a mission to find eggs for their commander's breakfast…The cooks refused to accept the city's surrender – "We don’t want the surrender of the 'oly city, we want heggs for ur hofficer" (I hope I got the cockney accent right…). The delegation moved on, and soon encountered two more British soldiers (from the same division), sergeants Sedgwick and Hurcomb, who were scouts for their unit. They too refused to accept the surrender of the Jerusalem but were willing to be photographed with the delegation and accepted cigarettes from them… (At the place where this meeting happened, a monument was erected in memorial to the surrender of Jerusalem to the British army and the soldiers of the 60th division that fell in the First World War. The monument can be found today behind Jerusalem's central bus station, in the Romema neighborhood).
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| (Wikipedia) |
After being rejected by a British artillery officer, the delegation met Brigadier Watson, commander of the 180th brigade, who accepted the surrender of Jerusalem. After the short ceremony, Watson informed his commander, General Shea (commander of the 60th division) the he had accepted the surrender of Jerusalem. Shea canceled the surrender to Watson and demanded that el Husseini surrender to him. Husseini again came out of Jerusalem and surrendered to Shea. Shea entered Jerusalem and declared martial law. He then informed Allenby that he accepted the surrender of Jerusalem. Allenby cancelled the two former surrenders and demanded that the city surrender to him and to him only. At this point el Husseini became ill and the third surrender took place without him. (He later succumbed to pneumonia – no doubt from too frequent exposure to the cold Jerusalem December mornings).
Allenby rode his horse to the Jaffa gate but entered the city on foot – as a sign of respect to the holiness of the city (and in striking contrast to Kaiser Wilhelm IIpompous entry to Jerusalem 20 years earlier) with his staff marching after him. He walked to the entrance of Jerusalem citadel (known as Tower of David), met the heads of the different communities in the city and declared martial law in the city.
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| (Wikipedia) |
The war in Palestine continued until September 1918. After a winter and a spring of static warfare, Allenby attacked the Turkish lines with his typical deception, feinting an attack on Trans Jordan while sending a large cavalry force covered by large numbers of airplanes towards Nazareth and Haifa. It was a textbook operation, still regarded to this day. The British arrived in Damascus on October 1stand on October 31st Turkey surrendered.
The Israel State archives hold several movies and photos showing Allenby's historical entrance to Jerusalem:
1) A part of a newsreel from the First World War, 10 minute long, which shows Allenby marching into Jerusalem.
3) Posters of the declaration of martial law in Jerusalem written in English, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and Russian.
Monday, August 12, 2013
1968: Budgeting East Jerusalem
Today's document is a wee bit confusing. It was written by Yehuda Tamir, PM Levi Eshkol's man for dealing with East Jerusalem, and it details what the construction for the next year is to be. Except that nowadays, at any rate, that's decided by the Budget Department of the Finance Ministry, and even if the prime minister himself wants to have a certain result, it still goes through the FM, where the locals look at the suggestion balefully before eventually acquiescing (it is the prime minister, after all). Tamir's letter reeks of the confidence of someone who knows that his words, assumed to be those of his boss, will be acted upon.
It's a different world.
Another minor thing you need to keep in mind is that in the late 1960s, Israel's annual budget year ran from April 1 to March 31. An odd system, thankfully done away with for the complications it engendered. Why anyone would maintain such a system is beyond us.
(Yes, we know.)
Anyway. Not only was the budget year odd, they also didn't use Excel in those days, which makes deciphering the budget a bit challenging. I think he's talking about a sum in the excess of 12 million IL, some to come from bank loans, but I may be misreading. The items in the letter are pretty clear. There is to be construction for Jews on Jerusalem's north side, at Givat Hamivtar, French Hill and elsewhere. The planning of what later became East Talpiyot was to be completed so as to begin construction in 1970. The government offices on the road to Mont Scopus are to be promoted.
Yet there was also a budget for Arabs; homes were to be built for Arabs in Wadi Joz and Beit Hanina. The construction at Beit Hanina really did happen and the buildings are still there; I don't know about Wadi Joz.
(File א-7921/3)
It's a different world.
Another minor thing you need to keep in mind is that in the late 1960s, Israel's annual budget year ran from April 1 to March 31. An odd system, thankfully done away with for the complications it engendered. Why anyone would maintain such a system is beyond us.
(Yes, we know.)
Anyway. Not only was the budget year odd, they also didn't use Excel in those days, which makes deciphering the budget a bit challenging. I think he's talking about a sum in the excess of 12 million IL, some to come from bank loans, but I may be misreading. The items in the letter are pretty clear. There is to be construction for Jews on Jerusalem's north side, at Givat Hamivtar, French Hill and elsewhere. The planning of what later became East Talpiyot was to be completed so as to begin construction in 1970. The government offices on the road to Mont Scopus are to be promoted.
Yet there was also a budget for Arabs; homes were to be built for Arabs in Wadi Joz and Beit Hanina. The construction at Beit Hanina really did happen and the buildings are still there; I don't know about Wadi Joz.
(File א-7921/3)
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Electrifying the Territories
The things a prime minister has to deal with, I tell you. We think we've got it tough, being so busy these past weeks that blogging has mostly stopped. Well, back in the first years after the Six Day War, the PM's office seems to have been involved with every tiniest detail pertaining to Israel's actions in Jerusalem, and if not every one of them, at least a startling range of things.
Here, look at this document from September 15, 1968. Yehuda Faust, the deputy manager of operations in East Jerusalem, sent a letter to the electricity company (and to the ministers of defense, justice, development, the mayor of Jerusalem and various others) reporting on a recent meeting where it had been decided to lay high-voltage cables to the Jewish neighborhoods in north-east Jerusalem such as French Hill and Givat Hamivtar, and also to series of military camps, mostly to the north. Alas, meetings and decisions were one thing, and actions on the ground were another, so Faust was nagging.
He also included various technical data. There were to be 89 km of cable, at a cost of IL3,240,000.
On page 3, which was apparently added a bit later, Mr Rakover (whoever he was) announced he couldn't string up cables in East Jerusalem without someone in authority OK'ing it, and he didn't know who that might be.
Page 5 mentions that to the south of Jerusalem, some of the installations are settlements, not military camps.
Here, look at this document from September 15, 1968. Yehuda Faust, the deputy manager of operations in East Jerusalem, sent a letter to the electricity company (and to the ministers of defense, justice, development, the mayor of Jerusalem and various others) reporting on a recent meeting where it had been decided to lay high-voltage cables to the Jewish neighborhoods in north-east Jerusalem such as French Hill and Givat Hamivtar, and also to series of military camps, mostly to the north. Alas, meetings and decisions were one thing, and actions on the ground were another, so Faust was nagging.
He also included various technical data. There were to be 89 km of cable, at a cost of IL3,240,000.
On page 3, which was apparently added a bit later, Mr Rakover (whoever he was) announced he couldn't string up cables in East Jerusalem without someone in authority OK'ing it, and he didn't know who that might be.
Page 5 mentions that to the south of Jerusalem, some of the installations are settlements, not military camps.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Catching the Bus to the Kotel
On February 16, 1969, a fellow by the name of Bazrai (whose family must have come from Basra) sent a letter to Yehuda Tamir, Levy Eshkol's top aide for Jerusalem affairs, reporting about a meeting he had recently held with representatives of Egged, the main bus company.
At the meeting it was decided to launch a regular bus line through the Old City, from Jaffa Gate to the Western Wall (the Kotel). It will stop at the Kishle police station, Zion Gate, The Jewish Quarter, and Dung Gate near the wall. It will come by every 15 minutes, meaning there will need to be two buses. The smallest buses in service can just inch by the arch in the Armenian Quarter, and it would be nice if someone could widen the alley at that point.The arch in the Armenian Quarter was of course never tampered with; it's still there and the small buses still inch by.
The line will connect to lines 18 and 20 and for 35 cents (agorot) passengers will be able to get a connecting ticket; a single ticket will be 20 agorot, while a normal single bus ticket on all the other lines is 25 agorot.
The service will operate between 6am (for early risers who want to pray the morning service at the Kotel) until 9:30pm.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Cabinet Transcripts are Off-Limits Even if You Were There
Blogging has been very slow recently, and sadly, will probably remain slow. There's been a parallel uptick in our activities on at least four tracks, and what with blogging being a luxury, well, we've not had the time. At least two of the projects may generate visible or reportable results by summer's end; the others will take longer but will generate lasting change which is intended to benefit our public.
Still, since I've got at least three files open on my desk, I really ought to flip through them before sending them back. One is Levy Eshkol's East Jerusalem file which has supplied grist for a number of recent posts. One of them was about the reconstruction of the Hurva synagogue, which ultimately didn't happen until 40 years later.
Apparently on January 1, 1969, the Cabinet discussed the idea. By now, 2013, the transcript of that meeting has been declassified and I could call it up and tell you what happened at the meeting if I wasn't otherwise engaged. Yaacov Lipshuetz, the Haifa attorney who had been nagging for months and not allowing the matter to slide, had to write the Cabinet secretary for a copy of the transcript at the time.
Nope, he was told. Cabinet transcripts don't get published or even sent in the mail. Anyway, since you were there, you know what transpired.
Helpful, huh? Readers of this blog, of course, can and do see such transcripts with some regularity, which just goes to show that you need to be wise in choosing your decade of birth.
Still, since I've got at least three files open on my desk, I really ought to flip through them before sending them back. One is Levy Eshkol's East Jerusalem file which has supplied grist for a number of recent posts. One of them was about the reconstruction of the Hurva synagogue, which ultimately didn't happen until 40 years later.
Apparently on January 1, 1969, the Cabinet discussed the idea. By now, 2013, the transcript of that meeting has been declassified and I could call it up and tell you what happened at the meeting if I wasn't otherwise engaged. Yaacov Lipshuetz, the Haifa attorney who had been nagging for months and not allowing the matter to slide, had to write the Cabinet secretary for a copy of the transcript at the time.
Nope, he was told. Cabinet transcripts don't get published or even sent in the mail. Anyway, since you were there, you know what transpired.
Helpful, huh? Readers of this blog, of course, can and do see such transcripts with some regularity, which just goes to show that you need to be wise in choosing your decade of birth.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Incorporation Papers of the Jewish Quarter Company
Today's document is a dreary legal affair: the incorporation of the Company for Development of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City (September 1968). This is the organization which rebuilt the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, and turned it from a pile of rubble into a modern residential neighborhood in one of the worlds' oldest cities, even while preserving the immense archaeological site it is built on, and serving millions of tourists annually.
The document itself is as bad as most such documents are, so we're going to cheat. We're going to send the link to this post to a reader of our blog who is both a lawyer and an incurable Jerusalem expert. If he thinks the document has interesting stuff in it, we'll post his comments automatically. (Readers are encouraged to chip in if they'd like.)
The second thing we're gong to do is point out that we found the document in a file from the office of Prime Minster Levi Eshkol, and it was sent to him after a discussion in the Cabinet subcommittee for economic affairs - which indicates that the whole issue was being closely watched by the very top of the government. Most companies don't have the prime minister poking around in their papers.
Ah, and a third matter, a little anecdote. The secretary of the Cabinet subcommittee was one Michael Nir. These days Michael Nir, the same man, works part time on the staff of the ISA - though he's rather a bit older these days.
(Photo: Wikipedia Commons)
The second thing we're gong to do is point out that we found the document in a file from the office of Prime Minster Levi Eshkol, and it was sent to him after a discussion in the Cabinet subcommittee for economic affairs - which indicates that the whole issue was being closely watched by the very top of the government. Most companies don't have the prime minister poking around in their papers.
Ah, and a third matter, a little anecdote. The secretary of the Cabinet subcommittee was one Michael Nir. These days Michael Nir, the same man, works part time on the staff of the ISA - though he's rather a bit older these days.
(Photo: Wikipedia Commons)
Thursday, June 27, 2013
"We Must Rebuild the Hurva!"
Before the destruction of the ancient Jewish Quarter in the Old City in 1948, the most impressive of its many synagogues went by the odd name of the Hurva, which means The Ruin. The reason for this went back to the early 19th century, when construction was begun and then abandoned; in the 19th century, however, a very fine building was constructed, but the traditional name stuck.
In the battle for the Jewish Quarter in May 1948, the dome of the building was damaged, but when the Jews surrendered to the Arab Legion and left, it was still standing. When Israel took the city in June 1967, the Hurva looked like - well, a hurva.
In late 1968, a Haifa architect named Yaacov Salomon began a frustrating correspondence with the office of Levi Eshkol, the prime minister. Salomon was representing the famous American-Jewish architect Louis Kahn, who had apparently drawn up a proposal to rebuild the Hurva. Correctly or not, Salomon assumed that the only way to make this happen was by convincing the prime minister. To his growing frustration, he wasn't able to reach the prime minster, and certainly not to convince him. In today's documents we can follow his repeated letters to Eshkol - there are at least five of them - between September and November 1968. In response to one of the first letters Eshkol had written that his opinion was that rebuilding the Jewish quarter - the apartments - was more urgent than rebuilding the synagogue, but Salomon disagreed, and wrote ever more exasperated letters. Eshkol's aides, meanwhile, kept putting off the date for a meeting, and this, of course, made Salomon even angrier.
