1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (34 page)

Operation Ben-Ami, Western Galilee, 13 -a2 May 1948

Subsequently, the Carmeli Brigade embarked on what was defined as "stage 2" of Ben-Ami, during 20-22 May conquering the villages of Kabri, Umm al-Faraj, and al-Nahar, slightly expanding eastward the coastal strip already in Israeli hands. The order defined the objectives as breaking through to Kibbutz Yehiam with three months of supplies and "attacking with the aim of conquest; to kill adult males; to destroy and torch [the villages]."297 The villages were rapidly conquered. Kabri was leveled with explosives298 after a handful of inhabitants were apparently executed.299 At Ghabisiya, south of Kabri, the villagers-with a tradition of collaboration with the Yishuv-greeted Carmeli with white flags. But the troops opened fire, hitting several villagers, and then executed six more (allegedly because of the villagers' participation in the ambush of the Yehiam Convoy two months before). The villagers were subsequently expelled.-31111

Elsewhere, at a number of sites, Haganah Home Guard units readied for the prospective invasion by disarming or clearing out neighboring villagers. They feared that the villages would help the invaders and serve as bases for attack. Thus, on 13 -14 May `Ein-Gev, an isolated kibbutz on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, demanded that neighboring Arab Argibat (Nugeib), whom the Jews had earlier persuaded to stay put, accept Jewish rule and hand over their weapons. But the villagers opted for evacuation, probably fearing Arab charges of treachery if they stayed. The kibbutzniks demolished their houses.,()' A fortnight later, the kibbutz evicted the Persian Zickrallah family, who owned a large farm just south of the kibbutz, along with their thirty Arab hands. "In war, there is no room for sentiment," explains the 'EinGev logbook. The Zickrallahs were later resettled in Acre.302

The Yishuv was not alone in trying to gain last-minute advantage on the eve of the invasion. Two Arab formations launched operations to clear the way for the expeditionary forces: a battalion of Muslim Brotherhood volunteers, commanded by Egyptian army officers, attacked Kibbutz Kfar Darom, and more tellingly, units of Jordan's Arab Legion, while still part of the British army in Palestine, conquered the `Etzion Bloc between Bethlehem and Hebron.

Kfir Darom sat astride the coast road between Rafah and Gaza. Brotherhood volunteers from Egypt had previously-and unsuccessfully-attacked the settlement on io April. Just before dawn on ii May the battalion, which had infiltrated into Palestine two weeks before, launched an artillery barrage. Smoke bombs followed, behind which infantry advanced. The defenders held their ground and the Egyptians failed to break through the perimeter fence. According to the historian of the Muslim Brotherhood volunteers, the attackers' confusion was compounded by their own artillery volleys that landed among them. The volunteers retreated, leaving behind some seventy dead.303

Far more significant was the attack on the `Etzion Bloc, in which the four settlements were destroyed. The area had first been settled in 1927 and was then repeatedly abandoned because of Arab harassment and economic difficulties. In the early 194os Jews affiliated to the nationalist religious Mizrahi Party returned to the area and established three kibbutzim: Kfar 'Etzion, Massu'ot Yitzhak, and 'Ein Tzurim. A fourth kibbutz, Revadinn, was added by Hashomer Hatza'ir settlers. By 1948 there were some five hundred settlers and Haganah members in the bloc. Though the land had been purchased from the Arabs, the locals saw the settlers as aliens and invaders. Indeed, three weeks before the UN partition resolution, the mayor of Hebron, A1i Ja'abri, warned Kfar `Etzion that the region's Arabs had resolved to "remove the Jews from the area in the event of the outbreak of hostilities." Ja'abri advised them "to leave voluntarily ... as in any event you will be removed by force" and promised that the settlers would be compensated for their lands.304

Starting on 1z-14 January 1948-when a convoy from West Jerusalem to the bloc was ambushed by villagers and an attack on the kibbutzim by several thousand local militiamen was repulsed-()--the bloc was effectively under siege. The Haganah retaliated, mainly by ambushing Arab traffic along the Hebron-Bethlehem road. On i5 January a thirty-five-man Haganah relief column was destroyed to a man.306

