1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (42 page)

The Jewish force facing the Legion initially consisted of three brigades. The `Etzioni Brigade defended West Jerusalem and what remained of the Palmah Harel Brigade, which had suffered severe casualties in the battle for the roads during February through May, held the area around Jerusalem, especially to its west. The Alexandroni Brigade was responsible for the Coastal Plain area opposite the West Bank, along the line from Tulkann to Qalqilya. A few miles to the south, at Latrun, the Jordanians were to encounter, from the third week of May, an additional unit, the newly formed Seventh Brigade.

Abdullah, flanked by Glubb, spent 14 May visiting the Legion's units in their assembly areas east of the Jordan River. The king addressed the troops: "He who will be killed will be a martyr; he who lives will be glad of fighting for Palestine.... I remind you of the Jihad and the martyrdom of your great -gran dfathers."139

Kirkbride left a good description of the first shot fired during the Legion's entry into Palestine:

"At a few minutes before the hour of midnight on May i4-i5th, 1948, King Abdullah and members of his personal staff stood at the eastern end of the Allenby Bridge across the River Jordan waiting for the mandate to expire officially.... At twelve o'clock precisely the King drew his revolver, fired a symbolical shot into the air and shouted the word "forward." The long column of Jordanian troops which stretched down the road behind the bridge ... moved off at the word of command, the hum of their motors rose to a roar. They passed [through] Jericho and went up the ridgeway [westward]." 140

"The troops themselves were in jubilation.... Many of the vehicles had been decorated with green branches or bunches of pink oleander flowers, which grew beside the road. The procession seemed more like a carnival than an army going to war," Glubb later recalled.141 Some soldiers appear to have been disappointed with the populace's reaction to the impending invasion. Captain Mahmud al-Ghussan, a staff officer in the Legion's Fourth Regiment, for example, later recalled that the inhabitants of Amman had virtually ignored the troops as they passed through on their way to Palestine "in order to save it from the Zionists and the West." 142 But others came away with different recollections. Ma`an Abu Nowar, another young officer, recalled that "emotions ran high.... I remember my father and mother among the crowd ... in Amman. As I was passing by in my GMC light armoured car, my mother shouted: `God be with you, my son. Don't come back. Martyrdom my son.' I was shocked, not because my mother wished me to be killed ... but because her head and face were bare.... In Jordan, conservative and devout women like her did not usually appear in public without a scarf covering their heads and faces. "143

The push into Palestine was straightforward and unopposed: the First Brigade, consisting of the First and Third regiments, headed northwestward for Nablus, fanning out around the town; the Third Brigade, with the Second and Fourth regiments, headed from Jericho north and then west, deploying by nightfall in and around Ramallah. Two days later, its units would push westward to Latrun and Bab al-Wad, astride the western approach to Jerusalem. The Legion's aim was to take control of key Arab areas of eastern Palestine. There was no Jewish or Palestinian Arab resistance. In most areas, cheering Arab crowds showered the Legionnaires with rice.

The original Legion plan had been to avoid Jerusalem.144 They had promised the British a nonbelligerent takeover of the West Bank, without Jerusalem. The United Nations had earmarked Jerusalem for international rule, and occupation of the city would be a clear violation of the will of the international community; and Britain, Jordan's patron, would be seen as complicit. Moreover, Jerusalem had a hundred thousand Jewish inhabitants, and the Legion's entry might spark Jewish-Jordanian hostilities, which Britain had specifically warned against and which Prime Minister Abul Huda had promised Bevin to avoid.

But military developments and King 'Abdullah's private political and personal inclinations ultimately overwhelmed such considerations. On 13 May the British pulled out of the Old City, and the Haganah defenders of its Jewish Quarter immediately occupied some abandoned positions, expanding their area of control (in mivtzra shefifon, Operation Viper). On 15-16 May, the Old City's Arab irregulars attacked and conquered most of these strongpoints, including the Greek Orthodox church, on the western edge of the quarter. But Jerusalem's Arabs began to panic.