There was the small matter that Eshkol was dying of cancer, but this wasn't public knowledge. It was known, even to Salomon, that he was ill, but this didn't register. In November, he announced that he was washing his hands of the matter. In February 1969, Eshkol passed away, and if the subject was brought to the next prime minster, Golda Meir, the file from Eshkol's office doesn't say.
The synagogue itself was only rebuilt in the early 21st century, and now looks like this:
(The pictures are all from Wikipedia commons. The file with the letters is ג-6423/9)
In the battle for the Jewish Quarter in May 1948, the dome of the building was damaged, but when the Jews surrendered to the Arab Legion and left, it was still standing. When Israel took the city in June 1967, the Hurva looked like - well, a hurva.
There was the small matter that Eshkol was dying of cancer, but this wasn't public knowledge. It was known, even to Salomon, that he was ill, but this didn't register. In November, he announced that he was washing his hands of the matter. In February 1969, Eshkol passed away, and if the subject was brought to the next prime minster, Golda Meir, the file from Eshkol's office doesn't say.
The synagogue itself was only rebuilt in the early 21st century, and now looks like this:
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Construction Status in Jerusalem, September 1968
It's been ages since we've posted on what used to be one of our main pet projects, namely Jerusalem after the Six Day War. Well, yesterday a file crossed my desk which had been ordered by a researcher in the reading room; when he declared it "uninteresting" someone brought it to me to have a peek. I don't think it's uninteresting. (ג-6423/9)
The file is from Levi Eshkol's office. The particular document we'll start with is an unsigned report from September 19, 1968, summarizing government construction projects in Jerusalem 15 months after the war.
In the east of the city there are 900 apartments under construction, and another 600 will be in construction within six months, for a total of 1,500. In the west part of town, the government is constructing 800 apartments, and private builders are working on 700, so that's also 1,500 units. We've prepared plots for the construction of 1,900 units in the east, but there aren't enough builders.
On Mount Scopus, enough dormitories are being built to accommodate 450 students by the beginning of the academic year (early November, apparently).
The first stage of construction on the national headquarters of the Police has been completed; the rest will be completed according to plan. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem headquarters has been moved to the Jericho Road in East Jerusalem.
The construction of 200 units for Arabs has been authorized. A fund has been set up, and IL250,000 of IL1m have already been earmarked.
Reconstruction is underway in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. 450 squatters have been removed from the shacks and ruins they were living in; 100 Jews have been settled in the first 200 rooms to have been renovated. They will be joined soon by another 300, and the renovation plans for additional structures are underway. We've begun laying water and electric mains. We've invested IL500,000 in removing 10,000 cubic meters of debris from the area.
Next year, we'll build 400 units on French Hill and 1,000 on Givat Hatachmoshet and 600 in Neve Yaacov (in East Jerusalem). Normally it takes 18 months to build a unit, but in light of the labor shortage it's taking longer.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Borders of Jerusalem
Today's post is purely informative; we'll leave any and all narrative to the readers.
Below is a section of a map which was drawn in 1949, and is filed in ג-3013/12, which comes from Ben Gurion's office and deals with matters of mass immigration in 1949-1953. The full map contains proposals for settling the large numbers of new immigrants. The section we're presenting, however, isn't about that; it's about the lines of 1947 and 1949 in the Jerusalem area.
The blue line is the intended border of the Corpus Separandum, the section of Mandatory Palestine which the United Nations didn't allocate to either side, Jews or Arabs, in the partition plan it adopted on November 29th 1947. The red line is a reasonable approximation of the 1949 armistice lines, referred to these days as the Green Line of 1967.
The little-known fact demonstrated by this map is that more than two thirds of the intended Corpus Seprandum lies outside the Green Line, in territory controlled between 1949-1967 by Jordan; and it includes the town of Bethlehem, as well as the area which today contains Maaleh Adumim.
Below is a section of a map which was drawn in 1949, and is filed in ג-3013/12, which comes from Ben Gurion's office and deals with matters of mass immigration in 1949-1953. The full map contains proposals for settling the large numbers of new immigrants. The section we're presenting, however, isn't about that; it's about the lines of 1947 and 1949 in the Jerusalem area.
The blue line is the intended border of the Corpus Separandum, the section of Mandatory Palestine which the United Nations didn't allocate to either side, Jews or Arabs, in the partition plan it adopted on November 29th 1947. The red line is a reasonable approximation of the 1949 armistice lines, referred to these days as the Green Line of 1967.
The little-known fact demonstrated by this map is that more than two thirds of the intended Corpus Seprandum lies outside the Green Line, in territory controlled between 1949-1967 by Jordan; and it includes the town of Bethlehem, as well as the area which today contains Maaleh Adumim.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Scuffling at the Mughrabi Gate
According to the Times of Israel, a UNESCO investigative team which was about to visit Jerusalem has been disinvited by Israel. Apparently part of the team's agenda was to investigate the matter of the Mughrabi Gate, which leads from the Kotel (Western Wall) into the Temple Mount compound. We don't have anything intelligent to say about this particular case, but it just so happens that we've got an interesting document about Israelis and Palestinians disagreeing about the Mughrabi Gate.
In early October 1967, four months after the Six Day War, Talmi al-Mukhtashev, head of the Waqf in Jerusalem, sent a letter to Levi Eshkol, Israel's prime minister. If he was in any way cowed by the new rulers, he managed to hide it, as he castigated Israeli actions at the Western Wall and the Mughrabi Gate.
In early October 1967, four months after the Six Day War, Talmi al-Mukhtashev, head of the Waqf in Jerusalem, sent a letter to Levi Eshkol, Israel's prime minister. If he was in any way cowed by the new rulers, he managed to hide it, as he castigated Israeli actions at the Western Wall and the Mughrabi Gate.
Last month we sent your honor a telegram warning that Israeli forces had taken over the Mughrabi Gate and opened it to the public; we demanded this action be undone and the key to the gate returned to us. We received confirmation of the telegram's arrival, but when no change was seen on the ground we've sent additional letters demanding the same.A note attached to the letter explained that it had been sent to various officials, including the police, Ministry of Justice and others, but that no answer was intended to the complaint. (File א-7921/3).
The open gate has enabled uncontrolled visits. Muslim worshippers have been cursed, Jewish tourists have misbehaved and some even had picnics and otherwise behave as tourists on the Temple Mount [the original Arabic probably called it Haram A-Sharif]. These events have caused offense to the Muslims, and we demand that the keys be handed back so the Waqf alone will control the area.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
1971: Planning for Jerusalem in 1980
In December 1971 Uri Mor wrote a report titled The Arabs of East Jerusalem, A Forecast for the 1980s. We recently met Mor, a staffer of the Office for Arab Affairs in the Prime Minister's Office. The copy in file גל-13908/2 is unfortunately truncated, and ends abruptly at page 13, but since by then it has covered quite a bit of ground, it seems safe to assume we've looking at most of the original.
Making predictions is always tricky, as the saying goes, and especially predictions about the future; making predictions about the future of Jerusalem seems, frankly, like a fool's errand. Making predictions about the future of Jerusalem then filing them in an archives whence they can be extracted and re-read in light of what actually transpired is, well, not recommended.
Mor prefaces his predictions about Jerusalem in 1980 by enumerating many of the things that could skewer his assumptions: there might be political changes in the West Bank or in Jordan. A new Pan-Arab hero such as Nasser might rise and excite the Arabs of Jerusalem. He notes various alternatives in which the Arabs of the West Bank and Jerusalem might coalesce around a leader of their own (though he doesn't see an obvious candidate). There might be negotiations between Israel and Jordan, which would inflame Arab public opinion on the West Bank where King Hussein is so hated following his massacre of Palestinians (in 1970 - and interestingly, he manages not to use the word "Palestinians"). Nor is he comfortable in projecting what the economic relations between Israel, West Bank and Jordan will be in the coming decade. Having said all that, however, he then sets out to make his projections.
He starts with demographic projections. In 1967 there were 68,500 Arabs in the city, and 200,300 Jews. In 1980 there will be 97,000 Arabs and 292,000 Jews. Of the Arabs, some 82% will be Muslim, and the rest Christians. Here is a demographic report from 2010 - 30 years later than Mor's target date - which comes from this useful website. So far as I can make out, Mor's figures for 1980 weren't far from the mark, though the trends were a bit different: a steady 3-1 relation of Jews to Arabs in Jerusalem has eroded significantly in the interval (it's now about 2-1 and sinking); the proportion of Christians among the Arabs has eroded even more.
He correctly foresees a sinking birthrate of Jews and Arabs, and fails to see that the death rate would also sink. He wonders if there's any chance of unifying Jerusalem with Bethlehem and Ramalah, apparently an idea he'd heard somewhere, but saw no sense in it. On the other hand, he also speculates that Ramalah might someday become the capital of the West Bank (true, since the late 1990's). He suspected there might be significant immigration of Arabs from the Hebron area into East Jerusalem, and wondered what this would do to the internal political dynamics of the Arabs.
On employment, he seems to have correctly foreseen that a significant chunk of the Arabs would work in construction in the Jewish sector. He didn't see much future for Arab light industry (there's isn't much heavy industry in Jerusalem and never has been). He did expect there to be a growing number of jointly-owned Jewish-Arab commercial or light-industry enterprises. This didn't happen. He saw a growing problem of educated Arabs who wouldn't find proper employment in Israeli institutions.
Interestingly, he expected growing integration to result in a growing number of Arabs acquiring Israeli citizenship.Within a decade, he dared to expect, they'll all be voting in the municipal elections. In national-level elections he expected Jerusalem's Arabs to support the Israeli Arab leaders. None of this happened, not in the 1980s, and hardly in 2013, either.
He went back and forth on what to expect regarding security and violence, but seems to have decided, on balance, to expect an encroaching pseudo-peace. As a projection for 1980, this wasn't bad.
He was considerably more optimistic about the Christian Arab community than time warranted. He knew they'd been declining for years, but expected, for some reason, that Israel's presence would reverse this process. It didn't.
Finally, he turns to the relations between Jews and Arabs. He felt the most significant factor would be how Israel relates to the Arab leadership - and then he continues his discussion on page 14 which we don't have.
Making predictions is always tricky, as the saying goes, and especially predictions about the future; making predictions about the future of Jerusalem seems, frankly, like a fool's errand. Making predictions about the future of Jerusalem then filing them in an archives whence they can be extracted and re-read in light of what actually transpired is, well, not recommended.
Mor prefaces his predictions about Jerusalem in 1980 by enumerating many of the things that could skewer his assumptions: there might be political changes in the West Bank or in Jordan. A new Pan-Arab hero such as Nasser might rise and excite the Arabs of Jerusalem. He notes various alternatives in which the Arabs of the West Bank and Jerusalem might coalesce around a leader of their own (though he doesn't see an obvious candidate). There might be negotiations between Israel and Jordan, which would inflame Arab public opinion on the West Bank where King Hussein is so hated following his massacre of Palestinians (in 1970 - and interestingly, he manages not to use the word "Palestinians"). Nor is he comfortable in projecting what the economic relations between Israel, West Bank and Jordan will be in the coming decade. Having said all that, however, he then sets out to make his projections.
He starts with demographic projections. In 1967 there were 68,500 Arabs in the city, and 200,300 Jews. In 1980 there will be 97,000 Arabs and 292,000 Jews. Of the Arabs, some 82% will be Muslim, and the rest Christians. Here is a demographic report from 2010 - 30 years later than Mor's target date - which comes from this useful website. So far as I can make out, Mor's figures for 1980 weren't far from the mark, though the trends were a bit different: a steady 3-1 relation of Jews to Arabs in Jerusalem has eroded significantly in the interval (it's now about 2-1 and sinking); the proportion of Christians among the Arabs has eroded even more.
He correctly foresees a sinking birthrate of Jews and Arabs, and fails to see that the death rate would also sink. He wonders if there's any chance of unifying Jerusalem with Bethlehem and Ramalah, apparently an idea he'd heard somewhere, but saw no sense in it. On the other hand, he also speculates that Ramalah might someday become the capital of the West Bank (true, since the late 1990's). He suspected there might be significant immigration of Arabs from the Hebron area into East Jerusalem, and wondered what this would do to the internal political dynamics of the Arabs.
On employment, he seems to have correctly foreseen that a significant chunk of the Arabs would work in construction in the Jewish sector. He didn't see much future for Arab light industry (there's isn't much heavy industry in Jerusalem and never has been). He did expect there to be a growing number of jointly-owned Jewish-Arab commercial or light-industry enterprises. This didn't happen. He saw a growing problem of educated Arabs who wouldn't find proper employment in Israeli institutions.
