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Notes
1 See especially Uri Bialer, “Ha-derekh la-birah: Hafikhat Yerushalayim le-makom moshavah ha-rishmi shel memshelet Yisrael bi-shnat 1949” (The Way to the Capital: Converting Jerusalem into the Official Seat of the Government of Israel in 1949), Cathedra, No. 35 (1985), pp. 163–91 and the references there; Michael Brecher, Decision in Israel's Foreign Policy (London, 1974); idem, “Ha-ma'avak ha-medini al Yerushalayim” (The Political Struggle over Jerusalem), in Eli Shaltiel (ed.), Prakim be-toldot Yerushalayim ba-zman he-hadash (Chapters in the History of Jerusalem in Modern Times) (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 384–417; Netanel Lorch, “Ben-Gurion u-kvi'at Yerushalayim ke-birat Yisrael” (Ben-Gurion and the Designation of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel), in Hagit Lavsky (ed.), Yerushalayim ba-toda'ah uva-asiyah ha-tziyonit (Jerusalem in Zionist Vision and Realization) (Jerusalem, 1989), pp. 377–403; Yemima Rosenthal, “‘Ha-pa'am lo ra'iti et barak ha-bitahon be-einav shel ha-zaken’: Te'udah al hahlatat Ben-Gurion leha'avir et misradei ha-memshalah le-Yerushalayim be-detzember 1949” (“This Time I Did Not See the Spark of Confidence in the Old Man's Eyes”: Deposition on the Decision by Ben-Gurion to Transfer the Government Offices to Jerusalem in December 1949), in Avi Bareli (ed.), Yerushalayim ha-hatzuyah, 1948–1967 (Divided Jerusalem, 1948–1967) (Jerusalem, 1994), pp. 55–60.
2 See n. 1 above; and cf. Sharett's reports to the government in the minutes of the government meeting, 26 July 1949, pp. 2–3, and 2 August 1949, pp. 45–50, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem (hereafter ISA). (Minutes of government meetings are cited from the bound copies in the reading room.)
3 For a general survey of government policy, see Motti Golani, “Kisufim lehud, ma'asim lehud: Mediniyut Yisrael bi-she'elat Yerushalayim, 1948–1967” (Separating Yearnings and Action: Israeli Policy on the Question of Jerusalem, 1948–1967), in Anita Shapira (ed.), Atzma'ut: 50 ha-shanim ha-rishonot (Independence: The First 50 Years) (Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 267–96. On the exit of Jews from Jerusalem after the UN General Assembly resolution of November 1947, and as a result of the battles at the beginning of 1948, see Yosef Katz, “Mekomah shel ha-ir Yerushalayim be-masekhet pe'ulotav shel ha-mimsad ha-tziyoni be-shalhei tkufat ha-mandat” (The Position of the City of Jerusalem in the Context of Activities by the Zionist Establishment at the End of the Mandate Period), Zion, Vol. 61, No. 1 (1996), pp. 67–90; Yonatan Fine, “Irgun ha-oref ha-yehudi likrat milhemet ha'atzma'ut: Be'ayot yesod be-mimshal uve-logistikah” (Organization of the Jewish Rear for the War of Independence: Basic Problems in Government and Logistics), in Alon Kadish (ed.), Mehkar milhemet ha-atzma'ut (Research in the War of Independence) (Tel Aviv, forthcoming).
4 The road was dedicated on 7 December 1948 in the presence of Ben-Gurion who wrote in his diary that the name chosen for it was “pompous” (Lorch, “Ben-Gurion,” p. 392).
5 See front-page report in Ha'aretz, 15 September 1949. Strangely enough, it was Minister of Justice Pinhas Rosenblit who attributed minor importance to its location in Jerusalem, associating it more with the ancient traditions concerning the judges of Jerusalem (ibid.).
6 Letter of the military governor of Jerusalem to the prime minister, 11 November 1948, ISA/RG 43/5446/23. The idea of transferring a ministry to Jerusalem had already been raised in a discussion in the National Council (Va'ad Le'umi) of 29 July 1948 following a political review by Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, when Moshe Kolodny, of the Zionist Worker Party (Ha-Oved ha-Tziyoni) proposed that the Minister of Religions and his ministry be installed in Jerusalem, the “city of religions” (Ha'aretz, 30 July 1948, p. 1).
