Leon Uris (31 page)

The Arabs had already witnessed a mass flight from Palestine of the leaders of their community after the partition vote. An unstoppable movement was forming. By the thousands, they took to the roads without a threat having been made and without so much as a shot being fired at them. The scattered movement exploded into a stampede.

Arab Palestine had all but lost the first round. In order to salvage their situation, the new strategy was to put every resource into the road battle to shut off Jerusalem from the rest of the Yishuv and starve out the Jewish population. If they could accomplish victory in Jerusalem, all of the early Arab failures would be nullified. Jerusalem was the heart of the Yishuv and to the Arabs it symbolized the head of the snake.

As this most vital battle shaped up, the Yishuv was shaken to its boots when the Arab Legion broke its promise and crossed the Jordan River. The beleaguered Etzion Bloc fell to the Legion after a murderous fight. Most of the survivors were massacred; a few were taken prisoner.

Arabs stormed out of Jerusalem and Hebron and Bethlehem to loot and level the Etzion Bloc, destroying its orchards and fields and desecrating its synagogues. On the eve of the Jewish declaration of independence, the Yishuv went into agonized soul-searching to find the courage to declare their freedom after this taste of things to come from the Legion.

T
HE NOOSE TIGHTENED AROUND
West Jerusalem. A hundred thousand Jews came under a virtual blockade. A thin, wheezing lifeline through the Bab el Wad was choked off, forced open, choked off.

Inside the Old City wall, two thousand ultra-Orthodox Jews refused to quit, although surrounded by fifty thousand Arabs and separated from their own population.

Supplies had to come from the coast through a thicket of Arab strongholds, then into the vulnerable Bab el Wad. The British made little pretense of patrolling the road.

In preparation for the siege, the Jews had made a survey of all cisterns in their part of the city. Because of periodic drought and perennial water shortages, rainwater had long been trapped on the flat rooftops of the houses and channeled into underground concrete holding tanks. Many houses had them, but they had long been out of use since a modern water system had been installed with pumping stations near the coast.

Chemicals had been put into the cisterns to preserve the water and they were capped with cement covers. It was determined that the cisterns held some three months’ supply of water if rationed at the rate of ten gallons per family per day.

The plan came none too soon, for the Arabs blew up water pipes all along the line into West Jerusalem and the British declined to get involved in rebuilding or guarding them.

Each day water trucks opened a given number of cisterns and distributed what became liquid gold. Each housewife set aside one gallon for essential drinking and cooking. The balance went through a series of declining usages so it could be recycled several times for personal washing or cleaning the most necessary cooking utensils. A tad was allowed for brushing teeth, laundry came last, and the final daily use was the toilet’s single flushing. There was no water for showers, gardens, or effective sanitation. In the ensuing months, Jerusalem’s streets became filmed with desert dust. As the Jews slowly dehydrated, their city took on a death-like browned-out look.

There was no fuel, except for hospitals, the military, and bakeries. Candles replaced electric lights. The Jerusalem housewife did her cooking on a communal bonfire. Because there never had been much timber in the region, people dismantled wooden railings and window sashes and chopped up furniture.

The only edible greens were dandelions. The ration fell to a borderline starvation level of six hundred calories a day. A make-shift airstrip that could only accommodate a small single-engine plane was where the Yishuv’s ‘air force’ made daily runs of baby formula, emergency medicines, small arms, and the Yishuv’s leaders.

Strategically the Jews were in impossible shape. The region was ponderously Arab. The Haganah had its troops spread so thin in trying to protect a bulky urban area that its lines sprung leaks all over. The arsenal consisted of five hundred rifles and some odds and ends, including the Little David mortars which had been used so effectively in Safed. These ‘Davidkas’ were moved from location to location to make the Arabs think the Jews had many more of them.

It became incumbent upon the Jews to consolidate their area. The Haganah managed to capture an Arab suburb of Katamon, which eliminated an enemy enclave in their midst and straightened out their lines.

Other Haganah attempts failed. The attack on the high ground at the Prophet Samuel’s Tomb, which could have protected incoming convoys, was beaten back.

