Yisrael Galili

Galili was born in May 1911 in Brailov, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, with the original surname Berczenko, also rendered Berchenko.[5][1] His parents brought him to Eretz Israel in 1914, when he was three, and the family settled in Tel Aviv.[1][6] He attended an elementary school in Tel Aviv, where he studied printing.[1]

In 1924, Galili was among the founders of the working-youth movement No’ar ha-Oved ve-ha-Lomed, also known as HaNoar HaOved, and became its first secretary.[1][6] He was subsequently active in the Histadrut’s Youth Center, linking his youth-movement work with the labor institutions in which much of his later public activity developed.[1] In 1930, he helped establish Kibbutz Na’an, which remained his home until his death.[5][6] Na’an also served as an armoury for the Haganah.[5]

Na’an was the first kibbutz established by the Working Youth movement, whose settlement activity subsequently extended to more than 50 communities.[7] Galili’s involvement in the youth movement, kibbutz life, and Jewish defense began well before his ministerial career: he joined the Haganah in 1927 and entered its Central Command in 1935 as a representative of the Histadrut.[1]

As a member of the Haganah’s leadership, Galili worked in defense organization and clandestine arms acquisition, responsibilities that remained central to his activity through the War of Independence.[1][8] During World War II, he participated in preparations for a possible German invasion of Palestine.[1] These preparations included a contingency option at Mount Carmel as Rommel’s army approached the region.[7] Addressing the United Kibbutz Movement council in 1942, he advocated organizing for defense and rebuilding national Jewish self-defense in the Land of Israel.[7]

His association with David Ben-Gurion also preceded statehood.[9] In March 1940, Galili joined a four-car journey from Jerusalem toward Aqaba with Ben-Gurion, Paula Ben-Gurion, Dov Yosef, and other participants.[9] The party traveled through the Arava to the Red Sea coast and returned by way of the Dead Sea.[9] Photographs from the journey place Galili beside Yosef near the Dead Sea.[9]

After World War II, Galili took part in armed underground activity against the British administration and was put in charge of the Haganah’s purchasing and arms department.[1] Together with fellow Haganah leader Moshe Sneh, he met Menachem Begin of the Irgun and Nathan Friedman-Yellin of Lehi to establish the united resistance movement, Tenuat Hameri.[10] The organizations agreed to coordinate their actions, while excluding the procurement of weapons and money from that coordination.[10] Galili was among the movement’s leaders during its campaign against British rule, which included the November 1945 attacks known as the Night of the Trains.[11] The alliance disbanded in August 1946.[11]

On June 29, 1946, during the British arrests remembered as Black Saturday, Galili evaded capture.[1] From 1946 to 1948, he served as chief of the Haganah’s Territorial Staff and participated in preparations for the War of Independence.[1] His assumption of command of the Haganah is also dated to May 31, 1947.[8] Before independence, his role combined political leadership with responsibilities for preparing the Jewish defense force for war.[5][1]

During the early part of the 1948 war, before the declaration of independence, Galili led efforts to establish the Haganah’s air service and other services that later became Israel’s air, armored, naval, and artillery corps.[6] His work encompassed procurement, training, operations, mobilizing public support, and strengthening the Haganah’s military capacity.[7] He also helped identify and encourage future commanders and negotiated with the Irgun and Lehi over their incorporation into the Israel Defense Forces.[6][7]

On May 3, 1948, Ben-Gurion abolished Galili’s position as head of the Haganah’s National Command, ending the role of the Jewish Agency’s representative in the command.[12] The dismissal notice specified that the headquarters of the security forces would thereafter receive instructions from the director of security or his representative, with the change taking effect at noon.[12] Galili read the notice to senior General Staff officers that morning and announced that he would cease performing the role at the appointed time.[12]

The change occurred while Chief of Staff Yaakov Dori was ill and Galili had, in practice, also performed chief-of-staff functions.[12] Senior officers objected to uncertainty about who would direct the General Staff’s departments; four department heads approached Ben-Gurion, and officers subsequently demanded Galili’s return.[12] Ben-Gurion asked him to resume work without restoring the National Command position, and Galili eventually returned in an initially undefined capacity.[12] In the reorganization, Galili sought to preserve the Haganah’s accumulated experience and continue working with responsibility under the new arrangements.[7]

Galili was appointed deputy minister of defense in the Provisional Government formed by Ben-Gurion in 1948 and opposed Ben-Gurion’s order to dissolve the Palmach.[1] He and Begin signed the June 1, 1948 agreement incorporating the Irgun into the IDF.[13] During preparations for the arrival of the arms ship Altalena, Begin asked Galili to head the government negotiating team.[13] Galili insisted that the weapons be handed over to the state for distribution and remained involved in key decisions by telephone even when he did not attend every meeting.[13]

A recollection of the Givati Brigade’s fighting in 1948 places Galili at Ibdis Hill after soldiers of the 53rd Battalion had captured the position.[14] He encouraged its defenders with the words: “I saw the thin ranks, but the spirit fills in the breaches. That spirit is the spirit of Givati.”[14] The soldier who recalled the visit also remembered the nighttime operation as having helped his platoon suffer fewer losses.[14]

Galili’s understanding of defense and pioneering also informed his criticism of the assassination of Lord Moyne.[15] In the late 1940s, he distinguished the assassins’ courage from the character and consequences of their action, which he regarded as terrorism that undermined the Yishuv and could have endangered Israel’s establishment.[15] His preferred model of heroism emphasized the sustained everyday work of pioneering youth in establishing and defending Jewish settlement rather than a single spectacular act.[15]

Galili entered the First Knesset in 1949 on the Mapam list, having supported Ahdut ha-Avodah’s union with Mapam the previous year.[1] He was not elected to the Second Knesset.[1] In 1954, amid disagreements over attitudes toward the Soviet Union, he supported the separation of Ahdut ha-Avodah–Po’alei Zion from Mapam, and he returned to parliament in the Third Knesset on that party’s list.[1] During the Third through Fifth Knessets, he served on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.[1]

He supported the establishment of the first Alignment with Mapai in 1965 and the creation of the Israel Labor Party in 1968.[1] His parliamentary career extended to 1977, while his cabinet service ran from 1966 to 1977, chiefly as a minister without portfolio.[1] For a brief period around the Six-Day War, he served as minister of information.[1][16] The appointment came during the formation of a national-unity government, amid public pressure for broader political participation and the appointment of Moshe Dayan as defense minister before the war began on June 5, 1967.[16]

Galili operated largely behind the scenes and advised both Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin.[1] He had also been a longtime adviser to Ben-Gurion.[17] He was one of Meir’s close confidants.[8] His parliamentary and ministerial work concentrated substantially on foreign affairs and security policy.[7]

After the 1967 war, Galili took responsibility for early Israeli settlement in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[8] He chaired the first joint government–Zionist Organization settlement committee and initiated settlement projects in Sinai, the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley, Gush Etzion, and the Gaza region.[7] His settlement proposals also included a second ring of communities around Jerusalem.[7]

After the Six-Day War, Galili became a principal architect of Labor Party policy toward the territories Israel had captured, supporting settlement in some areas while allowing for the return of others through a peace agreement.[5] Alongside Yigal Allon, he occupied a middle position within the Labor Movement: he opposed restoration of the June 4, 1967 borders without endorsing a refusal to withdraw from any captured territory.[18] At a June 1967 Kibbutz HaMeuhad council, he prevented supporters of Yitzhak Tabenkin from obtaining an explicit resolution affirming the integrity of the Land of Israel; the adopted wording instead called for “settling the land in all its expanses.”[18]

