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The long-awaited deadline was not greeted by everyone with cheers. Abdullah Ibn-Hussein, King of the Hashimite Kingdom of Transjordan, watched his Arab Legion assemble. With the first glimmer of dawn, the troops began to wind down the road to the Jordan Valley in tanks, armored cars and trucks. Their first operations were to occupy villages north and south of Jerusalem.
Still other Arab contingents were on the move. In southern Palestine, Egyptian troops crossed the border into the sandy wastes of the Negeb Desert to seize Jewish settlements on the road to Gaza. In northern Palestine, where Haganah was trying to secure the Galilee region, Syrian and Lebanese detachments attacked Jewish settlements. Egyptian air force planes swooped over Tel Aviv in the first strafing and bombing raids of the war. Palestine's native Arabs were panicky, almost leaderless.
Moderate Zionists wanted to make a settlement which would let them go back to the job of building Israel, free of Arab attacks. Already, however, some extremists have been advising the Jews to grab what they could. Last week, Irgun Commander Menachim Beigin said that he would stop underground activities in Israel, but he warned that his soldiers would fight for "all" of Palestine, including Transjordan, "until the Jewish flag will fly over the Tower of David in Jerusalem and Jewish peasants will work in the fields of Gilead [in Transjordan]." He warned the Israelite government not to make "further concessions" to the Arabs. Arab leaders, for their part, have not yet shown any willingness to live with the accomplished fact of a Jewish nation. Said Egypt's King Farouk last week: "I cannot and will not tolerate a Zionist state in the Middle East."
Both sides last week contained men who felt compelled to boast of tomorrow. Whatever hope there was of an understanding between Israel and the Arab states, short of years of debilitating conflict, lay in the fact that there were some who were boasting as little as possible.
* After Jacob, grandson of Abraham, had wrestled all night with the angel at the brook Jabbok, the angel dubbed him Israel ("Prince of God"), "for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed."