page_title: 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine
section_title: Siege of Jerusalem
hierarchical_section_title: 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine / War of the roads and blockade of Jerusalem / Siege of Jerusalem
context_page_description: The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine was the first phase of the 1948 Palestine war. It broke out after the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine.
  During the civil war, the Jewish and Arab communities of Palestine clashed while the British, who had the obligation to maintain order, organized their withdrawal and intervened only on an occasional basis.
  When the British Mandate of Palestine expired on 14 May 1948, and with the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, the surrounding Arab states—Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq and Syria—invaded what had just ceased to be Mandatory Palestine, and immediately attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The conflict thus escalated and became the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
context_section_description: Jerusalem and the great difficulty of accessing the city became even more critical to its Jewish population, who made up one sixth of the total Jewish population in Palestine. The long and difficult route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, after leaving the Jewish zone at Hulda, went through the foothills of Latrun. The 28-kilometre route between Bab al-Wad and Jerusalem took no less than three hours, and the route passed near the Arab villages of Saris, Qaluniya, Al-Qastal, and Deir Yassin.
  Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni arrived in Jerusalem with the intent to surround and besiege its Jewish community. He moved to Surif, a village to the southwest of Jerusalem, with his supporters—around a hundred fighters who were trained in Syria before the war and who served as officers in his army, Jihad al-Muqadas, or Army of the Holy War. He was joined by a hundred or so young villagers and Arab veterans of the British Army. His militia soon had several thousand men, and it moved its training quarters to Bir Zeit, a town near Ramallah.
  Abd al-Qadir's zone of influence extended down to the area of Lydda, Ramleh, and the Judean Hills where Hasan Salama commanded 1,000 men. Salama, like Abd al-Qadir, had been affiliated with Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini for years, and had also been a commander in the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, participated in the Rashid Ali coup of 1941 and the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War. Salama had re-entered Palestine in 1944 in Operation Atlas, parachuting into the Jordan Valley as a member of a special German—Arab commando unit of the Waffen SS. He coordinated with al-Husayni to execute a plan of disruption and harassment of road traffic in an attempt to isolate and blockade Western (Jewish) Jerusalem.
  On 10 December, the first organized attack occurred when ten members of a convoy between Bethlehem and Kfar Etzion were killed.
  On 14 January, Abd al-Qadir himself commanded and took part in an attack against Kfar Etzion, in which 1,000 Palestinian Arab combatants were involved. The attack was a failure, and 200 of al-Husayni's men died. Nonetheless, the attack did not come without losses of Jewish lives: a detachment of 35 Palmach men who sought to reinforce the establishment were ambushed and killed.
  On 25 January, a Jewish convoy was attacked near the Arab village of al-Qastal. The attack went badly and several villages to the northeast of Jerusalem answered a call for assistance, although others did not, for fear of reprisals. The campaign for control over the roads became increasingly militaristic in nature, and became a focal point of the Arab war effort. After 22 March, supply convoys to Jerusalem stopped, due to a convoy of around thirty vehicles having been destroyed in the gorges of Bab-el-Wad.
  On 27 March, an important supply convoy from Kfar Etzion was taken in an ambush in south of Jerusalem. They were forced to surrender all of their arms, ammunition and vehicles to al-Husayni's forces. The Jews of Jerusalem requested the assistance of the United Kingdom after 24 hours of combat. According to a British report, the situation in Jerusalem, where a food rationing system was already in application, risked becoming desperate after 15 May.
  The situation in other areas of the country was as critical as the one of Jerusalem. The settlements of Negev were utterly isolated, due to the impossibility of using the Southern coastal road, which passed through zones densely populated by Arabs. On 27 March, a convoy of supplies (the Yehiam convoy) that was intended for the isolated kibbutzim north-west of Galilee was attacked in the vicinity of Nahariya. In the ensuing battle, 42–47 Haganah combatants and around a hundred fighters of the Arab Liberation Army were killed, and all vehicles involved were destroyed.
caption: Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, prominent military leader during the Palestinian Civil War.
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