1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (47 page)

The kibbutz was in territory the United Nations had earmarked for Arab sovereignty. Unlike Nirim and Kfar Darom, the Egyptians could not afford to leave it behind as they advanced northward. The Negev Brigade understood this-and ordered the defenders to stand fast and delay the invaders for as long as possible. The time was needed to bolster the defenses further north and to absorb new weaponry. As Ben-Gurion put it: "This is a race in [that is, against] time. If we hold out for two weeks-we will win."260 An assembly of the kibbutz members decided on the evacuation of women and children and to fight to the last. On the night of i 8 - i9 May, a small Israeli armored column reached the kibbutz and extricated its ninety-two children (contrary to orders from OC Negev Brigade Nahum Sang). Left behind were 1 1o members (twenty of them women) and two squads of Palmahniks, with light weapons, a medium machine gun, and a PIAT.

The Egyptians attacked just after dawn, r9 May, when fighters, batteries of twenty-five-pounders and mortars pounded the settlement. But the First Battalion's assault, supported by a company of armor, just after noon, was driven back after initially breaching the perimeter fence. The Egyptians suffered dozens of dead; the kibbutz, five dead and eleven wounded. Cairo Radio announced that the settlement had fallen 26' The next morning, 20 May, the assault was resumed by the (fresh) Seventh Battalion, this time supported by gun-mounting armored cars. In desperate hand-to-hand fighting along the perimeter, with much of the kibbutz on fire behind them, the defenders beat back seven assaults. But thirteen more Israelis died and twenty were wounded; dozens of Egyptians also died. That night the Palmah sent in a platoon of reinforcements (which included six British army deserters who had thrown in their lot in with the Jews), with another PIAT and three machine guns.

The Egyptians spent 21-22 May licking their wounds and shelling the kibbutz; the Egyptian air force prevented a relief column from reaching the site. The settlement's buildings were leveled, and the defenders had become "inhabitants of caves and tunnels."262 By 22 May with dozens of wounded, the defenders were pleading for permission to withdraw. At 7:30 AM they radioed HQ: "Fear a second Kfar `Etzion [that is, massacre]. Allow [us] to evacuate, or send help. Extricate the women and wounded." At rr:oo they radioed: "No water. Exhausted." At 2:00 PM they threatened to evacuate that night: "We haven't the strength to defend the settlement."263

The Egyptians were determined to take Yad Mordechai. They added another battalion, the Second, and artillery and a tank, which hit the kibbutz through 23 May. Just before sunset, the battalions mounted a joint assault, "preceded by a destructive broom of fire and shells. Four waves ... tried ... and four waves fell back as they left behind them a trail of blood of [sic] two hundred dead.... They had tanks and artillery and aircraft.... And wewe had a few grenades and machine guns.... We pressed our human advantage. We had what to fight for-for our beloved settlement, for the children who would come back to the site, and, yes, also for the name ... of Mordechai Anielewicz.... It is possible we did not know it-but our war was a sort of reprisal for his death, there, on foreign soil, in a war without a future."264

By nightfall, half the defenders were dead or wounded. Under cover of darkness, the Negev Brigade sent a company of Palmahniks in armored vehicles to extricate the wounded. The column was spotted and attacked, but some vehicles made it through and linked up with the kibbutz. The relief force informed the kibbutzniks that only the wounded were to be extracted; the fit were to fight on. All realized, however, that the situation was hopeless. Contrary to orders, the kibbutzniks decided to break out during the night, on foot. They were assisted by the armored cars, who took out the seriously wounded. The Egyptians haphazardly shelled the area but failed to halt the evacuation. But two members, one of them a woman, Laika Shafir, carrying a wounded Palmahnik, were spotted and surrounded by Egyptian troops, who bayoneted all three. Ben-Gurion subsequently criticized the evacuation. 265

By morning, the kibbutzniks and Palmahniks had reached Israeli territory. Unaware, the Egyptians continued to shell the kibbutz through the early afternoon of 24 May. Then, hesitantly, they entered the ruins and raised a celebratory cheer; it was the first settlement they had actually vanquished. The price had been heavy; hundreds had died or been seriously wounded, and the Haganah had forced a four-to-five-day delay in the Egyptian advance northward, giving the Givati Brigade time to prepare.266

