1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (48 page)

On I-2 June the Egyptian First Battalion attacked in force, with hundreds of infantrymen back by fighter-bombers, a company of light tanks, a company of armored cars, and three batteries of field artillery. The settlement's seventy members, reinforced by seventy Giv`ati troopers, beat them off. At one point Egyptian armor broke through the perimeter fence but was driven off by Molotov cocktails and a lone PIAT. The defenders were helped, at a crucial moment, by the arrival of a column of machine-gun mounting Negev Brigade jeeps, which struck the attackers from the flank. The Egyptians retreated. The defenders suffered eight dead and eleven wounded; the Egyptians, more than a hundred casualties.289

After Isdud and the failure at Negba, all thought of further aggressive action seems to have vanished in the Egyptian command. Indeed, Kirkbride conjectured that the Egyptians had "entered into a tacit mutual non-interference pact with the Jewish Colony [that is, colonies] in the area of Palestine which they occupy ... a case of live and let live."290

But this was far-fetched. The Egyptians were to take one more settlement, Kibbutz Nitzanim, between Majdal and Isdud. The Egyptians had bypassed it in their advance northward. But with a truce just days away, they could not afford to leave it astride their main supply route. On 6-7 June, the Ninth Battalion, supported by troops from the Seventh Battalion, armor, artillery, and fighter-bombers, launched a determined assault and, despite an initial repulse, penetrated the perimeter fence. Gradually they rolled up the i+o de fenders. Among the attackers was Abd al-Hakim Amr (Nasser's friend and colleague, later the Egyptian army's chief of staff and defense minister, who committed suicide, or was murdered by Nasser's agents, in 1967 following the Egyptian defeat in the Six Days' War). The IDF command failed to send reinforcements, and the settlement's lone PIAT was put out of action early in the battle. Thirty-three of the defenders were dead and sixteen wounded when the outpost's commanders realized that further resistance was useless and opted for surrender. The Egyptians prevented their local auxiliaries from massacring the POWs. One hundred and five Israelis surrendered.29' Three or four were subsequently murdered by the Egyptians or irregulars. Among them were Avraham Schwarzstein, the settlement OC, and his radiowoman, Mira Ben-Ari. The two, carrying a white flag, had left their bunker and walked toward a group of Egyptian officers. One Egyptian, 'Abd al-Mun'im Khalif, drew a pistol and emptied it into Schwarzstein. Ben-Ari shot Khalif dead, and the other Egyptians then shot Ben-Ari.292

The unauthorized surrender was regarded by the IDF command as "shameful": "It is better to die in the trenches of [our] homes, than to surrender to the murderous invader," insisted the Giv`ati battle broadsheet, written two days later by Abba Kovner. `-For their part, the kibbutz members and the political body the kibbutz belonged to, the liberal Ha'oved Hatzioni, charged that the high command, dominated by socialists, had been indifferent to Nitzanim's fate and had failed to arm the kibbutz adequately or to send a relief force. Kovner's attack was seen as adding insult to injury. At war's end, the kibbutzniks demanded a committee of inquiry. In April 1949, the committee ruled that the kibbutzniks and soldiers had fought bravely and that the high command should have reinforced the settlement. It "rehabilitated" the fighters and criticized Kovner-but also cleared Giv`ati's commanders of any political bias in their dealings with the kibbutz.294

To be sure, the stubborn resistance of the kibbutzim along the Egyptian line of advance had demonstrated that the expeditionary force lacked the wherewithal even to push beyond Isdud, let alone reach Tel Aviv. By the end of May, al-Muwawi had hunkered down just north of Isdud, eighteen miles short of Tel Aviv. Perhaps those had been his orders from the first, or perhaps the resistance and the size and incompetence of his forces and supply problems had been decisive.

By the start of the First Truce, the Egyptian battalions were strung out and entrenched along the road between Rafah and Isdud, between Majdal and Beit Jibrin, and between Beersheba and Bethlehem; its lines were long and vulnerable and its forces dispersed. The Egyptians were no longer capable of mounting a serious offensive.

