1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (28 page)

Abu Diya's forces suffered serious losses, but they kept up the attack. By noon, the Palmah commanders had decided on retreat; the badly injured were to be left behind, to die in a planned demolition of the building. (The commanders assumed that the wounded, if captured, would be slaughtered.)s4 But at the last moment, around I:oo PM, HIS signals intelligence officers intercepted an Arab militia transmission from Katamon to the HQ in the Old City saying that Abu Diya had fled-in order "to bring reinforcements," he later claimed-and that, in the absence of reinforcements, they would be forced to retreat.

The Saint Simeon defenders were informed of the intercept-and decided to hold on. The Arab assaults tapered off, and the militiamen began to retreat, with the remaining civilian inhabitants of Katamon fleeing in their wake." Jewish relief columns at last reached the monastery at 5:oo PM, and the following morning, i May, `Etzioni Brigade troops occupied Katamon itself, chasing out a small Arab Legion unit that had protected the Iraqi consulate building. The occupation was followed by massive looting of the abandoned houses by the troops and Jewish civilians who pounced on the neighborhood. Jewish losses had amounted to twenty-one dead and eighty-three wounded.16 Arab losses were probably higher.

Yet the Jewish success inside Jerusalem did nothing to open the road to the city. On 3-4 May, Harel's units, with reinforcements from the `Etzioni Brigade, moved out of Jerusalem and launched Operation Maccabbi. The aim was to reopen the road; the focus was on the hills south and north of the road between Saris and Latrun.

But Harel had suffered sixty-seven dead and 155 wounded in the previous fortnight and was in poor shape. The brigade took the hilltops and dug in; Beit Mahsir, the main village just south of the road, fell on 1 1 May. The following three days were characterized by confusion and wasted effort. ALA units, backed by 75 mm artillery pieces and (unusually) a squadron of British armored cars, counterattacked, but the Palmahniks in the hilltop positions held on. Crucially, however, Harel, briefly supported by Giv`ati troops, failed to occupy the Bab al-Wad-Latrun stretch, even though the British pulled out of Latrun on 14 May and the ALA, on King Abdullah's orders, left the following day. The HGS was riveted to Palestine's borders and the invading Arab armies-and on late 17-18 May, the Arab Legion reached Bab alWad-Latrun and occupied the area in force. The door to Jerusalem once again slammed shut. The Israelis had failed to understand the area's importance or to exploit the momentary power vacuum.87

Nonetheless, Nahshon (and its follow-ups) marked the turning point in the civil war. For the first time, the Haganah had deployed a large (brigadesized) force and had shifted to the strategic offensive-the mode in which the Haganah and its successor organization, the IDF, was to remain, almost consistently, for the duration of the war. And for the first time the Haganah had embarked on a campaign of clearing areas of Arab inhabitants and militia forces and conquering and leveling villages, which was to contribute significantly to the collapse of Palestinian military power and society. Moreover, Haganah troops had killed the leading Palestinian military commander of 1948, and dissident troops had committed atrocities in Deir Yassin that, amplified through radio broadcasts, were decisively to encourage a mass Arab exodus from the Jewish state-to-be.

THE BATTLES OF MISHMAR HA`EMEIZ AND RAMAT YOHANAN

While the Haganah was trying to break the back of the irregular formations in West Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Corridor, two battles took place in the north in which the new policy, of permanently occupying and/or razing villages and of clearing whole areas of Arabs, was given its head. As with Nahshon, which was a response to attacks on the Haganah's Jerusalembound convoys, so with these two battles: both were initiated by the Arabs but resulted in Jewish counteroffensives that ended in Haganah victories and the wholesale flight of Arab communities; both, retrospectively, were seen as stages in the implementation of Plan D.

The battle for Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek, from 4 to is April, was the more important. The kibbutz, one of the left-wing Mapam's oldest and largest, home to a succession of the party's leaders, sat astride the road from Jenin to Haifa, which would figure large the following month in the Arab states' invasion plans. It was surrounded by Arab villages.

From January through March 1948 units of the ALA had repeatedly failed to conquer any settlements, and al-Qawugji had promised Cunningham that he would desist from further offensive action until 15 May.88 In early April, possibly prodded by the Military Committee in Damascus-who may have sought to relieve the pressure on the Palestinians in the Jerusalem area-or by jealousy of Abd al-Qadir al-Husseini's successes in late March,89 alQawuqji decided to violate his pledge. He targeted Mishmar Ha`emek, a prestigious target and one whose capture might assist the prospective invading Arab armies in achieving a major objective-the conquest of Haifa.

Al-Qawugji appears to have been certain of victory before firing the first shot-and this in part accounts for his premature announcements of victory during the first twenty-four hours of battle.90 The kibbutzniks were not completely surprised when, on the afternoon of 4 April, al-Qawuqji's seven 75 and io5 mm field guns-in the first use of artillery during the war-let loose; Haganah scouts had noted the positioning of the guns, and mortars, around the kibbutz that morning.91 The kibbutz's children were rushed through the trenches to safety in a cave just above the settlement. A handful of members were killed or wounded; dozens of cows and horses died. Most of the settlement's buildings collapsed or were badly damaged. But a followup infantry assault failed to breach the perimeter fence or the trench works, which were manned by the members. A company of Golani infantrymen arrived during the night of4-5 April to reinforce the defenses.

Al-Qawuqji kept up the shelling during the following thirty-six hours, but the kibbutz held out. A British armored column arrived on 6 April and mediated a twenty-four-hour truce. The wounded and most of the women and children were evacuated-much as the settlement's noncombatants had been evacuated during the attacks of 1929 and 1936-1939. (This was one of the first evacuations of noncombatants from a Jewish settlement-a phenomenon that would characterize most front-line kibbutzim during the following weeks. Altogether, about ten thousand children were evacuated from the settlements during the spring and summer. In some cases, the separation from parents and homes lasted for more than a year.)

Cunningham described the ALA's performance at Mishmar Ha`emek as "an ignominious fiasco."92 But al-Qawugji tried to put the best face on it. He demanded the kibbutz's surrender and a handover of arms. When the Haganah brushed this aside, he proposed to withdraw-provided the Jews promised to desist from attacking the neighboring villages, which had served as his bases. The kibbutz responded with bravado: al-Qaw ugji should compensate the kibbutz for the damage he had inflicted and must wheel his artillery pieces into the kibbutz and destroy them.93 More realistically, the local leaders said that they would have to consult Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, they "agreed to nothing," as a Golani Brigade transmission put it.94

On 8 April, the ALA announced that Mishmar Ha'emek had been conquered and that "the Arab flag" was now flying above its water tower.9s This was pure fantasy. Indeed, that day (or the next) a delegation of the settlement's members, probably including Ya`akov Hazan, Mapam's coleader, traveled to Tel Aviv and pleaded with Ben-Gurion-according to Ben-Gurion-to order the Haganah "to expel the Arabs [in the area] and to burn the villages.... They said that they were not sure [the kibbutz could hold out] if the villages remained intact and [if] the Arab inhabitants were not expelled." Ben-Gurion agreed. He recalled: "They faced a cruel reality ... [and] saw that there was [only] one way and that was to expel the Arab villagers and burn the villages."96 The local forces, now commanded by Yitzhak Sadeh and reinforced with Palmah, Alexandroni, and Carmeli companies, rejected a British suggestion to prolong the truce and on the night of 8 April took the offensive. AI-Qawugji's units were gradually pushed out of the area-though al-Qawugji continued to issue reports claiming to have won a famous victory,97 confusing anyone who might have sent him aid. King 'Abdullah observed al-Qawugji's "discomfiture" with "equanimity"

Subsequently, one of al-Qawugji's company commanders tellingly criticized the ALA's performance: "i. There was no plan behind the management of the battle ... 2. There was no communication link, written or oral, between those directing the front and the management of the battle. 3. No one was responsible for the distribution of food. As a result our soldiers in the front line did not receive their meal until i4:3o and [received no] water between three in the afternoon and three [after] midnight. Those responsible also did not ease the soldiers' suffering from the fierce cold.... There was no cooperation between the forces. The artillery fired without discrimination and the armored cars wandered [around the battlefield] as if they were independent agents, without any connection to us [infantry].~`~

The Battle of Mishmar Ha`emek, April 1948

The Haganah troops first raided neighboring villages (Ghubaiya al-Tahta, Ghubaiya al-Fauqa, and Khirbet Beit Ras). Then, emboldened by success, they went on to conquer and permanently occupy village after village-Abu Shusha (lo April), al-Kafrin (12 April), Mansi and Abu Zureiq (12-13 April), and then al-Naghnaghia, Buteimat, and Rihaniyya (14 April). Some ALA equipment fell into Haganah hands, including, it was reported, al-Qawugji's own Oldsmobile limousine (which was then transferred to Tel Aviv and used by Ben-Gurion).100 By 16 April Arab Legion intelligence was reporting "a general collapse of Arab morale in Palestine extending to Army of Liberation [that is, the ALA] whose commander is stating his position is critical." 101 AlQawugji complained-falsely-that "Russian non-Jews were assisting [the] Haganah ... and that in combat area there were ten twin-engined bomber aircraft ofAmerican type.,, 102 In reality, according to Ben-Gurion, some 640 Haganah soldiers had faced about twenty-five hundred ALA troops, with superior firepower-and bested them.'03