Another attack was made on the Victoria-Augusta complex to have a direct connection to Jewish establishments isolated on Mount Scopus. When this attack failed, Hebrew University, the National Library, and the Hadassah Hospital were cut off from West Jerusalem. To reach these institutions, convoys had to travel through a series of hostile Arab neighborhoods. To keep the institutions functioning and to save the buildings from being looted, the Yishuv reluctantly agreed to accept a demilitarized status for them.

In its first operation to break the blockade, Haganah units from Tel Aviv moved on Abdul Kadar’s hornet’s nest of Irregulars in the Lydda-Ramle area, blew up their headquarters, and cleared the road of sniper locations. But there was still a long, bloody way to go to get to Jerusalem.

Of late, Colonel Frederick Brompton had been meeting with Gideon Asch several times weekly at the Latrun Fort. Each acted in a liaison capacity to convey urgent business to the other’s command. Brompton had been selected for the job because he was a bureaucratic neutral, the epitome of British evenhandedness.

‘Very nasty business, this bomb you set off in Lydda,’ he said. ‘We have it that you are very quietly moving a Palmach force out of Shemesh Kibbutz and deploying it along the Bab el Wad. If I were a military man, I’d say you are going to take a crack at forcing the road open.’

Gideon threw open his arms in innocence.

‘It’s going to be damned costly, damned costly,’ Brompton said.

‘Perhaps if you made more than a token effort to patrol the highway ...’ Gideon said.

Brompton returned a gesture similar to the one Gideon had made.

‘All right, Colonel. Let’s get down to business. We have two priority questions. First, we continue to protest the Arabs arming the Temple Mount. We now count twenty machine guns and mortar emplacements and an observation post on the top of the Dome of the Rock. And if anyone lit a cigarette in the cellar of the Al Aksa Mosque, it would blow up the entire city.’

‘You know how it is, Gideon, old man. The Arabs have never had respect for anyone’s holy places, including their own.’

‘Like hell, Brompton. God forbid if the Jews were to put one well-placed shell into the Dome of Al Aksa. They’d have the world at our throats in a religious fever.’

Brompton gave the tiniest of laughs.

‘I was about to mention arms stashes in every hospital and school in East Jerusalem,’ Gideon continued.

‘You’re not going to teach the Arabs fair play or democracy at this date, Gideon. There are some things we would not do in order to keep the Mandate. God only knows, we may lose the Empire because even in war there are some boundaries to humanity. It’s a game with them, a dirty advantage. They’ll take it. You’ll just have to smile.’

Brompton suddenly showed nervousness, quite unlike himself. Gideon reckoned that there was some weighty business on the man’s mind he had not yet come to. ‘What else is on your agenda?’ Brompton asked.

‘The water line. We cannot rebuild or guard it without your help.’

Brompton was visibly irritated.

Gideon came to his feet. ‘Shit!’

‘Sit down, Gideon. Sit down, please,’ Brompton said, applying an oversized dollop of English calm. ‘I told you at the time of the partition vote that our position has changed from one of governing to one of neutrality. On the one hand, you believe we are decidedly pro-Arab. It may come as a surprise, but the entire Arab world accuses us of being blatantly pro-Zionist. In truth, the chaps in our command are divided down the middle.’

‘I didn’t ask you for a dissertation on British fairness. I asked you about water for a hundred thousand people.’

‘We cannot be involved in rebuilding the pipeline. We are withdrawing our forces at a very rapid rate. We have neither the manpower nor the desire to do so. It is clearly no longer our mission to keep either side from building up their forces or fighting one another. We are leaving and there is going to be all-out war after we pull out. We have continued, on a case-by-case basis, to step in and try to spare the civilian populations. We have escorted Arab populations out of Haifa and Tiberias and elsewhere. You have refused similar offers to evacuate. But let me emphasize that we are not out to stop Kaukji and we are not out to stop the Palmach. Forgetting all the nasty business we’ve done to one another in the past, all we want now is to get out.’

‘Without muddy hands,’ Gideon said.

‘Without muddy hands,’ Brompton agreed.

‘You’re a bad card player, Colonel,’ Gideon said. ‘What’s really on your mind?’