THE INVASIONS IN THE NORTH

The Iraqis

As with the Egyptian army, at the end of World War II, under British tutelage, plans were tabled for the modernization and expansion of the Iraqi army, which had been established with British assistance in the 1930s. The five-year plan called for a three-division army with an armored brigade and a five-squadron air force. Here, too, the thinking was geared to a possible Soviet threat. But Anglo-Iraqi relations were seriously subverted in January 1948 when riots erupted in Baghdad after the signing of a new Anglo-Iraqi defense agreement in Portsmouth. These halted cooperation in the five-year plan and the supply of additional British weapons, though a last-minute transfer of ammunition was completed in early spring.

On the eve of the invasion the Iraqi army consisted of two underequipped, undersized infantry divisions and a poorly equipped armored brigade, with some 1 zo armored cars, about seventy of them Humber IVs and Daimlers mounting two-pounder or six-pounder guns. The army had two operational artillery battalions, one equipped with modern twenty-five-pounders and the other, with obsolescent 3.7-inch and 4.5-inch howitzers. There were also two batteries of six-inch howitzers in extremely poor condition. Most of the artillery ammunition was old and undependable; some of it dated from i9i6-1917, though the twenty-five-pounders had a stock of eighteen thousand modern shells. The army also had seventeen-pounder antitank guns and some antiaircraft artillery. In March 1948 the Iraqi air force boasted sixty-two aircraft, about half of them Anson transport planes that were convertible to bombers and Gladiator fighter-bombers. Only three were modern Fury fighter-bombers. All the rest were old and in poor maintenance. Another seven Furies reached Iraq during April and May, but without guns, ammunition, or spare parts.295

In April and early May, Iraq prepared three brigade groups for dispatch to Palestine. The expeditionary force, initially numbering some forty-five hundred soldiers, was commanded by Major General Mustapha Raghib (who was replaced, in effect, in September by the army's commander-in-chief, Saleh Saib al-Juburi). Iraq decided to intervene at a cabinet meeting on zz or 23 April; the news of the fall of Arab Haifa had apparently been decisive.296 The Iraqis told Britain that, "in face of the continued Zionist aggression ['Deir Yassin, Tiberias and ... [the] terrible massacre at Haifa'], she must take necessary measures to prevent a disaster which would threaten the very life of Palestine Arabs and be fraught with danger to Iraq itself";297 she was "bound" to do so "as an Arab State" and "also because public opinion in Iraq insisted that some action should be taken."298 But the expeditionary force, crossing through Jordan with Abdullah's agreement, moved very slowly, owing to logistical problems and poor roads.

The Battle of Gesher, Jordan Valley, i5 -22 May 1948

Iraq's Second Brigade Group, consisting of two infantry battalions, an armored car battalion, and a battalion of twenty-five-pounders, began arriving in Mafraq, Jordan, at the end of April.299 The Iraqi force was to constitute the Legion's "junior partner" and right wing, first in the Jordan Valley and subsequently in the hills and foothills of northern Samaria. But it had come with an agenda of its own. Apart from helping to crush the Jewish state, the Iraqis appeared interested in reaching Haifa, on the way conquering the area on either side of the length of the Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline that conveyed oil from fields near Mosul through the Lower Galilee to Haifa.30°

On the evening of 14 May, the brigade occupied the Naharayim (Jisr alMajami) electricity plant, an Israeli enclave just east of the Jordan. But finding the two bridges across the river demolished, they turned south. On the morning of 15 May they forded the river, their objective Kibbutz Gesher and the neighboring police fort, which overlooked the river. The kibbutz was pounded by artillery through the day. "We are surrounded since last night. 3" mortars are intermittently hitting us. Two aircraft dropped bombs. It is not known to whom they belong," radioed Gesher.30' The Israelis opened the floodgates at the Degania and Dalhamiya dams, raising the level of the Jordan, but without real effect; the Iraqis kept crossing.