A wide swath around Mishmar Ha`emek was cleared of Arab inhabitants. Most simply fled, disheartened by al-Qawugji's defeat or demoralized by Jewish attack. The remainder were expelled, toward Jenin.104 A few prisoners were executed. The villages were then systematically leveled. According to the Mishmar Ha`emek logbook, by 15 April "all the villages in the area as far as the eye can see [had] been evacuated."'()-' The flight and expulsion of inhabitants around Mishmar Ha`emek radiated panic farther afield, leading to flight from villages in the Hills of Ephraim and the Hefer Valley. 106

The displaced villagers subsequently appealed to the AHC: "Thousands of poor women and children from the villages of Abu Zureiq and Mansi and Ghubaiya and al-Kafrin and other places near the colony of Mishmar Ha`emek, whose houses the Jews have destroyed and whose babies and old people [the Jews] have killed, are now in the villages around Jenin without help and dying of hunger. We ask you to repair the situation ... and do everything to quickly send forces ofvengeance against the Jews and restore us to our lands." 107

The expulsions and accompanying acts of brutality had left a bitter taste in the mouths of some kibbutzniks. Eliezer Be'eri (Bauer), a Middle East scholar and member of Kibbutz Hazore a, a neighbor ofMishmar Ha`emek's to the northwest, wrote to his Mapam colleagues: "Of course, in a cruel war such as we are engaged in, one cannot act with kid gloves. But there are still rules in war which a civilized people tries to follow." He detailed the atroci ties and described how the neighboring villages were conquered and pillaged.10s

Al-Qawuqji's ALA withdrew to the hill country to the east, around Nazareth. Mishmar Ha`emek had suffered losses and had been virtually leveled-but it had survived. The surrounding Arab villages in the western Jezreel Valley and the Hills of Ephraim to the west, abandoned by alQawuqji, had been leveled and their inhabitants driven into exile in northern Samaria. 109

The Battle of Mishmar Ha`emek had had an adjunct. On n April, as his situation grew critical, al-Qawugji had fired off a cable to the ALA's Druze Battalion, based in Shafa-Amr, east of Haifa, to begin operations around Kibbutz Ramat Yohanan. He hoped it would ease the pressure around Mishmar Ha`emek. The battalion, commanded by the Druze warrior Shakib Wahab, who had fought against the French in the Syrian Druze revolt of 1925 -1927, was only nominally under al-Qawugji's command, the Druze community having insisted that the battalion retain its operational independence in Palestine.' "I Indeed, once in the country, Wahab opened secret peace negotiations with the HIS.

Nonetheless, Wahab acceded to al-Qawugji's request. His troops occupied two semiabandoned villages, Hawsha and Khirbet Kayasir, west of Shafa-Amr, and began to shell Ramat Yohanan and harass the neighboring settlements."' The Haganah responded. After an initial failure, which nonetheless chipped at the Druze Battalion's morale,112 a battalion-sized Carmeli force on the night of 15-16 April overran the two villages. Wailing refugees fled to Shafa-Amr, spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities.' 1,3 For the Druze Battalion, recapturing the villages became a matter of honor. On 16 April they assaulted the Carmeli positions-they advanced "with large knives sparkling between their teeth in the sunlight"' `-nine times. Some of the assaults were mounted to extricate casualties from previous assaults. Wahab had pleaded for artillery support, but the ALA HQ had sent only a brace of z.5-inch mortars-and only one in ten of the mortar bombs used "had been serviceable, which heightened the despair." 1 " Hundreds of local militiamen had joined in. But the Carmeli troops fought back steadfastly. By late afternoon, Wahab pulled his exhausted troops back to Shafa- Anlr.1 16 The battalion had lost twenty-four men, and more than forty-two were "missing-in-action" (or "wounded"). Dozens of local Arab militiamen were also killed and wounded;117 nineteen Carmeli soliders had died. One Haganah report praised "the [well-]trained and very brave enemy forces." 118 But the Haganah had won. During the following days most of Wahab's soldiers deserted and returned to Jebel Druze, in Syria; by 2 May, he was corn plaining that his battalion had only "19o" soldiers left (of an original complement of five hundred): "the morale is very low ... and [the local militiamen] are collaborating with the Jews in these days of harvest and are working together with them, they want good neighborly relations with the Jews."' "Why aren't you helping us?" Wahab complained to the ALA HQ.120 But Wahab himself was-again-secretly negotiating a separate peace with the Haganah.121 The defeat resulted in "mass flight" from ShafaAlnr122 and no doubt demoralized the Arab inhabitants of Haifa. The Carmeli troops razed Hawsha and Khirbet I ayasir, and "the whole area was cleansed [tohar]. Villagers fled and peace reigned in the whole area."123 But more significantly, the battle had persuaded Palestine's own Druze community that the Arabs would lose. By summer, the community had thrown in its lot with Israel.