The panic was mainly triggered by the Haganah's Operation Pitchfork (mivtza kilshon) in West Jerusalem, launched on 14 May. Within hours, the Haganah had taken the series of abandoned British strongpoints ("Bevin grads") in the city center (the Central Post Office, the Russian Compound, the King David Hotel, and the adjacent YMCA, and the Notre Dame de France monastery complex, overlooking the Old City's northwestern wall) and Arab or partly Arab quarters to the south and north, including the German and Greek "colonies," Baka, and the Allenby Camp in the south and the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood (occupied by the IZL) and the adjacent Police School to the north. On 17-18 May the Haganah added the Arab Abu Tor neighborhood and the city's train station, just south of the Old City, to its conquests. 145 Masses ofArabs fled into the Old City. "We have conquered almost all of Jerusalem apart from [the] Augusta Victoria [Hospital, bordering the Mount of Olives] and the Old City. The Old City is besieged by the Jews from almost all sides," Ben-Gurion, exaggerating, told his cabinet. 146

Operations Shefifon and Kilshon were mounted at least in part because of Haganah fears that the Legion would also target Jerusalem. 147 But their result was "a terrible panic ... many [East Jerusalemites] began fleeing the city," reported Haganah intelligence.148 The town's notables fired off a stream of cables to Abdullah and Glubb: "S.O.S. The Jews are near the [Old City] walls, tell the Arab Legion to give help immediately," and "Save us! Help us! They are up to the Jaffa Gate! They have occupied Sheikh Jarrah! They are scaling the walls of the Old City! Save US!,, 149 In their desperation they even cabled al-Qawugji to "Send help immediately." 150

The only realistic potential "savior," however, was the Legion. And `Abdullah could not stand aside. On 16 May he cabled Glubb: "I ... order that everything we [that is, the Arabs] hold today must be preserved-the Old City and the road to Jericho. This can be done either by using the reserves which are now in the vicinity of Ramallah or ... the general reserves. I ask you to execute this order as quickly as possible."IS1 Further cables followed the next day, one from Abul Huda, who had initially opposed entering Jerusalem as contravening the UN decision:152 "His majesty ... is extremely anxious and indeed insists that a force from Ramallah with artillery be sent to attack the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The Jews are attacking ... the Old City.... An attack on the Jews would ease the pressure."153

But Glubb was reluctant to commit his army to prospectively costly and indecisive street fighting. He had too few troops, and his armored cars-the Legion's key mobile asset-would be both vulnerable and relatively useless in urban warfare. Until the last minute he hoped that a truce would be agreed or imposed that would leave Jerusalem out of it.154 He tarried. Crossing into the West Bank on 16 May and moving from unit to unit, Glubb deliberately stayed "out of contact" with Amman-to avoid receiving the order to move on Jerusalem. 1 55

But he could stall for only so long. At nightfall on 17 May he ordered two twenty-five-pounders to take up positions overlooking northern Jerusalem "from which they could support an advance if ordered." And two infantry companies were dispatched to the Mount of Olives.1SI Early on 18 May one of the companies moved into the Old Cityis7 to man the walls-from which, Glubb reminded the readers of his memoirs, ever with an eye to history, "nearly 1,900 years ago the Jews themselves had cast their darts at the advancing legions of Titus." But these were token forces and could not be expected to hold off a serious Haganah assault. "The King was haggard with anxiety lest the Jews enter the Old City and the Temple [Mount] area ... [where] his father the late King Husayn of Hijaz, was buried." That night, Glubb ordered a massive push from Ramallah through Sheikh Jarrah into the Old City. "The die was cast," he recorded. iss

'Abdullah's decision to intervene in Jerusalem was propelled by the Palestinians' appeals. And, without doubt, he feared that if East Jerusalem fell, his fellow Arabs would blame him. But he was also driven by other considerations, chief of which was the political and religious importance of the city to the Islamic world (as well as to the Christian West and the Jews). East Jerusalem was the jewel of Palestine. Annexed by Amman, it would turn Abdullah's godforsaken desert kingdom into a major player. Alternatively, the loss of the Old City would gravely undermine Arab morale. Moreover, the king was loath to allow the graves of his father and brother Faisal to fall into Jewish hands. i-` No doubt, the unopposed occupation of the bulk of the West Bank whetted the king's appetite for bigger and better conquests; for a few days, he even talked about conquering West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.'60

And, to be sure, there was a major strategic consideration, which Glubb quickly appreciated: if East Jerusalem fell, the road to the Jordan River would be open, and if Haganah units reached Jericho, they would cut off the Legion from its supply bases and threaten it with encirclement. The Legion's position in Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron would become untenable; the army would face "disaster." To hold the West Bank, the Legion had to secure East Jerusalem. 161

