As the sun set on the British Mandate and rose over the new State of Israel, civil war raged between Arabs and Jews. Jerusalem’s hundred thousand Jewish residents prepared to celebrate Pesach under siege, unsure whether they were headed for redemption or for exodus from another kind of Egypt

In November 1947, the United Nations approved the partition of Mandate Palestine, designating Jerusalem as an internationally governed enclave intended to serve as a bridge of peace between the proposed Arab and Jewish states. Immediately after the UN vote, fighting broke out between the city’s two populations, disrupting normal life and causing no few casualties. One long, narrow route, winding mostly through hostile Arab villages, connected Jewish Jerusalem with the rest of the country’s Jews. The enemy took full advantage of this weakness, essentially placing the city under siege. Supply convoys were frequently attacked, usually near Sha’ar Ha-gai, where the road was hemmed in by hills. 

Essentials soon dwindled, and the situation grew dire. Outlying Jewish settlements reliant on Jerusalem, such as Neve Yaakov and Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, suffered similarly. Some one hundred thousand Jews – a sixth of the Jewish population – were imperiled by the conflict. And when spring rolled around, all of them – from the ultra-Orthodox Neturei Karta sect to the largely irreligious members of Ramat Rahel – were busy preparing for Pesach. 

The weeks leading up to the holiday were darkened by loss. Eleven members of a convoy to Har-Tuv (see “Doctor under Fire,” Segula 66) were killed after a dangerous mission on March 17 (6 Adar II); fourteen more were murdered on the Fast of Esther (March 24 that year) while transporting goods to Atarot, an agricultural village slightly north of Jerusalem. And two days after Purim, on March 27 and 28, another fifteen lost their lives in the Nebi Daniel convoy, having delivered critical supplies to the besieged Etzion Bloc. The Jewish-owned armored vehicles and trucks were captured by the Arabs, leaving Jerusalem’s military command without much of a fleet. 

The next few days brought further casualties in the struggle to equip other parts of the country. The Yehiam convoy lost forty-six men, and another twenty-four were slain outside Kibbutz Hulda. 

Pesach was a special challenge, as the holiday’s seven-day ban on bread required all manner of irregular substitutes, which the convoys clearly couldn’t deliver. 

So the pre-state Jewish community’s leadership devised a new strategy. Instead of attempting to secure exposed vehicles, they’d take control of the road itself. Operation Nahshon was launched on April 4, on the night of 26 Adar II. Fifteen hundred fighters armed with newly arrived weapons (smuggled in over land and sea despite the British embargo) managed to hold the route long enough for nine hundred tons of supplies to reach Jerusalem in two convoys. Two hundred twenty-five trucks, mostly volunteered by their owners, took part. 

 

No Matza

On 25 Adar, just before this immense effort began, Jerusalem regional commander David Shaltiel’s military adviser, Fritz Eshet, flew from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv to report to David Ben-Gurion. With no breadf even in his own home, Eshet warned that matters could easily deteriorate: 

The population is hysterical […]; there are no stocks of food; […] the Romema neighborhood has had no water for the last thirty-six hours […]; the [civilian] rear is expected to cave. (David Ben-Gurion, 1948–49 War Diary [Ministry of Defense, 1982], vol. I, p. 340 [Hebrew])

The next day, David Ben-Gurion announced to the Zionist Workers’ Party committee that Jerusalem was the land of Israel’s soul and that its needs therefore took precedence over everything else. 

It’s [too] easy to starve it, parch it, and silence it […]. As long as there’s a choice between Jerusalem and elsewhere, Jerusalem comes first. (David Ben-Gurion, In Battle [Israel Workers’ Party, 1950], vol. 5, p. 298 [Hebrew])

Dov Yosef chaired the Jerusalem Emergency Committee, which oversaw the city’s supply line. He described the severe food shortages in early March: 

We lacked animal proteins, and apart from flour we had [staples] for only four to fifteen days. (Dov Yosef, The Faithful City: The Siege of Jerusalem, 1948 [Simon & Schuster, 1960], p. 84)

Jerusalem’s Sephardic chief rabbi, Ben Zion Meir Hai Uzziel, had been stuck in the city for six months, separated from his children. He wrote to them a week before Pesach:

No one knows yet what will happen on Pesach, but in any case everything will be rationed and in short supply […]. Under these circumstances, there’s no hope of our all sitting down together as a family for Seder night, and I can’t imagine how miserably lonely that night will be. (Rabbi Ben Zion Meir Hai Uzziel, Treasures of Uzziel [ Rabbi Ovadya Yosef Publications Committee, 5767], vol. 5, pp. 558–59 [Hebrew])

Rabbi Dr. Tuvia Guttman, who lived next to the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Me’a She’arim, wrote similarly in his memoirs: 

The days before Pesach are especially difficult for us. No food is available on the regular market, apart from rations, which have rightly been minimized […]. On the black market, if you have connections, you can get a few small items at full price, like a tin of sardines, a jar of jelly […]. As yet we have no matza, and we’re very concerned. (Rabbi Dr. Tuvia Guttman, Jerusalem’s War of Liberation in 1948, p. 40 [Hebrew])

Operation Harel began on April 15 (6 Nisan), bringing two large convoys of 442 trucks carrying 1,800 tons of supplies. Palmah forces who’d been guarding the route to Jerusalem were moved into the city in preparation for Operation Jebusite – aimed at securing strategic sites abandoned by the British – so the road was once again blockaded. 

The provisions delivered via operations Harel and the Nahshon vastly improved conditions in Jerusalem as Pesach approached. The convoys were welcomed by a joyous crowd, and the Jewish population rallied. Even isolated spots such as the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, Mount Scopus, and Neve Yaakov were resupplied, including Pesach food.