1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (63 page)

General Al-Muwawi knew that the game was up. To save the two arms of his army he had to pull back from Isdud-Majdal-Beit Jibrin and Bethlehem-Hebron and regroup in a greatly reduced line between Beersheba and Gaza. At issue, he believed, was no longer the conquest or retention of (parts of) Palestine but "the defense of the Land of Egypt." This was the gist of his cable to Cairo in late afternoon, 20 October, and Cairo's response that evening; Israeli intelligence intercepted both communications.31 Israeli intelligence also intercepted Egypt's request for Jordanian and Iraqi assistance-and their de facto responses, amounting to a "no."32

But if the Egyptians were hard-pressed militarily, the Israelis were running out of political time. Already on 16 October General William Riley, the American head of the UN Observer Mission, had demanded that Israel halt its assault and return to the 14 October lines. Ben-Gurion ignored him, but the unanimous Security Council's call on 19 October for "an immediate and effective ceasefire," to be followed by negotiations geared to achieving a "withdrawal" to 14 October, was a little more serious.--' However, Israel, as expressed in a telegram from Eban that Ben-Gurion quoted in Cabinet, saw the demarche as "weak." Eban noted that the Americans had refrained from participating in the discussion34 and that the Soviets had been instrumental in preventing an explicit demand for Israeli withdrawal to the previous lines. Ben-Gurion, without consulting the Cabinet, delayed a response to give the army more time. The al-Muwawi intercepts probably contributed to BenGurion's resolve.35

Israel dragged its feet for two days. On 21 October it informed the United Nations of its readiness to comply. On 22 October Acting Mediator Ralph Bunche ordered the two sides to cease fire at 12:oo GMT that day. Israel's interior minister, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, concluded: "I have a feeling, that each time we succeed-someone stops us and prevents us from exploiting the situation to the end, and we do what that `someone' wants. On the other hand-when the Arabs are winning-no one ever stops them."36

This sense, and reality, of last-minute UN interventions denying Israel full military victories was to hound Israeli policy-makers down the decades. Nonetheless, by 22 October the IDF was to achieve one additional, major success.

Sensing that he had hours rather than days, Allon on 19 October had a choice-to go for Majdal and Gaza or to take Beersheba, the Negev's capital, which would seal the fate of the eastern wing of the Egyptian army and bolster Israel's political claim to the Negev. He chose-the General Staff al lowed him discretion-Beersheba, knowing that a head-on collision in the coastal towns would be costly and that their capture would probably not be accomplished in the relevant time frame. Allon had taken note of the Egyptians' impressive stamina in defense. He explained: "It emerged that the Egyptian command had instilled into their troops the belief that the Jews do not take prisoners, but rather kill the prisoners. Thus every position saw itself compelled to fight to the death.... Though we tried to circulate handbills and information [to the contrary] and to create bad blood between officers and men and between [Arab] locals and the [Egyptian] army, we failed to persuade them that we take prisoners and are hospitable [to POWs]."a7 (Ben-Gurion, incidentally, thought simply that "the Egyptians had fought with great courage"-on Hill 113, at Huleikat, and especially at `Iraq Suweidan.)3s

Ben-Gurion was skeptical about the IDF's ability to take Beersheba in twenty-four to forty-eight hours.-39 But Allon went ahead. Late on r9 October he sent off a flying column, consisting of the Eighty-second Armored and the Seventh Infantry battalions, through the newly established Huleikat passage. It covered the distance to Beersheba in less than two days. On the way, it was joined by elements of the Ninth Battalion. On 21 October the three battalions stormed into Beersheba, taking only a handful of casualties, though the town was defended by a regular infantry battalion (the First) with artillery and mortar batteries and hundreds of North African, Egyptian, and Palestinian auxiliaries. The first Ben-Gurion heard of the conquest, apparently, was from an Arab radio station.40

About i zo Egyptian soldiers were taken prisoner. Many of Beersheba's inhabitants had fled to Hebron days before, following IAF bombings; a few had stayed put. Palmah poet Hayim Guri was later to describe the battle's aftermath, the "corpses ... lying face down, leaning against a wall, on all fours"; the looting ("the blinding gold of the spoils"); the "eruption of the black wolf of hatred"; "the eternal prisoners' face."41 A number of POWs were murdered by Ninth Battalion troops bent on avenging fallen comrades (Guri's "wolf of hatred"?): they threw a grenade into the mosque where POWs were being held; a number of civilians were executed after being stripped of valuables.42 Most prisoners were placed in detention centers and set to work cleaning up the town. The civilians, about 350 of them, were expelled to Gaza.43

