1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (31 page)

The battle, and the arrival of Manshiya's refugees, no doubt demoralized Jaffa's remaining inhabitants-as did the quickly spreading rumor that it was the IZL, the authors of Deir Yassin, that was at the gates. But even more important in triggering the mass flight of the population southward, toward the Gaza Strip, was the ceaseless three-day mortaring of the town center, which accompanied the fight for Manshiya.

In 1946 IZL guerrillas had captured two 3-inch mortars and plentiful ammunition from the British. These were now taken out of their hideaway, and during 25 -27 April IZL mortarmen rained down twenty tons of ordnance on the town's center. An HIS report described what happened during the first hours of the bombardment: "A terrible panic arose and all the inhabitants began to run towards the Ajami [Quarter]. The spectacle was shocking. Those running trampled each other underfoot, others left their shops open.... Even the armed men fled.... Jaffa's inhabitants were confused and helpless. One gold jeweler ... cursed the leaders and said that they had abandoned the Palestinians to stand alone against the Jews.... It were better to have accepted the partition agreement peacefully and not to surrender to the enemy in war. "168

The bombardment was "indiscriminate," according to Cunningham;169 the aim was "to break the spirit of the enemy troops [and] to cause chaos among the civilian population in order to create a mass flight."170 "Our shells ... fell on many central sites including the post office, near the municipality ... and near the port. A coffee shop in the vegetable market was hit and tens of gang members were killed and injured.... The barrage stopped the movement of buses ... and paralyzed completely the supply of food to the city and in it. Hotels turned into hospitals.... The port filled up with masses of refugees and the boarding of boats took place in confusion," IZL intelligence was to report.171 Among those fleeing by boat was Michel Issa, the local ALA commander.172

The Red Cross representative in Palestine, Jacques de Reynier, was later to recall: "Soon the flight started. In the hospital, the drivers of cars and ambulances took their vehicles, collected their families and fled without the slightest regard to their duty. Many of the ... nurses and even doctors left the hospital with [only] the clothes they had on."173 By 8 May, only one doctor and one nurse remained in the main, government hospital.174

The assault on Jaffa, following hard on the heels of the fall of Arab Haifa, had placed the Mandate government and London in a quandary. Several companies of British troops were still strung out along the seam between Jaffa and Tel Aviv. They came under fire and briefly engaged the IZL during the battle for Manshiya.175 But the main problem was political. "There must be no repetition there of what happened last week in Haifa," Sir Henry Gurney, chief secretary of the Mandate government, jotted down in his diary. 176 Arab leaders inside and outside Palestine were blaming the British for Haifa: they charged Stockwell with conspiring with the Jews or at least doing nothing about the Haganah offensive while preventing Arab reinforcements from reaching the city, and with promoting the Arab surrender. 177 The British argued that the Arab leaders trotted out these charges "to excuse their own ineptitude" and "inefficient and cowardly behaviour." But, be that as it may, they understood that Anglo-Arab relations had "considerably deteriorated" as a result. 178 This triggered a major tiff in Whitehall-as well as, eventually, intervention in the battle for Jaffa.

Late on 22 April, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, chief of the Imperial General Staff, had been summoned to io Downing Street, where he was forced to admit that he had not been kept abreast of developments in Haifa. Bevin "became very worked up; he said 23,000 [sic] Arabs had been killed and the situation was catastrophic." 17' The following day Attlee, Bevin, and Montgomery reconvened. Bevin, according to Montgomery, was "even more agitated." "The massacre of the Arabs had put him in an impossible position with all the Arab states," Bevin had argued; the army had let him down. ""' Incensed, Montgomery demanded that Bevin retract the charge and attacked his handling of the Palestine crisis, saying that the foreign secretary was "now ... trying to make the Army the scapegoat." Montgomery, according to his own account, threatened to resign and tell all, "fairly [setting] the cat among the pigeons." A fortnight later, Attlee convened a further meeting and succeeded in making peace: everyone, according to Montgomery, ended up "laughing."181

But, following Haifa (and Tiberias and Deir Yassin), Whitehall was seriously alarmed about Britain's position in the Middle East. And the army was worried about the safe completion of the withdrawal from Palestine along routes that passed through Arab-populated territory;'82 increased Arab antagonism might result in attacks. These considerations resulted in forceful British intervention in Jaffa. Here the British could stop the erosion of their image and position in the Middle East. Here they could vigorously demonstrate that they were not "pro-Zionist."

