1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (43 page)

The war was not confined to the northern neighborhoods. At the southern edge of Jerusalem, hundreds of local irregulars were joined on 19 May by eight hundred Egyptian regulars and Muslim Brotherhood fighters-the van of the right arm of the Egyptian invasion via Beersheba and Hebronand several platoons of Legionnaires. The combined force deployed 3.7-inch howitzers and three-inch mortars and six armored cars. Their target was Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, which controlled the Jerusalem-Bethlehem road and the southern entrance to Jerusalem. For three days, the force bombarded the kibbutz, almost leveling it. Then, on 22 May, after an infantry assault, the eighty weary and outgunned defenders abandoned the site and fled to Jerusalem. The Arabs systematically looted the buildings, then torched them. But that evening, in a surprise attack two Haganah platoons from Jerusalem retook the kibbutz. The following day the Arab forces retook the settlement; and that evening, the Haganah returned.

The final battle began on 24 May. Again the Arabs attacked. But this time, the Haganah force, reinforced by fifty IZL members, held grimly onto the western half of the kibbutz. A company from the Harel Brigade arrived. The following day the Arabs made one last effort, and failed. The Palmah, using flamethrowers, counterattacked that night, drove the remaining Arabs out, and conquered the nearby monastery of Mar Elias. The Arabs retreated to Sur Bahir. In the weeklong battle, more than a hundred Arabs died; among the Israelis, twenty-six were killed and eighty-four were wounded. The Israelis had secured the southern entrance to Jerusalem. 17-1

But the key to Jerusalem lay north of the city. The Legion's position remained precarious. It firmly held only the area around the Damascus Gate; but the R mallah-Jerusalem road was still enfiladed by Israeli fire, and the entrance to the Old City and its northwestern wall were dominated by the Haganah-occupied, five-hundred-room, stone-faced complex of Notre Dame. Glubb ordered the Third Regiment, which had deployed in Samaria, to head for the capital. For six days, its bedouin soldiers "had fretted and cursed in inaction" around Nablus;176 now, at last, they were joining battle.

In the early morning hours of 22 May the regiment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel William Newman, an Australian World War II veteran, dismounted from their trucks and advanced, under a blazing sun, from Shu`fat through Sheikh Jarrah to the Old City's northern walls, all the while taking fire from Haganah positions in Sanhedriya, Mea Shearim, and Mount Scopus. The Legion responded with artillery, mortars, and small arms; the whole area was enveloped in thick smoke; many Legionnaires, by now exhausted, went astray in the streets and alleyways north of the Old City walls. But the core of the Third Regiment, backed by gun-mounting armored cars, launched a desultory attack on Notre Dame. As the shells crashed into the stonework, the defenders moved from room to room and fired back. One of the cars was ignited and disabled by Molotov cocktails hurled by Gadna youths. The Legionnaires backed off. The next day, the regiment tried again. This time, it was a well-organized assault, with infantry, armored cars, and artillery. The shells "came thick and fast," as one compound resident noted. 177 But "the Holy Catholic Church seemed to have built for eternity," wrote Glubb; the Legion's two- and six-pounders and mortars were of little use against the stout walls. The infantry failed to enter the compound. A twentyfive-pounder was brought up and fired point-blank. It felt like "a continuous earthquake," recalled one of the defenders.178 An Israeli PIAT knocked out two armored cars. At one point, a Legion company managed to penetrate the ground floor. The fighting was hand-to-hand, from room to room; both sides lobbed grenades and fired tommy guns. The defenders, most of them sixteen- and seventeen-year-old Gadna youths-one (Mordechai Rotenberg) was fourteen-held on. 179 Most of the regiment, pinned down by Haganah fire, failed to reinforce the penetration. In the end, Lieutenant Ghazi al-Harbi, a native of Saudi Arabia, and his Fourth Company were ordered to withdraw; the Haganah reoccupied the ground floor. Fighting around the building continued for several hours. By evening the Legion had had enough and withdrew to the Damascus Gate. The Third Regiment had suffered dozens of dead and wounded.'80

Glubb later visited the regiment and met al-Harbi: "The tears ran down his wrinkled and weather-beaten face as he begged for permission for one more try to take Notre Dame. `We'll do it this time, 0 father of Faris,' he assured me," recalled Glubb. "I vetoed any more attempts." 181

But the regiment had managed to link up with the Old City, and by 24 May, a continuous, thin Legion line stretched from Ramallah through Sheikh Jarrah and the empty area between West and East Jerusalem.