During the following months the Yishuv leadership repeatedly debated the possible evacuation of the bloc (as the British recommended). But a decision in principle was taken against: "No Jewish point or settlement should be evacuated and they [must] be held until the last man."307 This principle, coupled with strategic considerations linked to the fate of Jewish Jerusalem, proved decisive. It was argued that the `Etzion Bloc siphoned off Arab fighters who otherwise would have been free to attack West Jerusalem. In addition, the bloc was a strategic asset because it was able to interdict Arab traffic between Hebron and the capital.308

In early April, the fighters in the bloc-on orders from the Haganah command, who sought to reduce the pressure on Jerusalem-repeatedly ambushed traffic, including Arab Legion and British army vehicles, along the Hebron-Bethlehem road. On 12 April Legion armored cars attacked Kfiir `Etzion's outposts, and then withdrew.-()9 Further Haganah attacks followed, with the Legion taking casualties. As the British withdrawal deadline from Jerusalem drew near, they worried that the Haganah would block the road, along which their Second Brigade was due to proceed, via Beersheba and Rafah, to the Suez Canal.310 The Legion's newly formed Sixth Regiment was placed in charge of security along the road.

The Haganah attacks along the road persuaded the British to allow the Legion to solve the problem, though they never admitted, then or later, to having taken such a decision. At first, a punitive attack was ordered. On 4 May, a Legion infantry force, with armored cars, Bren-gun carriers, and cannon, perhaps supported by a few British tanks and armored cars,311 assaulted and took Haganah positions, principally the "Russian Monastery," on the eastern edge of the bloc, from which traffic had been attacked. But the Legionnaires failed to take and destroy other key positions and withdrew. Twelve Haganah soldiers died and thirty were wounded, and some light mortars and machine guns were lost. Several dozen Arabs died, mainly local militiamen who had joined in.

The local Legion commanders, led by Abdullah Tall, OC Sixth Regiment, began to plan the bloc's conquest. The attack went home on 12, May. Tall im plies that he initiated the assault without authorization and that General John Glubb, the commander of the Legion, only gave it a post facto endorsement.312 This appears unlikely. The assault was grounded in clear strategic rather than tactical considerations. The Legion seems to have been motivated in part by revenge for the casualties it had previously suffered at the hands of the bloc's fighters, in part by its obligation to secure the road for British traffic, in part by pressure from the Hebron notables to uproot what they had long regarded as an unwanted presence, in part-this was Glubb's subsequent justification for intervening313-by a desire to enable a last convoy of British-supplied vehicles and stores from the Suez Canal to reach the Legion. But, no doubt, Glubb also calculated that the advance removal of the obstacle posed by the bloc would facilitate his takeover of the Bethlehem-Hebron area in the forthcoming invasion, while its continued existence would hamper his operations.314

On the eve of the battle, the bloc was defended by some five hundred Haganah fighters and kibbutz members, who were armed with light weapons, two two-inch mortars, one three-inch mortar, a number of medium machine guns, and several PIATs. They had little ammunition, especially for the mortars and PIATs. The attacking force consisted of the bulk of two Legion infantry companies (the sixth and twelfth garrison companies), a company of ALA irregulars, two dozen armored cars, some of them mounting twopounders, a battery of three-inch mortars, and possibly one or two sixpounders. These were supported by more than a thousand militiamen.

The Legion attacked just before dawn, 12 May, with an effective mortar and artillery barrage on Kfar `Etzion's outer redoubts and buildings. Armored cars then moved in, infantry following. The defenders had no answer to the Legion's armor and artillery and were killed or ejected from position after position. By noon, the Legionnaires had taken the "Russian Monastery" and had reached the crossroads at the center of the bloc, isolating Kfar `Etzion from the other settlements and occupying the landing strip, through which the besieged bloc had been supplied during the previous months. The radio messages from Kfar `Etzion grew desperate: "We are being shelled heavily. Our situation is very bad. Every minute counts. Send aircraft [to parachute supplies] as quickly as possible."315

After a pause, the Legionnaires renewed their artillery attack. That night the defenders radioed Haganah headquarters: "Send immediately belts for Spandau machine guns. Extricate us immediately. There is no hope of holding out.... The situation in men, weapons, and ammunition grave. Do everything tonight." -116 But all Jerusalem could do was ask the British and the Red Cross to intervene.317

The Legion renewed the assault just before dawn. A preliminary shelling was followed by armored cars and infantry attacking the perimeter trench works. Reinforcements arrived from Massu'ot Yitzhak and light aircraft dropped makeshift bombs without effect; ground fire forced them to stay too high. In any event, there was no way to stop the armored cars or to neutralize the artillery and mortars. That morning, the armored cars and infantry breached Kfar `Etzion's defenses from the north. Just before noon, the order went out from the kibbutz's commanders to the outlying outposts and trenches to surrender. Groups of defenders carrying white flags emerged from bunkers and trenches. But elsewhere, unaware of the surrender order, the defenders still fired off the odd shot.

