1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (22 page)

But this description of Zionist policy requires several caveats. From the first, the IZL and LHI did not play along. Almost immediately, they responded to Arab depredations with indiscriminate terrorism (to the ire of the Haganah chiefs).125 "Enough [with restraint]. From now on-we [shall attack] the nests of murderers," announced Kol Zion Halohemet (the Voice of Fighting Zion), the IZL radio station, on 7 December 1947.12x' During the following days a series of attacks by IZL and LHI bombers and gunmen claimed several dozen lives. The most notable were two IZL bomb attacks outside the Jerusalem Old City Damascus Gate (on 12 and 29 December) 127 and a LHI grenade and machine gun attack (on 28 December) on coffee shops in Jerusalem's Romema district. The coffee shops, according to the LHI commander's later account, "were jammed with Arabs hatching schemes, sipping coffee and playing backgammon." 128 Similar IZL attacks were launched that month in Yazur and Yahudiya, in the center of the country, in Tira, south of Haifa, and in Jaffa, and on 4 January 1948 the LHI detonated a large truck-bomb at the old Jaffa municipality (saraya) building, which housed the NC offices, killing dozens.129 The local leader, Rafik Tamimi, called the mufti and reported: "The situation in Jaffa is so bad, it's hard to describe. "1s0 Without doubt, the terrorist attacks sowed panic. But they also deepened Arab hatred and contributed to turning what was sporadic Arab violence into a bitter, full-scale war.

Second, the mainstream Zionist leaders, from the first, began to think of expanding the Jewish state beyond the 29 November partition resolution borders. As Shertok told one interlocutor already in September 1947, if the Arabs initiate war, "we will get hold of as much of Palestine as we would think we can hold."'-" He seemed to be referring particularly to the clusters of Jewish settlements left by UNSCOP outside the partition borders, such as that in Western Galilee, from which, even before 29 November, there was growing pressure on the Yishuv leadership for inclusion in the Jewish state. i as Moreover, the Haganah's limited retaliatory policy itself contributed to the spread and escalation of the hostilities, in one or two cases igniting a fire where none had been before.

Last, to be sure, the Haganah's defensive policy during the first months of the war was dictated in part by a lack of means; the Haganah was not yet ready for large-scale offensive operations, in terms of both unit readiness and armaments. Indeed, in early February 1948 Galili hinted that matters would change once large arms shipments from Czechoslovakia arrived: "We are interested in holding on for two months, [after which] the situation might fundamentally change. In two months we will have different equipment, and then we will be able to deliver a decisive blow against them."1 as

Much of the fighting in the first months of the war took place in and on the edges of the main towns-Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and Haifa. Most of the violence was initiated by the Arabs. Arab snipers continuously fired at Jewish houses, pedestrians, and traffic and planted bombs and mines along urban and rural paths and roads. Movement in certain areas and streets became unsafe. From the second week of December, Jewish traffic was organized in convoys, with Haganah and, occasionally, British escorts, and concrete antisniper walls were erected at the entrances to Jewish buildings and streets in the mixed towns. As the weeks passed the hostilities spread.

The first organized Arab urban attack was launched against the Jewish Hatikva Quarter, on the eastern edge of Tel Aviv. Following several days of sniping and Haganah responses in kind, British troops intervened, killing two Haganah men and arresting others. The Haganah then blew up a house on the outskirts of the neighboring village of Salame. The following day, 8 December 1947, hundreds of irregulars, led by Hassan Salame, assaulted the Hatikva Quarter. The Haganah resisted fiercely. A few of the quarter's houses fell as British troops looked on. The Arabs looted and set them alight. Haganah reinforcements arrived, infiltrating between British patrols, and the Arabs retreated. The Arabs suffered some sixty dead, the Jews two dead. Afterward, a British officer returned a Jewish baby abducted by the attackers. The British suspected that the assault had been carried out on direct orders from Haj Amin al-Husseini.134

A second urban attack took place two months later, in Jerusalem, the seat of the Mandate government. The attackers ran the risk of British interference but claimed that they were retaliating for a Jewish attack on a bus. On io February 1948, about iSo Arabs poured out of the Old City and attacked the Yemin Moshe neighborhood to the west, across the Vale of Hinnom. They were protected by covering fire from the city walls. The Haganah, eventually aided by British troops, beat them off. Sixteen Arabs died and dozens were wounded (some by friendly fire); the Jews suffered one dead and five wounded.135

Attacks by Arab irregulars on rural settlements also began in early December 1947. On 4 December a band of 120-150 gunmen from Salame attacked Ef al, a small kibbutz northeast of Tel Aviv. The settlers, helped by Palmah reinforcements, beat them off. A more forceful attack was launched on 27 December against nearby Kfar Yavetz by militiamen from Qalansuwa and Taiyiba. They were responding to provocative Haganah patrolling and the demolition of a nearby well. Haganah reinforcements reached the settlement in time and a British armored column also intervened. The attackers withdrew, leaving behind a number of dead. Several Haganah men were also killed.

A more extensive attack, also resulting from local friction, took place on i i January 1948, against Kfar Uriah, near Ramla. A Palmate force and a column of British armor routed the attackers, who came from neighboring Beit Jiz and Khirbet Beit Far. Three Haganah men were killed and thirteen were wounded; twenty-five Arabs died.

Like most intercommunal wars, this one, too, was marked by cycles of revenge. On the morning of 3o December, an IZL squad threw bombs from a passing van into a crowd of casual Arab laborers at a bus stop outside the Haifa Oil Refinery, killing eleven and wounding dozens. In a spontaneous response inside the plant, Arab refinery employees (reinforced by laborers from outside), using "sticks, metal bars, stones, etc.," turned on their Jewish coworkers, mostly white-collar employees, and, in an hour-long rampage, butchered thirty-nine and wounded another fifty. Several Arab employees protected Jews. The British refinery executives and security officers refused to intervene or give the Jews arms from the plant's armory, though a number of British workers saved Jews. The massacre was halted by the arrival of British forces, who then allowed the Arabs to be bussed out. No one was arrested. The subsequent investigation by leading Haifa Jewish figures found that the massacre was spontaneous and triggered by the earlier IZL attack and that the Arabs had not planned the outbreak.136

But the HGS felt that the massacre could not go unpunished, whatever its trigger, and targeted the large village of Balad ash Sheikh and its satellite village, Hawasa, southeast of Haifa. Many of the refinery workers lived there. Indeed, an HIS report immediately named three Balad ash Sheikh villagers who had participated in the massacre.137 On the night of 31 December-i January, the Haganah sent in a Palmah company and several independent platoons. The orders were to "kill as many men as possible"-or, alternatively, "ioo" men-and "destroy furniture, etc.," but to avoid killing women and children. The raiders moved from house to house, pulling out men and executing them. Sometimes they threw grenades into houses and sprayed the interiors with automatic fire. There were several dozen dead, including some women and children. During the raids, nearby British and Arab Legion units fired from afar at the raiders. The Haganah suffered three dead and two wounded.' 38 Mapam leaders criticized the indiscriminate nature of the retaliation. Ben-Gurion responded that "to discriminate [in such circumstances] is impossible. We're at war.... There is an injustice in this, but otherwise we will not be able to hold out." 139

A second revenge cycle occurred in Eastern Galilee. On 2 December 1948, several Arabs attacked a Jewish guard buying cigarettes in a kiosk in the village of Khisas, at the tip of the Panhandle. The guard shot one of them dead. The British arrested the guard, but local villagers began to snipe at Jews cultivating nearby fields. On 18 December a group of Arabs ambushed and shot dead a Jewish cart driver near I ibbutz Ma`ayan Baruch. 14() The local Palmate contingent requested permission to retaliate against Khisas and other villages. Local Jewish leaders, led by Nahum Hurwitz, a veteran of Hashomer, opposed the idea, arguing that the area was largely quiet. But Yigal Allon, the Palmah OC, approved a reprisal (apparently without HGS approval), and that night the Palmah hit Khisas and a nearby mansion belonging to the local effendi, Emir Fa`ur. In Khisas, the Palmahniks stormed a house, killing three men, a woman, and four children, and then blew it up, also damaging an adjacent building; at the mansion, they killed four men. None of the dead appear to have been involved in the death of the cart driver. Much of Khisas's population fled-and those who remained sued for peace. 14'

The raid triggered a protracted dispute among the Yishuv's political leaders. A few, backed by Arab experts, condemned the raid, saying that it had "spread the conflagration." Yosef Sapir, a liberal leader, called for "severe punishment" of the officers responsible.142 `Ezra Danin, one of the HIS's founders, complained that the Haganah "does what it pleases despite our advice."14=3 No one was punished. But the Arabs were bent on exacting re venge: on 9 January 1948, several hundred bedouin, mostly from Syria, directed by Emir Fa`ur, attacked Kibbutz Kfar Szold on the Syrian border. They were driven off with the (eventual) help of a British armored column. One Haganah man was killed and four were wounded; twenty-four Arabs died and sixty-seven were wounded.144