7 Dr. Alfred Boneh, head of the Institute for Economic Research of the Jewish Agency (who resided in Jerusalem), was also involved in the socioeconomic initiative suggested by Dov Yosef; he also requested a list of the ministries that the government thought “could return to Jerusalem.” See his letter to the Government Secretariat, 22 November 1949, ISA/RG 43/5446/23.
8 Letter of the military governor of Jerusalem to the finance minister, 6 December 1948 (copy), ISA/RG 43/5446/23. In his application to the finance minister for a budget, he stressed the vital political importance of the transfer as well as its economic importance as a means of restoring stability to the city.
9 See minutes of government discussions on 12 and 20 December 1948, ISA.
10 The reference seems to be to capital cities or governments located on the front lines. Six months later Ben-Gurion admitted that he had not supported the government's return to the city because he had been afraid of military complications in Jerusalem. See minutes of government meeting, 29 May 1949, p. 32, ISA.
11 Ben-Gurion's proposal was identical to the list in Dov Yosef's letter (see p. 233 above). See minutes of government discussions, 20 December 1948, ISA, pp. 25–9.
12 Ibid., p. 27. Transportation Minister David Remez added another concrete example, noting that the location of Jerusalem was indeed difficult, but so was the Hebrew language (ibid., p. 29).
13 A simple problem underlay all these matters. While it was strange to keep the Jews of Jerusalem under a regime of “occupation,” according to international law any area held by a state that was not annexed to it had to be governed by military rule, and therefore a decision to abolish military rule meant either the abandonment of responsibility for the area (which had no basis) or its implicit annexation, even without an official announcement. See minutes of government meeting, 30 January 1949, ISA.
14 Ibid., p.12.
15 See the ministerial committee's proposal, 2 February 1949, ISA/RG 43/5446/23, and Fishman-Maimon's criticism of its inactivity (ibid.), which resulted in the government decision of 30 January 1949 to co-opt him onto the committee and charge him with the task of calling a meeting to activate it. See his request to the government secretary, 4 February 1949, to place the matter at the top of the agenda in the next government meeting (ibid.). (Although Fishman added “Maimon” to his name only later in 1949, we shall refer to him by both names to avoid confusion.) At the same time there was a significant development in the negotiations with King Abdullah on the future of Jerusalem, although no documentation linking the two events has yet been found.
16 Ministerial committee's proposal, 3 February 1949, ibid.
17 Minutes of government meeting, 6 February 1949, pp. 38–43, ISA. The additional departments to be transferred at this stage were the Department for Enemy Property and Absentee Property Owners and the Income Tax Division and Population Registry, which were attached to a number of ministries.
18 The details and significance of these measures require a separate discussion.
19 Letter from Dov Yosef to Government Secretary Ze'ev Sherf, 20 February 1949, ISA/RG 43/5446/23. See also minutes of the discussion between the representatives of the Jerusalem branch of the National Union of Government Workers and the head of the Personnel Department, Shlomo Kedar, 6 March 1949, on incorporating about 100 workers dismissed by the Military Government into the civilian departments in Jerusalem (ibid.)
20 See the report by Shlomo Kedar to Ze'ev Sherf, 6 March 1949, ibid.
21 Minutes of government meeting, 3 March 1949, “Guidelines,” p. 6 (Chapter 6, Section 2), ISA.
22 Divrei ha-Knesset (Knesset Record), Vol. 1, 10 March 1949, p. 135.
23 Minutes of government meeting, 29 May 1949, p. 20, ISA.
24 Letter of Shlomo Kedar to Ze'ev Sherf, 6 March 1949, ISA/RG 43/5446/23, p. 4.
25 Minutes of government meeting, 27 March 1949, pp. 10–25, ISA. The following quotations are from this meeting.
26 Ibid., p. 24.
27 Ibid., p. 22. The government accordingly appointed a team responsible for locating property in Jerusalem for housing the ministries and their staff.
28 Ha-Boker, 28 March 1949; Ha'aretz, 28 March 1949; telegram of congratulations from the teachers of Jerusalem to the government, 28 March 1949, on the decision to transfer the Ministry of Education to the city (despite Education Minister Shazar's objection), and from the Jerusalem Branch of the Progressive Party, 29 March 1949, ISA/RG 43/5446/23.