Brompton cleared his throat defensively. ‘I’m about to tell you something you already know. Your situation in Jerusalem is impossible. The Etzion Bloc is finished. The Jews in the Old City are doomed. Perhaps the Jewish Agency says these are acceptable losses, then what? If you manage to hang on until May 15, when we get out, you’re looking at the Arab Legion within one day’s march of Jerusalem. With the Egyptians coming in from the south and the Syrians and Iraqis from the north, they plan a very tumultuous convergence on Jerusalem. Gideon, Plan D is dangerous ... nay, suicidal.’

Gideon did not speak of his own vigorous opposition to Plan D. Undoubtedly the British command was of the same opinion and was wary of the consequences of the Yishuv’s stubbornness.

‘I am authorized to speak for the British Government from the prime minister on down and to personally implore you to take your population out of Jerusalem.’

‘Why this sudden pang of conscience?’

‘Straight on, Gideon?’

‘Straight on.’

‘Once an Arab has an upper hand in battle, he has only one driving force—total annihilation. We are obliged to go on record as having warned you to evacuate West Jerusalem because we will not take the responsibility for the massacre of twenty, thirty, forty, eighty thousand civilians.’

‘Do you fear for us as human beings or do you really fear being held up to the world with blood on your hands?’

‘As I said earlier, we are split down the middle. But in any event, we do not store arms in cathedrals and we are not Nazis.’

‘Yes, I understand you,’ Gideon said.

‘Then surely you know there is an eighty percent chance of the greatest single massacre in two thousand years.’

‘We are so aware.’

‘For God’s sake, Gideon, you must impress this on Ben-Gurion. How can he live as a man after he has permitted such a thing to happen? How can any of your dreams of nationhood survive such a catastrophe?’

‘I’ll certainly give the Old Man your message. There’s a problem, you see. The same problem we had in Europe. We have no place to evacuate
to.
Or am I to assume that your warning comes along with a magnanimous gesture by His Majesty’s Government to open your arms and take in a hundred thousand Jews or a half-million Jews in the event of an all-out Arab victory? We don’t have to emigrate to England. What about sending us to Uganda or India or the West Indies? Perhaps you can convince the Americans or Canadians to give us refuge. Or how about all the rest of the sanctimonious Christian democracies. Ah, Colonel, you are a naïve man. We Jews know that not a single tear will be shed over our demise.’

Gideon arose and made for the door.

‘Gideon.’

‘Yes, Brompton.’

‘I am personally very sorry about this.’

‘Never mind. Being a Jew has always meant that we are a people who dwell alone.’

The Yishuv’s answer came instantly. Ben-Gurion ordered the Bab el Wad opened. Heretofore the Palmach had operated only in small units, squads, and platoons. The Jewish command set into motion Operation Nachshon, named for the first man with Moses who leaped into the Red Sea to test the waters. The Har El (God’s Hill) Brigade of the Palmach was given the gut-wrenching mission of opening the Bab el Wad long enough to get some supply convoys through to Jerusalem. At the same time, the Yishuv started building secret roads to bypass Latrun and run around the back of the Bab el Wad.

The most strategic position at the Jerusalem end of the highway was an Arab village built on the ruins of Roman and Crusaders’ forts, the Kastel. Its high ground completely dominated the road and had been the major staging area for raids on Jewish convoys.

Using years of intelligence gathered by Gideon Asch, units of the Har El Brigade splintered, traversed the treacherous landscape by night, and seized many of the key points along the road, ejecting the Arab Irregulars.

At the same time, a company of eighty Har El men inched its way up the long, steep hill to the Kastel undetected. They were able to effect total surprise. The battle was over in minutes and the villagers took flight.

With the Kastel momentarily in Jewish hands, a frenzied, around-the-clock operation ensued. Supplies were loaded aboard trucks all over Jewish Palestine.

By April 30, three large convoys had slugged their way into Jerusalem.

Word of the capture of the Kastel flashed from Arab villages to Jerusalem with disbelief. A fever instantly swept over the Arab community all the way down to Tabah. Although Haj Ibrahim gave no blessings and declined to join, dozens of his fellahin rushed to answer the call to retake the Kastel.

When enough men had gathered at the base of the hill, they charged up haphazardly, only to be hurled back. Without a determined and knowledgeable leader to rally them, the Arabs became unable to organize or sustain a drive and, after some further long-range potshots, they drifted off back to their homes.