Hard on the heels of the fall of Beersheba, the Egyptians suffered a second blow-the sinking of their flagship, the Amir Farouk, a i,44o-ton Britishbuilt sloop. The ship and a minesweeper were sighted by the Israelis on zi October off the Gaza coast, and a squadron of three one-man, explosivepacked speedboats, accompanied by a pickup boat, were sent to intercept. Leading the squadron was Yohai Bin-Nun, commander of the small naval commando unit. The two Egyptian ships were carrying troops. They had their lights on and apparently believed that the UN cease-fire was in effect. Two speedboats attacked the Amir Farouk, the seaman on each jumping off seconds before his boat rammed the Egyptian's hull. The flagship capsized and sank. The third speedboat, crewed by Bin-Nun, badly damaged the minesweeper, which the Egyptians later tugged back to Alexandria. The three commandos, swimming among hundreds of Egyptians, many of them dead or wounded, were retrieved by the pickup boat. Ben-Gurion later took the three commandos to lunch.44

While Allon's troops were attacking at Beit Hanun, Huleikat, and Beersheba, the IDF General Staff-to pin down unengaged Egyptian forces and widen the corridor to West Jerusalem as well as to secure the length of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv railway line-authorized the Harel and `Etzioni Brigades to mount twin attacks on the Egyptians and local irregulars in the Beit Shemesh and Bethlehem areas. The two brigade commanders, Yosef Tabenkin and Moshe Dayan, had for weeks been pressing the high command to allow them to conquer East Jerusalem, the ruins of the `Etzion Bloc, and Hebron. The General Staff cautioned that the assaults must end by dawn zi October or before the cease-fire took effect.

On the night of I9-20 October, in mivtza hahar (Operation the Hill), three Hare] battalions swept southwestward and southeastward from Hartuv, taking a string of villages-Bureij, Deiraban, and Deir al-Hawa, and the Belt Jimal Monastery-and driving out their inhabitants. The troops subsequently dynamited some of the villages.'-' One of the handful of Israeli casualties was the legendary Aharon Schmidt, known as "Jimmy," an operations officer in the Harel Brigade, a talented violinist and poet.46

The Egyptian, Muslim Brotherhood, and Sudanese defenders fled after the Egyptian command told them it could not supply them with ammunition "as the Gaza-Beit Jibrin road had been severed."47 During the next two days the Israeli troops pushed southward and eastward and took Beit Natif, Jarash, Beit `Itab and Allar, Ras Abu Amr, al-Qabu, Husan, and Wadi Fukin (though later abandoned the last two villages). At the same time, on Harel's left flank, the `Etzioni Brigade was scheduled, in Operation Yekev, to take the Beit Jala crest, on the outskirts of Bethlehem, and then possibly conquer Bethlehem itself. Brigade OC Dayan was optimistic. In his prebattle briefing he quoted Orde Wingate's epigram: if attacked from an unexpected direction, Egyptian troops will flee "like birds hearing a tin can being beaten." But a determined Egyptian machine gun crew pinned down the vanguard of `Etzioni's Sixty-first Battalion as it clambered up the slope toward Beit Jala. There was confusion and paralysis. The lead platoon's OC disappeared into the night, and the company, battalion, and brigade OCs were left without a clear picture. They failed to take any initiative. With dawn approaching and fearful of a diplomatic imbroglio, the attack was called off. Ben-Gurion-with the IDF General Staff divided-rejected Dayan's appeal to renew the offensive the following day, fearing that the United Nations would intervene and order the IDF out of Beersheba. Ben-Gurion also feared Christendom's ire were Israel to assault Bethlehem.48

Besides, Ben-Gurion had no wish to clash with the Jordanians, a conflict that might end the Egyptians' military and political isolation. In the hours before the cease-fire the Jordanians had organized and dispatched a flying column from Ramallah to Bethlehem-Hebron. The Jordanians pretended that its purpose, as Alec Kirkbride put it, was "to stiffen the Egyptians."" But its real goal was to beef up Jordan's token units in the area (which had coexisted alongside the Egyptians during the months of Egyptian control), take over from the departing Egyptians, and, above all, prevent IDF conquest of the southern West Bank.