29 See the decisions of the ministerial committee for the transfer of ministries to Jerusalem, 31 March 1949, and the operational plan of the project coordinator in the Prime Minister's Office, Mrs. Even-Tov, 31 March 1949, ibid.
30 For the background of the plan and its principles see Yosef Schweid et al., Tokhnit av le-Yerushalayim 1968 (Master Plan for Jerusalem 1968) (Jerusalem, 1974), pp. 78–80; S. Shapiro, “Planning Jerusalem: The First Generation, 1917–1968” in David Amiran et al. (eds.), Urban Geography of Jerusalem (Jerusalem, 1973), pp. 139–53.
31 Letter from Zalman Lifshitz to the prime minister and finance minister, 23 March 1949, ISA/RG 43/5448/17.
32 For the map see ISA/RG 43/5448/20.
33 Minutes of government meeting, 11 April 1949, p. 51, ISA. Some of the area, which spread over more than 2,000 dunams {\rm (dunam = 1,000 \hspace{0.167em} sq.m.)} , was owned by Jews (private owners and companies) and the remainder was defined as the property of absentee owners. See the report and exact survey of the area by the survey engineer Zalman Lifshitz, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, File A/402.
34 Letter from Aryeh Sharon to the Prime Minister, 29 July 1949, with map attached, ISA/RG 43/5440/15. Additional maps are in the archives of the Land Acquisition Project, Yad Ben Zvi Institute, Jerusalem.
35 The members of the committee were M. Shatner of the Finance Ministry (chairman), A. Biran, district commissioner in the Ministry of the Interior, A. Friedman, district engineer, H. Rau, Planning Division, and M. Brachman, representative of the prime minister.
36 Its members were prominent architects: Yohanan Ratner, Richard Kaufman, Yosef Klarwin, Aryeh Sharon, Shlomo Arazi.
37 Letter from Mordechai Shatner to Government Secretary Ze'ev Sherf, 6 November 1949, and the recommendations of the committee in the meetings held from November 1949 onward, ISA/RG 43/5448/14.
38 See minutes of the committee meetings, the final one dated 16 January 1950, and its chairman's announcement on its disbanding as of 14 March 1950. He expressed the hope that it would continue its fruitful activities in the newly built Kiryah. ISA/RG 43/5440/15.
39 See letter of Shlomo Kedar (Personnel Department) to Government Secretary Ze'ev Sherf, 6 March 1949, ISA/RG 43/5446/23.
40 Letter from Dr. Pinhas Novak, managing director of the Ministry of Health, to Ze'ev Sherf, 4 April 1949, ISA/RG 69.3/724/12.
41 Cf. Health Minister Shapira at the government meeting 5/5709, 27 March 1949, pp. 17–18, 23, ISA.
42 See minutes of government meeting, 29 May 1949, ISA.
43 Minutes of government meeting, 27 March 1949, pp. 18–19, ISA.
44 Letter from Avraham Hechster to Hanna Even-Tov, 12 June 1949, ISA/RG 43/5446/23.
45 Letter from Hanna Even-Tov to Avraham Hechster, 21 June 1949, ibid.; letter from Moshe Brachman to the government secretary, 31 July 1949, and a detailed table of all the officials transferred to Jerusalem, their family and housing situation, ibid.
46 The ministerial committee ruled that an official who did not want to move to Jerusalem would be considered as having resigned his position, but would be eligible for severance pay.
47 Cf. also the letter of Avraham Hechster to Hanna Even-Tov, 29 July 1949, claiming that the transfer of ministries could not be regarded as a total failure, among other things because the number of government personnel had increased by about 50%. ISA/RG 43/5446/23.
48 See above, and also the description of the situation in letter of Shlomo Kedar to the government secretary, 18 May 1949, ibid.
49 Minutes of government meeting, 8 August 1949, ISA.
50 Ibid., p. 52. The members of the committee were Rabbi Fishman-Maimon, Yosef, Remez and Sharett (who emphasized his opposition to the transfer), and also the finance minister. See also memorandum of Moshe Brachman to the ministerial committee that dealt with the transfer of the ministries, 7 August 1949, ISA/RG 43/5446/23.
51 Concerning the criticism on the gap between words and deeds, Rabbi Fishman-Maimon noted that he had heard senior officers saying that they could, at a certain juncture, have conquered the Old City of Jerusalem but did not do so for political reasons (a claim that was later made on many other occasions), and therefore at least New Jerusalem should be saved. Minutes of government meeting, 9 August 1949, p. 52, ISA.
52 Shitreet cited the example of Attaturk who had replaced the historical capital, Istanbul, which was under attack, with the new capital in Ankara.
53 Minutes of government meeting, 9 August 1949, pp. 60–65, ISA.
54 Ibid., p. 28.
55 Herzl was buried in Jerusalem on 17 August 1949, and the front page of Ha'aretz on that day announced that “Jerusalem, the Capital, is preparing [for Herzl]” (emphasis added).
56 Minutes of government meeting, 17 August 1949, pp. 16–44, ISA. The Lausanne Conference was convened in April–September 1949 in an (unsuccessful) effort to reach an Israeli–Arab peace agreement, subsequent to the armistice agreements signed in Rhodes.
57 He hoped that the transfer to Jerusalem would free offices in the Kiryah in Tel Aviv, so that all the Tel Aviv offices could be concentrated there, thus saving the cost of renting buildings elsewhere in Tel Aviv. The money saved would pay for renovating the offices being set up in Jerusalem (where they were generally located in abandoned property). See letter of Shlomo Arazi to the finance minister, 20 September 1949, ISA/RG 43/5446/23, as well as the report on the transfer and the minutes of government meeting, 24 November 1949, ISA/RG 69.3/714/7. On the types of abandoned property in Jerusalem, see Arnon Golan, “Plitim, olim, shkhunot netushot: Itzuv ha-ma'arakh ha-ironi shel Yerushalayim ha-yehudit be-milhemet ha-atzma'ut ve-ahareiha, 1948–1950” (Refugees, Immigrants, Abandoned Neighborhoods: Shaping the Urban Layout of Jewish Jerusalem during the War of Independence and Afterwards, 1948–1950), in Bareli (ed.), Yerushalayim ha-hatzuyah, especially pp. 85–8.
58 Dov Yosef ordered that renovations begin immediately (without waiting for the budget from the Finance Ministry), and in that very month renovations were begun in two of the buildings. See the internal letter of the Office of Supply and Budget, 29 September 1949, ISA/RG 69.3/724/13.
59 See minutes of government meeting, 24 November 1949, ISA/RG 69.3/7114/7.
60 See the list of ministerial committee decisions, 1 December 1949, ibid.
61 The team was headed by Shlomo Arazi, director of the Kiryah Office. See minutes of the ministerial committee and draft notes, 1, 4, 15, 26 December 1949, ISA/RG 69.3/714/7.
62 Reports of Shlomo Arazi, 1 December 1949 and 4 December 1949, ibid. He also had to deal with the evacuation of the Gal-On rest home that was used for wounded soldiers in Jerusalem.
63 Minutes of government meeting, 6 September 1949, ISA.
64 In the background were recollections of the 1937 partition proposal, when the leaders of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine) had faced the dilemma as to which alternative would best realize the Zionist program. Golda Meyerson (Meir) asked what would have happened if all or a majority of the delegates to the 1937 Zionist Congress had agreed to partition. Some would say that this would not have helped matters, but she knew some who were convinced that the State of Israel could already have been established then.
65 Cf. the report by the Director of the Kiryah, Dov Reizer, headed “Sharonah — Only a Temporary Seat of Government for the State of Israel,” Ha'aretz, 18 May 1948, p. 1.
66 Quoted in Rosenthal, “Ha-pa'am lo ra'iti,” p. 56. His words were recorded by Argov ten days after they were spoken. Rosenthal notes that this statement, like others that indicated Ben-Gurion's loss of self-confidence, was deleted when the original letter was published in the Argov Memorial Volume in 1959.
67 See Katz, “Mekomah shel ha-ir Yerushalayim”; and Yair Paz, “Tokhnit ha-Sokhnut ha-Yehudit le-halukat Yerushalayim (1937–1938)” (The Plan of the Jewish Agency for the Partition of Jerusalem [1937–1938]), Cathedra, No. 72 (1994), pp. 113–34.
68 On the status of the political organizations in the Yishuv during the Mandate period, see Dan Horowitz and Moshe Lissak, Origins of the Israeli Polity: Palestine under the Mandate (Chicago, 1978).
69 Oral interview quoted by Brecher, Decision in Israel's Foreign Policy, p. 29.