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Of
the 418 Palestinian towns and villages, destroyed or depopulated in
1948 and after, some 48 lay in the Negev area; 3 in the Beersheba
District, and 45 in the Gaza District.
In the Beersheba District, the villages of al-Imara (El Imara), al-Jammama
(Jammameh) and al-Khalasa (El Khalasa) constitutes the doomed
Palestinian villages. But in the Gaza District, among the 45
wiped-out Palestinian villages, the towns and villages of al-Faluja,
Iraq Suwaydan and Iraq al-Manshiyya have entered history for two
reasons: -
The ferocity of the battles which took place between the Egyptian
army and the Israeli invaders, first; and the presence of many
prominent young Egyptian officers, including Major Gamal Abdul
Nasser, later the Egyptian President and the Pan-Arab nationalism’s
hero, who battled the Israeli invaders and resisted the ensuing
siege of Egyptian troops at al-Faluja Pocket; a siege that turned
out to be a case of great embarrassment to Cairo and other Arab
capitals.
Many Jewish settlements and factories were to be built after 1948 by
the newcomers to commemorate these battles at which Nasser and his
compatriots had taken part.
Within hindsight, the Israeli press began reporting, in the wake of
the second uprising against occupation, on the dwindling fortunes of
the Negev’s colonies and industrial establishments, which were built
in the aftermath of the 1948 war. For example, Ha’aretz reported
last year a telling story about the laying off of hundreds of
workers from a factory of clothes, which was built in the early
1950s to commemorate the “ defeat of Nasser’s army”, in the words of
Pinhas Saphir, then Israel’s minister of industry. Saphir drove a
Chilean millionaire in the early hours of a summer day in 1950s to a
remote spot in the Negev in an attempt to fool the latter that he
was driving him to a suburb of Tel Aviv. Failing to convince his
interlocutor in the first trip, he drove him to the same destination
again asking him to build the factory there. When the businessman
hesitated to have an industrial establishment be built in the
desert, Saphir ordered him on behalf of Ben-Gurion this time to go
ahead with the project, saying not far from here the Israeli army
had defeated Colonel Nasser’s army and we want to commemorate this
historic event. In fact the collapsing Israeli economy has been
highlighted lately by endless press reports; it became a worry-some
issue in the election of January 28, 03.
Notwithstanding the outcome
of the Negev’s battles of 1948, the going developments in occupied
Palestine in the wake of the Palestinian Intifada against occupation
had its roots in the catastrophe of 1948. In retrospect, it is
worthwhile touring the Negev Triangle of 1948 ahead of the
systematic destruction of 48 Palestinian towns and villages.
When Ben-Gurion ordered in 1948 the Israeli army to break through
the triangle of the Egyptian forces encircling the Negev from three
sides, these forces in Palestine were grouping in three blocs, which
each one had been stationed on one side of the triangle in charge of
certain task: -
Firstly, the western side, paralleling the Mediterranean coast and
extending from ‘Rafah’ and ‘Majdal’ crossing Gaza was manned by the
main bloc of the Egyptian army led by the commander in chief of the
Egyptian forces in Palestine, Major General Mohammad Ahmad El Mawawi
as of the beginning of the operations until October-then removed
from his post leaving it to General Ahmad Fuad Sadeq, who arrived on
20 October to the HQ in El Areesh (behind Rafah).
The force was composed of 11 infantry battalions backed by three
artillery battalions and engineering units, as well as signal and
administrative. In fact it is difficult to make serious valuation of
it, as the most of the formations were incomplete-- some of which
were no more than organizational skeletons, which lacked officers
and soldiers, as well as adequate arms and ammunition and means of
transport.
Secondly, the second –eastern-side of the Egyptian military
triangle, south of Palestine, was within the domain of the
volunteering forces, which had taken part in the war ahead of the
Egyptian Army. It walked from ‘Ouja’ to ‘Aslouj’ to ‘Beersheba’ and
‘Hebron’; its vanguard arrived in the outskirts of Jerusalem. The
volunteers were a military force, but, however, very difficult to
describe with scientific or even descriptive accuracy.
These forces--as indicated by its name-- comprised soldiers (many of
them were Muslim Brothers) who volunteered to fight in Palestine, or
officers, filled with zeal, had been ordered to volunteer. And when
this occurred, it was believed that their force was all what Cairo
had in mind for Palestine, as the entrance of the Egyptian army was
not decided upon yet.
As for the Prime Minister ‘Mahmoud Famy al-Naqrashy’, sending the
volunteers was enough to absolve Egypt from further responsibility
towards Palestine. But he was overwhelmed by a royal decision for
Egypt to enter the war.
However, it turned out that the volunteers had penetrated deep,
reaching the Jerusalem’s outskirts. Notwithstanding the fact that
they did not take part in big battles, their speedy advance gained
them a resounding reputation, especially that their leader was the
highly respectable and inspiring officer, Qaem Maqam “Ahmad Abdul
Aziz”. However, the reputation of this force and the character of it
leader were to face a real danger, because of its speedy advance to
the extent that its logistic lines had extended for 80 km.
Thirdly, the third side of the triangle of the Egyptian forces was
the so- called line of the north Negev; this side in fact was the
wide base of the turned over triangle; it extended from Beit Jibreen,
to transverse the central Negev up to the Majdal.
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