Already on 1 6 October, the day after the start of Yoav, John Glubb had divined both the danger and the opportunity: "If the Jews break through to ... Beersheba, the Egyptians in Hebron will be cut off. We don't want the Jews to capture Hebron too. If we step in and occupy Hebron ... we shall appear as saviours.... The Jewish offensive may have good and had sides. It may finally give the gyppies [that is, Egyptians] a lesson.... Perhaps we could send a regiment to Hebron," he had mused.5"

On zi -zz October, as Mayor Muhammad `Ali al-Ja'abri appealed to I ing Abdullah to save Hebron, Glubb sent in his column ("G Force"), consisting of two mechanized infantry companies and an armored car squadron, all from the First Regiment, and a battery of heavy mortars, 350 men in all, which fanned out in Bethlehem and Hebron. The force was commanded by Major Geoffrey Lockett, "an eccentric British officer who liked his pinch of snuff and tot of whiskey ... [a] gallant man with a great love for fighting."-'i

But Lockett didn't get his fight, not immediately. The IDF did not respond. Bound by the UN cease-fire order and still engaged against the Egyptians, Ben-Gurion had no desire to renew the war with the Legion.

Just after noon on 22 October the guns (briefly) fell silent. Operation Yoav was officially over. It had ended in significant Israeli achievement, if not in a decisive victory. IDF radio interception had played an important part. The Israelis had broken the Egyptian cipher and, for example, decrypted in real time the order to withdraw and stabilize a new front along the BeershebaGaza line. -12 The victory, reported the Israeli representative in Washington, had "made [a] deep impression [on the American] Defense and State De partments."53 In Cairo, the Egyptian leadership for days deluded itself-and tried to delude others, including their Arab allies-about the events in the Negev. Prime Minister Mahmoud Nuqrashi told Arab leaders, gathered in Amman, that his army was in excellent shape and that "there is no need to take Zionist propaganda seriously. "54 Azzam Pasha told journalists that the Egyptians had recaptured Beersheba.55

But outside observers were more clearheaded (or honest). They noted the fragmentation of the Egyptian army, the encirclement of the force at Faluja, and the dissolution of the eastern arm of the expeditionary force. "With their backs to the sea and incomplete control over their communications with Sinai, the Egyptians must be very uncomfortable," was how the British representative in Amman understatedly put it.56

Al-Muwawi was particularly concerned about his northernmost brigade, the Second, dug in around Majdal and Isdud. After the fall of Beit Hanun, Egyptian engineers rapidly laid down wire matting on the dunes along the Mediterranean shore, creating a makeshift bypass route from Gaza to Majdal. But it was built for retreat, not advance. In the fortnight after 22 October, al-Muwawi, in nightly convoys, gradually pulled back his northerly units, starting with Isdud, which was evacuated on 26-27 October. Most of the Palestinian population fled southward along with the Egyptians. IAF reconnaissance reported: "A giant stream of refugees, with cattle, sheep, mules, and carts is seen streaming along the whole shoreline between Isdud and Gaza."57 At the same time, to the east, the Legion, fearing the spread of panic, was doing its best to bar the way to refugees fleeing eastward from Beit Jibrin-Tarqumiya toward Hebron.58

In most places, the IDF did not have to resort to expulsion orders. The inhabitants, with or without Egyptian advice, fled as the Israelis approached or let loose with mortars and machine guns. Most villages were found abandoned or almost completely empty when the IDF entered. The few remaining inhabitants-those left behind, because of handicap, carelessness, or age-were usually expelled. In some places, inhabitants initially removed themselves only a few hundred yards to wait and see what the IDF intended and only later moved on or were pushed toward the Gaza Strip. Elsewhere, with fleeing inhabitants infecting neighboring villages with panic, in a domino effect, the refugees moved directly toward the Gaza Strip. Without doubt, Allon wanted empty villages and towns behind the shifting front line and probably let his subordinates understand this (though explicit written expulsion orders from Southern Front to its subordinate units are rare).

Yoav had been a success. But Israel had sought a more comprehensive victory. During the days after 22 October its military and political leaders acted to bolster the operation's gains, in defiance, or circumvention, of the UN truce observers, especially in the east, where observers were thin on the ground.

Already on 22-24 October Giv`ati and Eighth Brigade units expanded the IDF's area of control and tightened the noose around the Egyptian Fourth Brigade, centered at Faluja-`Iraq al-Manshiya, by conquering a string of villages and positions in the Judean foothills, north of Beit Jibrin, including Kidna, Rana, Zikrin, Ajjur, and Zakariya, mostly after brief skirmishes.s`° On 27 October, IDF General Staff formally ordered Southern Front "during the truce" to "soften up" the besieged Egyptian units and to "gain tactical advantages" by harassing the `Iraq Suweidan-`Iraq al-Manshiya pocket and the Majdal area, by conquering nearby villages (al-Qubeiba and Dawayima) and by employing "psychological warfare by means of flyers and `treatment' of civilian inhabitants."60