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Not so Holy Land
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| TURMOIL: Palestinian refugees are evacuated from the Port of Haifa |
The state of Israel came into being at midnight on May 14, 1948. A 19-year-old British journalist, Arnold Hadwin, found himself
a witness to a moment of history while doing national service in
Palestine. Sixty years on, these are his memories
IT WAS a brilliant May morning in Haifa in the
shade of Mount Carmel. Palestine had just
ceased to exist, to be replaced by the new state
of Israel. As a young Royal Marine, with the
task of keeping the warring communities
apart through these historic events, it felt curiously
mundane - just another day.
But not for Michaela, one of the Jewish girls,
working as a clerk in the Port Pass offices of 40
Commando Royal Marines. With visible emotion,
she handed me a stamped envelope. It was a firstday
cover.
"It's finally happened," she said.
The six stamps on the envelope bore the word
ISRAEL. It was no longer a metaphysical concept
or part of a prayer ... "next year in Jerusalem". It
was now a land of people, homes and enterprise.
I was a 19-year-old member of the Intelligence
Section of 40 Commando RM, on National Service
in what we used to call the Holy Land. I had been
trained in the arts of war, but now had to learn new
tricks about keeping the peace.
My unit remained in Haifa until the end of June.
We were the last to leave Palestine, witnesses to the
birth pangs of Israel and the bloody aftermath of
this uneasy United Nations compromise. On that
first day of the State of Israel, I was conscious of
the emotion-filled atmosphere, but more
preoccupied with the life-and-death struggle to
come, as five Arab armies mounted their invasion
from north, south and east.
A few weeks earlier I had been sitting outside a
dockside cafe with a Palestinian Arab
acquaintance. George was articulate, a member of
the educated, middle class. He was worried about
what would happen when British troops pulled out,
and pointed to my green beret on the table.
"This - the Yehudi (the Jews)," he said. Running
his fingers along the edge of the table, he went on:
"This - the sea. Within 24 hours of you leaving ..."
He swept the beret off the table with his hand, not
needing to finish the sentence.
He was expressing a belief, common at the time,
that the combined armies of Transjordan, Egypt,
Syria, the Lebanon and Iraq (financially backed by
other oil-rich Arab states) would easily crush Israeli
forces. In theory, they should have done. What
George and the other pundits failed to realise was
that when an Israeli unit lost a battle, it had to
regroup and fight again because there was nowhere
else to go but the sea.
On that first day of Israel's existence, I remember
musing to myself that it would be an extraordinary
state. Even the young women clerks in our
Commando office had a couple of degrees and
spoke several languages. It seemed that no other
country would be able to tap such intellect, such
culture, such sophistication for its top jobs and its
most lowly.
Back in 1948, Israel had many things going for it.
The kibbutznics - the communal settlement
dwellers - were overwhelmingly impressive. They
were dedicated to the land, vigorous, self-reliant,
and proud in the best sense of the word. They were
committed, but not in a bigoted religious way. And
their soldiers had the same virtues.
Many Arabs had already left their homes - some
because they had been told to get out of the way of
the invading armies, many more being brutally
ousted by Jewish terrorists. Fear reigned supreme.
The Royal Marines had arrived in the Holy Land
in January, 1948. A small advance party of 40
Commando disembarked from HMS Cheviot to
secure Haifa Port in case there were to be a fighting
withdrawal at the end of the Mandate.
I could not believe my luck. I had been a cub
reporter on The Northern Echo before being called
up for my National Service. I was now a reporter
with a notebook, pencil and Sten gun.
Our tour of duty in Haifa was a reporter's dream.
There were enough incidents every day - bombings,
shootings, killings - to fill half a dozen newspapers,
and no news editor to say I was wet behind the ears.
It was exciting as a reporter, but as a Royal
Marine caught up in a complex life-and-death
struggle, with the deeply entrenched hatred of the
warring sides ever present, it was often disturbing
and distasteful.
I quickly realised we had not been trained for
peace-keeping and spent the next 30 years trying to
persuade military authorities to re-write the
training manuals. We had to play it by ear.
As the end of the Mandate approached, Jews and
Arabs jockeyed for position, trying to occupy key
buildings, crossroads and vantage points. By April
22, Haganah, the Jewish Defence Army, had
attacked the Suk, the Arab quarter of Haifa, and we
had to evacuate 12,000 refugees across the bay to
Acre, up to the Syrian frontier or on to Beirut.
On one such operation I was on a 15cwt truck at
the rear of a convoy of vehicles heading for the
Syrian border. A lorry carrying about 30 or so
refugees and their belongings broke down opposite
a kibbutz on the road to Acre. The Arabs were
terrified. So it was decided that myself and two
companions on the 15cwt should tow the lorry into
Acre and the rest of the convoy would pick us up
on its way back.
Theoretically, security military vehicles should
travel in pairs. But this was an emergency. In the
market place at the Crusader fortress town of Acre,
we were lauded as heroes. Food, fruit and hooch
were plied upon us, but as darkness fell, and with
no sign of the convoy, we became apprehensive.
EVERY man appeared to have an arsenal of
weapons - automatics, pistols, knives,
grenades. It wasn't that we thought they
would attack us, rather, that few of them seemed
to know how to handle these instruments of
destruction. A bullet from an incompetent friend
wreaks as much havoc as a bullet from an enemy.
So we decided to seek refuge in the prison fortress,
run by competent British warders.
Unfortunately, the telephone wires had been cut,
so there was no way of contacting our unit in Haifa.
And a voice on the radio announced that a 15cwt 40
Commando RM with three men aboard had been
lost without trace. As dawn broke, we scuttled back
to Haifa, foot down hard on the accelerator. There
was another heroes' welcome for us from comrades
who had given us up for lost.
Securing the port for our final withdrawal and
making sure all British servicemen and endangered
civilians made it safely to Haifa was a tedious
business after such excitements. The final
evacuation - named Z Day - was set for June 30. We
took our last look at the beauty of Mount Carmel.
I had been witness to a moment in history which
has cast a long shadow. The present leaders are not
out of the kibbutznic mould.
* Arnold Hadwin edited The Evening Despatch
(Darlington) 1964-73; The Telegraph & Argus
(Bradford) 1973-84, and was editor of The
Lincolnshire Standard Group from 1984 until his
retirement in 1989. Since then he has been on
several assignments training journalists in
Tanzania, Uganda, Kazakhstan, Armenia,
Moldova and Russia. He was President of the
Guild of British Newspaper Editors 1981-82.
12:50pm Wednesday 14th May 2008
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