Interestingly, he expected growing integration to result in a growing number of Arabs acquiring Israeli citizenship.Within a decade, he dared to expect, they'll all be voting in the municipal elections. In national-level elections he expected Jerusalem's Arabs to support the Israeli Arab leaders. None of this happened, not in the 1980s, and hardly in 2013, either.
He went back and forth on what to expect regarding security and violence, but seems to have decided, on balance, to expect an encroaching pseudo-peace. As a projection for 1980, this wasn't bad.
He was considerably more optimistic about the Christian Arab community than time warranted. He knew they'd been declining for years, but expected, for some reason, that Israel's presence would reverse this process. It didn't.
Finally, he turns to the relations between Jews and Arabs. He felt the most significant factor would be how Israel relates to the Arab leadership - and then he continues his discussion on page 14 which we don't have.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
1972: Strengthening Israel's Control of East Jerusalem
It has been a while since we've posted about East Jerusalem. Today's document is interesting because it's not clear what its significance might be. It's a six-page handwritten draft, on the back of discarded official correspondence, signed by Uri Mor and addressed to his boss, Shmuel Toledano, the Advisor for Arab Affairs. In the top left corner, there's a squigly which looks like Toledano's initials, so he may indeed have read it. The file itself, גל-13908.2, we've already met (here), and it's from Toledano's office. The date is March 27, 1972. All in all, then, though at first glance it looks like a half-baked draft that should have ended up in the wastepaper bin, it is probably a valuable document for understanding the mindset of anonymous mid-level Israeli officials working on the unification of Jerusalem, five years after the act of unification itself. Did it inform policy? Did it create any action? Who knows?
Mor's thesis is that true unification of Jerusalem will happen when Jews and Arabs live together. Even commercial transactions, he says, aren't the goal, merely a way to create coexistence. Yet his recipe for achieving the goal are unconvincing.
The situation in the city, as Mor saw it, was that the Arabs of East Jerusalem had gotten used to Israel's control; the municipality was giving them good service; and the connections to Jordan were fraying. And yet, he mused, many of the Arabs now had needs for services which are supplied by the government, not the municipality, such as restitution for damaged property, and also, the smooth relations with local Arab leaders might perhaps not reflect the opinion of the general populace. He recommended creating an active cadre of hundreds of locals who would meet Israeli officials regularly and mediate between them and their communities. Apparently his office was to spearhead this effort, thereby increasing its importance.
Mor also noted various social trends. The Christian community is diminishing, while the Muslim population is growing. This growth is fueled by a high birthrate and also by immigration from the West Bank into Jerusalem because of the better economic conditions in town. He advocated close monitoring of the social and economic trends, though it's not clear that he had any way of influencing them. He suggested encouraging the publication of a pro-Israeli Arab newspaper, and repeated that there must be better connections with prominent Arab figures.
It's a rather odd document. The claim that the Arabs of East Jerusalem were already integrating into Israel in 1972 sounds over-optimistic. The measures he recommends veer from monitoring - which is a type of intelligence gathering - to some form of top-down encouragement. Surprisingly (or not), the document reads more as a justification of the office than a blueprint to create significant change on the ground. Full of good intentions and fine sentiments, lacking in any malice or arrogance, but strangely hollow.
Mor's thesis is that true unification of Jerusalem will happen when Jews and Arabs live together. Even commercial transactions, he says, aren't the goal, merely a way to create coexistence. Yet his recipe for achieving the goal are unconvincing.
The situation in the city, as Mor saw it, was that the Arabs of East Jerusalem had gotten used to Israel's control; the municipality was giving them good service; and the connections to Jordan were fraying. And yet, he mused, many of the Arabs now had needs for services which are supplied by the government, not the municipality, such as restitution for damaged property, and also, the smooth relations with local Arab leaders might perhaps not reflect the opinion of the general populace. He recommended creating an active cadre of hundreds of locals who would meet Israeli officials regularly and mediate between them and their communities. Apparently his office was to spearhead this effort, thereby increasing its importance.
Mor also noted various social trends. The Christian community is diminishing, while the Muslim population is growing. This growth is fueled by a high birthrate and also by immigration from the West Bank into Jerusalem because of the better economic conditions in town. He advocated close monitoring of the social and economic trends, though it's not clear that he had any way of influencing them. He suggested encouraging the publication of a pro-Israeli Arab newspaper, and repeated that there must be better connections with prominent Arab figures.
It's a rather odd document. The claim that the Arabs of East Jerusalem were already integrating into Israel in 1972 sounds over-optimistic. The measures he recommends veer from monitoring - which is a type of intelligence gathering - to some form of top-down encouragement. Surprisingly (or not), the document reads more as a justification of the office than a blueprint to create significant change on the ground. Full of good intentions and fine sentiments, lacking in any malice or arrogance, but strangely hollow.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
A Turf War in Jerusalem with Real Significance
On March 5, 1972, Shmuel Toledano, the Advisor on Arab Affairs to the Prime Minister, sent a letter to his boss, Golda Meir:
Two years ago, the government decided that the Arabs of East Jerusalem are to be regarded similarly as the Arab minority in Israel, and that therefore my office should be in charge of their affairs. [Meaning they are different from the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza, who were not treated as Israeli citizens.] At the time, the Minister of Police (Shlomo Hillel) agreed. Since then, the minister has been criticizing my office as if we're treading on his turf. No one is arguing against police involvement in police matters, though fortunately there are ever fewer security issues in east Jerusalem, as the populace is integrating into the west part of town. We should be encouraging this integration while working to detach the Arabs of Jerusalem from the Arabs of the West Bank - as my office is striving to do. It would be a mistake to have the minister of police involved in matters touching upon negotiations about the future of the West Bank and Jerusalem:The file I found this letter in (גל-13908/2) doesn't record what Golda's decision was. Whether Toledano won this particular argument or not, the fundamental issue was decided - from the Israeli perspective at least - in his favor. What history has to say about this remains to be seen.
a. This is the opposite of detaching the two groups.
b. Most of the affairs of the Arabs of East Jerusalem are now civic and economic, not police issues. As the municipal elections approach, and there are 40,000 eligible voters in East Jerusalem, my office has the expertise to work with them correctly.
c. In the earliest years of the state there was a minister of "Police and Minorities". This caused resentment among the Arabs of Israel and it was discontinued. We should be careful not to regress.
It is a fact, as the minister notes, that some of the leaders of the Arabs of the West bank live in Jerusalem. Yet we should be working to seperate the two communities, not unite them.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The Sad Tale of Mekor Haim Street
For the past 20 years, the ISA has been housed in temporary quarters on Mekor Haim Street near the commercial area of Talpiyot in Jerusalem. Someday, we'll move to a real building meant to house the national archives - though, truth be told, we have other, more pressing challenges to face (here, for example, or here). In the meantime, however, we're situated on what was once, many years ago, a quiet residential lane, but now looks like this:
Ah, the good old times...
Or not. Just the other day someone showed me these two English-language letters from 1940, from which one can learn that in March 1940, and also in May, Mekor Haim was anything but a quiet residential lane. Not at all.
Which just goes to show that on Mekor Haim St, the temporary is decidedly permanent.
Ah, the good old times...
Or not. Just the other day someone showed me these two English-language letters from 1940, from which one can learn that in March 1940, and also in May, Mekor Haim was anything but a quiet residential lane. Not at all.
Which just goes to show that on Mekor Haim St, the temporary is decidedly permanent.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
How to Sell Arab Property in East Jerusalem
Following the mild self-rebuke of the previous post about using too many words on this blog while presenting long-winded documents, here's a short post about a very slim file (גל-13922/11, if you insist on its name). It contains all of five brief letters, and yet it underlines an entire field of bureaucratic practice which has never been fully clarified: who decided who owned which property in the territories Israel took control of in 1967. If you think about it for a moment, it's an extremely important issue, and it underlies much of the settlement project. Of course, this particular file shines a light at the issue, it doesn't resolve it.
On April 7, 1971, S. Shapira, a lawyer at the Land Authority, wrote a two-paragraph note to the Attorney General: we're seeing a growing number of Arabs living in other countries who are sending us their representatives so as to sell their East-Jerusalem real estate to Israelis. How are we supposed to deal with such transactions? (p.2)
On April 19, Michal Bodenkin, an assistant to the AG, replied even more tersely: We'll need to deal with each separate case (p.3); she then sent a copy of her letter to the Advisor on Arab Affairs (p.4). Marking turf, apparently.
Why was there an upswing of such transactions? It wouldn't reflect the very large construction projects getting underway in East Jerusalem, as those were administered centrally, while Shapira's query seems to refer to individual transactions. The file offers no explanation; when we find one we'll tell.
The final document in the file is pure turf-wars, but its subject is interesting: Zvi Terlow, the executive director of the Ministry of Justice, announces to lots of important folks in lots of ministries, that all cases of claims by Jews on land plots in the territories must go through his ministry. It was February 1974, and I assume someone was seeing a rise in Jews purchasing land on the West Bank; the Gush Emunim settler movement was to break onto the public scene within weeks.
On April 7, 1971, S. Shapira, a lawyer at the Land Authority, wrote a two-paragraph note to the Attorney General: we're seeing a growing number of Arabs living in other countries who are sending us their representatives so as to sell their East-Jerusalem real estate to Israelis. How are we supposed to deal with such transactions? (p.2)
On April 19, Michal Bodenkin, an assistant to the AG, replied even more tersely: We'll need to deal with each separate case (p.3); she then sent a copy of her letter to the Advisor on Arab Affairs (p.4). Marking turf, apparently.
Why was there an upswing of such transactions? It wouldn't reflect the very large construction projects getting underway in East Jerusalem, as those were administered centrally, while Shapira's query seems to refer to individual transactions. The file offers no explanation; when we find one we'll tell.
The final document in the file is pure turf-wars, but its subject is interesting: Zvi Terlow, the executive director of the Ministry of Justice, announces to lots of important folks in lots of ministries, that all cases of claims by Jews on land plots in the territories must go through his ministry. It was February 1974, and I assume someone was seeing a rise in Jews purchasing land on the West Bank; the Gush Emunim settler movement was to break onto the public scene within weeks.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Seizure of Private Property in East Jerusalem
Let's not beat around the bush. In May 1967 there were no Jews in the Jordanian sections of Jerusalem. Today there are more than 200,000 Jews living in the parts of town that Israel took from Jordan in the Six Day War. Most of them live on what were once empty hilltops, as those of us old enough to remember can attest even without any archives. Yet even barren rocky hilltops may have been owned, at least in some cases, by individuals. And some of those Jews moved into places such as the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, where the ruined buildings were owned by someone, or the decrepit buildings were inhabited. Which means that at some point, in 1967 or 1970 or 1972, Israel's government expropriated Arab property, or used Eminent Domain, whatever legal terminology you wish to use to describe the action of transferring ownership of property from some individuals, for the purpose of executing policy.
Today's file (גל-13927/17) comes from the Advisor for Arab Affairs, whom we introduced here (and also here). It doesn't describe Israel's policy of seizure of property, which was done in another agency (the Land Administration Agency), but rather the complaints about the policy which were directed towards the Prime Minister's Office, i.e. the Advisor for Arab Affairs in the PMO.
Most of the file is sealed. Not because there are any dark security secrets in it, but because by Israeli law, an individual who passes private information to an authority has the expectation of his (or her) privacy being respected. Once 70 years have passed we may assume the individuals are no longer alive and the files can be opened, but the letters in this file are from 40-45 years ago. Still, by way of giving a taste of what was in them, see pages 7 and 8.
The fellow on page 7, for example: He lived in the Old City, and had been informed his home was about to be seized. So he wrote to the prime minister and made five points:
1. My house is right next to the holy places of Jews and Muslims, so there's no price you can give me to equal what it's worth.
2. The government says the seizure is for the public good, but I don't see any benefit.
3. As an Israeli citizen I demand to stay where I am and I'll promise to respect all the laws.
4. I reserve the right to go to the courts.
5. I'm enclosing the documents which prove my ownership.
Or page 8: Yosef Dan-Gor writing to his boss, Shmuel Toledano, the Advisor for Arab Affairs himself, in the matter of two familes who own homes in the Sheikh Jarrakh area where the government intents to construct a number of ministries. The two familes are obstinate not to leave. Ovad Yakir of the Land Administration Authority, he writes, has suggested I meet them and make a seriously generous offer, before we turn to legal action. I think he's right, but I need your permission. [Intriguingly, they may not have been moved. If you go to the government compound in Sheikh Jarrah you can see that a number of older, Arab, homes are still there.]
Pages 2-5 are a letter from a voluntary welfare organization near the Mount of Olives. In January 196,8 they had been informed that they were to be moved elsewhere because the government was seizing their building, and they strenously obejcted. In addition to describing all the important things their organization did, they also pointed out that the building belonged to the Waqf and thus couldn't be expropriated, and also warned that such an action would cause public unrest and was against peace.
