

On 3 April, The Scotsman reported that a spokesman at a meeting of Arab military leaders in Damascus had announced that Jerusalem would be "strangled" by a blockade. On 1 April The Times estimated that the Jewish population of Jerusalem required a minimum of 50 truckloads per week. By the end of March it was clear that food supplies for civilians in Jewish Jerusalem would run out.

By March the daily average number of trucks reaching Jerusalem was six. In January 1948 the number of trucks supplying Jewish Jerusalem had fallen to thirty per day. They were given 50,000 Palestine pounds credit with the Histadrut's wholesalers, Hamashbir Hamerkazi. In January the Committee estimated 4,500 tons a month was needed. In December 1947 the Jewish Agency set up the Jerusalem Emergency Committee, headed by Dov Yosef, which stockpiled food and fuel. The intention of the besieging forces was to isolate the 100,000 Jewish residents of the city from the rest of the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine and, in the case of the Jordanian forces, to capture East Jerusalem (including the Old City). Ambushes by Palestinian Arab irregulars became more frequent and more sophisticated. The breaking of the siege of Jerusalem and the annexation of the captured areas to the Jewish state became primary goals for the Israelis in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Arabs blocked access to Jerusalem "at Latrun and Bab al-Wad," a narrow valley surrounded by Arab villages on hills on both sides. Arab forces tried to cut off the road to Jerusalem from the coastal plain, where the majority of the Jewish population resided. Jerusalem was split between Israel and Jordan after the war, with Israel controlling West Jerusalem and Jordan controlling East Jerusalem along with the Old City.Īrab plundering of the Jewish Quarter after its inhabitants' expulsionįollowing the outbreak of disturbances at the end of 1947 the road between Tel Aviv and Jewish Jerusalem became increasingly difficult for Jewish vehicles. Fighting did not resume during the remaining months of the 1948 war.
WORLD WAR Z RELATED TO JERUZALEM MOVIE FREE
Israeli forces launched three assaults on Latrun to free the road to the city but without success they then built an alternative road to Jerusalem before the truce imposed by the United Nations on 11 June and successfully broke the blockade.ĭuring the period known as the First Truce, West Jerusalem was supplied with food, ammunition, weapons and troops. Jordanian forces deployed in East Jerusalem, fought the Israelis and took the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, following which the population was expelled and fighters taken as prisoners of war to Jordan. Israeli victories against the Arab militias in the city pushed Abdullah I of Jordan to order the Arab Legion to intervene. In the meantime, the Arab Legion had deployed in the area of the former British Mandate that was allotted to the Arab state, not entering the corpus separatum but massively garrisoning Latrun to blockade West Jerusalem once again. On 14 May and the following days, the Etzioni and Harel brigades, supported by Irgun troops, launched several operations that aimed to take over the Arab side of the city. This blockade was broken in mid-April of that year by Jewish militias who carried out Operation Nachshon and Operation Maccabi. Fighting nevertheless immediately broke out in the city between Jewish and Arab militias, with bombings and other attacks being carried out by both sides.īeginning in February 1948, Arab militias under Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni blockaded the corridor from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, preventing essential supplies from reaching the Jewish population. 'separated body') administered by an international body. Under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, Jerusalem was to be a corpus separatum ( lit. It saw Jewish and Arab militias in Mandatory Palestine, and later the militaries of Israel and Transjordan, fight for control over the city of Jerusalem.
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The Battle for Jerusalem took place during the 1947–1948 civil war phase of the 1947–1949 Palestine war. East Jerusalem and the Old City fall under Jordanian controlīritish military officers seconded to Transjordan.West Jerusalem falls under Israeli control.
