דוד בן-גוריון DAVID BEN-GURION recorded a draft order to mobilize the ההגנה HAʾHAGANA Field Corps.

Earlier in the same entry, Ben-Gurion described a conditional arrangement for Avraham Granot to supply £250,000 from הקרן הקיימת לישראל HAʾKEREN HAʾKAYEMET LEʾYISRAʾEL money if Eliezer Kaplan supplied another £250,000. This records an urgent financing proposal, not proof that either sum was paid. He also discussed how הסוכנות היהודית HAʾSOḪNUT HAʾYEHUDIT leaders in ירושלים YERUŜALAYIM and תל אביב TEL AVIV could meet separately if the road were cut, and how the Situation Committee would divide its work. The question was whether institutions of יהודים YEHUDIM could keep defending communities and providing civilian authority while communications failed.⁴

Representatives of the four Gush Etzion communities told him that approximately 350 adults and 70 children lived there. His inventory of Kfar Etzion's weapons and needs for communication, fencing, and transport made the safety of a defined civilian community part of the military decision. The figures were estimates conveyed in a planning meeting, not a census or evidence of a new evacuation.⁵

Ben-Gurion also wrote that he would not make an arrangement with הארגון HAʾIRGUN and לח״י LEḤI until they ceased independent activity, including threats and extortion. This was his stated condition, not evidence that every armed action by יהודים YEHUDIM already came under one command. Historian Itamar Radai likewise describes separate local and national interests in the fighting around יפו YAFO, where citrus growers sought a limited accommodation while armed operations continued. The draft order should be read within that unsettled political and military setting.⁶

The diary records Ben-Gurion asking Eliahu Sasson whether to attack Salameh and Sasson opposing that proposal. Their exchange does not establish that the proposed attack occurred.⁷

The diary record is dated 9 December 1947 and places its report of the draft order “in the evening.” The surviving transcription does not give a clock time or establish whether that evening began before or after local sunset. This article therefore uses the secure Hebrew month, Kislev 5708, rather than choosing 26 or 27 Kislev. It dates Ben-Gurion's record of a draft order, not its verified implementation.⁸

• Which records would show that the draft became an issued order and that the named numbers were actually mobilized?
• What does the draft reveal about preparation by institutions of יהודים YEHUDIM before sovereignty, and what does it leave open about implementation?