Arab Military Blueprint for Invasion and Occupation of Israel Revealed

The contents of an alleged Arab blueprint for the conquest, occupation and dissolution of the State of Israel is revealed here today in the current issue of “Vision,” a Spanish-language publication with wide circulation in Latin American countries. The magazine claims that the document, which fell into the hands of Allied intelligence agents, has been circulated as a working paper among Syrian and Egyptian staff officers.

According to this blueprint, D-Day in Palestine is to start with air raids on Lydda and other Israeli air fields. After a series of massive bombardments. Egyptian paratroopers are to seize the fields. These actions are to put the Israeli air force out of commission and prevent it from retaliating in kind against Cairo and Alexandria.

The attack on Lydda is to be accompanied by raids on neighboring Tel Aviv, which the Arab blueprint considers “expendable.” The destruction of this residential city is expected to demoralize the Israeli population. In contrast, the raiders will be instructed to spare as much as possible of Tel Aviv’s twin city of Jaffa whose harbor installations the Arabs want to use “after victory.”

In the same way, the Egyptian bombers will be under rigid orders not to touch at the port district of Haifa, especially at the British oil refineries in the northern sector of the bay. Only a number of strategic points on the hills of Mount Carmel are to be destroyed.

The blueprint contemplates no aerial attacks on Jerusalem. The battle for the city is to be fought exclusively on the ground by troops of Jordan’s Arab Legion. In fact, Jordan’s participation in the hostilities–which even after Glubb’s removal-remains far from certain forms an indispensable part of the Syrian master plan. At the same time a three-pronged invasion is to be launched by Egyptian ground troops from the South, Syrian units from the north and Jordan elements from the east.

DIFFICULTIES TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION; “BLITZ ACTION” BY PARATROOPERS PLANNED

The Egyptians will try to move northward toward Tel Aviv from their Gaza beachhead Jordan’s soldiers are to reach the sea north of Petah Tikva, at the shortest point of distance between the Jordan border and the coast, thereby cutting Israel in two. They are to roll southward towards. Tel Aviv to join up with the Egyptians and northward to invest Haifa. Meanwhile, the Syrians are to drive to the south via Quaitra. Safed and Cana to contact the Jordanians at Haifa.

The Arabs seem to be aware of the difficulties of carrying out this plan, i. e. cutting through a country which, like Israel, will form one single armed camp. But they heavily count upon their air attacks to disrupt the Israeli defense system and prepare the terrain for their ground troops. The blueprint stresses that the Egyptian airborne battalions which have been trained by German officers for the past five years, are to play a major role in the invasion.

The whole war is to be over before any of the Big Powers has made up its mind to intervene. Once organized resistance has ceased-except for isolated strong points the Arab occupation armies are to enter the scene. They will establish martial law in all Israeli communities and supervise the evacuation of the survivors. German experts are slated to help the Arab Military Government in that task which, as the blueprint says, “is to be patterned after the evacuation of the Sudeten Germans by the Czechs and of the Oder-Neisse Germans by the Poles.”

ISRAELIS TO BE SHIPPED TO ARAB REFUGEE CAMPS IN JORDAN

The guiding idea is that all Jewish homes must be distributed among Palestine Arab refugees while the Israeli population is to be put into camps. Israeli military camps are to be transformed into POW compounds for Jewish soldiers. The government camps for newcomers from Europe and Africa many of which had ben closed, are to be reopened for civilians. Other parts of the population are to be shipped to Jordan refugee camps to take the place of the Palestinian Arabs.

According to the Syrian scheme, this will be a provisional arrangement, pending an international settlement of the question. Native-born Israelis will be ultimately allowed to stay in the country under certain conditions. Jews born in other Arab territories will be permitted to return there “in the humanitarian spirit of the Moslem religion.” They will not be given their property back, of course, but will be put into camps “until such time as they can be re-fitted into the country’s economic process.”

EXPECT RUSSIA AND UNITED STATES TO ADMIT JEWS FROM “CONQUERED” ISRAEL

The Arabs seem to have reasons to believe that the Iron Curtain governments which have always opposed Zionism, would “welcome back” those Jews who were born in their respective countries. As to the other European Jews, they are to be kept in Palestine camps until they have obtained visas to other countries overseas. It is expected that American, under the pressure of world opinion and of the Jewish population in the U.S., will adopt emergency measures in that sense and that other countries in the Western hemisphere and even in Europe will take similar steps.

As to the state of Israel it is to be incorporated into a new state called Palestine which will include Jordan and be under mixed Jordan-Palestine Arab direction. The native-born Jewish minority will be represented in the state’s institutions after the model of Morocco. There also will be provisions for certain non-active Jews “who have to offer a special contribution to the country’s welfare,” to remain in Palestine.

“Vision” emphasizes that this is the gist of the Syrian master plan now under study in Allied intelligence quarters. “The scheme is considered the product of the more extremist officers circles in the Syrian army. Nothing indicates that it had been officially endorsed by Col. Nasser of Egypt. Nor does it seem to contain a correct evaluation of Israel’s defense capacities,” the article says.

“Fantastic as the scheme may sound, Middle East experts are afraid that the Arabs may be tempted to act in accordance with its general lines once they are persuaded that the following political situation exists: 1. The Jordan army is ready to cooperate; 2. Soviet Russia agrees to veto any UN intervention; 3. The U.S. prefers to keep out of an open military conflict in the area; 4. Great Britain considers its oil interests in the Arab countries more vital for its future than the defense of Israel.

“Under these conditions,” the “Vision” article continues, “many experts on the spot are urging the Western Powers to make quite clear, while there is still time, that any Arab air attack on Israel would provoke a massive retaliation in kind. If Col. Nasser and other Middle East statesmen can be convinced that war against Israel inexorably means the destruction of Cairo, Alexandria and Damascus, they are expected to ask Allah twice before starting a conflict their regimes could not survive,” the article concludes.