Leon Uris (29 page)

On the night of decision, Gideon arrived early to review the options once again. The pages of Plan D seemed to glare from the conference table as though a light from an unseen force were shining on it. Without words, Gideon knew that Ben-Gurion had dug in; when that happened he could be immovable. Plan D audaciously called for the defense of every Jewish settlement, no matter how vulnerable or isolated.

‘At worst, it is suicidal,’ Gideon said at last. ‘At best, it is a dangerous gamble.’

‘I know what you think, Gideon,’ B.G. retorted tersely.

They began to arrive from the Galilee, from the Negev, from the mixed cities, from the settlements. When the backslaps were done and the tea finished, Gideon went into a long review of the situation.

Aside from the larger cities with mixed Arab and Jewish populations, there were some three hundred exclusively Jewish settlements in Palestine. Each had a Haganah unit, consisting mainly of citizen-soldiers. The bulk of the Jewish population lived in a belt from Haifa to Tel Aviv. This would be the principal defense line.

However, some fifty settlements were either in densely populated Arab areas or in remote locations, such as the Negev Desert and the Dead Sea. To defend these meant stretching supply lines beyond their means. The Arabs would have their best success slicing up the roads. In order to carry on normal transportation, the Jews had been forced to armor plate their vehicles and move them in large convoys. It would add to an already overtaxed supply line. Militarily it made little sense and many of the Haganah commanders were dead set against it. They argued hotly for the evacuation of these more isolated settlements. This would enable the Yishuv to consolidate, shrink their communications and supply lines, and set up a defense in a tighter area.

Ben-Gurion doggedly shook off the advice. ‘We will not give up a single settlement without a fight!’

‘But, B.G., we are overextended.’

‘The first settlement we cede without a battle will only encourage the Arabs and demoralize every Jew in Palestine,’ the Old Man answered.

‘But the first time we lose a settlement in battle will demoralize us even more!’ Gideon Asch shouted from the end of the long table.

‘If we cannot win this battle for the roads,’ B.G. retorted, ‘then we cannot have a state.’ He arbitrarily halted further debate for the moment and asked the various section chiefs to give their assessments.

The head of manpower gave a shaky picture. The Haganah had nine thousand battle-ready men in the eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old age group. These troops would largely carry out a defensive mission. Their units would be called upon to hold the settlements and towns against the initial Arab assaults.

The Haganah’s striking force, the Palmach, was pumping its numbers up to a final capacity of three to four brigades with a total strength of several thousand men.

This was the core of their fighting capacity. In an all-out war against five regular Arab armies, the Yishuv could count on raising perhaps another twenty thousand men.

The Irgun and the Stern Group had a few thousand men, mostly urban guerrillas, but they operated independently and would only cooperate with the Haganah on a case-by-case basis.

The grim fact was that they would be outnumbered by the Arabs by a ratio of at least five to one. If the Arabs were determined, they could draw from a vast population pool and throw endless reinforcements at the Yishuv.

The ordnance chief followed with an even more sobering report. The Haganah arms inventory consisted of ten thousand rifles and a few thousand submachine guns, light machine guns, and mortars. To complicate matters, the rifles required a number of different calibers of ammunition. The Yishuv had nine single-engine aircraft of the Piper Cub variety and forty pilots. They had no fighter planes, no bombers, no tanks, no artillery, and no vessels. They would be outmatched in firepower by the Arabs by a ratio of a hundred to one.

Ben-Gurion next turned to the underground arms procurement head. Agents had been combing the world but were having little success. One hopeful sign was an initial discussion with the Czechs, but what might come out of it appeared to be too little and too late.

Finances? They were flat broke. Golda Myerson had been dispatched to America in a desperate mission to raise funds, a small ray of hope as the Jewish community of that country raised several million dollars.

‘What Golda has done has been a miracle,’ the financial director said, ‘but when it comes right down to it, it amounts to a few days’ oil revenues for the Saudis. The Arabs can outspend us by as much as they choose: a thousand to one, ten thousand to one, a million to one.’

‘Now, Gideon,’ Ben-Gurion said, ‘maybe you have a little good news.’

Gideon shuffled his papers but scarcely needed to refer to them as he reported on the strength of the Arab Irregulars and their probable strategy.

