Israel found the wreck of the Altalena ship from 1948. Its own army set it on fire, and the dispute over it has revived before the election

The wreck of the cargo ship Altalena, which the Israeli army shelled and set on fire off the coast of Tel Aviv in June 1948, lies at a depth of 503 meters about twenty kilometers from Israel’s shores. The discovery was announced on Monday by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Heritage Minister Amichaj Elijahu, both from the far-right Otzma Jehudit (Jewish Power) party. According to them, the vessel has been preserved intact. Times of Israel ↗

The ship was bought in the summer of 1947 in the United States by the underground organization Irgun and had originally served the U.S. Navy as a landing craft for tanks. In June 1948 it brought to Israel, which had existed for barely a month, roughly 930 immigrants together with a large shipment of weapons and medical supplies. Arutz Sheva ↗

The British administration, which had governed the territory until then, considered Irgun a terrorist organization. Among other things, the group was behind the attack on Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in July 1946, in which more than ninety people were killed. Ilta-Sanomat ↗

Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, and already on June 1 signed an agreement to incorporate Irgun into the newly formed army. The dispute broke out over who would get the weapons from the ship. Irgun commander Menachem Begin demanded one fifth for his fighters in Jerusalem, while David Ben-Gurion’s government insisted that all armaments were subject to the army, because it feared the creation of an “army within an army.” The ship also arrived during the first truce agreed by the United Nations, which explicitly banned the import of weapons and fighters. Jerusalem Post ↗

At Kfar Vitkin north of the city of Netanja, where the ship arrived on June 20, fighting broke out a day later in which six Irgun members and two soldiers were killed. Begin then went aboard and the Altalena headed south toward Tel Aviv, where the shooting was repeated on June 22. Artillery fire on the stranded ship was directed by forces on the shore under the command of the young Jicchak Rabin, later chief of the general staff and prime minister. Another ten Irgun members and one soldier were killed there, nineteen people in total. Times of Israel ↗

Begin at the time urged his people not to return fire, justifying it with a sentence that became part of the Israeli canon: there will be no civil war while the enemy stands at the gates. The case permanently divided Israeli politics into Ben-Gurion’s labor camp and Begin’s revisionist camp, and at the same time established the principle that the state should have a single army subordinate to the government. Begin became prime minister in 1977, when the nationalist right replaced for the first time the socialist movement that had founded Israel. CBS News ↗

The burned-out wreck was first left lying off the Tel Aviv coast and was towed away only in 1949, roughly twenty kilometers from shore, where it was sunk. It has now been found at precisely this distance from the coast. Ilta-Sanomat ↗

The search for it had run in secret for months, and the ship was eventually found by a vessel equipped with sensitive sensors and mapping systems. The expedition was initiated by Minister Elijahu and led by Roni Sadeh, head of the maritime mapping department of Israel’s surveying office, the Survey of Israel. Arutz Sheva ↗

Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir appeared separately on Monday evening in front of the Irgun museum in Tel Aviv. According to the daily Maariv, they were originally supposed to speak together and split up only at the last moment; the prime minister avoided a joint photograph after Ben-Gvir issued a statement without mentioning him. “Begin also knew what it is like when you are boycotted. They sit with you in the most closed rooms, and when the moment of truth comes, they do not want to be photographed with you,” the minister said. Jerusalem Post ↗

In his own statement, the prime minister called Ben-Gurion’s decision to shoot tragic and said that instead of unloading the needed weapons, Haganah men opened fire. According to the Jerusalem Post’s historical overview, however, the ship was already being fired on by soldiers of the new Israeli army, into which the pre-state armed forces had begun to be incorporated shortly after the declaration of independence. Netanyahu promised that he would have the ship raised from the seabed and turn it into a tangible symbol with the message that civil war must never happen again, and in the same speech he called for the creation of a broad government of national unity. Jerusalem Post ↗

That promise is still uncertain, and it is not the first of its kind. The location of the Altalena had already been announced once in December 2012, then a few miles off the coast of Rišon Lecijon and at a depth of 300 meters, and the government said even then that it was interested in raising the ship. According to the Times of Israel, raising the entire vessel is probably impossible because of its depth and location, and no one has independently confirmed that the wreck really has been preserved intact, as the ministers claim. The army also said it had no role in the search operation. Times of Israel ↗

The David Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute responded with a statement saying that the discovery is not an opportunity to renew old disputes, but a reminder of why the state principle is a condition for the state’s existence and not just a slogan. Elijahu, by contrast, speaks of a deep national wound and of the historical responsibility Begin showed when he prevented civil war. CBS News ↗

Israel will go to the polls on October 27. The Knesset dissolved on July 17 as the first parliament since 1988 to last its full term. In a Channel 12 television poll from that time, the Jašar party of former chief of the general staff Gadi Eisenkot had twenty-three seats and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud had twenty-two. Al Jazeera ↗

People from Ben-Gvir’s circle said after Monday’s appearance that the prime minister’s behavior points to his intention to enter government precisely with Eisenkot, adding that this is exactly how Menachem Begin was once treated. The wreck, which for seventy-eight years recalled how close Israel came to civil war, thus became within one day of its discovery an argument in the dispute over the formation of the next government. Jerusalem Post ↗

Photo: the burning Altalena off the Tel Aviv coast, June 22, 1948. Author: Government Press Office photographer / National Photo Collection of Israel / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0. The image has been reduced.