The US, the UK and Israel's Potential Contribution to the Defence and Political Stability of the Middle East, 1950-1955

By 1947-1948, both the USA and the UK attached to Palestine, which was at this time still under British mandate, a significant role in their Middle East defense plans, because of its strategic position in the Eastern Mediterranean from which the nearby British garrison at the Suez Canal Zone could be defended.1 The British defense plan for 1948, codenamed ‛Sandown’, which was endorsed by the American Joint Planning Staff (JPC), was designed to block the advance of Soviet land and air forces and drive them into a war of attrition. Its authors outlined four defense perimeters on which the defenders were supposed to hold up and break the Soviet offensive against the Suez Canal base. The first defense line – the Outer Ring – ran along the Taurus Mountains in Turkey and the Zagros Mountains in Iran down to Bander Abbas in the Persian Gulf. The second line – the Inner Ring – ran from Aqaba on the Red Sea, northwards to the east of Trans-Jordan, up to Syria and then westwards to the Taurus Mountains in Turkey. The third one was the Palestine Lebanon line, which ran from the Mediterranean town of Tripoli in Lebanon eastwards to Syria, southward to the Sea of Galilee and the western part of Trans-Jordan. The fourth and last defense perimeter – the Ramallah line – stretched from Jericho through Ramallah to North of Tel-Aviv. This plan's authors stipulated that the last ditch battle against Soviet forces advancing southwards to the Suez Canal should take place about sixty-eighty days after the outbreak of hostilities and on the Ramallah line from which no withdrawal was possible