In March 1972, Galili presented Meir with proposals addressing the administration and population of the territories, at a time when an established, organized governing procedure had not yet emerged.[3] He wanted Israeli diplomats to receive an authorized briefing explaining Israel’s pursuit of defensible, permanent borders.[3] He opposed a return to the 1948 ceasefire lines or the former British Mandate’s international borders and sought substantial negotiated border changes, combined with security arrangements that could include demilitarization in particular areas.[3]

His positions differed by frontier.[3] He favored retaining Israeli control of Sharm el-Sheikh and treating the Gaza Strip as part of Israel, but did not propose retaining all or most of Sinai.[3] Along the Jordanian frontier, he described the Jordan River as a security border and opposed establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank.[3] On the Syrian frontier, he opposed abandoning the Golan Heights or restoring the former international boundary.[3] These positions were accompanied by support for negotiating territorial questions with neighboring states.[3]

Galili argued that negotiations should begin without prior territorial commitments imposed as a condition.[3] His letter stated: “The borders will be determined by negotiation, by agreement, and not through coercion by other bodies.”[3] He also rejected an interpretation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 that would require withdrawal from all captured territories to the previous borders.[3]

During the summer of 1973, the Labor Party debated its territorial policy ahead of the Eighth Knesset elections then scheduled for October.[17] At that point, the territories contained fewer than three dozen Israeli settlements and fewer than several thousand Israeli residents.[17] Galili issued compromise proposals that drew on Dayan’s ideas but softened them.[17] After Labor ministers separately rejected proposals from Galili and Dayan, Galili worked to combine their approaches.[3] An agreement among Galili, Dayan, and Pinchas Sapir was submitted to Meir on August 14, 1973.[3]

On September 3, Galili submitted the draft for discussion and government approval under the title “Agreements and Recommendations on an Action Plan for the Next Four Years.”[3] The joint proposal contained 15 principles covering administration, housing, health, education, infrastructure, employment, trade, and new Jewish settlements.[3] The Labor Party adopted the Galili Plan in September, with a statement that it would not change the territories’ political status.[17] The proposals were not fully adopted in practice.[3]

The plan paired the strengthening of Israeli control and settlement with measures intended to address local residents’ civil and economic needs.[3] It proposed refugee rehabilitation, vocational and higher education, health care, water systems, roads, trade, industry, and expanded infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank.[17] It also sought broader economic ties with Israel and employment in Israel on equal salary and employment conditions.[1] Other provisions called for permanent housing for Gaza refugees and municipal elections, which subsequently took place in 1976.[1]

Dayan’s open-bridges policy, including trade with Jordan, was to continue.[1][3] Israeli businesses were to be encouraged to operate in the territories, and land was to be acquired for Jewish development and settlement.[1][17] The settlement proposals broadly followed the parameters of the Allon Plan and included continued development of Jewish Jerusalem.[1] New settlements or reinforcement of existing ones were envisaged in the Rafah Approaches, the Jordan Valley, and the Golan Heights.[17]

Among its more specific provisions, the plan proposed studying the feasibility of a deep-sea port south of Gaza over two or three years before a government decision.[17] It also called for a regional center in the Rafah Approaches to reach 800 housing units by 1977–1978.[17] Its preamble stated that implementation would not depend on changing either the areas’ political status or the civil status of inhabitants and refugees.[17] Galili also proposed returning one third of the Golan Heights to Syria in peace negotiations, while indicating that a return of the entire Heights was unlikely under Labor Party leadership.[17]

An INSS analysis of an April 18, 1973 discussion reports that Galili, Meir, and Dayan received warnings that Egypt intended to go to war in mid-May and agreed that Israel was heading toward a major conflict.[19] According to the same analysis, Galili raised diplomacy and a return to the previous border as a possible means of avoiding war, but the three did not pursue that option in the government forum.[19]

During the Yom Kippur War, Galili belonged to the informal political-security group known as Golda’s kitchen cabinet or the war cabinet, alongside Meir, Dayan, and Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon.[4] In practice, this group was responsible for government decisions relating to the war.[4] When the generals discussed a proposed operation across the Suez Canal, Galili and Allon pressed them to distinguish military considerations from political ones.[4]

