1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (23 page)

The ALA commanders immediately proved both mendacious and incompetent. On zo January the Second Yarmuk, supported by Abu Ibrahim alSghir's irregulars and local villagers-perhaps four hundred men, armed with obsolete rifles, three medium machine guns, and a light mortar-attacked Kibbutz Yehiam, in Western Galilee (an area earmarked for Arab sovereignty), which was defended by its members, a handful of Palmahniks, and a unit of the Twenty-first Battalion of the Levanoni (later, Carmeli) Brigade-in all, about seventy men, with one medium machine gun, and two light mortars. The defenders were well organized, and the attackers tipped their hand by prematurely blowing up a nearby bridge. Wave after wave of as saults failed to crack the defenses and the ALA withdrew, after suffering thirty dead and sixty wounded; Yehiam sustained four dead-and six more were killed in a nearby ALA ambush. 1-16

The First Yarmuk went into action a month later, on 16 February. It had spent weeks preparing, and Haganah intelligence picked up the signs. The HGS guessed that Kibbutz Tirat-Zvi, in the Beit Shean Valley, was the target. The kibbutz was reinforced, and on the night of 15-i6 February, a Palmah force blew up the Sheikh Hussein Bridge over the Jordan River, to cut off the ALA units from their Syrian bases. (That night Palmah units also blew up three bridges along the Lebanese-Palestinian border and houses in Jaffa and its suburb, Abu Kabir, and launched a daring raid deep in Arab territory, on the village of Sasa, in northern Galilee, killing some sixty villagers and destroying twenty houses.) is7 Haganah wiretappers had picked up coded messages: "The sheikh is on his way, everything is ready," and "A warm rain fell tonight near Beisan."isx Soon after midnight, ALA units opened diversionary fire on neighboring kibbutzim and blew up bridges on approach roads. When mortars and machine guns opened up on Tirat-Zvi, the Haganah was ready. There were i 15 defenders and about six hundred assailants. But Jewish counterfire, new barbed wire perimeter fences, and pouring rain and mud proved too much for the ALA. The main assault went in at dawn-and was broken. The Arabs retreated, and a British armored column arrived on the scene. The British ordered Safa to leave the area. He agreed-but only if the British first let loose with mortars and machine guns so that he could later explain that he had withdrawn under (British) duress. The British complied, and the First Yarmuk Battalion withdrew. The ALA left behind some forty to sixty dead. News of the defeat swiftly spread through Arab Palestine, causing demoralization. Tirat-Zvi had suffered one dead and one wounded.'s9

The failure of Arab attacks on urban neighborhoods, fear of British intervention, and the incessant appeals by urban notables (especially from Jaffa, motivated by the citrus harvest, which was exported through the port, and Haifa) to Husseini to sanction a cessation of urban violence had led to a switch in focus to the countryside. But this had produced mixed results, with many villagers refusing to host or cooperate with the armed bands and with a general failure to overrun any Jewish settlements. The Haganah troops were too skilled and highly motivated, the bands and the ALA too poorly equipped, trained, and led.

But the roads were another matter, and the Palestinian irregulars focused on them from January through March. Here they enjoyed relative success, and here, so it appeared, was the area of maximum Jewish vulnerability. Along the roads the Arabs usually enjoyed the advantages of the initiative, high ground, surprise, numbers, and firepower. And the results of successful large roadside ambushes could be far-reaching if not decisive. If supplies failed to get through, especially to Jewish Jerusalem, the Yishuv's morale and war effort might collapse. And the gradual withdrawal of British troops from successive regions of Palestine meant that in more and more areas it was possible to attack traffic without fear of British interference.

Already on 31 December 1947 the HIS reported: "The Arabs intend to paralyze all Jewish traffic on the roads within the next few days." In early February 1948 the service learned that Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini intended to halt all Jewish traffic on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway.1611 Supplies to Jerusalem were clearly a major target. But there were other Jewish areas of vulnerability. One of the severest blows to the Haganah resulted from the Palestinian blockade of the Jerusalem-`Etzion Bloc road, which early in the hostilities had witnessed the devastation of several convoys. On 15-16 January 1948, a reinforced thirty-five-man platoon, composed mainly of Hebrew University students, tried to bypass the road and reach the besieged bloc by foot through the Judean Hills. The column was spotted and ambushed by a faz a. The villagers killed all of them in a drawn-out battle (and then, according to some reports, mutilated their bodies).161

Side by side with ambushes along the roads, the Husseini-affiliated irregulars turned to large-scale urban terrorism, despite an increasing difficulty in penetrating Jewish neighborhoods, which were patrolled by the Haganah and cordoned off and separated from Arab neighborhoods with barbed wire and British and Jewish check posts. The Arabs had noted the devastating effects of a few well-placed Jewish bombs in Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa 162 and enjoyed the services of an accomplished bomb-maker, the blond and blueeyed Fawzi al-Kutub, who learned his craft with the SS in Nazi Germany. 163

There was a string of bombings during January-March 1948. On the night of 1-z February two British deserters, Eddie Brown and Peter Madison, and an Arab, Abu Khalil Janho, working for Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini, drove a British army truck and a police car to the entrance of the Palestine Post building in downtown West Jerusalem. The three fled and at 1o:55 PM the truck exploded, gutting the building and damaging the adjacent Himmeltarb Hotel, which housed Palmah troops. One man died and more than twenty were injured. 161

The next attack was the war's worst. Despite ample forewarning, Husseini managed on zz February to introduce three stolen British trucks and an armored car, driven by six British army deserters and ex-policemen, into the heart of Jewish Jerusalem. The small convoy stopped outside the Atlantic and Amdursky hotels, which housed Palmah troopers, on Ben-Yehuda Street. Kutub had rigged the trucks with explosives in the village of Imwas (New Testament Emmaus), near Latrun. The Britons primed the bombs, shot dead a suspicious Jewish guard, and drove off in the armored car. The trucks blew up at 6:30 AM, leveling four buildings. The Palmahniks were out on operations. But fifty-eight people died, almost all civilians, and thirty-two were seriously injured. There was shock and anger. Ben-Gurion said that he had been in London during the Blitz, "but such a thing I never saw, I couldn't recognize the street." But, he added, "we were the first to commit [such acts] ... the Jews were the first." He was referring to previous LHI and IZL bombings. 165 Vengeful IZL and LHI gunmen immediately took to the streets, killing sixteen British troops and policemen. A week later, on 29 February, an LHI bomb planted near Rehovot derailed a British troop train from Cairo to Haifa, killing twenty-eight and wounding others. 166

The third Arab bombing of the series was the most audacious. On i I March, a Husseini agent, Anton Daoud Camilio, who doubled as an HIS informer, drove a car bomb into the courtyard of Jerusalem's National Institutions compound, the headquarters of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund. Camilio was an American-born Armenian who worked as a driver for the American consulate. He was supposed to deliver three Bren machine guns to the Haganah. The guards were instructed to allow him in. He parked the consular vehicle and walked out of the compound. A few minutes later, the car exploded. Twelve people were killed and ten seriously wounded. The Haganah and the American consulate were badly embarrassed, and morale in Jewish Jerusalem was shaken.'67

Ultimately, though, the bombings were a sideshow; the roads were far more important. The Arab ambushes during December 1947-mid-March 1948 had taken a heavy toll and supplying the isolated outposts in the Galilee, the Negev, and Judea, and Jerusalem's Jews, became a major headache for the Haganah. Most of the Palmah was deployed guarding the convoys, and the casualty rate was appalling. Jewish defensive tactics and means steadily improved. Yet so did the Arabs' organization and firepower. Often the convoys barreled through. But in the end it was an unequal struggle between small Haganah units in lightly armed, cramped, highly inflammable, makeshift armored cars and masses ofArabs enfilading the road from behind rocks on surrounding hills. Narrow roads made maneuver all but impossible. Communication between vehicles was often lost, and occasionally poor equipment impaired communications between the convoy and Haganah headquarters. Once a convoy was ambushed, there was usually nowhere to retreat to: Jewish settlements were often far away, and unfriendly Arab villages lay in all directions.

British troops often protected convoys and interfered in firefights.168 But this ceased in March as more and more units were withdrawn to the Haifa enclave, from which they boarded ships to Britain. And the government's willingness to protect Jewish traffic was dampened by the dissidents' continuing attacks on its troops. In any event, assuring the safety of the withdrawing forces had become Whitehall's chief concern-though, to be sure, a second major interest was maintaining good relations with the Arabs so that Britain's position in the Middle East would remain robust after the withdrawal from Palestine.

Jewish pressure on Arab traffic was maintained throughout. In some areas, such as Haifa, topography and demography combined to give the Jews the upper hand. But ultimately, the Yishuv proved more vulnerable, because whereas most Arabs lived in autarchic or semi-autarchic villages, most Jews lived in towns that required continuous supply.

In late March, the Haganah endured a series of major disasters on the roads. They appeared to portend defeat in the war-and demonstrated the imperative for a basic change in strategy that would shift the initiative to the Yishuv and allow a diversion of energies from protecting convoys to smashing the Arab militias in their home bases. In less than a fortnight the Haganah lost most of its armored vehicles and dozens of its best troops.

First came three serious setbacks in the Jerusalem area-near Har-Tuv (18 March), 'Atarot (24 March), and Saris (24 March)-in which the Haganah suffered twenty-six men killed and eighteen vehicles destroyed. 169 Greater disasters followed. On the morning of 27 March a large convoy-three dozen supplies-laden trucks accompanied by five busloads of troops and seven armored cars-snaked its way from Jerusalem to the `Etzion Bloc. A Haganah spotter plane flew overhead. Kamal Erikat, Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini's deputy, decided to attack the convoy on its way back and mobilized thousands of armed villagers and townsmen from Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem. It would be the biggest convoy ambush of the war. The British warned the Jewish Agency that they would not intervene and advised that the convoy postpone its return. But the men and vehicles were needed in Jerusalem, the Haganah responded, and the convoy set out.

A Haganah spotter aircraft warned that Arabs were massed along the route and had set up roadblocks. But the commanders believed that they could push through. A British colonel in an armored car drove southward through the roadblocks and warned the convoy what to expect. The trucks and buses plowed on. Just south of Bethlehem, at Nabi Daniyal, the Arabs let loose. The convoy's obstacle-busting vehicle, mounting a steel "V," cleared six of the barriers but came to a halt at the seventh. Heavy fire rained down from the hillsides on the stalled vehicles. An armored relief column sent from Kib butz Ramat Rachel, south of Jerusalem, was unable to reach the convoy and turned back after it, too, sustained casualties. The British declined to intervene.

Most of the 186 Haganah troopers, men and women, left their vehicles, which had become death traps, and took refuge in an empty stone house by the road. The armored cars, like a western wagon train, took up positions around the house (which served as a summer dorm for Arab grape harvesters). A handful of Haganah men managed to retreat to the `Etzion Bloc, six miles to the south. For thirty hours the rest of the troopers were under siege, several thousand Arabs pouring down fire from the rock-strewn hillsides. The attackers repeatedly tried to edge nearer. Haganah spotter planes, mounting Bren guns, periodically strafed them and dropped primitive bombs and supplies. In Jerusalem, the Haganah tried unsuccessfully to assemble a large relief force or prod the British into action. One defender, Aharon Gilad, recorded: "Depression took hold ... all fear death." The surrounding Arabs shouted: "Where is your mother, where is Ben-Gurion? We shall soon cut your throats."

An Arab militiaman, a barber, later wrote: "I took part in the battle from 4 in the afternoon until midnight. Then we had supper.... At 4 in the morning it was very cold, but I felt as if it was a summer night. At 04:30 we received the order to assault.... Then two Jewish airplanes ... threw down ammunition to the besieged but ... not on target. Several [Arab] fighters went to collect the parcels. The aircraft fired on them with machineguns and threw bombs. Several fighters were lightly injured. The fighters fired on the airplanes, which fled the area."

On the morning of z8 March, a British armored column at last set out from Jerusalem, brushed aside the roadblocks, and halted a mile from the house. A three-way negotiation followed. Eventually, the Haganah agreed to stop the strafing runs, the Arabs stopped firing, and the besieged troops handed their weapons to the British. They then boarded British trucks and left, and the army handed over the weapons to the Arabs. Haganah losses were fifteen dead and seventy-three wounded, as well as ten armored cars, four buses, and twenty-five armor-clad trucks. The HIS estimated Arab losses at sixty dead and two hundred wounded. The engagement left a trail of bitterness in the Haganah command. The commander in the besieged house, Arye Tepper (Amit), later implicitly blamed the Haganah chiefs for the fiasco and proposed that the isolated outposts around Jerusalem, including the `Etzion Bloc, be evacuated; the price of holding on was too high.170