When news of the IZL attack reached London, Bevin "got very excited ... and [instructed] the GIGS ... to ... see to it that the Jews did not manage to occupy Jaffa or, if they did, were immediately turned out."183 The British rejected Arab demands to allow Arab Legion units to help the embattled town 184-or, more widely, to allow Arab armies to cross into Palestine to defend its Arab inhabitants. But they immediately dispatched reinforcements-in all, more than four battalions of infantry, armor, and naval commandos, from Cyprus, Libya, Egypt, Malta, and Irag1"s-to Palestine, despite the general evacuation that was under way. The troop reinforcement was geared to freeing units already in Palestine to deploy in Jaffa (and, more generally, to facilitate the evacuation, which required covering infantry, air, and armored Units). 1,16 Such was Bevin's fear of a reenactment of Haifa that he bypassed normal channels (the defense minister and the high conunissioner) in prodding the army to act.187

Already on z5 April, hours after the start of the IZL assault, the British Lydda District commissioner, William Fuller, asked Tel Aviv mayor Yisrael Rokah to get the IZL to call off the attack. Fuller persisted in these efforts during the following two days, warning that the army would be forced to intervene.isx On z8 April, the British, via Rokah, demanded that the IZL cease fire and withdraw immediately from Manshiya-or they would "bomb Tel Aviv from land, sea and air"; they intended to "save Jaffa for the Arabs at all costs, especially in the light of the fact that the Jews had conquered Haifa. "1," The IZL rejected the demands.

But British forces were already on the move. Early on 28 April infantry units and squadrons of tanks pushed into Jaffa. Most of the British activity was merely demonstrative. Royal Navy destroyers sped up and down the coast and RAF aircraft flew dry runs over southern Tel Aviv and Jaffa. But one foursome of RAF Spitfires attacked with cannon and machineguns a Haganah position in a factory in nearby Bat Yam, forcing its abandonment, and British artillery and tanks hit suspected IZL positions in and around Manshiya. The IZL mortars fell silent.'90 Next day, the British tanks and infantry pushed into Manshiya itself, meeting stiff IZL resistance. Gurney sent BenGurion a minatory message-which the Jews called an "ultimatum"threatening to bomb Tel Aviv if he did not rein in the IZL and Haganah (see Operation Hametz below).'9' Montgomery had instructed the army to make sure that the Arabs remained in possession of Jaffa, to "bomb the Jews and shoot them up": "The more armed members of the IZL and Stern gangs that you can kill the better," he ordered.'92

But Cunningham had already told the army what to do. Late on z9 April and repeatedly the following day British commanders met Antos BenGurion, a Jewish Agency liaison officer (and Ben-Gurion's son), and Jaffa mayor Yusuf Heikal, and a ceasefire agreement was hammered out: the British would halt their attacks, the Haganah would stop Operation Hametz (see below) and promise not to attack Jaffa before the end of the Mandate, and the IZL would evacuate Manshiya, With Haganah troops replacing them and British troops patrolling its southern end and occupying its police fort. 19-1 The agreement went into effect on i May, the IZL troops finally pulling out of Manshiya-but only after blowing up the fort and a string of nearby buildings. Jaffa-or, more accurately, its fringe areas-were once more under British rule. But it was only until 13 May.

The British show of force may briefly have kept the Jews at bay. But it did little to stein the outward flow of refugees. Without doubt, contributing to the exodus was the Haganah offensive, mivtza hametz (Operation Unleavened Bread), of 28-3o April, just east of Jaffa, and the behavior inside the town of the Arab militias, especially recently arrived ALA troops commanded by Mahdi Salah.

In Hametz, conducted by units of the Giv ati, Alexandroni, and Kiryati Brigades, the Haganah aimed at "completely surrounding and cutting off" Jaffa from its hinterland by conquering a string of Arab villages-Yazur, Yahudiya, Sakiya, Salame, Kafr Ana, and Beit Dajan-and the suburb-village of Tel al-Reish. The orders spoke generally of "cleansing the area [tihur hashetah]" and "permitting civilian inhabitants ... to leave after they are searched for weapons." Women and children were not to be harmed, and looting was forbidden.'94

