Background
In the central and northern parts of Palestine, the Israelis had managed to make substantial territorial gains before the second truce of the war went into effect. But the southern Negev Desert, allocated to a Jewish state in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, was still under Egyptian control. Despite the second truce, the Egyptians denied Jewish convoys passage through to the Negev, and captured positions beyond the truce demarcation lines.
Operation Ten Plagues (after the punishment God sent to the Egyptians for holding the Israelis captive in the Hebrew Bible) was made and approved at a Cabinet Session 6 October 1948. The operation came after at 14 October 1948 when a convoy consisting of 16 trucks was fired on as it passed through Egyptian positions.
Ralph Bunche, who had become UN mediator after the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte, said:
- military action of the last few days has been on a scale which could only be undertaken after considerable preparation, and could scarcely be explained as simple retaliatory action for an attack on a convoy.
Read more about this topic: Operation Yoav
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