30 November 1947
The enthusiasm continues. Young men and women, who didn’t sleep all last night, dance, rejoice, and sing on.
Suddenly there is a moment of quiet. Shots echo through the land. A bus on the road from Netanya to Jerusalem is attacked, leaving four dead bodies on the ground. The war has begun.
Everywhere the Arab youth rush to join the fighting organiza-tions. And from Syria, from Egypt, from Iraq, and from
Transjordan,7 volunteers come streaming into the country - along with large quantities of weapons.
The first attack is aimed at the lifeline of the Hebrew population — the lines of transport. The roads to Jerusalem and in the Negev are closed after repeated attacks by Arab groups. A bomb is placed under the water pipeline in the Negev, and after each repair it is blown up again. On 2 December an Arab mob rampages through the commer-cial center of Jerusalem, killing five Hebrews and chasing the Hebrew population out of remote parts of the city. At the same time the first attacks are mounted on the outskirts of Tel Aviv from the direction of Jaffa. The roads are blocked. The larger towns and also smaller villages are encircled.
The third party is also active. The British, who had decided to withdraw from the country, intended thereby to leave the Arabs to finish off the Yishuv.8 They have no scruples about making it easier for them. With British support the Arab Legion9 enters the country. On 14 December fourteen members of the Haganah are killed outside the barracks of the Legion in Beit Nabala, as they are escorting a convoy of lorries to Ben-Shemen. On 22 February British terrorists blow up the center of Hebrew Jerusalem in Ben-Yehuda Street. On 28 February the British disarm eight Haganah people, who are securing the road from Tel Aviv to Cholon by the Hayotzek factory, and hand over the helpless victims to the Arab murderers. The Yishuv is fighting for its life and still may not carry its weapons openly.
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The Yishuv is also unprepared for this war. The Zionist institutions, which have been campaigning for years for the partition of the coun-try, didn’t believe that the Arabs would carry out their threat and go to war. They expected that the world, represented by the UN, would