‘I count less than three thousand full-time men in Abdul Kadar’s Jihad Militia,’ Gideon said. ‘However, half of them are deployed in the Ramle-Lydda area. This means they will make an all-out fight for the airport. In our early strategy we must be prepared to commit the Palmach. If we don’t capture the airport, it would spell a catastrophe.’

The chief of operations, a young Jerusalem archaeologist of thirty years, agreed that Ramle-Lydda and the airport was second only to West Jerusalem.

Gideon continued. ‘The balance of the Jihad force is around Jerusalem. But we must remember Abdul Kadar can drum up as many as ten thousand coffeehouse fighters for any given action. All of them have arms of some type. If he smells a soft spot in our defense, he might overrun it by his sheer numbers. He can hurt us in three ways. First, the roads. He can line up a thousand men along the Bab el Wad against any given convoy.’

‘For us to clear the Bab el Wad and the Judean hills,’ Yigael Yadin, the chief of operations, said, ‘we would have to use an entire Palmach brigade.’

‘We might have to,’ Gideon replied. ‘Abdul Kadar’s obvious strategy is a blockade of West Jerusalem and the starvation of our people.’

‘It would be the mortal blow to the Yishuv,’ Ben-Gurion said.

Yadin, who was a Jerusalemite, whose family lived in the city, and whose father had discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls, was adamant. ‘I would love dearly to be able to commit a Palmach brigade from Latrun to Jerusalem, but it is not possible. We may have to think in terms of a Jewish state without Jerusalem.’

There was a silence of someone sprinkling ashes.

‘It cannot happen,’ the Old Man said.

‘I hope not,’ Yadin agreed.

Ben-Gurion nodded for Gideon to continue. ‘The four most vulnerable settlements in Palestine are the Etzion Bloc,’ he said, in reference to four kibbutzim of ultra-Orthodox Jews located in all-Arab territory fifteen miles south of Jerusalem. ‘Abdul Kadar can butcher us there. The Etzion Bloc is my major objection to Plan D. I think we have to evacuate it.’

Several commanders jumped up in disagreement. The debate heightened.

‘Quiet, quiet. Let Gideon finish.’

‘West Jerusalem is already our greatest problem,’ Gideon insisted. ‘How the hell can it supply the Etzion Bloc?’

‘I disagree! Abdul Kadar cannot take the Bloc.’

‘Then I suggest that you personally lead the first convoy that tries to break through to them,’ Gideon retorted. ‘Suppose the Etzion Bloc holds against the Irregulars. Suppose some of the isolated settlements in the Negev and Galilee hold during the first phase. What then? What happens in phase two when the Arab Legion crosses the Jordan River and the Egyptians invade from the south?’

‘Forget Plan D for the moment. I want your assessment of Kaukji.’

The Old Man was being stubborn beyond stubborn. Gideon sighed a deep sigh and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Kaukji has put together a force of eight thousand men: a thousand Syrians, five hundred Lebanese, two thousand Iraqis, five hundred Jordanians, two thousand Saudis, and two thousand Egyptians. They are laced with a number of regular officers from the standing armies of these countries. In addition, we may be looking at a few thousand Moslem Brotherhood and several hundred highly trained troops in the form of British deserters, ex-Nazis, and European mercenaries. Kaukji will have some armor and a half-dozen artillery batteries.’

‘How good are they?’

‘They are more than adequate for their particular mission. Their strategy is no secret. Kaukji will cross and try to pick off some of the most isolated settlements in the Galilee. None of these settlements can depend on reinforcements from us. If Kaukji captures a village or kibbutz, there will be a massacre. I am sure that Kaukji deeply believes he can create a panic and flight of the Jews in Galilee through such a massacre.’

The intelligence chief nodded in agreement.

‘During phase one, which we are now entering,’ Gideon continued, ‘the British are going to adopt a benign attitude. They will allow Kaukji’s Arab Army of Liberation to cross into Palestine unchallenged and permit them to establish a headquarters in a heavily populated Arab area, probably around Nazareth.’

‘Are you saying that the British will stand by idly if Kaukji engages in a massacre?’

‘Well, we come down to personal evaluations,’ Gideon answered. ‘My own opinion is that they will not lift a finger. Kaukji is going to be permitted to operate openly. The British might do this and that to play out their game of being evenhanded, but there’s no truth to it. Even if Kaukji is unsuccessful in taking a settlement, he is going to do tremendous damage to us on the roads.’

Once again the fallibility of Plan D came under attack. Why give Kaukji such tempting targets as small isolated kibbutzim? It was high-risk business.

‘Declaration of the state is high-risk business,’ Ben-Gurion retorted. ‘War is high-risk business. Only by making the Arabs pay for every inch can we blunt their ardor.’

It was obvious that the Old Man was not going to back down. A final assessment was made by the chief of intelligence. Supplies for the Arabs was a simple matter, for they had the entire Arab world as a hinterland and could simply move arms over the border. If the Saudis opened their purse strings, the parade of Arab arms would be endless. On the other hand, the Yishuv had to bring in every bullet from over the sea. This, along with Arab population advantages, painted a bleak picture for the Jews. It all depended on just how much stamina the Arab armies had.

For the most part, they were far from being modern armies, but they did have tanks, long-range guns, motorized units, combat aircraft, and, in fact, everything the Jews did not have.

The force the Haganah feared most was Abdullah’s Arab Legion of ten thousand trained professionals including the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force, with modern weaponry under the command of a skilled cadre of British officers.

Plan D was argued far into the night. Ben-Gurion prevailed. His only concession was that in such places as the Etzion Bloc, the women and children would be removed. It was past two in the morning when the plan was adopted. This left one major question to be discussed. What of the Arab civilian population? What of their continued flight out of the country?

On this issue everyone deferred to the Old Man. He was the spiritual father of this unborn nation. His philosophy would set its tone and its standards.

‘The Arabs have begged for this war,’ Ben-Gurion said. ‘But we have too many other priorities to engage in endless quarrels with them. We must win the war and come out of it with a viable state. There are so many things a Jewish state must accomplish, for we and our moral standards must be the light of mankind.

‘Yet we are the worst kind of fools if we think we can carry out our schemes of grandeur in the midst of hostile neighbors. We must have peace and we must live with the Arabs if our state is to flourish as something more than a fortress.

‘Never,’ he said, smashing the table with his fist, ‘will we adopt any policy to drive the Arabs from Palestine. In those places that spell strategic life and death for us, such as Ramle-Lydda, as Latrun, as West Jerusalem, we will fight them with everything we have. If the Arabs choose to run, I will not beg them to stay. If they leave Palestine, I will not beg them to return. But under no circumstances will we force out a single Arab who wants to remain. Defeat will go down hard for the Arabs. I pray they will consider their own brothers and sisters who fled from Palestine in the same manner that we care for our brothers and sisters. I pray the Arabs will give them a chance at a decent life. But when a man leaves his home during a war which he started, he cannot expect us to be responsible for his future.

‘It is late and we are tired, comrades. One final policy. We must always keep the door open to negotiation and peace. Someday an Arab leader will walk through it and sit down and talk with us. Gideon, I note that you doubt me ... but we shall see.’

T
HE RIVER
B
ANIAS FLOWED
down from Mount Hermon over the Syrian border to help form the headwaters of the Jordan. Nearby stood the kibbutz of Kfar Szold, six years old, named for Henrietta Szold, the American woman who had founded the Hadassah.

Generalissimo Kaukji selected this as his initial target. He crossed with three battalions, including the First and Second Yarmuk, named for an ancient battle in which the Arabs had defeated the Byzantine Empire.

Eager to report a first quick victory, little was made in the way of plans and the kibbutz proved more than capable to the task. Kaukji retired quickly to the Syrian side.

COMMUNIQUÉ #1, ARAB ARMY OF LIBERATION

Praise Allah, the compassionate, the merciful. At 0700 of January 10, small elements of the Yarmuk and Hittim battalions engaged in a training exercise against Kfar Szold. As the exercise progressed, it was apparent that the settlement was unable to hold. I ordered an all-out attack, but this was interrupted by British forces in the area, compelling us to retire. Victory is plainly in sight.

F. Kaukji, Field Marshal,

Arab Army of Liberation