What Palestinians Can Learn From a Turning Point in Zionist History

The Irgun, along with an even more radical group, the Stern Gang, was responsible for a massacre of more than 200 Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin in April 1948.

A month later, after the British walked out of Palestine and Mr. Ben-Gurion declared the state of Israel, Arab armies attacked. On June 1, the Haganah and Irgun agreed to merge into the Israel Defense Forces, headed by Haganah commanders. The accord called on Irgun members to hand over arms and terminate separate activity, including arms purchases abroad.

But there remained the question of an old American Navy landing vessel bought by the Irgun's American supporters and renamed the Altalena. The ship, whose purchase had predated the June 1 agreement, was packed with 850 volunteers, 5,000 rifles, 3,000 bombs, 3 million cartridges and hundreds of tons of explosives.

Mr. Ben-Gurion wanted every soldier and bullet he could get and ordered the ship to dock. But Mr. Begin said the arms should go to Irgun troops. Mr. Ben-Gurion refused; at that point, Irgun men headed to the beach to unload the arms.

Mr. Ben-Gurion realized the challenge he faced. As he put it in his memoir, "I decided this must be the moment of truth. Either the government's authority would prevail and we could then proceed to consolidate our military force or the whole concept of nationhood would fall apart."

He ordered the Altalena shelled. Dan Kurzman, in his biography of Mr. Ben-Gurion, "Prophet of Fire," describes the old man sitting with his cabinet just before his decision, "his eyes inflamed from sleeplessness, his hair in even wilder disarray than usual," and saying, "The state can not exist until we have one army and control of that army."

After the volunteers disembarked, Mr. Begin boarded the ship, as did other Irgun fighters. The shelling began. When one hit and the Altalena burst into flames, Mr. Begin was hurled overboard by his men and carried ashore. The ship sank, along with most of its arms and more than a dozen Irgun members. Others were arrested, and the Irgun's independent activities were finally put to an end. "Blessed be the cannon that shelled that ship," Mr. Ben-Gurion declared, providing his political enemies on the right with a rallying cry against him for the next generation.

In his 1953 memoir, "The Revolt," Begin says he had known hunger and sorrow in his life but had wept only twice — once, out of joy, when the state was declared, and the second time, in grief, the night the Altalena was destroyed.

The point for the Palestinians is that until their radical militias are put out of action, those groups will always be in the position of spoilers. In 1996, the Palestinian Authority showed itself capable of confrontation, making widespread arrests of extremists in the wake of several suicide bombings. Thousands of militants were arrested. But most were eventually let go. The Palestinians must do it again and in a definitive manner. The Altalena is a symbol of that task because it involved genuine confrontation yet little loss of life. As Mr. Ben-Gurion wrote in his memoir:

"The incident caused near civil war among the Jews themselves. But in the eyes of the world we had affirmed ourselves as a nation. When the smoke cleared and the indignation died down, the population at large put itself squarely behind its government. The days of private armies were past, and, in the manner of every other well-organized state, we had the makings of a central command under government control."