The Haganah made other mistakes. On the night of 5-6 January 1948, a squad of sappers penetrated West Jerusalem's Katamon neighborhood and blew up part of the Semiramis Hotel, suspected of housing an Arab irregulars headquarters. Twenty-six civilians died, including the Spanish deputy consul, Manuel Allende Salazar y Travesedo. The explosion triggered the start of a "panic exodus" from the prosperous Arab neighborhood.1 ,' Jewish sources later claimed that one or two of the dead were irregulars.146 Several JAE members criticized the Haganah,147 and the British were irate, calling in Ben-Gurion for a dressing down. He subsequently removed the officer responsible, Mishael Shaham, from command.148

But generally Haganah retaliatory strikes during December 1947-March 1948 were accurately directed, either against perpetrators or against their home bases or hostile villages and militiamen. Relatively few women and children were killed. In mid-May, HIS summarized the results of the Jewish reprisals of December 1947-March 1948: "The main effect of these operations was on the Arab civilian population ... [leading to] economic paralysis, unemployment, lack of fuel and supplies because of the severance of transport. They suffered from the destruction of their houses and psychologically their nerves were badly hit, and they even suffered evacuations and wanderings.... [All this] weakened the Arab rear areas and made the operations of the militiamen more difficult, and also led to clashes between the Arab population that was hurt and the Arab combatants whom the civilian inhabitants saw as the source of the disaster. The Jewish attacks forced the Arabs to tie down great forces in protecting themselves.... The [reprisals also caused] ... doubt about their own strength. This war of nerves had great value in undermining to a large extent the confidence of the enemy. But these are phenomena suffered by each side in the conflict and they did not yet reach the extent of decisively affecting the staying power of the Arabs and their morale." 149

Attacks on Jewish transport were one of the main features of the civil war. From early December 1947, Jewish traffic began to move in Haganah-protected convoys, sometimes accompanied by British armored cars. The Haganah cladded trucks and pickups with armor plating. But Arab ambushes grew in number and potency. On 11 December, a convoy from Jerusalem to the isolated `Etzion Bloc of Jewish settlements south of Bethlehem was am bushed by a faz a of Arab villagers; ten Jews died. On r4 December, a second convoy, headed for Ben Shemen, near Lydda, was shot up near the Beit Nabala military camp: fourteen Jews were killed and ten injured-shot by Arab Legionnaires serving with the British army in Palestine. r 50

The Jews retaliated in kind. On 12 December, for example, a unit of the Palmah's Third Battalion ambushed a bus, apparently filled with irregulars, at Nabi Yusha, near Safad, killing six and wounding thirty.

Within a month of the outbreak of hostilities, the stakes increased considerably, with the arrival of foreign volunteers who reinforced the Palestine Arab militias. Toward the end of December, some six hundred crossed into Palestine from Lebanon and Syria and fanned out in Jaffa, Haifa, Gaza, Safad, Acre, and Jerusalem.15I A fortnight later, the advance units of the ALA-having completed their (superficial) training in Qatana-crossed the border. The ALA's Second Yarmuk Battalion (the Yarmuk River was the site of a famous Muslim victory over the Byzantines in 636), with just over three hundred troops, crossed over from Rmaich, Lebanon, on 9 -1o January 1948 and headed for Tarshiha in the Galilee. The battalion was commanded by a Syrian army major, Adib Shishakli, and was composed mostly of Syrians.152

The First Yarmuk Battalion crossed from Transjordan a few days later and pushed inland, bivouacking in Tubas, near Nablus. The six-hundred-man battalion was commanded by Captain Muhammad Safa.1sa The British quickly learned of these illegal crossings and were much embarrassed (Cunningham was furious).154 But they did nothing-other than exacting from Safa a worthless promise that the ALA would not engage the Jews until after they, the British, had left the country. A third ALA unit, the Hittin Battalion (named after Saladin's victory over the Crusaders at the Horns of Hittin in 1187), crossed into Palestine from Jordan (with King Abdullah'spermission) at the end of January and joined the First Yarmuk.155 It was commanded by an Iraqi, Madlul Abbas, and was composed mostly of Iraqis, with a sprinkling of Palestinians.