The bulk of the defenders, more than a hundred men and women, assembled in an open area at the center of Kfar'Etzion. Arab soldiers "ordered [us] to sit and then stand and raise our hands. One of the Arabs pointed a tommy gun at us and another wanted to throw a grenade. But others restrained them. Then a photographer with a kaffiya arrived and took photographs of us.... An armored car arrived.... When the photographer stopped taking pictures fire was opened up on us from all directions. Those not hit in the initial fusillade ... ran in various directions. Some fled to the [central] bunker. Others took hold of weapons. A mass of Arabs poured into the settlements from all sides and attacked the men in the center of the settlement and in the outposts shouting wildly `Deir Yassin."'318 Almost all the men and women were murdered. All witnesses agree that the militiamen who poured into the settlement looted and vandalized the buildings, "leaving not one stone upon another."319 (Afterward, they did the same in the three other settlements: they apparently were driven by a desire for revenge and "a desire to prevent the Jews' return to the bloc.")320

Not all the Legionnaires participated in the massacre. Indeed, the Legion subsequently variously denied that there had been a massacre or ascribed the slaughter to the local militiamen.321 One officer saved and protected "Aliza R.," a Haganah radiowoman who had jumped into a trench during the initial fusillade. Two Legionnnaires who heard her scream pulled her out and took her aside and (apparently) tried to rape her. A Legion officer shot the two with his tommy gun and led her to an armored car and safety.322 In all, only a handful of the defenders survived: three were saved by Legion officers; another managed to reach Massu`otYitzhak, still in Jewish hands. The rest, io6 men and twenty-seven women, died in the battles that day or were murdered in the slaughter that followed. Another twenty-four defenders had been killed on the first day.323 In the two-day battle, the Legionnaires apparently suffered twenty-seven dead and the local militiamen, forty-two dead.324

The fall of the bloc's main settlement clinched the fate of the other three, as the Haganah command immediately understood. The three kibbutzim were short of manpower, weapons, and ammunition and had no prospect of rescue by Jewish or British intervention. The Haganah in Jerusalem, with the invasion imminent, was too hard-pressed; and the British, with two feet out the door, were certainly not going to intervene and prevent an Arab victory-indeed, a victory by their Jordanian clients-bare hours before their exit from Palestine.

In hectic negotiations with the British and the Red Cross, the Jewish Agency on 13 May arranged the orderly surrender of the three settlements, which were subjected to continuous attacks during the afternoon and evening. The settlements had pleaded with Jerusalem to organize their surrender, fearing massacre the following morning.

On the morning of 14 May, as the leaders in Tel Aviv were putting lastminute touches to the new state's Declaration of Independence, a Red Cross convoy reached the bloc. The Legion had pulled back a few hundred yards. But thousands of militiamen surrounded the three settlements. Firefights broke out; a number of disarmed Jews were murdered. Another massacre loomed. But the Red Cross representatives, aided by Arab policemen from Jerusalem, negotiated the entry of small Legion units into the settlements to effect an orderly submission. Revadim, then 'Ein Tsurim, then Massu'ot Yitzhak surrendered. At each site the arms were handed over to the Legion, and the defenders were loaded onto trucks. Firefights broke out between the Legionnaires, bent on protecting the Jews, and the militiamen, who wanted to kill and loot. In the end, the Legionnaires loaded 357 POWs onto trucks and ferried them to Transjordan, where they remained until war's end. The Legion violated the surrender agreement by not releasing the females and the wounded, who were to have been transported to Jewish Jerusalem. But Chaim Herzog, the senior Haganah liaison officer with the British, reported that "the behavior of the Arab Legion vis-a-vis the prisoners from the `Etzion Bloc was exemplary [hayta lemofet]. They displayed great civility and obstructed the Arab mob's attempts to harm them. "325

In the general landscape of the second stage of the civil war, the events at the bloc had been an exception. The hostilities of April through mid-May had resulted in a resounding Jewish victory and the crushing of Palestinian Arab military power and Palestinian society. In mid-May the HIS summarized: