Abdel Nasser in the Palestine war

After 75 years of the Palestine war, the necessity of reviewing appears again, so that the facts can be ascertained with as much documentation as possible, so that we know what exactly happened? Why were we defeated in 1948?

This is a question of the present, not of history. From a political point of view, the entry of the Arab armies into the war in the manner in which it took place represented a certain defeat. Like most of the ruling elites, Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud Fahmy al-Naqrashi did not agree with the military intervention.

The opinion of Haj Amin al-Husseini - the Mufti of Palestine and the first spokesman for its people - was to assign the task of military confrontation to groups of volunteers and support them with weapons and money, provided that the armies remain stationary on the borders, alert and ready.

There was no semi-convergent political vision, nor a strategy that brought together the Arab armies.

In the military view, the defeat was attributed to two men:

The first is the Egyptian Major General Ahmed al-Mawawi, the leader of the Palestine Campaign. After the war, he tried to clear his name, revealing letters he wrote to his commanders protesting the sending of troops without adequate training or necessary weapons.

And the second - the English general John Bagup Gallup, who was entrusted with the general command of the Arab armies, and he was taking his instructions in the course of the war from London!

The young officer, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was barely over thirty years old, arriving by military train to Gaza on June 3, 1948, could not have expected, or crossed his mind, that the experience of the war in Palestine would rule the broad lines of his directions and push him - after the cessation of its battles and return. Cairo - to rebuild the "Free Officers" organization again and form its constituent body, which appeared on the flaming political theaters on July 23, 1952.

Under the glow of the flames in Palestine, the course of his life changed once and for all. This is a fact that cannot be denied in light of what Gamal Abdel Nasser, Chief of Staff of the Sixth Battalion, recorded in his personal diary, which he wrote on a desk with a gas lamp above it during the Palestine War.

The most sincere thing attributed to a man is what he writes in his handwriting, expressing his feelings and observations at the moment of the event, without expecting that anyone will look at what he wrote, even after decades.

The diaries are closer to flashlights that illuminate the atmosphere of the Palestine war and confusion in it. There was no military preparation, strategic planning for combat orders, nor the slightest combat readiness for the Arab armies to enter Palestine.

In his handwriting, he recorded sharp and continuous criticism of a high degree of intensity and anger, for "there is absolutely no reserve from the platoon for the brigade... and there are no wires or any fortifications other than digging."

Before the start of the war, the Jewish Agency was able to mobilize 81,000 fighters, most of whom were officers who gained military experience during the years of World War II, while the combined numbers of the Arab armies were 37,000 officers and soldiers!

The number of aircraft in the possession of the Jewish forces, as it was called at the time, was 78 aircraft at the beginning of the war, while it did not exceed 30 aircraft on the Arab side.

The differences in arms were not hidden, or suddenly caught the decision-makers by surprise. According to what Professor Muhammad Hassanein Heikal reported in “Al-Arush wa al-Jawish,” a two-part reference book that is important in terms of its documentation, as it includes a complete record of Egyptian military telegrams during the war, the facts announce themselves. The telegrams paint a complete picture of the battlefields, its championships and its failures.

Surprisingly, it has not yet been studied with the attention it deserves, scrutiny and comparison with the documents of the other side in the war.

The Journal of War is usually the most complete historical document, for a picture of the battlefield and the political backgrounds connected to it.

“The War Diaries,” its publication was delayed for decades until near the end of the twentieth century, as happened in the written diaries of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Both times he kept his deposits before he decided to publish them, the first time - by his decision to put their documents in the custody of history and researchers.. and the second time - at my insistence so that the full picture becomes clear. And his belief was - as he told me: "Every publication has its time."

The worst thing that has been written about the 1948 war is its defeat attributed to Abdel Nasser! This was a deliberate ignorance of the reasons for political revenge and the consolidation of defeat in the public conscience.

The 6th Battalion, trapped in Fallujah, was not ready to surrender, emphasizing fighting to the last man, according to the official cables.

In his handwriting, he wrote on October 28, 1948: "...we will resist to the last man...". That categorical statement of a young fighter - due to her anger - is almost the real beginning of his whole story, as if it were an early point of enlightenment in a long fictional text.

The Palestine war, with its heroics, sacrifices, and pains, and what it revealed of the dysfunctional conditions in the leadership of the army and the leadership of the country, was the first mover of what happened in Egypt after less than four years, with the overthrow of the entire regime. In agreement with the Gulf