The letter on page 6 is also from Dan-Gor to his boss Toledano, in August 1960: there are five Arab families on French Hill who since January 1968 have been refusing all offers we've made. My impression is that they're not going to change their minds. [Here also: go to this area today and you'll see more than five Arab homes which have been there since before 1967. Are they the same families? Did Israel eventually back down?]
Page 9 is yet another letter from Dan-Gor: regarding the area where the Jordanian army had a military position south of the UN headquarters ("The Sausage"): Colonel Halamish informs us that the IDF is willing to vacate the hilltop to facilitate the construction of the Armon Hanaziv neighborhood.
And finally, most interestingly, the letter on page 10, Dan-Gor to his boss in May 1970: We're trying to seize an area in Wadi Joz so as to build a neighborhood for the [Arab] families which are being evicted from the Jewish Quarter in the Old City. The construction will be done by the [Arab] contractor Kalik Jad'On. The snag is that some of the owners of plots in that area are refusing to go along with the agreement we've already made with most of their neighbours, and now they've turned to the High Court of Justice (Bagatz).
Today's file (גל-13927/17) comes from the Advisor for Arab Affairs, whom we introduced here (and also here). It doesn't describe Israel's policy of seizure of property, which was done in another agency (the Land Administration Agency), but rather the complaints about the policy which were directed towards the Prime Minister's Office, i.e. the Advisor for Arab Affairs in the PMO.
Most of the file is sealed. Not because there are any dark security secrets in it, but because by Israeli law, an individual who passes private information to an authority has the expectation of his (or her) privacy being respected. Once 70 years have passed we may assume the individuals are no longer alive and the files can be opened, but the letters in this file are from 40-45 years ago. Still, by way of giving a taste of what was in them, see pages 7 and 8.
The fellow on page 7, for example: He lived in the Old City, and had been informed his home was about to be seized. So he wrote to the prime minister and made five points:
1. My house is right next to the holy places of Jews and Muslims, so there's no price you can give me to equal what it's worth.
2. The government says the seizure is for the public good, but I don't see any benefit.
3. As an Israeli citizen I demand to stay where I am and I'll promise to respect all the laws.
4. I reserve the right to go to the courts.
5. I'm enclosing the documents which prove my ownership.
Or page 8: Yosef Dan-Gor writing to his boss, Shmuel Toledano, the Advisor for Arab Affairs himself, in the matter of two familes who own homes in the Sheikh Jarrakh area where the government intents to construct a number of ministries. The two familes are obstinate not to leave. Ovad Yakir of the Land Administration Authority, he writes, has suggested I meet them and make a seriously generous offer, before we turn to legal action. I think he's right, but I need your permission. [Intriguingly, they may not have been moved. If you go to the government compound in Sheikh Jarrah you can see that a number of older, Arab, homes are still there.]
Pages 2-5 are a letter from a voluntary welfare organization near the Mount of Olives. In January 196,8 they had been informed that they were to be moved elsewhere because the government was seizing their building, and they strenously obejcted. In addition to describing all the important things their organization did, they also pointed out that the building belonged to the Waqf and thus couldn't be expropriated, and also warned that such an action would cause public unrest and was against peace.
The letter on page 6 is also from Dan-Gor to his boss Toledano, in August 1960: there are five Arab families on French Hill who since January 1968 have been refusing all offers we've made. My impression is that they're not going to change their minds. [Here also: go to this area today and you'll see more than five Arab homes which have been there since before 1967. Are they the same families? Did Israel eventually back down?]
Page 9 is yet another letter from Dan-Gor: regarding the area where the Jordanian army had a military position south of the UN headquarters ("The Sausage"): Colonel Halamish informs us that the IDF is willing to vacate the hilltop to facilitate the construction of the Armon Hanaziv neighborhood.
And finally, most interestingly, the letter on page 10, Dan-Gor to his boss in May 1970: We're trying to seize an area in Wadi Joz so as to build a neighborhood for the [Arab] families which are being evicted from the Jewish Quarter in the Old City. The construction will be done by the [Arab] contractor Kalik Jad'On. The snag is that some of the owners of plots in that area are refusing to go along with the agreement we've already made with most of their neighbours, and now they've turned to the High Court of Justice (Bagatz).
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
The Government Protocols: Mid-September 1948
We continue our series of presenting the protocols of the cabinet (see the previous installment here).
In the week of September 8, 1948, the cabinet convened twice, on the 8th and on the 12th. There were three main topics to be discussed, all of them still relevant in 2013.
The first was the relationship between the State of Israel and its Orthodox citizens, focusing on the conditions of miltary service and how they might be squared with religious commandments. Apparently some Orthodox soldiers near Netanya had been ordered to do something they felt they couldn't do, so they'd been arrested. This prompted one of the religious ministers, Rabbi Fishman, to threaten to resign. The cabinet told him his resignation wouldn't be accepted, and also ordered the soldiers released, as well as set up to figure out how to deal with such matters. A similar committee will undoubtedly be set up as soon as the present coalition negotiations end, and it won't be the last, either.
There was a discussion about the high consumer prices and what to do about them. A committee was set up. (And another will be set up any day now, just wait and see.)
Finally, there was discussion about Israel's position at the UN regarding Jerusalem. It can be summarized thusly: Israel will not relinquish its control of the Western half, and certainly not for some sort of internationalization; if, however, the UN decided that the Old City should be internationalized (Israel didn't control that part), Israel might be willing to go along with the idea. Better that than Jordanian control which would prevent any access to Jews. (As indeed happened.) Without being privy to any insider information, it's safe to bet that this, also, is on the agenda of Israel's present political leaders, all these years later.
In the week of September 8, 1948, the cabinet convened twice, on the 8th and on the 12th. There were three main topics to be discussed, all of them still relevant in 2013.
The first was the relationship between the State of Israel and its Orthodox citizens, focusing on the conditions of miltary service and how they might be squared with religious commandments. Apparently some Orthodox soldiers near Netanya had been ordered to do something they felt they couldn't do, so they'd been arrested. This prompted one of the religious ministers, Rabbi Fishman, to threaten to resign. The cabinet told him his resignation wouldn't be accepted, and also ordered the soldiers released, as well as set up to figure out how to deal with such matters. A similar committee will undoubtedly be set up as soon as the present coalition negotiations end, and it won't be the last, either.
There was a discussion about the high consumer prices and what to do about them. A committee was set up. (And another will be set up any day now, just wait and see.)
Finally, there was discussion about Israel's position at the UN regarding Jerusalem. It can be summarized thusly: Israel will not relinquish its control of the Western half, and certainly not for some sort of internationalization; if, however, the UN decided that the Old City should be internationalized (Israel didn't control that part), Israel might be willing to go along with the idea. Better that than Jordanian control which would prevent any access to Jews. (As indeed happened.) Without being privy to any insider information, it's safe to bet that this, also, is on the agenda of Israel's present political leaders, all these years later.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Initiating a Large Settlement: Next
Here's another thread we should have made more progress on than we did. Almost a month ago, we presented a document from corridors of the Ministry of Construction and Housing, which told how in December 1980, some of the officials were gearing up the planning process of a new town north of Jerusalem. At the time we told part of the story which appears in the file, and promised we'd post the second half the next day... Ah well. That didn't work out, did it.
Anyway. That previous document was an internal summary written by one Ministry of Construction official to another. It was very business-like: 'we're running out of space to build neighborhoods, and we've got to look further afield.' We don't know what happened next, but in February the file contains a flurry of follow-up letters, all of them from beyond the ministry. There are three identical letters sent on February 9th by one Yisrael Adler, who worked for the D.E.L. Development and Engineering company--one to the communications officer in the West Bank military governor's office; one to the Electricity Officer there, and one to the Head of Archeology at the Rockefeller Museum (I assume this means the Antiquities Authority). Each letter informs of the intention to plan a new town in the area, and requests to be informed where the communications and electricity lines are, and where the sensitive archaeological sites lie.
And note: An employee of a private firm is requesting this information from state officials, in the service of a state project which has apparently hired the private firm.
If it's the minutiae of how policy gets implemented which interest you, the letter of February 18, 1981 is perhaps the most intriguing. Its author was Benny Dvir, who worked in the programs department of the Ministry of Construction and Housing, a subordinate of Zeev Barkai who wrote the letter launching this project (as we saw in the previous post). So it's a government document. It was sent to Engineer T. Litersdorf in Tel Aviv, one of the principles of The Litersdorf-Goldenberg engineering firm. It mentions that meetings have been going on, and recognizes that the private-sector professionals have seen Barkai's letter of December 1st. Dvir's letter summarizes what everyone knows so as to have a written record of it - so far, so standard paper-pushing. Yet then the letter itself veers off into new territory, when it presents the motivations for creating a new town north of Jerusalem:
Anyway. That previous document was an internal summary written by one Ministry of Construction official to another. It was very business-like: 'we're running out of space to build neighborhoods, and we've got to look further afield.' We don't know what happened next, but in February the file contains a flurry of follow-up letters, all of them from beyond the ministry. There are three identical letters sent on February 9th by one Yisrael Adler, who worked for the D.E.L. Development and Engineering company--one to the communications officer in the West Bank military governor's office; one to the Electricity Officer there, and one to the Head of Archeology at the Rockefeller Museum (I assume this means the Antiquities Authority). Each letter informs of the intention to plan a new town in the area, and requests to be informed where the communications and electricity lines are, and where the sensitive archaeological sites lie.
And note: An employee of a private firm is requesting this information from state officials, in the service of a state project which has apparently hired the private firm.
If it's the minutiae of how policy gets implemented which interest you, the letter of February 18, 1981 is perhaps the most intriguing. Its author was Benny Dvir, who worked in the programs department of the Ministry of Construction and Housing, a subordinate of Zeev Barkai who wrote the letter launching this project (as we saw in the previous post). So it's a government document. It was sent to Engineer T. Litersdorf in Tel Aviv, one of the principles of The Litersdorf-Goldenberg engineering firm. It mentions that meetings have been going on, and recognizes that the private-sector professionals have seen Barkai's letter of December 1st. Dvir's letter summarizes what everyone knows so as to have a written record of it - so far, so standard paper-pushing. Yet then the letter itself veers off into new territory, when it presents the motivations for creating a new town north of Jerusalem:
Political considerations:
1. Having analyzed various political options, the ministry has come to the conclusion that the Jewish presence in the metropolitan area of Jerusalem needs to be strengthened.
2. The non-Jewish neighborhoods (Azariya, Shuafat, al-Gib, Anata etc) are growing rapidly.
3. Within the city lines the ratio of Jews to non-Jews is 2.5:1. In the entire metropolitan area, however, it's more like 1:1. There needs to be a massive growth in the Jewish presence.
4. There's only one main road from the plain up to Jerusalem; we need to widen this corridor.
Urban considerations:
1. Housing prices in Jerusalem are too high.
2. Not enough diversity in the types of housing in the city.
3. If the city grows north, we may be able to develop train transport in that direction.
4. Greater diversity of employment.
Other considerations:
1. Size: at 15 km from Jerusalem we'll need a largish town; closer in, it can be smaller and lean on the center for services.
2. Ownership: while areas with private ownership are not impossible for development, we're looking for areas with state ownership.
3. We're looking for areas with convenient topography.I remind you that it was in response to these letters that the ministry ended up witha map and description of the E1 area (and E2-6, as well as W1-6)
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
1968: Housing Projects in Jerusalem
Back in 1968 (and perhaps before and after, our file doesn't say), the management of the Ministry of Housing and Construction used to convene once a month or so to review policies and programs. The minister (Mordechai Bentov in 1968) participated, as did the general manager, David Tene, and lots of top officials. They didn't set national housing policy, but their reviews covered all the large projects they were running and they discussed their pace of progress or - often - how budgetary constraints were preventing them from reaching their goals. In general, the protocols of these meetings would delight urban planners who are also history buffs, or historians of urban development; economic historians interested in how Israel's government tried to control the housing market may also take joy in these files.
The rest of us - well, let's just say one can find more dramatic files in the archives. Yet before we shrug and move on to the next file, let's glance quickly at file ג-4457/1which contains the records of three such meetings, in May, June and August 1968.
On May 29, 1968, Bentov opened the meeting by talking about a recent cut of IL140,000,000 to the ministry's budget (the money was being transfered to the Ministry of Defense). There was some good news, however, such as an added IL26,000,000 for construction in East Jerusalem (p. 2). Tene then commented that Jerusalem was about the only area where the ministry's large projects were progressing quickly (p. 4); the government had decided that Jerusalem and Beer Sheva had the highest priority. Further on, one of the participants noted that since construction in Jerusalem had been slow in previous years, there would be a shortage of new apartments until the current projects would begin to come onto the market, in 1969-70 (p. 6). Bentov also noted that the Prime Minister had urged him to set up a few dozen shacks near Mount Scopus so that someone would start moving in already.
