Nazareth

====1948 War====
[[File:Moshe Sharett - Amin Gargurah.jpg|thumb|[[Amin-Salim Jarjora]]
 (left), Mayor of Nazareth, with Israeli prime minister [[Moshe Sharett]], 1955]]
Nazareth itself was not a field of battle during the 1948 War, which began on 15 May, before the first truce on 11 June, although some of the villagers had joined the loosely organized peasant military and paramilitary forces, and troops from the [[Arab Liberation Army]] (ALA) had entered Nazareth on 9 July. The local defense of the town consisted of 200–300 militiamen distributed along the hills surrounding the town. The defense in the southern and western hills collapsed after Israeli shelling, while resistance in the northern hills had to contend with an incoming Israeli armored unit. Not long after the Israelis began shelling the local militiamen, Nazareth's police chief raised a white flag over the town's police station.<ref name="Emmett44">Emmett 1995, p. 44.</ref>

Most of the fighting around Nazareth occurred in its satellite villages, particularly in [[Saffuriya]], whose residents put up resistance until largely dispersing following Israeli air raids on 15 July.<ref name="Emmett43">Emmett 1995, p. 43</ref> During the ten days of fighting which occurred between the first and second truce, Nazareth capitulated to Israeli troops during [[Operation Dekel]] on 16 July, after little more than token resistance. By then, morale among local militiamen was low and most refused to fight alongside the ALA because of their perceived weakness in the face of Israel's perceived military superiority and the alleged maltreatment of Christian residents and clergy by ALA volunteers. The Muslim mayor of Nazareth, Yusef Fahum requested a halt to all resistance put up by Nazarenes to prevent the town's destruction.<ref name="Emmett44"/>

The surrender of Nazareth was formalized in a written agreement, whereby the town's leaders agreed to cease hostilities in return for promises from the Israeli officers, including brigade commander [[Ben Dunkelman]] (the leader of the operation), that no harm would come to the civilians of the town. Soon after the signing of the agreement, Dunkelman received an order from the Israeli General [[Chaim Laskov]] to forcibly evacuate the city's Arabs. He refused, remarking that he was 'shocked and horrified' that he would be commanded to renege on the agreement he, and also Chaim Laskov, had just signed. Twelve hours after defying his superior, he was relieved of his post, but not before obtaining assurances that the security of Nazareth's population would be guaranteed. [[David Ben-Gurion]] backed his judgement up, fearing that expelling Christian Arabs might provoke an outcry throughout the Christian world.<ref>Derek J. Penslar, [https://books.google.com/books?id=qWsPAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA235  ''Jews and the Military: A History,''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200103083953/https://books.google.com/books?id=qWsPAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA235 |date=3 January 2020 }} Princeton University Press 2013 p.235.</ref> By the end of the war, Nazareth's population saw a large influx of refugees from major urban centers and rural villages in the Galilee.<ref name="Emmett40"/>