The battle had not gone all the Haganah's way. During 14-16 May the Jewish settlements of Atarot and Neveh Ya`akov, north of Sheikh Jarrah, were attacked by irregulars and Legion units and abandoned, the defenders withdrawing to Mount Scopus. And on 17-20 May, the militarily untenable settlements of Kalia and Beit Ha`arava, at the northern end of the Dead Sea, south of Jericho, were abandoned. The women and children left by air and the rest by sea, southward, to Sodom.

But the most significant Israeli defeat occurred within the Old City itself, with the fall of the Jewish Quarter. Before the war, most of the inhabitantsalmost all ultra-Orthdox-had been "on good terms with their Arab neighbours," resented the Haganah presence, and "were loath to see their homes sacrificed to Zionist heroics," as one British diplomat put it. isa

Following an unsuccessful attack by Arab militiamen on ii December 1947, British troops took up positions around the quarter, forming an outer cordon sanitaire around the Haganah-defended perimeter. The British occasionally impounded Haganah weapons. On 28 March there was a skirmish as the British tried to confiscate Haganah weapons; there were several deadbut the British stopped harassing the defenders.

Until 13 May, when the British evacuated, ninety men, mostly Haganah, had defended the Jewish Quarter. In the following days, about a hundred more joined them. On 16 May Arab irregulars attacked the quarter, capturing several positions and mortaring the houses. Many inhabitants fled into synagogues and cellars. The quarter's rabbis demanded that the Haganah surrender; they feared a massacre. But Haganah Jerusalem headquarters ordered the defenders to hold on, promising reinforcements. The battle raged the next day, too. The defenders suffered heavy losses, and the Haganah was left with ten bullets per rifle. But it held on. A Haganah effort on 17-18 May to break into the Old City at Jaffa Gate was beaten off 183 But a simultaneous effort, by the Harel Brigade's Fourth Battalion outside the southern wall ended with the conquest of Mount Zion after fierce fighting inside the Dormition Abbey.

The Haganah decided to exploit the success and take Zion Gate and link up with the besieged quarter. But the planning was slapdash, and the Fourth Battalion was given insufficient reinforcements to carry it through. That night, 18-19 May, a platoon of twenty-four exhausted Palmahniks (two of them women)-led by David El'azar (IDF chief of general staff, 19721974)-took Zion Gate after blowing in the doors with an eighty-eightpound charge. 184 The Arab defenders fled. A handful of Palmahniks, followed by eighty middle-aged Haganah conscripts-defined by the quarter's defenders as "useless"-carrying boxes of ammunition and extra weapons, reached the quarter.

The small Palmah force felt unable to hold the gate and the alley to the Jewish Quarter unless substantially reinforced. Owing to incompetence or a misunderstanding, Shaltiel failed to send the additional troops, and just after dawn, i9 May, the Palmahniks abandoned Zion Gate without a battle and returned to Mount Zion. For five hours, no one held Zion Gate. Indeed, two Israelis from West Jerusalem walked through it to the quarter, bringing food for their relatives. The area was quiet, no one stopped them, and they saw no one.185 Around noon, a Legion unit occupied the gate; once again, the quarter was sealed off.186

Now it was seasoned Legionnaires-Abdullah Tall's Sixth Regimentnot disorganized Palestinian militiamen, who were doing the besieging. The assault on the Jewish Quarter was renewed. The Legionnaires were assisted by irregulars, half of them ALA. The defenders were outnumbered five to one and completely outgunned. Starting on i9 May, the Legionnaires, heavily supported by cannon and mortars, steadily reduced the quarter. The attackers methodically blew up each house and position they conquered. Armored cars with two-pounders were deployed in the alleyways.

On 22 May the quarter's rabbis, Ze'eve Mintzberg and Ben-Zion Hazan, cabled Israel's two chief rabbis: "The community is about to be massacred. In the name of the inhabitants [this is] a desperate appeal for help. The synagogues have been destroyed and the Torah scrolls have been burned.... Misgav Ladakh [Hospital] is under a hail of shells and bullets.... Save us. ),187

The Harel Brigade tried to break back in, but the attempts were poorly planned, undermanned, and half-hearted. Daily the Legion broadcast a demand to surrender, and by the end, most of the inhabitants were pressing the Haganah to accede. On 26 - 27 May, the Legionnaires took the Hurvat Israel (or "Hurva") Synagogue, the quarter's largest and most sacred building, and then, without reason, blew it up. "This affair will rankle for generations in the heart of world Jewry," predicted one Foreign Office official.188

The destruction of the synagogue shook Jewish morale.' 89 Jerusalem Haganah headquarters ordered the defenders to hold on "for a few more hours"-but was unable to mount a serious relief effort. Israeli historians would later charge Shaltiel with incompetence and even indifference. But West Jerusalem itself was under siege-the Legion had blocked the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road at Latrun and Bab al-Wad-and he was extremely shorthanded. He understood that the quarter was a sideshow. And its antiZionist ultra-Orthodox inhabitants were not exactly the Haganah's cup of tea. 190