During the last week of May, flying columns of the Negev and Giv`ati Brigades harried the Egyptians. The embryonic IAF also took part, periodically bombing, with converted civilian aircraft, Gaza-the Egyptian headquarters-and its environs. On the night of 25-26 May, sixteen townspeople were reportedly killed by incendiaries and fifty-five- and i 1o-pound bombs.217 The Israelis believed that the Egyptian advance "was directed at Tel Aviv."26s Israeli desperation was such that two Palmah Arab Platoon scouts, David Mizrahi and `EzraAfghl (Horin), were sent to Gaza reportedly to poison wells (as well as gather information). They were caught on zz May near Jibalya with "thermos flasks containing water contaminated with typhoid and diphtheria [or dysentery] germs," according to King Farouk. Mizrahi and Afgin had apparently poured the concoction into one well before being captured and confessing.269 The two were executed on 22 August.270 The Egyptians complained to London, but the Foreign Office thought it prudent "to keep out" (though one official minuted that the matter was so "obnoxious" that perhaps, if the opportunity arose, Britain could "express [its] disgust" to the Israelis) .271

The Egyptians reached Majdal on z4 May and made it their headquarters, setting up a defensive perimeter. Some observers thought that the Egyptians-"wisely"-had, at this stage, in view of their logistical problems, "decided ... to advance no further."272

But on z8 May they renewed their push northward, reaching Isdud (Ashdod), their van digging in less than two miles beyond the village. This last leapfrog may have been prompted by a Jordanian request to relieve the pressure on Latrun-so, at least, the Haganah suspected.273 (Ben-Gurion said, "The Egyptian army sent to Ashdod doesn't understand what it is fighting for.") 274 But the Egyptians may equally have sought to advance as far as possible toward Tel Aviv or, alternatively, to reach the northern edge (that is, Isdud) of the southern portion of Palestine allotted in the UN partition resolution to the Palestinian Arabs. In any event, the Egyptians never advanced further and quickly lost the initiative-which they were never to regain dur ing the war. In less than a week, two Israeli efforts changed the strategic picture in the south.

In the first action, just before sunset, 29 May, a foursome of Israeli Messerschmitts-the first assembled275 and sent into action-took off from `Egron Airfield, less than ten miles from Isdud. Giv'ati Brigade's "Cultural Officer," the poet (and former anti-Nazi partisan) Abba Kovner, witnessing the takeoff, wrote: "All that the Jewish people had ... was sent aloft. "276

One of the pilots was `Ezer Weizman (who was to command Israel's air force in the i96os and was later to serve as the state's president). He later recalled: "As soon as we got up into the air, we could see anti-aircraft fire directed at us from ... Ashdod. We swung out to sea, climbing to 7,000 feet, and swooped toward the Egyptian column. The sight took my breath away. The Egyptian Army, in all its power and glory, was spread along the road and knew, more or less, what stood between it and Tel Aviv-two and a half companies of the Giv`ati Brigade, anxiety-stricken and exhausted. I must confess I had a profound sense of fulfilling a great mission."277 The lead pilot, Lou Lenart, who had flown in the US Air Force in the Philippines, was quoted by Ben-Gurion as saying that "he had never encountered such AA fire."278 Each pilot made three passes, bombing the center of Isdud and strafing the Egyptian troops. By conventional standards, the attack was a failure. Few if any Egyptians were killed; all three planes' 20 mm cannon stopped firing after the first burst. One plane was shot down and another crash-landed, badly bending a wing. But the attack had a strong psychological impact. One intercepted Egyptian radio message stated: "We have been heavily attacked by enemy aircraft, we are dispersing."279 Conversely, the watching Israeli troops nearby were uplifted by the spectacle; for the first time, they were receiving real air support.280 Thereafter the Egyptians felt that they had lost air supremacy and remained fearful of air attack.

The next blow was on the ground. Fearing a resumption of the advance on Tel Aviv, HGS ordered the Giv'ati and Negev Brigades to attack and "destroy" the Egyptian vanguard.28' In mivtza pleshet (Operation Philistia) or the Battle of Isdud-mistakenly portrayed in traditional Zionist historiography as the crucial action in which the Egyptian advance was stymied-some two thousand IDF soldiers faced a slightly larger force of twenty-five hundred entrenched Egyptians, of the First, Second, and Ninth battalions. Moreover, the Israelis dispersed their effort in a way that increased their numerical disadvantage at most points of contact.