At the next meeting, on June 5, 1968 (exactly a year after the Six Day War), Bentov opened his review by noting that on the land which had been expropriated in East Jerusalem, the ministry intended to build 2,500 housing units--1,200 in the first stage and the rest in a second stage. The original intention had been to start with 400 private homes on what is now known as Givat Hamivtar, but now it seemed better to allocate plots for only 250 of them and to use the rest for apartment buildings. This then set off a lively discussion, as more than 1,200 families had already signed up for the project. There was also a plan to build cheaper apartments near Sanhedria for religious families. (Well, that certainly happened.) (p.9-10)
Much of the meeting of August 22, 1968, focused on the various construction projects in East Jerusalem - certainly more than any other single area. One of the construction companies was already working, another two were expected to start very soon. One problem they were going to encounter was a lack of professional construction workers; discussions with the ministry of Labor were already underway to employ a few hundred laborers from the West Bank, some of whom would need to be sent through training courses. (p.14-ff).
All the construction projects being discussed in Summer 1968 were in the north-east of town: Sanhedria, Givat Hamivtar, French Hill, and perhaps the area which would later be named Ramat Eshkol (PM Levi Eshkol died in 1969).
The American reaction was also harsh, and together with other Western countries, they announced that they would not conduct any official business in Jerusalem, even if invited by the minister. Sharett wrote to Dulles, arguing that plenty of time had been given to the UN to deal with the Jerusalem issue in a more realistic way, but it had not done so. Before the move the US ambassador and their staff had had no difficulty in visiting government offices in Jerusalem. He added that no change in Jerusalem's status was involved. "New Jerusalem has in any case and to all practical purposes been our capital since 1949, and would have continued to be our capital, with the Foreign Ministry or without it."
The rest of us - well, let's just say one can find more dramatic files in the archives. Yet before we shrug and move on to the next file, let's glance quickly at file ג-4457/1which contains the records of three such meetings, in May, June and August 1968.
On May 29, 1968, Bentov opened the meeting by talking about a recent cut of IL140,000,000 to the ministry's budget (the money was being transfered to the Ministry of Defense). There was some good news, however, such as an added IL26,000,000 for construction in East Jerusalem (p. 2). Tene then commented that Jerusalem was about the only area where the ministry's large projects were progressing quickly (p. 4); the government had decided that Jerusalem and Beer Sheva had the highest priority. Further on, one of the participants noted that since construction in Jerusalem had been slow in previous years, there would be a shortage of new apartments until the current projects would begin to come onto the market, in 1969-70 (p. 6). Bentov also noted that the Prime Minister had urged him to set up a few dozen shacks near Mount Scopus so that someone would start moving in already.
At the next meeting, on June 5, 1968 (exactly a year after the Six Day War), Bentov opened his review by noting that on the land which had been expropriated in East Jerusalem, the ministry intended to build 2,500 housing units--1,200 in the first stage and the rest in a second stage. The original intention had been to start with 400 private homes on what is now known as Givat Hamivtar, but now it seemed better to allocate plots for only 250 of them and to use the rest for apartment buildings. This then set off a lively discussion, as more than 1,200 families had already signed up for the project. There was also a plan to build cheaper apartments near Sanhedria for religious families. (Well, that certainly happened.) (p.9-10)
Much of the meeting of August 22, 1968, focused on the various construction projects in East Jerusalem - certainly more than any other single area. One of the construction companies was already working, another two were expected to start very soon. One problem they were going to encounter was a lack of professional construction workers; discussions with the ministry of Labor were already underway to employ a few hundred laborers from the West Bank, some of whom would need to be sent through training courses. (p.14-ff).
All the construction projects being discussed in Summer 1968 were in the north-east of town: Sanhedria, Givat Hamivtar, French Hill, and perhaps the area which would later be named Ramat Eshkol (PM Levi Eshkol died in 1969).
Monday, July 13, 2015
13 July 1953, Creating Facts: The Israeli Foreign Ministry Moves to Jerusalem
In July 1953 the Israeli Foreign Ministry was about to move its offices to Jerusalem. Israel's leaders knew that this was a controversial move, since, on 9 December1949, the UN General Assembly had passed Resolution 194 on the internationalization of Jerusalem under UN control. In 1947 Israel had accepted internationalization of Jerusalem as part of the Partition Plan. But after the Arabs rejected the plan and tried to prevent its implementation by force, Israel no longer felt bound by it.
On 5 December 1949 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared in the Knesset that Jewish Jerusalem was an organic and inseparable part of the State of Israel. At that time Israel agreed to international supervision of the Holy Places, most of which were in any case under Jordanian rule. We've already shown here the draft of his statement Ben-Gurion sent to Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, in which he threatened that Israel would leave the UN if the resolution was adopted.
On 5 December 1949 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared in the Knesset that Jewish Jerusalem was an organic and inseparable part of the State of Israel. At that time Israel agreed to international supervision of the Holy Places, most of which were in any case under Jordanian rule. We've already shown here the draft of his statement Ben-Gurion sent to Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, in which he threatened that Israel would leave the UN if the resolution was adopted.
After the resolution passed, despite opposition from Britain and the US, Ben-Gurion announced the transfer of the Knesset and the government ministries to Jerusalem. Sharett opposed the announcement and believed that there was no real danger of steps to carry out internationalization. He even threatened to resign – see his reaction here.
The Knesset and the Prime Minister's Office were transferred to Jerusalem immediately, but other government offices followed gradually. A complex of one storey bungalows in the Givat Ram area of Jerusalem was built to house the Foreign Ministry. Meanwhile Sharett ran the office from the Kirya government buildings in Tel Aviv. In May 1952 the move was announced, to be carried out in the summer of 1953.
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| Ben-Gurion, Sharett and Minister Moshe Shapira in the first Knesset building in Jerusalem (Frumin House), 1952 Photograph: Wikimedia |
In May 1953 the new US Secretary of State J.F. Dulles visited Israel as part of a tour of the Middle East. He hoped to organize an anti-Soviet defence organization similar to NATO but found little enthusiasm among the Arab states. During the trip he met Sharett, and, according to a letter sent to the secretary in July, the foreign minister told Dulles about the imminent move to Jerusalem, and the secretary did not protest. He asked that the move not take place while he was in the area, and suggested that Sharett repeat previous statements on Israel's attitude to the Holy Places. Sharett gave a statement in the Knesset recognizing Israel's obligations to protect the Christian Holy Places under its control.
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| Nuns crossing into Jordan at the Mandelbaum Gate Photograph: Fritz Cohen, Government Press Office |
On his return to the US, Dulles gave a radio speech on his tour. He said that the new Republican Administration should act to allay the fears of the Arabs and to restore the reputation of the US, which they believed was giving one sided support to Israel. He described his feelings on seeing Jerusalem, which was split into armed camps, but was above all a Holy Place. Dulles, son of a Presbyterian minister, said that the link to Jerusalem felt by religious groups all over the world was a claim preceding the political claims of Israel and Jordan. Headlines in the Israeli press claimed that he had supported the internationalization of the city, the return of some of the Arab refugees and the strengthening of the Arab League.
On June 7 the government discussed the speech. In Sharett's references to Jerusalem (pp. 5-9) he emphasized that there was no change in US policy. Israel could gain if the Holy Places were put under international control, as it might get access to the Western Wall and to Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem. He warned his colleagues against the illusion that unilateral action by Israel, and faits accomplis such as moving the government offices, could actually solve the problem of Jerusalem. The rest of the world, and especially the Catholic church, which had much influence in France and Latin America, did not accept Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The unclear situation could be exploited by the Arabs, even though they cared for the Holy Places "as the snows of yesteryear'. Ben-Gurion also commented on Dulles' speech but his comments centered on other issues.
In the guidelines he sent Israel's diplomatic representatives to explain the coming move, Sharett asked them to emphasize the practical reasons involved. He described at length the difficulties suffered by the Ministry staff, and especially the minister himself, in commuting between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and the harmful effects of their remoteness from the centre of decision making.
Sharett knew that the embassies would not leave Tel Aviv but did not expect any particular problem with official visits to the Ministry in Jerusalem. Arab protests were loud, as can be seen below.
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| The Foreign Ministry moves in, 9 July 1953. Photograph: Yehuda Eisenstark , Israel State Archives |
Gradually the ban was relaxed, and on Independence Day, 1954, most of the diplomatic corps attended the president's reception in Jerusalem.
Most diplomatic representations in Israel remain in the Tel Aviv area, but today all official visits by heads of state are received at the Foreign Ministry . The ministry remained in the hut complex for 50 years, until an impressive new building was opened in 2003 near the Supreme Court in Givat Ram.
Most diplomatic representations in Israel remain in the Tel Aviv area, but today all official visits by heads of state are received at the Foreign Ministry . The ministry remained in the hut complex for 50 years, until an impressive new building was opened in 2003 near the Supreme Court in Givat Ram.
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| The Foreign Ministry today Photographs: The Israeli Association for Diplomacy |
Sunday, June 23, 2013
89 New Settlements, and Another 77
There are a few important corners of Israel's state bureaucracy where one can get awesome things done quickly. The invention, development and deployment of the Iron Dome anti-projectile systems, for example, happened very quickly by the standards of any government project. Most of the time, however, executing large projects inside the official sphere is, how to put this, challenging.
All the more reason to observe with incredulity the rate at which Israel in its infancy managed to get things done. Today's document, for example, is a report by Raanan Weitz, head of the Settlement Department in the Jewish Agency, from June 14, 1949. (File ג-3013/12).
In the first six months of Israel's independence, according to Weitz, 35 settlements were founded. Then, in the ensuing 10 months or so, his department had created 54 settlements, in what was called "Series A". The cost of this activity had been 4,705,100 Lira (IL), and about 11,700 immigrants had been settled.
Just recently his officials had begun settling 1,010 families of new immigrants in 13 abandoned villages. He had "borrowed IL 250,000 for this from the next budget he was about to request, along with IL 171,750 which he had already used for series A, above the original allocation. (And note that he seems to have been informing that he'd already done this, not requesting permission. As in "I've already spent the money, now find a way to cover it.")
Having completed that, he was now requesting funds to launch "Series B". The plan here was to create 77 new settlements, for at least 3,000 families. The cost would be IL 3,676,750 (including the two above sums which had already been spent). The Series B settlements would be made up as follows: 22 settlements of pioneering youth; 22 settlements of demobilised soldiers (many of whom would have been new immigrants); 13 settlements for immigrants in abandoned villages; and 20 founded especially for their immigrant settlers.
The document then goes on for another 30-some pages with details about funds, expenditures, brief descriptions of each of the new settlements, and so on.
It might also be interesting to note that Weitz had no complexes about the abandoned villages. He's quite straightforward in talking about them and naming them, and he also doesn't agonize about how they came to be abandoned. Like everyone else at the time he was aware that the way of the world in the 1940s was that during and after wars populations were transferred from place to place; he remembered how the Arabs had trumpeted their intention to get rid of the Jews, and once the tables had been turned, he was getting on with life; his urgent task was to find somewhere to put the large numbers of Jews who were being transferred out of their homes and coming to Israel.
All the more reason to observe with incredulity the rate at which Israel in its infancy managed to get things done. Today's document, for example, is a report by Raanan Weitz, head of the Settlement Department in the Jewish Agency, from June 14, 1949. (File ג-3013/12).
In the first six months of Israel's independence, according to Weitz, 35 settlements were founded. Then, in the ensuing 10 months or so, his department had created 54 settlements, in what was called "Series A". The cost of this activity had been 4,705,100 Lira (IL), and about 11,700 immigrants had been settled.
Just recently his officials had begun settling 1,010 families of new immigrants in 13 abandoned villages. He had "borrowed IL 250,000 for this from the next budget he was about to request, along with IL 171,750 which he had already used for series A, above the original allocation. (And note that he seems to have been informing that he'd already done this, not requesting permission. As in "I've already spent the money, now find a way to cover it.")
Having completed that, he was now requesting funds to launch "Series B". The plan here was to create 77 new settlements, for at least 3,000 families. The cost would be IL 3,676,750 (including the two above sums which had already been spent). The Series B settlements would be made up as follows: 22 settlements of pioneering youth; 22 settlements of demobilised soldiers (many of whom would have been new immigrants); 13 settlements for immigrants in abandoned villages; and 20 founded especially for their immigrant settlers.
The document then goes on for another 30-some pages with details about funds, expenditures, brief descriptions of each of the new settlements, and so on.
It might also be interesting to note that Weitz had no complexes about the abandoned villages. He's quite straightforward in talking about them and naming them, and he also doesn't agonize about how they came to be abandoned. Like everyone else at the time he was aware that the way of the world in the 1940s was that during and after wars populations were transferred from place to place; he remembered how the Arabs had trumpeted their intention to get rid of the Jews, and once the tables had been turned, he was getting on with life; his urgent task was to find somewhere to put the large numbers of Jews who were being transferred out of their homes and coming to Israel.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Borders of Jerusalem
Today's post is purely informative; we'll leave any and all narrative to the readers.
Below is a section of a map which was drawn in 1949, and is filed in ג-3013/12, which comes from Ben Gurion's office and deals with matters of mass immigration in 1949-1953. The full map contains proposals for settling the large numbers of new immigrants. The section we're presenting, however, isn't about that; it's about the lines of 1947 and 1949 in the Jerusalem area.
The blue line is the intended border of the Corpus Separandum, the section of Mandatory Palestine which the United Nations didn't allocate to either side, Jews or Arabs, in the partition plan it adopted on November 29th 1947. The red line is a reasonable approximation of the 1949 armistice lines, referred to these days as the Green Line of 1967.
The little-known fact demonstrated by this map is that more than two thirds of the intended Corpus Seprandum lies outside the Green Line, in territory controlled between 1949-1967 by Jordan; and it includes the town of Bethlehem, as well as the area which today contains Maaleh Adumim.
Below is a section of a map which was drawn in 1949, and is filed in ג-3013/12, which comes from Ben Gurion's office and deals with matters of mass immigration in 1949-1953. The full map contains proposals for settling the large numbers of new immigrants. The section we're presenting, however, isn't about that; it's about the lines of 1947 and 1949 in the Jerusalem area.
The blue line is the intended border of the Corpus Separandum, the section of Mandatory Palestine which the United Nations didn't allocate to either side, Jews or Arabs, in the partition plan it adopted on November 29th 1947. The red line is a reasonable approximation of the 1949 armistice lines, referred to these days as the Green Line of 1967.
The little-known fact demonstrated by this map is that more than two thirds of the intended Corpus Seprandum lies outside the Green Line, in territory controlled between 1949-1967 by Jordan; and it includes the town of Bethlehem, as well as the area which today contains Maaleh Adumim.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Map of a Euphemism
No two languages share a complete overlap of vocabularies. English, for example, doesn't have a word for the crucially important Hebrew word "dugri," which may actually have been imported from Arabic. Nor "chevre," which was imported from nowhere.
Hebrew, on the other hand, only recently invented a word for "accountability," and the invention is an unwieldy and unhelpful "achrayutiut," which sounds as bad in Hebrew as you think it does. Oddly, Hebrew also lacks a word for a universally common phenomenon: euphemism. We get along without the term, but we use the linguistic tool all the time, as you'd expect in society with officials, elected and otherwise, who are supposed to have accountability for stuff.
This isn't new. Today's document is, for a change, a map, and it's part of the same file we used yesterday, in which an aide to Ben Gurion collected documents about the mass immigration between 1949-53. (Those are the years of the file, not the immigration, which started earlier and kept on going.)
The map itself is considerably larger than the segments we've scanned. Dated April 26, 1949, it purports to show where the "Department of Transit Camps" proposed to build camps for 15,250 families. Most of them were to cluster around Haifa and Tel Aviv, the two sections we scanned. the euphemism, of course, is in the moniker of the camps. Transit sounds temporary, short-termed, and at least minimally comfortable; it raises the image of orderly wooden shacks, perhaps. It isn't the obvious word to depict large fields with tents in which entire families spend months or even a few years. Those we call, in Hebrew, maabarot, and while present day politicians like to take pride in their childhood years in them, their parents found little to like about them at the time.
Though, come to think of it, transit camps (machanot maavar) and maabarot are actually closely related words, both from the root a-v-r, to move.
Another point of interest about the map is how much has changed since 1949. Look at the map of Tel Aviv and the 18 proposed camps surrounding it. Lots of camps, in an area which was near the center and thus eased all sorts of logistical issues, but where there was lots of empty space. In 2013 (and also much earlier), that entire area, from Herzlia to Petach Tikva to Rishon Lezion, is all built up. It's all one single conurbation. Many of its denizens once lived in those maabarot. Or their grandparents did.
Hebrew, on the other hand, only recently invented a word for "accountability," and the invention is an unwieldy and unhelpful "achrayutiut," which sounds as bad in Hebrew as you think it does. Oddly, Hebrew also lacks a word for a universally common phenomenon: euphemism. We get along without the term, but we use the linguistic tool all the time, as you'd expect in society with officials, elected and otherwise, who are supposed to have accountability for stuff.
This isn't new. Today's document is, for a change, a map, and it's part of the same file we used yesterday, in which an aide to Ben Gurion collected documents about the mass immigration between 1949-53. (Those are the years of the file, not the immigration, which started earlier and kept on going.)
The map itself is considerably larger than the segments we've scanned. Dated April 26, 1949, it purports to show where the "Department of Transit Camps" proposed to build camps for 15,250 families. Most of them were to cluster around Haifa and Tel Aviv, the two sections we scanned. the euphemism, of course, is in the moniker of the camps. Transit sounds temporary, short-termed, and at least minimally comfortable; it raises the image of orderly wooden shacks, perhaps. It isn't the obvious word to depict large fields with tents in which entire families spend months or even a few years. Those we call, in Hebrew, maabarot, and while present day politicians like to take pride in their childhood years in them, their parents found little to like about them at the time.
Though, come to think of it, transit camps (machanot maavar) and maabarot are actually closely related words, both from the root a-v-r, to move.
Another point of interest about the map is how much has changed since 1949. Look at the map of Tel Aviv and the 18 proposed camps surrounding it. Lots of camps, in an area which was near the center and thus eased all sorts of logistical issues, but where there was lots of empty space. In 2013 (and also much earlier), that entire area, from Herzlia to Petach Tikva to Rishon Lezion, is all built up. It's all one single conurbation. Many of its denizens once lived in those maabarot. Or their grandparents did.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
More than a million immigrants? Can do!
It's time we went back to the efforts to integrate the masses of immigrants who arrived in Israel's first years; we've mostly been doing this recently from the rich file on the matter from Ben Gurion's office, ג-3013.12 (see the previous installment here). Today's document is informative, but mostly it's, well, quaint. No one would have written such a document in 2013 - or 1973, for that matter. But it was written in 1949.
Actually, it's an undated document; it appears truncated, ending abruptly in what seems to be mid-paragraph on page three, with two pages of data tacked on; and it's unsigned. Being an archive, however, rather than a library, we're not overly fazed. It's in a file we recognize; and it's wedged between other documents which indicate that it was written in early 1949; and no matter who authored it, it was important enough to be filed in the prime minister's files. So here it is. It's titled "A 5-Year Plan for Settlements, 1949-1953".
The challenge: By the end of the year there will be one million people in Israel. Over the next four, we expect 900,000 additional immigrants, and natural growth of 100,000. By the end of 1953 there will be two million Israelis, of whom 1,200,000 will have immigrated since creation of the state. At least 200,000 of them must be integrated as farmers, or 60,000 family units.
The document assumes, without specifically saying, that most of the immigrants are penniless and it's the task of the state to find them housing and employment. This is implied in the following breakdown of the 60,000 new units that must be created:
10,000 can be settled in existing settlements.The document also recommends expanding Israel's fishing capacities, in order to produce sufficient proteins. It then turns to the inevitable issue of funds: more than 100,000,000 Pounds will be needed.
35,000 will need to be settled in new settlements.
5,000 will have enough capital of their own that they'll be able to acquire their own farms in existing villages.
10,000 will find employment in supporting services for the farmers.
The majority of settlements will be built in the north, where there's water and areas left empty of their former inhabitants. A minority will be settled in the northern Negev, to the extent we can pipe water down there within five years. In the southern Negev, we'll build a small number of experimental settlements, and learn how agriculture might be done that deep into the desert.
In order to grow enough food for two million people we're going to have to expand the areas under cultivation. (The document lists acreage per crop.)
The project must be centrally planned. We'll need to significantly expand our distribution systems. Although we intend to produce as much of our own food as possible, we should also investigate the possibility of exporting some products. We'll also need to develop a marketing system.
We'll need to invest a major effort in training the new farmers. Once we're already doing that, they need also to be taught the values of the Histadrut (the main trade union), and they need to be connected to it.
By and large, the plan was successfully executed. The rate of immigration turned out a bit slower than the author of the report expected, but not significantly so. The fact that the folks in the prime minister's office were unfazed by the dimensions of the challenge may have had something to do with it.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Who Needs a Constitution?
Israel, famously, has no constitution. Fact. The reason, according to general opinion, is that back in 1948, the religious parties didn't want one, because it might conflict with the Bible, so the secular politicians humored them at the time, and what started as a temporary act of politics became a permanent condition.
Here's the transcript of the cabinet meeting of December 13, 1949 (not 1948) where the issue was discussed at length, and the decision was made. (And note that it's part of our Declaration of Independence project.) Listening in on the discussion contains some surprises: yes, the Minister of Justice, Pinchas Rosenne, was in favor of enacting a constitution. And yes, the Attorney General, Yaacov Shimshon Shapira, agreed with him. And yes, one of their main considerations was the need to protect the rights of individuals. And yes, the religious representatives were skeptical, though not because they felt the Bible could serve as a rule book for the particularities of life in modern Israel, a claim they didn't make. And yes, many of the discussants felt that enacting a constitution in the fractured Israeli political climate would be divisive and challenging.
But that wasn't the dynamic that foiled the intention to have a constitution.
The reason the cabinet decided not to work towards creating a constitution was David Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion had no interest in there being a constitution, and so he hijacked the discussion in its fourth minute (at the latest), and by the time he stopped talking the issue was dead, even though the conversation went on for another hour or more; then, when at the last moment Rosenne tried to salvage his position by suggesting the government tell the Knesset it would set up a committee, Ben Gurion shot that down, too.
The reason for Ben Gurion's strident position? "There's no time." Actually, he offered three reasons, though he said it was two, but only one was really important. The first of the three and the one he didn't count was that he didn't see any reason for having a constitution. Why should some laws be stronger than others? And why think that today's legislators are any wiser than those 300 years hence? (He probably had a low opinion of any number of the ones of his day, but that's just speculation.) There need to be good laws, yes; and the United States needed a Constitution to stitch together all the colonies, but Israel has other challenges. The second reason, and the first he admitted to, was that a session of the Knesset dedicated to formulating a constitution would be given over to posturing and grandstanding - he didn't single out any particular party or group as the main potential culprit.
The real reason he gave, at great length, was that there were vastly more important things to do. So he gave a long speech about bringing in 3-400,000 additional immigrants and making a place for them; about settling the Negev and using its resources; about building ports and railways, towns and highways; and also all the regular, mundane laws needed to run a country. "The coming few years are the most important in our history. If anyone thinks that declaring independence or winning the war (of 1947-1949) were what was needed to found the state, they're wrong. The work is all ahead of us."
On the edge of the discussion, there was a humourous little exchange between Ben Gurion and Golda Meir, who basically accepted his argumentation, but nevertheless said that in principle she was in favor of having a constitution. "That's because you're American," Ben Gurion shot at her. "Yes, that may be," she responded.
Here's the transcript of the cabinet meeting of December 13, 1949 (not 1948) where the issue was discussed at length, and the decision was made. (And note that it's part of our Declaration of Independence project.) Listening in on the discussion contains some surprises: yes, the Minister of Justice, Pinchas Rosenne, was in favor of enacting a constitution. And yes, the Attorney General, Yaacov Shimshon Shapira, agreed with him. And yes, one of their main considerations was the need to protect the rights of individuals. And yes, the religious representatives were skeptical, though not because they felt the Bible could serve as a rule book for the particularities of life in modern Israel, a claim they didn't make. And yes, many of the discussants felt that enacting a constitution in the fractured Israeli political climate would be divisive and challenging.
But that wasn't the dynamic that foiled the intention to have a constitution.
The reason the cabinet decided not to work towards creating a constitution was David Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion had no interest in there being a constitution, and so he hijacked the discussion in its fourth minute (at the latest), and by the time he stopped talking the issue was dead, even though the conversation went on for another hour or more; then, when at the last moment Rosenne tried to salvage his position by suggesting the government tell the Knesset it would set up a committee, Ben Gurion shot that down, too.
The reason for Ben Gurion's strident position? "There's no time." Actually, he offered three reasons, though he said it was two, but only one was really important. The first of the three and the one he didn't count was that he didn't see any reason for having a constitution. Why should some laws be stronger than others? And why think that today's legislators are any wiser than those 300 years hence? (He probably had a low opinion of any number of the ones of his day, but that's just speculation.) There need to be good laws, yes; and the United States needed a Constitution to stitch together all the colonies, but Israel has other challenges. The second reason, and the first he admitted to, was that a session of the Knesset dedicated to formulating a constitution would be given over to posturing and grandstanding - he didn't single out any particular party or group as the main potential culprit.