On the morning of 28 May a delegation of rabbis arrived at the quarter's Haganah command bunker and announced that they intended to surrender. The commander, Moshe Roznak, agreed that they open "truce negotiations." Glubb described what followed: "Two old rabbis, their backs bent with age, came forward down a narrow lane carrying a white flag." In no man's land they met a Jordanian officer and said that they were empowered to negotiate. Tall demanded to see the quarter's mukhtar, Rabbi Mordechai Weingarten. Weingarten, accompanied by his daughter, Yehudit, duly appeared, and the negotiations began in a nearby cafe.

A brief ceasefire was agreed, and Weingarten returned to the Jewish Quarter, where representatives of the inhabitants and the defenders voted almost unanimously in favor of surrender; only the IZL representative abstained. Shaltiel was not consulted or informed. Rosnak, Weingarten, and Tall then signed an instrument of surrender. Tall agreed that the civilian inhabitants and all the women would be free to leave for West Jerusalem; army-age males (or "combatants") would become prisoners of war. Seriously wounded combatants were to be set free.'9' By then, of the 213 defenders, thirty-nine were dead, and 134 were wounded.'92

The fears of the quarter's inhabitants proved groundless; the Legion had learned its lesson from K far `Etzion. The Legionnaires deployed in force and protected the Jews from the wrath of the gathering Arab mob. The soldiers shot dead at least two Arabs and wounded others as they guarded the Jews. One POW recalled: "We were all surprised by the Legion's behavior toward us. We all thought that of the soldiers [that is, Haganah men] none would remain alive.... [We feared a massacre. But] the Legion protected us even from the mob, they helped take out the wounded, they themselves carried the stretchers.... They gave us food, their attitude was gracious and civil." 193

The Legionnaires took prisoner 29o healthy males, aged fifteen to fiftytwo-thirds of them, in fact, noncombatants-and fifty-one of the wounded. The other wounded and twelve hundred inhabitants were accompanied by the Legionnaires to Zion Gate and freed. 194 The quarter was then systematically pillaged and razed by the mob.lys The fall of the Jewish Quarter, an important national site, dealt a severe blow to Yishuv morale.

As the battle in Jerusalem unfolded, the importance of the Tel AvivJerusalem road and the vital sector at Latrun and Bab al-Wad dawned on the two sides."' But the penny dropped first for Glubb. In Jerusalem, the fighting had ended more or less in stalemate: Israel held West Jerusalem and the Arabs, the eastern part of town, including the Old City. Glubb understood that if he was to continue holding East Jerusalem (and, perhaps, the West Bank as a whole), he must prevent the Israelis, who had a far larger army, from reinforcing the tunderequipped `Etzion and Harel Brigades. He had to block the road from Tel Aviv-and Latrun-Bab al-Wad was the place, where the narrow road begins the climb up through the Judean Hills to the capital.1` 7 Occupying Latrun-Bab al-Wad would also draw off or pin down Israeli troops who might otherwise be deployed in Jerusalem. 198

The Israelis saw the situation in a mirror image. The Haganah feared that the Legion was intent on conquering West Jerusalem or shelling and starving it into submission; `Etzioni and Harel had to be reinforced and the city resupplied; the Haganah had to take Latrun-Bab al-Wad and open the road. And some commanders no doubt thought about a further, offensive stage, in which the Haganah would conquer East Jerusalem and push down to Jericho and the Jordan, leaving the Legion cut off and stranded in the West Bank.

The small hillock at Latrun, topped by the large Tegart police fort, and the surrounding Arab villages of Latrun, Deir Aiyub, Imwas, Yalu, and Beit Nuba, sat astride the junction of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem and RamallahMajdal roads. The fort had been held from the end of April, when the British abandoned it, until mid-May by units of the ALA and assorted militiamen. On 14 May the Jordanians ordered a1-Qawuqji to withdraw from the West Bank, and the ALA pulled out. A platoon of left-behind Legionnaires, of the Eleventh Infantry Company, and dozens of Jordanian tribal militiamen, under Lieutenant Abd al-Majid al-Maaita, took over the Latrun fort-but the road to Jerusalem remained open. For two days, the Haganah failed to exploit the vacuum, and on 17 May, the door began to slant shut: Glubb ordered in the Fourth Regiment, commanded by Habas al-Majali. The troops began to deploy between Bab al-Wad and Latrun that night. On 18 May the road to Jerusalem was severed.