#History #timeline

Nasser's Memoirs of the First Palestine War

Key takeaways

content: "@khalidiNasserMemoirsFirst1973" -file:@khalidiNasserMemoirsFirst1973

Reading notes

• y. But who was the real culprit in Palestine? In my opinion the crime of the Palestine war was not committed by the Egyptian army but by others

• the people of Egypt and other friendly nations - were almost convinced of its guilt.

• About this time a group of the Constituent Committee of the Free Officers Organization met at my house, and it was decided that some of us should proceed to Palestine as volunteers4 and that the rest should remain in Cairo.

• n. The last thing that I told Kamel just before the train moved off was: "You must let me know if you need anything. I shall follow up your requests with the army and will see to it that no amount of red tape or inertia should stand in our way."

• The Egyptian army at the time was made up of nine battalion

• three of these were anywhere near the frontier when the order was given to enter Palestine, and a fourth was on the way

• I felt that the dead left behind at Dangour symbolized the battalion's faith in the cause for which it was fighting.

• I frankly confessed all my fears to Abdul Hakim. I felt that there was an attempt to scatter our force

• Before leaving he gave me the sum of 1000, which had been entrusted to him. With this money I was to buy as much cheese and olives as I could. Our forward troops had no emergency rations to rely on in the front-lines, where they could not be served with hot meals

• Slowly the news of the truce2l began to reach us in the trenches. We received orders to cease fire at 6 a.m. on Friday, and the talk of a political war was resumed. But the enemy did not consider the war a political one

• On the first day of the truce the enemy moved against the Arab village of 'Abdis which interpenetrated our lines. He moved against Beit Duras. He occupied Juseir, Asluj and Julis. He tried to infiltrate with his convoys through our lines in order to reach the settlements cut off in the southern Negev. The enemy was obviously not taking the truce seriously.

• I still remember that as I sat at the conference table my whole being was filled with the thought that conviction was utterly lacking in the plans that were being drawn up. It occurred to me that I was sitting in front of a stage. All those standing on the stage had perfected their roles and were exerting them- selves in playing them. But everyone on the stage knew that it was just a role

• Presently events were to take a sharp unexpected turn. And I must here be absolutely frank and confess, though six years have elapsed since then, that I found myself in a situation where for the first time I raised my voice in the field against an order given to me by my superiors

• I felt the food stick in my throat. The note comprised the following two lines: "1. The 6th Battalion will hand over its positions to the 5th Battalion which is on its way from Gaza. 2. The 6th Battalion will occupy the town of Julis in the early morning of July 10."

• The doctor shook his head in disagreement and said: "It is true that you have been hit, but your injury is a rather unusual one. The bullet seems to have hit the side of your carrier, at which the bullet head became separate from its metal casing. What actually hit you was only the casing and not the bullet head."