Elements of the two Israeli brigades, supported by a battery of 65 mm artillery and a pair of 120 mm mortars, attacked Isdud and the Isdud (or Suqreir) Bridge to the north on z-3 June. They briefly captured houses on the village outskirts but were driven off with serious losses.282 Elsewhere, the attackers were firmly repulsed by the Egyptians; many were hit during the retreat. Some fifty Israelis were killed or went missing, and another fifty were wounded; Egyptian losses are unknown.

By permission of Carta, Jerusalem

The Battle of Isdud, Operation Pleshet, 13 June 1948

But the unsuccessful attack caused alarm, amounting almost to panic, in the Egyptian command, which feared that their forces north of Majdal were overstretched and might be cut off. One Egyptian diarist recorded: "Front commander [Neguib] reports that his forces were bombarded from the air, by artillery and by mortars and that the Jews launched an assault which was barely beaten off. The headquarters was badly damaged and the telephone lines were cut. "'s3 The fear of being cut off was exacerbated by a Giv`ati ambush just south of Isdud, which shot up a supply column from Majdal. An additional reason for Israeli joy was the success that day, 3 June, of the lone operational Israeli Messerschmitt, piloted by Mordechai Allon. He intercepted and downed two converted Egyptian Dakotas on a bombing mission over Tel Aviv.284

The Egyptian advance had come to a halt before Operation Pleshet. But the attack nonetheless had serious-and, from the Israeli perspective, positive-consequences. An Arab chronicler, Kamal Ismail al-Sharif, was to write: "In accordance with the plan worked out by the Arab states, the Egyptian army was to have advanced to Yibna [Yavneh], but immediately upon the arrival of the Egyptian van at Isdud, the enemy ... launched a strong attack.... Though it was repulsed, the enemy achieved at least one objective-the pinning down of the Egyptian army ... in Isdud. It would be no exaggeration to say that the Jewish attack on Isdud was a turning point in the Israeli-Egyptian struggle.... The Egyptian command was forced to change its plans: instead of continuing to chase after the Zionist gangs, the command decided to limit itself to severing the Negev from the rest of the country."285 In other words, all thought of driving on Yavneh and onward to Tel Aviv was driven out of Egyptian minds. Al-Muwawi radioed Cairo that, lacking men and equipment, and already overextended, he "could not advance one step further" without courting disaster.286

But the Egyptians had achieved one important success before coming to rest at Isdud: during the battle for Yad Mordechai, the First Battalion had advanced eastward, from Majdal, along the road through Faluja to Beit Jibrin, linking up with the right arm of the invasion force in the Hebron hills. The troops dug in and established a chain of positions on either side of the road, thus both securing the west-east axis and linking the invasion's two arms, and cutting off the two dozen Jewish settlements south of the road, effectively besieging them and the Negev Brigade. At the same time, as Nasser later pointed out, this also had the effect of further dispersing the Egyptian expeditionary force "at the end of long lines of communication. [The battal ions] became so scattered that their main concern was to defend themselves and protect their lines of communication.... We had lost all power of initiative."287

During the following months Egyptian energies were devoted to maintaining, and even expanding, the west-east chain of positions and to assuring the continued siege of the settlement enclave-while Israeli energies were devoted to breaking through, lifting the siege, and linking up with the settlements while driving a wedge between the western and eastern arms of the Egyptian army.

About halfway between Majdal and Beit Jibrin stood the `Iraq Suweidan police fort, which dominated the west-east road as well as a (secondary) north-south road running east of and parallel to the coast road. The Israelis were to dub the fort at the crossroads "the monster on the hill." With its evacuation by the British on 12 May, it had been occupied by Muslim Brotherhood irregulars. On 22 May, Egyptian regulars replaced them and then unsuccessfully attacked the well-fortified Kibbutz Negba, about a mile to the north.288 Negba was to remain a focus of Egyptian attention until the start of the First Truce on ii June.