Salame, Sakiya, A1-Kheiriya, and Yazur, heavily outgunned, fell almost without a fight, HIS attributing their general nonresistance to the effect of the prior Arab defeats in Haifa, Mishmar Ha'emek, and Tiberias: "It is clear that the inhabitants have no stomach for war."i -' Most of the villagers fled as the Haganah columns approached. A number of prisoners, who were suspected of killing Jews, were executed.116 When Ben-Gurion visited Salame on 3o April he found "only one old blind woman." 97

The killing of the prisoners was not unusual. Until April, neither side generally took prisoners, partly because they had no adequate facilities to hold them. The British, the country's nominal rulers, would not have countenanced Haganah or Arab militia POW camps, certainly not in areas under their control. In practice neither side, after capturing enemy positions, houses, or traffic, kept prisoners. Captured combatants were usually shot out of hand or, less frequently, after a brief incarceration and interrogation, freed.'98 During the first stage of the civil war, Jews probably killed more POWs than vice versa simply because Jews overran more Arab positions.

April and May were characterized by confusion and inconsistency. From the start of April onward, the Haganah captured villages and Arab urban neighborhoods and towns; and Arab combatants fell into Jewish hands in growing numbers, especially in Haifa. HGS ordered the brigades to set up temporary detention centers, and a number were established. But some units continued to shoot POWs or to release them for lack of holding facilities. Noncombatants almost invariably were freed.

In effect, prisoners were incarcerated in orderly fashion only from 26 May, when the Haganah set up a central POW camp in the abandoned village of Jalil al-Qibliya (Gelilot), just north of Tel Aviv. By 12 June, the camp held more than four hundred prisoners. From the Arab side, Jews captured before 15 May were often executed, though the large batch of POWs taken in the `Etzion Bloc by the Arab Legion (see below) were transferred to a camp in Jordan. After 15 May, POWs usually ended up in detention camps in Arab states, though a few were murdered before they reached them. 199

Without doubt, the rapid collapse of Jaffa's hinterland villages owed much to the prior IZL conquest of Manshiya and the demoralization of Jaffa's militiamen and inhabitants. In turn, the fall of the villages further undermined the morale of Jaffa's remaining residents, precipitating further flight.200 But so did the chaos and rapine in Jaffa itself. "The shops, the markets and the banks were closed.... The sick, the wounded, and the dead who have been left without care ... reinforce the dread. The fear of a renewal of the [Jewish] attack [while] they are without arms, is terrible," reported one Haganah intelligence source.201 Electricity, water, and fuel were in short supply, and the recently arrived ALA and irregulars, mostly Iraqis, subjected the dwindling number of locals to robbery and rape, and systematically plundered the abandoned houses, shops, and warehouses-a task that "was completed by British troops. All is permitted as there is no government."202 One Arab commentator later wrote that, as daily convoys of refugees were departing for Gaza, the ALA troops "acted as if the town was theirs, and began to rob people and loot their houses. People's lives became worthless and women's honor was defiled."203 Mayor Heikal fled on 4 May or just before, as did most of the other remaining notables.204

Jaffa's agony ended on i4 May, when Haganah troops, accompanied by token IZL units, drove into the almost empty town; only about four thousand inhabitants remained. Ben-Gurion visited four days later and commented: "I couldn't understand: Why did the inhabitants ... leave?""'-' The Haganah's peaceful entry followed two days of negotiations between Kiryati Brigade OC Michael Ben-Gal and a handful of Jaffa notables. The Haganah promised that there would be "no military trials and acts of vengeance" and that peace-minded inhabitants who had fled would be allowed to return.206 In the formal agreement signed on 13 May, the Jaffa notables promised to hand over arms and keep the peace and the Haganah, to abide by the Geneva conventions and allow the return of women, children, and, after a security screening, males.207

But the following weeks were not untroubled. The Haganah screening of the remaining inhabitants was unpleasant; refugees were not allowed back; and property was vandalized and looted by soldiers and civilians from Tel Aviv, on a massive scale. One Haganah document graphically describes the events in Manshiya on i8 May: "There I found a large crowd of women, children and men who were looting everything: Chairs, cupboards, and other furniture, household and kitchen utensils, sheets, pillows." Haganah units tried to halt the looting, occasionally firing into the air or beating miscreants, but with incomplete success.208 The problem was that the troops, too, were involved, as one official reported a week later: "I saw soldiers, civilians, military police, battalion police, looting, robbing, while breaking through doors and walls."209