On 16 May the Iraqis captured Camel Hill, northwest of Gesher, and launched simultaneous infantry attacks on the kibbutz and the fort. Israeli Piper Cubs pinpricked the Iraqis from the air, and the defenders repulsed the Iraqis, inflicting heavy losses. The following day the Iraqis renewed the assault, this time with armored cars and infantry The armored cars broke into the fort's courtyard but were beaten back by a hail of Molotov cocktails. Six cars were put out of action. The Iraqis then besieged the settlement for five days. Israeli counterattacks, under a hot Jordan Valley sun (on i8 May more than a dozen troopers fainted from the heat),302 failed to dislodge them from the Camel. The Iraqis tried one more direct assault and then, on 22 May, attempted indirection-by scaling the heights of Kaukab al-Hawn, the site of the Crusader fortress of Belvoir, dominating the area from the west. But Golani Brigade troops who had dug in on the crest the day before beat them off.303 Witnessing the Iraqi fiasco was the regent, Abd al-Ilah.304 The Haganah had made effective use of two of the 65 mm cannon that two days before had been used so tellingly against the Syrians a few miles to the north (see below).

The Iraqis' situation, stranded on the west bank of the Jordan without bridges for resupply and with Gesher and Golani robustly fighting back, was unproductive and, in the long run, precarious. And Glubb needed them else where. Under IDF pressure in Jerusalem and in desperate need of the Legion's First Battalion bivouacked around Nablus, Glubb pressed the Iraqis to leave Gesher and to redeploy in Samaria.305

On zz May the Iraqis threw in the towel and withdrew back across the Jordan. The brigade group, now joined by the forward elements of two further brigade groups, the First and Third, drove southward along the east bank and then crossed the river westward at the Damiya Bridge into Samaria. During the First Truce, in June and July, two further scratch brigades, the Fourth and Fifth, joined the Iraqi force in the West Bank.306 By September, the Iraqi expeditionary force, with five brigades, consisted of eighteen thousand soldiers, making it the largest Arab army in Palestine.307 A handful of British officers "advised" the Iraqi army until they were ordered home in early June 308 1949'

Once in Samaria, the Iraqis were largely inactive. But renewed Haganah pressure on the Legion at Latrun resulted in a minor Iraqi attack, at Glubb's request, to disperse Haganah energies. On 28 May an Iraqi battalion attacked and took part of the Coastal Plain settlement of Geulim, southeast of Netanya. Alexandroni troops counterattacked-while the Iraqis were busy looting-and retook it.309 A handful of IAF aircraft periodically bombed and strafed the Iraqis during the next three days.310 The Iraqis hunkered down in Samaria and made no further offensive efforts, except the capture on 30-31 May of Ras al-`Ein water pumping station, midway between Geulim and Lydda.

The IDF decided to take on the Iraqis at the northern tip of their perimeter, in Jenin. It is unclear what motivated the General Staff: a desire to preempt a possible Iraqi push toward the Jezreel Valley or to the Mediterranean through Israel's narrow "waist" (at places a mere ten miles wide from the Arab lines to the sea); a desire to draw Legionnaires away from Latrun or to prevent Iraqi assistance to the Legion; or merely to grab additional land before the UN truce came into effect.311

In preliminary operations, on 28-30 May, Golani units advanced southward from the Jezreel Valley and captured a string of Palestinian villages: Zir'in, Nuris, and al-Mazar, in the Gilboa foothills, and the crest of Mount Gilboa itself, as well as Tel Meggido and the village of Lajjun to the west. The area had been held only by a ragtag collection of militiamen. Its conquest paved the way for the advance on Jenin.

On i -z June Moshe Carmel launched the core of the offensive, using the Carmeli Brigade's two battalions, the Twenty-first and Twenty-second, and Golani's Thirteenth Battalion, with additional Golani companies in reserve. The objective was to conquer Jenin and surrounding villages and "to kill and destroy the enemy."312 Golani swiftly overran the villages of Sandala, Mugei bila, Jalama, and Arana, and on the morning of 3 June Carmeli, in three columns, moved on Jenin itself. But although the Twenty-first Battalion managed to occupy three hills overlooking the town from the west, the Twentysecond and an armored bus column failed to take some of their objectives, including the key Jenin police fort to the east, and parts of the town itself. The troops suffered from the intense heat and from an inability to dig in on the rock-encrusted hills.