From: ScotFOP <ScotFOP-AT-aol.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 19:30:26 EST
Subject: M-NEWS: ScotFOP #3


Information Bulletin
Countdown to Catastrophe
Scottish Friends of Palestine 8th January 1998

Information concerning sources can be obtained from Scottish Friends of
Palestine 

``Is it not now the time to be rid of them? Why continue to keep in our midst
these thorns at a time when they pose a danger to us?'' Diary entry of Yosef
Weitz of the Jewish National Fund

Yosef Weitz was responsible for ``local evictions and expulsion operations''
against Palestinians and for allocating land to Jewish colonial settlements.
>From January to March 1948 Weitz was responsible for expelling the local
Palestinian population from Ramot-Menashe, Beit Shean Valley and Western
Galilee.

As director of the Jewish National Fund, Weitz served on the Population
Transfer Committee of the Jewish Agency. In a report he wrote that the
`transfer' of the Arab population from Jewish areas

``does not serve only one aim - to diminish the Arab population. It also serves
a second purpose by no means less important, which is to evacuate the land now
cultivated by Arabs and thus release it for Jewish settlement.''

Dr. Yacov Thon, who served on the same Committee and was, ironically, a
founding member of an `ultra-liberal' group which sought reconciliation and
accommodation with the Arabs revealed his intentions at secret committee
meetings

``Without transferring the Arab peasants to neighbouring lands, we will not be
able to bring into our future state a large new population. In short without
transfer there can be no Jewish immigration.''

These sentiments were shared by Irgun leader and Israeli prime-minister to-be,
Menachem Begin

``My greatest worry in those months was that the Arabs might accept the United
Nations plan. Then we would have the ultimate tragedy, a Jewish state so small
that it could not absorb all the Jews of the world''.

As a terrorist leader Begin was well placed to ensure that the Palestinian
Arab would never reach agreement with the Zionists. He was also well placed to
facilitate their `transfer' elsewhere.

Jan 9 1948
A group of Zionists from Yavne attacked `Wadi Sukrayr' (Suqrir) [pop. 390] to
the north of Gaza. A counter-attack was launched by the police. 8 Arabs and 12
Haganah scouts were reported killed. A Haganah intelligence report, dated 2
days later, recommended that ``the village should be destroyed completely and
some males from the village should be murdered.''. This was the first
operational proposal by the Haganah to demolish and level a village.

The first attack on an isolated Zionist settlement took place at Kefar Szold,
a kibbutz in the north of Palestine, by a unit of the Arab Liberation Army
(ALA) from Syria.

3 Zionist settlements were attacked by about 600 fighters from the ALA.
British troops and aircraft dispersed the attackers.

Jan 11
Zionist forces demolished a bridge over the River Jordan, a transit route from
Syria to Palestine. At a meeting with Ben Gurion, Arab affairs adviser, Ezra
Danin, while commenting on the effectiveness of the Arab forces in controlling
the main roads and the use of retaliation against local villages to combat
this, advised that  ``our friends among the Arabs inform us that a severe blow,
with a high rate of casualties to the Arabs would increase Arab fear and would
render external Arab intervention ineffective.'' Ten days earlier Gad Machnes
had advised Ben Gurion along the same lines ``we need a cruel and brutal
retaliating policy, we have to be accurate in time, place and number of dead.
If we know that a family is guilty, we should be merciless and kill the women
and the children as well, otherwise the reaction is useless. While the forces
are in action, there is no room for checking who is guilty and who is not.''

While Elias Sasson, director of the Arab Division of the Jewish Agency's
Political Department observed of the main towns and the rural hinterland
``Hunger, high prices, and poverty are rampant in a frightening degree. There
is fear and terror everywhere. The flight is painful. from house to house,
from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, from city to city, from village to
village, and from Palestine to the neighbouring countries.''

The settlement of Kfar Uriah, on the Jerusalem - Jaffa railway was attacked by
Arab forces. The British forces drove off the attackers. 

The FBI uncovered a fund of =A3194 000 for purchase of explosives in the USA in
support of the Zionist cause.

Jan 12
3 Palestinian Arabs killed and 7 British soldiers wounded in a village outside
Jerusalem while trying to uncover snipers.

In an armed robbery attributed to the Stern Gang, a branch of Barclays Bank
was raided.

Jan 13
The body of a Pole, believed to have been `executed' by a Zionist firing squad
was found in Tel Aviv.

Haganah `black squads'(bomb squads) attacked the Sheikh Jarrah Arab quarter on
the outskirts of Jerusalem, gaining control of the northern approaches to the
city. In the Kidron area they torched or blew up 25 Arab houses. In this
action, one of the heaviest attacks to date, a mortar bombardment rained down
on the densely built houses with road approaches being mined to hinder Arab
reinforcements. Zionist forces positioned in Nahalat Itzhak, an adjacent
Jewish community, swept the area with machine gun fire. 

To the south of the city, Arab forces besieged the Jewish colony of Kfar
Etzion.

A Jewish bus terminus in Haifa was bombed. The deaths of 6 Jews and 2 British
was reported.

A number of Arab attacks on Jewish settlements were reported. In northern
Palestine, in the Hulah area, British troops came to the rescue of the
settlers. One settler was killed near Haifa. A Jewish convoy was ambushed
between Jerusalem and Hebron with two Jewish fatalities. Once again, British
troops gave assistance to the Zionists.

On the outskirts of Haifa one Jewish land labourer was killed. Two bodies were
found close to Palestinian villages, one Jewish, one unidentified. 

In Jaffa, 4 Palestinian Arabs, including a 4 year old girl, were shot dead
with 7 wounded. 

4 settlements north of Hebron were attacked by Arab raiders not, it was
reported, as a result of any pre-planned action. Apparently it was led by a
Palestinian who had escaped from Acre prison when it had earlier been attacked
by Zionist forces.

A number of street murders took place in Jerusalem with Jews, and one British
officer with a Jewish wife, being the victims.  Palestinians planted a bomb in
a post office van resulting in the death of 6 Jews.

The London Times posed the $64 000 question:

``Are there any prospects of settlement in Palestine after Britain's
abandonment of the mandate and subsequent withdrawal?''

A Czech arms deal, worth over $12 million, was concluded with the Haganah.
Arms purchased included 24 500 rifles, 5 000 light machine guns, 200 medium
machine guns, 54 million rounds of ammunition and 25 Messerschmitts.