On the morning of i9 May, a battalion-sized Legion force of infantry and armor, with six-pounder and mortar batteries, hastily patched together from the brigades that had fanned out in the northern West Bank, set out down the main road from Ramallah to the Old City. At Sheikh Jarrah and the Police School, the Legionnaires brushed aside the IZL defenders-killing six and wounding fifteen-and proceeded southward, reaching the Old City's Damascus Gate in the afternoon. A linkup had been achieved. 162 But the route from Shu`fat through Sheikh Jarrah and Musrara to the Old City was still enfiladed by Haganah (and IZL) light weapons and mortars from West Jerusalem's easternmost districts and, from the east, from the Hebrew University-Hadassah Hospital campus on Mount Scopus, a Haganah enclave in Arab territory. A Legion effort to break into Mount Scopus that day was repulsed by the Haganah, as were small armored thrusts westward, into the Sanhedria, Beit Yisrael, and Mandelbaum Gate areas. The main thrust, at Mandelbaum Gate, was beaten off, with three Legion armored cars disabled, by a melange of Home Guard and Gadna (Haganah youth corps) fighters, brandishing a PIAT and Molotov cocktails, supported by one Haganah armored car mounting a two-pounder. 163

Operation Kilshon and the Jordanian attack of Jerusalem, 13-z8 May 1948

The success boosted Yishuv morale; the Haganah had demonstrated, after the defeats in the `Etzion Bloc and the Police School, that the Legion's armor and artillery could be stopped. 161

On zo May Legion armored cars attacked the Haganah and Gadna positions on the top floors of Notre Dame, which dominated the northern wall of the Old City. "The Haganah soldiers seem to be mostly little boys and girls of 15 or 16 and quite irresponsible," reported one British woman who was in the complex. 165 But the Legionnaires failed, abandoning several burned-out cars, hit by Molotov cocktails, by the monastery walls. 166

In all these attacks, the Legion was trying to secure the Ranallah-Old City road-or "do [nothing more] than protect the Old City," as Kirkbride, briefed by Glubb, informed Whitehall.167 But Israeli leaders, including BenGurion,1CS not privy to Glubb's plans, interpreted the attacks as the start of an effort to penetrate and conquer West Jerusalem. (Subsequently, Israel's interior minister, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, could not fathom "why the Arab Legion, when it took Sheikh Jarrah, didn't proceed further. Had it continued, it is possible it could have conquered all of Jewish Jerusalem or a large part of it. But we had a miracle."169 Gruenbaum assumed that conquering West Jerusalem was Jordan's objective.)

Indeed, the Israeli prime minister believed that the Jordanian invasion was part of a pan-Arab design, supported by Britain, "to destroy within a few days the [ Jewish] state."170 His suspicions went so far as to report (mistakenly) that the Legion was about to use British-supplied poison gas. 171 Even the Anglophile and generally cool-headed foreign minister, Moshe Shertok, suspected Jordan and Britain of complicity in an "unmistakable inexorable line of crushing [the] Jewish State or reducing it to [the minuscule 1938] Woodhead [Commission proposals] size and letting neighboring beasts devour large part of Palestine."172 The Legion push in Jerusalem-and the IZL's flight from Sheikh Jarrah-had resulted in an order by David Shaltiel, the Haganah Jerusalem District OC, to all commanders "to shoot anyone ... who was not obeying his orders or was trying to flee the battlefield." 173

One reason the Yishuv leaders believed that the Jordanians were bent on taking West Jerusalem was the intermittent artillery barrages the Jordanians unleashed during the battles around the Old City. Although some shelling was directed at Israeli mortar batteries or government buildings, much was indiscriminate, and Jewish civilian casualties were extensive. Reporting from Jerusalem, a senior official-probably Walter Eytan-wrote that "in [the northern West Jerusalem neighborhoods] there is scarcely a single home that has not been shelled, scarcely a family that has not suffered some loss in dead or wounded ... [and the inhabitants] go hungry.... One Hadassah Hospital alone ... treated one thousand shell casualties in the two weeks between May i5th and 31st.... Because they are mostly ... poor people, people without influence, one does not hear much about this mass suffering."'74