Galili later testified before the Agranat Commission about the assessments preceding the October 1973 attack.[20] He said the leadership had judged the immediate probability of war to be low, despite a broader belief that war was inevitable because Egypt and Syria wanted to alter the post-1967 status quo.[20] He acknowledged that Israel had discounted an American warning and argued that the country had to remain prepared for a surprise attack.[20] An INSS account also quotes a 1974 letter in which Galili criticized the concentration of decision-making in Meir’s small inner group and the absence of wider consultation after the war.[21]

Galili continued to support territorial compromise without abandoning settlement as an instrument of Zionist policy.[7][18] In June 1976, his movement accepted territorial compromise and the settlement lines of the Allon Plan while rejecting the Gush Emunim and Herut position of settlement throughout Judea and Samaria.[18] During the process leading to the Camp David Accords and peace with Egypt, however, he opposed relinquishing the Yamit area.[7] His position was that peace could justify a heavy price, but not every price, and he feared the implications that withdrawal might have for other territories and settlements.[7]

Galili was not selected as a Labor candidate for the Ninth Knesset elections and subsequently became a party elder and mentor to former Ahdut ha-Avodah members.[1] In 1980, he encouraged Allon to seek the Labor leadership and, after Allon’s death, encouraged Rabin.[1] He left politics in 1980 and devoted his time to educational programs at Na’an.[5] He died there on February 8, 1986.[5] His son Yonatan had died by suicide in 1963; Galili was survived by his wife and his son Shlomo.[6]

Galili’s legacy encompasses the building of the Haganah, the relationship between defense and the labor-settlement movement, and the formulation of Israeli territorial policy after 1967.[5][7] His work in acquiring arms and organizing military services formed part of the preparations that carried the pre-state Jewish defense force into the War of Independence.[1][6] His later political influence rested substantially on advisory relationships and policy work rather than on leadership of a major government ministry.[1]

The Knesset held a memorial session recognizing his long parliamentary and ministerial service, with particular attention to foreign affairs and security.[7] Memorial addresses recalled his involvement in procurement, training, operations, and developing public support for the Haganah, as well as his guidance of future commanders.[7] They also connected his defense work with his commitment to the Working Youth movement and the founding of Na’an.[7]

The Galili Document preserved a detailed expression of his approach to the territories: negotiated borders, settlement within selected strategic areas, and practical programs for employment, infrastructure, and services for Arab residents.[1][3] His political course allowed territorial concessions in peace negotiations while opposing a complete return to the prewar boundaries.[5][18] His final years returned him to the educational work at Na’an, the community he had helped found more than half a century earlier.[5]

The Altalena negotiations remain a significant dispute concerning Galili’s authority and conduct.[13] Sources differ on his formal status at the time: Encyclopedia.com describes him as deputy minister of defense in the Provisional Government, while the academic Altalena study says he held no official position when Begin asked him to head the negotiating team.[1][13] Begin’s side understood the talks to concern the ship and its cargo and sought 20 percent of the weapons for Irgun fighters in the IDF and Irgun units in Jerusalem, whereas Galili insisted on state control of distribution.[13] Irgun accounts maintained that he had agreed to send 20 percent to Jerusalem, although the understanding did not identify the recipients.[13] Accounts also differ over his June 19 telephone call to Begin and what he told Ben-Gurion; no protocol of the relevant conversation with Ben-Gurion has been found.[13] Ben-Gurion later accused him of exceeding his authority, while Galili insisted that he had acted with authorization and denied misleading him.[13]

The reasons for Galili’s dismissal from the Haganah command are likewise subject to competing political and institutional interpretations.[12] Galili believed Ben-Gurion wanted to make wartime political decisions alone, while other explanations emphasize military organization, party rivalry, and personal considerations.[12] His later territorial proposals also encountered opposition within Labor and the government, particularly from those reluctant to fix the territories’ future or opposed to the document’s comparatively hawkish direction.[1][3]