Jews Battle to Seal Off Haifa; Arab Thousands Fleeing City; Truce Aids Women, Children

Haganah Presses Drive Along Road To Nazareth

By the Associated Press, Jerusalem

Jews Battle to Seal Off Haifa; Arab Thousands Fleeing City; Truce Aids Women, Children — Evening Star, 25 April 1948 — Evening Star · Washington, District of Columbia · 25 April 1948

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“JERUSALEM, April 24.—Jewish militia fought today to take possession of a buffer area to seal off their greatest prize, the port city of Haifa.

While thousands of weary Arabs streamed from the city which was captured by Jews in a spectacular battle Thursday, Hagana guns blazed out at Balad Esh Sheikh and nearby Tirah, two villages about five miles east of the big port. The Arab villages are on the road to Nazareth and Tiberias, a city on the Sea of Galilee from which the Arabs also have been driven by the Jews.

The British said the Arabs asked for a truce at dawn after an all-night fight and agreed to surrender their arms. When only 22 rifles were turned in, however, the Jews delivered a new ultimatum for the delivery of all guns and the fighting was renewed. The latest reports said the British had arranged a temporary truce for the evacuation of women and children from the villages.

Dispatches from Haifa said the Jews were trying to prevent the evacuation of the 37,000 Arabs remaining in the city. The Jews considered the evacuation a political rebuff, and wanted them to remain to demonstrate that Arabs and Jews can live side by side. They offered the Arabs co-operation in solving food and supply problems.

Arab leaders replied to Jewish persuasions, however, that they could not ‘subject ourselves to conquerors.’ Indications were that most of the Arabs would leave the city as a silent protest against the Jewish blitz of the parts of the town not controlled by the British… Arabs in the city were under a Jewish curfew, virtual house arrest.

Hagana said five field guns, mortars and other arms had been found in an inch-by-inch search of Arab quarters. Arab civilian leaders ordered the evacuation because they were unwilling to attempt to enforce Jewish terms for surrender of arms upon armed Arab volunteers. The city of 130,000 is about half Arab.

The Arab population was being moved across the bay to Acre by British army landing craft and small boats, and plans were being made to move other thousands by British army trucks overland to Nazareth, neighboring Lebanon and Nablus in the Arab’s so-called ‘triangle of strength’ in Central Palestine.

The evacuation was being carried out at the time Jews observe the passover in commemoration of their own exodus from Egypt, and from docks where the British customarily deported intercepted Jewish immigrants to Cyprus. Thousands still huddled in refuges without food.”

Context added by this archive

The two subheadings on this page are “Jews Oppose Evacuation” and “Arabs Won’t Enforce Terms.”

Both halves of the argument about Haifa are in one column of Associated Press copy, three days after: the Jews trying to prevent the evacuation and wanting the Arabs to stay, and Arab civilian leaders ordering it because they would not disarm their own volunteers.

The same column reports the Arabs of Tiberias “driven” out, a curfew described as virtual house arrest, and the passover comparison.

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"Jews Battle to Seal Off Haifa; Arab Thousands Fleeing City; Truce Aids Women, Children," Evening Star, 25 April 1948, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1948-081. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1948-081