The real reason he gave, at great length, was that there were vastly more important things to do. So he gave a long speech about bringing in 3-400,000 additional immigrants and making a place for them; about settling the Negev and using its resources; about building ports and railways, towns and highways; and also all the regular, mundane laws needed to run a country. "The coming few years are the most important in our history. If anyone thinks that declaring independence or winning the war (of 1947-1949) were what was needed to found the state, they're wrong. The work is all ahead of us."
On the edge of the discussion, there was a humourous little exchange between Ben Gurion and Golda Meir, who basically accepted his argumentation, but nevertheless said that in principle she was in favor of having a constitution. "That's because you're American," Ben Gurion shot at her. "Yes, that may be," she responded.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Immigrants to Israel, 1948-1952
File ג-3101/12 contains hundreds of pages of letters, reports and statistics about immigration to Israel between May 15, 1948 and the end of December 1952, as filed by someone in David Ben Gurion's office. Our previous post, about the tragic chaos in the immigrant camps, comes from this file; since it has lots of interesting things in it, we'll return to it in a future post or three. Now, however, we'd like to present the last document in the file, a list which was apparently drawn up in July 1953, summing up the statistics of the immigration.
Bear in mind that in May 1948 when Israel became independent, there were some 600,000 Jews in the country. By the time the battles subsided, towards the end of that year, 110,000 immigrants had arrived, 6,000 Jews had been killed in the war, and the stabilizing borders contained 100,000 Arabs or perhaps a bit more. 800-850,000 people all in all.
By the end of 1952, 738,891 immigrants had arrived (this includes the 110,000 who arrived in the second half of 1948). Of course, the immigration didn't end in December 1952, but that's beyond the scope of our file.
Muslim countries:
Turkey 35,025
Syria and Lebanon 34,608
Iraq 124,226
Yemen and Aden 48,375
Other Asian countries 7,579
Tunesia, Marroco, Algeria 52,584
Lybia 32,129
Egypt 17,114
Total Muslim countries: 377,251 of 889,700
Communist satelite states:
Poland 106,751
Romania 121,537
Bulgaria 37,703
Czechoslovakia 18,815
Hungary 14,519
Yugoslavia 7,757
Total Comunist states: 307,082 of 729,000
Western states:
South Africa 538
Other Africa 576
Germany & Austria 11,013
Other Europe 19,605
Latin America 2,025
Total Western states: 33,706 of 1,746,230
USA & Canada 1,809 of 5,200,000
Unidentified 18,989
Grand total 738,891 of 8,564,930
The USSR is not on the list.
Bear in mind that in May 1948 when Israel became independent, there were some 600,000 Jews in the country. By the time the battles subsided, towards the end of that year, 110,000 immigrants had arrived, 6,000 Jews had been killed in the war, and the stabilizing borders contained 100,000 Arabs or perhaps a bit more. 800-850,000 people all in all.
By the end of 1952, 738,891 immigrants had arrived (this includes the 110,000 who arrived in the second half of 1948). Of course, the immigration didn't end in December 1952, but that's beyond the scope of our file.
Muslim countries:
Turkey 35,025
Syria and Lebanon 34,608
Iraq 124,226
Yemen and Aden 48,375
Other Asian countries 7,579
Tunesia, Marroco, Algeria 52,584
Lybia 32,129
Egypt 17,114
Total Muslim countries: 377,251 of 889,700
Communist satelite states:
Poland 106,751
Romania 121,537
Bulgaria 37,703
Czechoslovakia 18,815
Hungary 14,519
Yugoslavia 7,757
Total Comunist states: 307,082 of 729,000
Western states:
South Africa 538
Other Africa 576
Germany & Austria 11,013
Other Europe 19,605
Latin America 2,025
Total Western states: 33,706 of 1,746,230
USA & Canada 1,809 of 5,200,000
Unidentified 18,989
Grand total 738,891 of 8,564,930
The USSR is not on the list.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
The Lost Child of Beit Lid
In the chaotic first years of Israel's existence, many hundreds of children went missing -- at least 800, perhaps more than a thousand. These children were younger than three, and their families were new immigrants living in tent camps (ma'abarot) where they were temporarily parked upon arrival. The children were sent to hospitals and never came back. When their bewildered and frantic parents went looking for them, they were told their children had died and been buried. In some cases, letters from the military arrived in the late 1960s, requiring the teenagers be screened for service. By then the parents were no longer bewildered and disoriented refugees, and when they realized there were others like them, they demanded an investigation. Since then, there have been four separate public investigations. Since most (but by no means all) of the children were from Yemenite families, the issue is know in Israel as The Case of the Yemenite Children.
The various investigations have shown that indeed, most of the missing children really did die at the time - but not all of them have ever been accounted for. Some people continue to believe that there was a conspiracy to remove children from large immigrant families and to hand them over to wealthy childless Ashkenazi families. Also, keep in mind this earlier post, which told how many Yemenite Jews had never encountered a physician, which partially explains some of the context.
One of the documents we published as part of our Declaration of Independence collection deals with one of these cases. (ג-3013/12)
On November 3, 1950, Yehezkel Sahar, the Chief of Police, wrote to Minister of Health Moshe Shapira. A few months earlier, there had been a report in the media about an infant who had gone missing in one of the camps. Sahar assured Shapira that he put his best investigator on the case, and here's the result: a three-page detailed report written by S. Sofer.
We think the report undermines the conspiracy theory, but it does demonstrate a frightening degree of callousness in the chaos:
The various investigations have shown that indeed, most of the missing children really did die at the time - but not all of them have ever been accounted for. Some people continue to believe that there was a conspiracy to remove children from large immigrant families and to hand them over to wealthy childless Ashkenazi families. Also, keep in mind this earlier post, which told how many Yemenite Jews had never encountered a physician, which partially explains some of the context.
One of the documents we published as part of our Declaration of Independence collection deals with one of these cases. (ג-3013/12)
On November 3, 1950, Yehezkel Sahar, the Chief of Police, wrote to Minister of Health Moshe Shapira. A few months earlier, there had been a report in the media about an infant who had gone missing in one of the camps. Sahar assured Shapira that he put his best investigator on the case, and here's the result: a three-page detailed report written by S. Sofer.
We think the report undermines the conspiracy theory, but it does demonstrate a frightening degree of callousness in the chaos:
February 29, 1950: The story appeared in Davar.At the ISA, we asked ourselves if we have any documentation about the child at a later stage of life. Since his name was common, however (we've withheld it in the publication), that wasn't possible -- and anyway, if we assume that he didn't starve in the Ein Shemer camp but was probably picked up by some other family, there's no way to know what his name was. If he's still alive he must be 64 years old. If.
March 17, 1950: A social worker from the Beit Lid camp confirmed that the 7-month-old child was transferred from there to the hospital on Dec 21, 1949. Having been cured, he was sent mistakenly to a different camp, Ein Shemer. At Ein Shemer they have his discharge paper from January 8, 1950 -- but they don't have him. Nor can they explain how they have his discharge form.
A doctor at the hospital confirms that the child was brought from Beit Lid on December 21. He was sent back on January 8 -- to Ein Shemer. She doesn't know who the ambulance driver was.
The parents reported that their baby son was sent to the hospital but not returned, and when they asked they were told he was sent to Ein Shemer. (Oddly, the dates in their recounting are a bit later, in February.)
A doctor at Ein Shemer fond no record of a child by this name, but confirmed that on January 8, an unnamed child was brought from the hospital.
A registrar at the hospital recorded all patients. But when they're sent back, it's with an ambulance service from Ramat Gan.
A doctor at the hospital remembers discharging the child and sending him to Ein Shemer.
The ambulance driver has a record for children transferred to Ein Shemer on January 8, one with this name. There is a procedure for handing over children, and he acted accordingly.
A doctor at Ein Shemer said that they refuse to accept children whom they didn't send. Sometimes, he says, drivers leave children and quickly depart so as not to be stuck with them.
A police sergeant found no records at Ein Shemer. He brought the mother to the children's home but she didn't identify her son. On April 7, he returned to Ein Shemer and heard from an administrator that there's lots of confusion in their records.
Officer Sofer completed his report with the comment that it might be possible to investigate further but he didn't see how this would help find the child. He recommended that someone look into the matter and determine who is responsible for the lax procedures. He complimented the original social worker who had invested time and her own money in traveling back and forth in her efforts to investigate.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Killing Meir Tobianski
Running a country necessitates difficult decisions. Even in peaceful countries, someone has to make allocations of funds which impact the lives of citizens. In countries at war, leaders must make direct decisions about life and death. Setting up a country, and especially in the midst of war, calls for hard men (and women) who are capable of very hard decisions. Founders of nations will often turn out not to have been the kind of person you'd invite over for tea.
Yet there are degres of hardness. Today's document deals with a small group of hard men who were present at the founding of Israel, indeed, played significant roles in its early years, yet who were too hard, too ruthless, and who crossed lines which shouldn't have been crossed. These were Issar Beeri, Avraham Kraemer (Kidron), Binyamin Gibli, and David Karon. Together, the four of them killed Meir Tobianski on June 30, 1948, as told in today's chilling document.
Meir Tobianski was born in Kovna (now Kaunas) in 1904, and came to Mandatory Palestine in 1925. For most of his adult life, he was affiliated with the Hagana, mostly concurrently with civilian jobs. In 1947, he began working as an engineer in the Jerusalem electricity company. Once the war started he commanded various bases in the Jerusalem area. On June 29, he and his troops swore allegience to the just-created IDF. The next day he traveled down to Tel Aviv on errands.
While in Tel Aviv he was accosted by some officers who summoned him to an urgent meeting. They took him to a building up the road back to Jerusalem and interrogated him, accusing him of transfering sensitive information to the enemy. He admitted giving some information to British colleagues in the electricity company. At this stage, his interrogators declared themselves a military court, sentenced him to death, and had him shot. All on the same day. His body was dumped in a nearby hole. His wife was told his fate only a few days later.
The document drawn up after the event described who Tobianski was, what he admitted, who was on the court, the verdict, the report of execution, and the signatures of the judges, if judges they were, all on one page.
Issar Beeri was tried and discharged from the IDF in February 1949, for the killing of an Arab Israeli called Ali Kassem who had been a Haganah informer suspected of being a double agent. When, a few months later, the newly appointed Attorney General, Yaacov Shimshon Shapira, insisted he be tried for the unlawful killing of Tobianski, there was some resistance since he had already been discharged. Shapira insisted, in an important case demonstrating the supremacy of the rule of law, and Beeri was convicted. He was sentenced to one day in jail but pardoned that same evening by the president. In 1950, he was called to testify in the trial of Paul Kollek (Teddy Kollek's brother) in the case of yet another unlawful wartime killing, of IZL activist Yedidia Segal in 1948. In spite of his crucial achievements in the creation of a military intelligence branch duirng the War of Independance, his violence seems to have ended his career. He died in 1958, age 57.
Beeri's three subordinate officers, who had served as the judges and signed the document, fared better. They were not tried, as it was accepted they had been following Beeri's orders, had assumed they had the authority, and had been convinced of Tobianski's treason.
Avraham Kraemer changed his name to Kidron, and eventually rose to become the General Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. David Karon worked for the Mossad, spending years in Teheran. Binyamin Gibli remained in the IDF and rose to become a Colonel in an army which at the time had only two higher ranks; among other positions he was the head of Military Intelligence in the 1950s, where he was probably involved in the 1954 attempt to provoke American and British anger at Egypt by attacking their installations there.
Meir Tobianski was entirely exonerated in 1949. Here is his page on the official website of fallen IDF soldiers. He is buried in the military cemetary on Mount Herzlin Jerusalem.
Yet there are degres of hardness. Today's document deals with a small group of hard men who were present at the founding of Israel, indeed, played significant roles in its early years, yet who were too hard, too ruthless, and who crossed lines which shouldn't have been crossed. These were Issar Beeri, Avraham Kraemer (Kidron), Binyamin Gibli, and David Karon. Together, the four of them killed Meir Tobianski on June 30, 1948, as told in today's chilling document.
Meir Tobianski was born in Kovna (now Kaunas) in 1904, and came to Mandatory Palestine in 1925. For most of his adult life, he was affiliated with the Hagana, mostly concurrently with civilian jobs. In 1947, he began working as an engineer in the Jerusalem electricity company. Once the war started he commanded various bases in the Jerusalem area. On June 29, he and his troops swore allegience to the just-created IDF. The next day he traveled down to Tel Aviv on errands.
While in Tel Aviv he was accosted by some officers who summoned him to an urgent meeting. They took him to a building up the road back to Jerusalem and interrogated him, accusing him of transfering sensitive information to the enemy. He admitted giving some information to British colleagues in the electricity company. At this stage, his interrogators declared themselves a military court, sentenced him to death, and had him shot. All on the same day. His body was dumped in a nearby hole. His wife was told his fate only a few days later.
The document drawn up after the event described who Tobianski was, what he admitted, who was on the court, the verdict, the report of execution, and the signatures of the judges, if judges they were, all on one page.
Issar Beeri was tried and discharged from the IDF in February 1949, for the killing of an Arab Israeli called Ali Kassem who had been a Haganah informer suspected of being a double agent. When, a few months later, the newly appointed Attorney General, Yaacov Shimshon Shapira, insisted he be tried for the unlawful killing of Tobianski, there was some resistance since he had already been discharged. Shapira insisted, in an important case demonstrating the supremacy of the rule of law, and Beeri was convicted. He was sentenced to one day in jail but pardoned that same evening by the president. In 1950, he was called to testify in the trial of Paul Kollek (Teddy Kollek's brother) in the case of yet another unlawful wartime killing, of IZL activist Yedidia Segal in 1948. In spite of his crucial achievements in the creation of a military intelligence branch duirng the War of Independance, his violence seems to have ended his career. He died in 1958, age 57.
Beeri's three subordinate officers, who had served as the judges and signed the document, fared better. They were not tried, as it was accepted they had been following Beeri's orders, had assumed they had the authority, and had been convinced of Tobianski's treason.
Avraham Kraemer changed his name to Kidron, and eventually rose to become the General Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. David Karon worked for the Mossad, spending years in Teheran. Binyamin Gibli remained in the IDF and rose to become a Colonel in an army which at the time had only two higher ranks; among other positions he was the head of Military Intelligence in the 1950s, where he was probably involved in the 1954 attempt to provoke American and British anger at Egypt by attacking their installations there.
Meir Tobianski was entirely exonerated in 1949. Here is his page on the official website of fallen IDF soldiers. He is buried in the military cemetary on Mount Herzlin Jerusalem.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
We Need to Build a City by Next Week
A few months ago, we broached the subject of the harsh austerity measureslaunched by the Israeli government in early 1949 to cope with the enormous economic challenges of the day (and achieve some political goals along the way). The overall title of these measures was "Tsena" (Austerity), though the most striking and memorable part was the rationing.
Today's post will look at a different aspect of the policy: the urgent need to create housing for hundreds of thousands of homeless immigrants before the begining of the rain season. Fortunately for the immigrants and for the country, the very thick layer of bureaucracy which exists in Israel today had not yet had time to accumulate, and thus it was possible for some fellow with authority to say "go do it" and they went and did it. If they did it well or not, flawlessly or not, is a different question, but at least they went and did it.
We stay away from contemporary politics on this blog, but think of the number of times you hear about a construction project in the settlements getting authorized, then authorized again, and again being authorized - and you'll begin to see what I mean. Acquiring permission to construct takes literally years. Now compare thatwith this:
On May 13, 1949, the boss of the Central Housing and Building Corporation sent a letter to Gershon Zack in the Prime Minister's Office:
Today's post will look at a different aspect of the policy: the urgent need to create housing for hundreds of thousands of homeless immigrants before the begining of the rain season. Fortunately for the immigrants and for the country, the very thick layer of bureaucracy which exists in Israel today had not yet had time to accumulate, and thus it was possible for some fellow with authority to say "go do it" and they went and did it. If they did it well or not, flawlessly or not, is a different question, but at least they went and did it.
We stay away from contemporary politics on this blog, but think of the number of times you hear about a construction project in the settlements getting authorized, then authorized again, and again being authorized - and you'll begin to see what I mean. Acquiring permission to construct takes literally years. Now compare thatwith this:
On May 13, 1949, the boss of the Central Housing and Building Corporation sent a letter to Gershon Zack in the Prime Minister's Office:
1. We're willing to build 10,000 housing units immediately as discussed.
2. Many of the construction workers will be new immigrants.
3. The government will procure the import licenses needed.[Who pays whom how much, and when]
8. We're willing to start working on the first 1,000 units immediately.
9. Following Mr. Zack's order we started building one 2-room unit immediately, it will be ready next week.
We wait your authorization...On the 19th of May, Prime Minster Ben Gurion himself visited the construction site and was shown that first unit. On the 23rd, the next letter reached Zack, summarizing the visit and adding that
1. We're prepared to construct 10,000 units as discussed.
2. We must receive the neccessary land plots this week. If so, we'll be completing 150 units each day by the end of June.
3. We'll need 400 construction workers for each 150 units.What happened next? Zack's file (ג-333/63) doesn't quite say, but in June he got a note from the Central Housing and Building Corporation with an urgent request:
Please tell the inspector for transport Mr. Lubersky he's got to allow us to import an automobile for our subcontractor.Then, on July 28, 1949, Major Moshe Refaeli of the Engineers' Corps wrote to the prime minister. First, he intruduced himself: he was on loan from the military to the Central Housing and Building Corporation as its acting execuutive. He had recently participated in a meeting between Ben Gurion and some engineering officers, in which the PM had told with satisfaction of the progress of public construction projects.
I am convinced of your sincerity, Prime Minister, but based on what I'm seeing, Sir, you may not be hearing the full story.
Two months ago, we were asked to construct 10,000 housing units. We have the technical know-how. We were told the budget was confirmed on June 1st. We have ample laborers, as any visit to the immigrants' camps will show. Yet we haven't done more than a third of the job.
We only have some 100 days left until the rainy season, yet we're not working on schedule. There seem to be a number of reasons for this.
1. The project is being run by a committee of five people, each of whom has other tasks, and none of whom regards himself as responsible.
2. Not all the land has been allocated, and when it is there are often fights with local municipal authorities about jurisdictions, water supply and other matters.Though, truth be told, a third of a miracle is still not bad. In 2012, it would take three years merely to acquire the permits.
We're doing our utmost, but it's important that you know we're not reaching the targets we've been set.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
What's a Doctor? On the Travails of Yemen's Jews
Over at our Hebrew-language blog we've put up a post about Operation Magic Carpet in which almost 50,000 Yemenite Jews were brought to Israel in 1949 and 1950. At the time the operation was not publicly known, but afterwards it became the stuff of legend: the brand-new state of Israel rescuing an ancient but backward community and bringing almost all its members to the renewed homeland. (Here's an example.) More recently historians have been looking with a critical eye at the policies and actions of the state in its early years, and have found it to have been somewhat different than the founding myths. Here's a recent description of Esther Meir-Glitzenstein's research on the operation, which shows that there was a surfeit of chaos, mismanagement and some hard-heartedness, with the result that hundreds of Yemenite Jews if not more perished along the way or at the collection camp at Aden.
Of course, the two narratives don't have to contradict each other. It's possible that large numbers of Yemenite Jews wanted to reach Israel, for multiple reasons, and that the complicated task of extricating them and bringing them to Israel was woefully mismanaged. Woeful mismanagement is, sadly, a very common condition.
Past and future researchers wishing to work out additional perspectives of the question will find lots of relevant documentation here at the ISA. This blog won't try to argue either case, preferring to present a single document created by someone who didn't know about the historical interpretations because he was busy being there at the time: The report of Dr. Moschytz, a physician sent to Aden in the second half of October 1949 by the ministry of immigration:
Of course, the two narratives don't have to contradict each other. It's possible that large numbers of Yemenite Jews wanted to reach Israel, for multiple reasons, and that the complicated task of extricating them and bringing them to Israel was woefully mismanaged. Woeful mismanagement is, sadly, a very common condition.
Past and future researchers wishing to work out additional perspectives of the question will find lots of relevant documentation here at the ISA. This blog won't try to argue either case, preferring to present a single document created by someone who didn't know about the historical interpretations because he was busy being there at the time: The report of Dr. Moschytz, a physician sent to Aden in the second half of October 1949 by the ministry of immigration:
First stage: the escape from Yemen is not coordinated at all, prior to the arrival of the people at the border of Aden. I'm not aware of anyone directing this escape. In any case, we heard rumours of an additional 15-18,000 people on their way to the border, and we have no idea if they're rich or poor, if healthy or ill. The last time that Hashed [the transit camp in Aden] reached a capacity of 13,000, the border was sealed for a month, and some 4,500 people accumulated beyond the border. They all contracted malaria while waiting; many were left totally bereft. The JDC sent medicine, but many of them refused to take it. At one point the JDC supplies were sufficient but at a second place it wasn't, and some of the people died of hunger.
Second stage: En route many of the locals assist the immigrants for high fees, so that they arrive penniless. Their physical condition is awful, and the children suffer the most. It's no surprise that the mortality rate is high, mostly from sickness but in some cases from hunger.
Third stage: the camp gets a warning of a few hours that new people are about to arrive. Before the camp learned how to deal with them, desperately ill people simply died where they were put, because they had never seen a doctor before, and the medical staff didn't know to seek them out. Now they're brought to the hospital and given medications against tropical fever. Many of those who arrived at death's door leave the hospital as soon as their fever goes down, falsely believing they've been cured and desperate not to miss the plane [to Israel]. The hospital staff had to build a fence around the hospital to prevent the patients from escaping in this manner...
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Elections!
No, not the upcoming elections of January 22nd 2013: we're an archive. So it's the first elections in Israeli history, which took place in 1949, even as the War of Independence wasn't quite over and large numbers of Jews were still on their way to the new State of Israel. Here's a newsreel (in English) from those days, as made by the United Israel Appeal - which was, of course, a fundraising organization, and so can be excused the spot of hyperbole:
(file number קב-393.1)
Actually, hyperbole or not, most countries newly set up in the late 1940s (and 1950s, and 1960s) needed decades before they grew into real functioning democracies. So perhaps the self satisfaction wasn't entirely unwarranted.
(file number קב-393.1)
Actually, hyperbole or not, most countries newly set up in the late 1940s (and 1950s, and 1960s) needed decades before they grew into real functioning democracies. So perhaps the self satisfaction wasn't entirely unwarranted.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
1949: Promoting Large Families, Jewish and Arab
63 years ago today, on July 19th 1949, Israel's cabinet made two important decisions. The first was to bring the remains of Theodor Herzl from his grave in Vienna to a final resting place in Jerusalem. The second was to encourage families to have more children by granting a sum of 100 lirot to any family with 10 living children.
To partake in this pro-natal program, eligible families would fill out a form listing their children. Here's the form of a family originally from Aden (in Yemen) with 12 children, ages 6 to 31, three of them already married. Another registered family had 11 children, seven of whom had been born in Baghdad, and the youngest four in Haifa. And here's another family, all born in Jerusalem, later living mostly in Petach Tikva, with all 11 children married except for the youngest (who was widowed at the age of 26). We're not certain this already well-established family was the sort the government had in mind.
The initial estimation of the program's accountants was that there would be about 100 eligible families: they had already identified 40 families, expected another 30 to come forward immediately, and projected that by the end of the year another 30 eligible families would have been found. Beyond that estimate, there was the question of Israel's Arabs. Their families too would be eligible, but the official in Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's office did not have any idea how many of them there were; should their number be larger than expected, he reserved the right to come back for additional funding. In this letter, penned by someone in the Prime Minster's secretariat to the military governor of Jaffa, the author explains how Arab women should fill out the form, in Hebrew if possible, and while presenting the ID cards of their children.
The program provoked a range of reactions. Some were strongly in favor, others more critical. This fellow thought the policy was a wonderful idea, but wondered if there was a way to augment it: what Israel really needed, he argued, was for its wealthier families to have ten children because this would make for larger numbers of well-off citizens and all the concommittant advantages. The problem, of course, was that wealthy people wouldn't be influenced by a mere 100 lirot incentive. The only thing that might entice them, suggests the respondent, is a total tax exemption.
The policy remained in place until the enactment of Israel's social security child support policy in 1959.
To partake in this pro-natal program, eligible families would fill out a form listing their children. Here's the form of a family originally from Aden (in Yemen) with 12 children, ages 6 to 31, three of them already married. Another registered family had 11 children, seven of whom had been born in Baghdad, and the youngest four in Haifa. And here's another family, all born in Jerusalem, later living mostly in Petach Tikva, with all 11 children married except for the youngest (who was widowed at the age of 26). We're not certain this already well-established family was the sort the government had in mind.
The initial estimation of the program's accountants was that there would be about 100 eligible families: they had already identified 40 families, expected another 30 to come forward immediately, and projected that by the end of the year another 30 eligible families would have been found. Beyond that estimate, there was the question of Israel's Arabs. Their families too would be eligible, but the official in Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's office did not have any idea how many of them there were; should their number be larger than expected, he reserved the right to come back for additional funding. In this letter, penned by someone in the Prime Minster's secretariat to the military governor of Jaffa, the author explains how Arab women should fill out the form, in Hebrew if possible, and while presenting the ID cards of their children.
The program provoked a range of reactions. Some were strongly in favor, others more critical. This fellow thought the policy was a wonderful idea, but wondered if there was a way to augment it: what Israel really needed, he argued, was for its wealthier families to have ten children because this would make for larger numbers of well-off citizens and all the concommittant advantages. The problem, of course, was that wealthy people wouldn't be influenced by a mere 100 lirot incentive. The only thing that might entice them, suggests the respondent, is a total tax exemption.
The policy remained in place until the enactment of Israel's social security child support policy in 1959.
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