Leon Uris (80 page)

“Oh, Dov ...”

“Karen ... I never really had another girl. I ... I just said that to make you go away.”

“I know.”

“Did you really know it all along?”

“I made myself believe that, Dov, because I wanted to believe you cared for me.”

“That is what is so wonderful about you, Karen. You can make yourself believe things and make me believe them too. I wanted to come back to Gan Dafna and make you proud of me. I wanted to make you proud even though I thought you would be gone.”

Karen lowered her eyes.

“I’ll do anything for you,” he whispered.

She reached up and touched his cheek. “Dov, you are so cold. Please go to my cottage. You can tell Kitty everything. She understands about us. Just as soon as I get off guard duty we will go see Dr. Lieberman together. Be careful. The password is Happy Holiday.”

“Karen. I have thought so much about you all the time. I won’t ever do anything wrong or anything that would hurt you.”

“I know that.”

“Could I kiss you?”

“Yes.”

Their lips brushed with a frightened searching.

“I love you, Karen,” Dov said, and ran off toward the gates of Gan Dafna.

“International law,” Barak Ben Canaan said angrily to the United States delegate, “is that thing which the evil ignore and the righteous refuse to enforce.”

Conversation, no matter how well put, made little difference any longer. If the Jews declared their independence on May 15 they would have to face seven Arab armies alone.

Kawukji’s irregulars and the Palestine Arabs under the command of Safwat and Kadar increased their activities.

The year 1948, the year of decision, came into being.

Through the first few months the Arabs became bolder and the tempo of the fighting increased as the British dismantled their huge military establishment and pulled back from position after position.

THE GALILEE

Irregulars lay siege to
kibbutz
Manara high in the hills on the Lebanese border. A half dozen other isolated Jewish positions were cut off.

The Arabs launched five straight attacks on Ein Zeitim—the Fountain of the Olives—but each attack was beaten back.

Syrian villagers began to fight. They crossed the Palestine border and attacked the northern Jewish outpost settlements of
kibbutz
Dan and Kfar Szold. Major Hawks, the British commander, dispatched forces to help drive the Syrians back over the border.

Arabs from Aata, helped again by Syrian villagers and irregulars, attacked Lahavot Habashan—the Flames of the Beshan—Mountains.

Ramat Naftali, named for one of the tribes of ancient Israel, was hit.

Arab activity in Safed increased as the Arabs waited for Major Hawks to withdraw. The blockade against the Jews was beginning to tell as food and water shortages developed in the Cabalist city. Convoys were getting through to Jewish quarters only when the British helped.

HAIFA

The key port of Palestine was a major objective of both sides. For the time, the dock area stayed in British hands, as it was essential for British withdrawal.

In Haifa the Jews had one of their few superior positions in Palestine, in Har Hacarmel above the Arab sector. The British commander, openly pro-Arab, continued to force the Jews out of strategic positions they had won.

Maccabees rolled barrel bombs down the slopes of Carmel into the Arab area and the Jews managed to ambush a huge Arab arms convoy from Lebanon and kill the Arab commander.

All normal business between the two sectors ceased. Amin Azaddin, an officer of the Arab Legion, arrived to assume command of the ever increasing irregular force.

The British held the Jews in check to allow the Arabs to build enough strength to launch an attack up Har Hacarmel.

THE SHARON

This central plain, scene of the great Crusader battles, was the most thickly settled Jewish area. It faced the most heavily populated Arab area of Samaria known, from its shape, as the “Triangle.” Although both sides remained poised, this sector remained relatively quiet.

TEL AVIV-JAFFA

A battlefield appeared between the adjoining cities. Street fighting and patrols continued around the clock. The Maccabees took their place in the center of the Haganah lines. Raids on both sides were constant. The Arabs used a minaret as an observation and sniping post and the position of the intervening British troops prevented the Jews from attacking it.

THE SOUTH

In the sprawling Negev Desert the Jewish settlements were few and widely separated. The Arabs had two large bases, Beersheba and Gaza, of the fame of Samson. The Arabs were able to put a deadly siege on the settlements and slowly starve them. Each Jewish settlement managed to hold but the Arabs were bold in this area and the pressure steadily increased. The Jewish air force was born. It consisted of two Piper Cubs for liaison contact. Another Piper Cub flew into besieged Jerusalem. These Pipers carried out their first bombing missions by throwing grenades out of their windows.

JERUSALEM

Abdul Kadar tightened his grip on the throat of Jewish Jerusalem. The Bab el Wad, that tortuous and vulnerable road through the Judean hills, was shut tight. The Jews were able to get through only by organizing large convoys and then at heavy price. The British steadfastly refused to keep the roads open.

Outside of Jerusalem to the south, the Jews had four isolated settlements in the Hebron Hills on the road to Bethlehem. These four settlements, manned by Orthodox Jews, were known as the Etzion group. Their position was as bad and vulnerable as Safed’s. The Etzion group was completely shut off from Jewish Palestine. To make matters worse, the Trans-Jordan Arab Legion, under the thin disguise of being British troops, blocked the road from Jerusalem to these settlements.

Inside Jerusalem the food and water shortages had become critical. Bombings, sniping, armored-car travel, and open warfare were the order of the day.

The fury reached a peak when a Red Cross convoy from the Hadassah Medical Center on Mount Scopus was ambushed by the Arabs and seventy-seven unarmed Jewish doctors were massacred and their bodies hacked to pieces. Again British troops took no action.

Zev Gilboa reported to Ari’s office for the task of receiving Fort Esther from the British.

“We are all ready to go,” Zev said.

“Good. You may as well drive on up to the fort. Major Hawks said he would turn the place over at fourteen hundred. Say, what’s this I hear about you and Liora having another baby?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll have to stop giving you weekends off if you can’t keep out of trouble.” Ari smiled.

Zev ran outside, jumped into the cab of the truck, kicked off the brakes, and drove out of Ein Or
kibbutz
. Twenty Palmach boys and girls rode along to man Fort Esther. Zev drove over the main artery and then took the mountain roads toward the Lebanese border and Fort Esther.

Zev thought about his last visit to his
kibbutz
, Sde Shimshon—the Field of Samson. Liora had told him that they were expecting another child. What wonderful news! Zev was a shepherd when he wasn’t on duty ... but that seemed long ago. How grand it would be to take his sons out with him and laze on the hillsides around watching the flock ...

He switched off thoughts like these; there was much work to do. When Fort Esther was turned over he had to relieve the siege of
kibbutz
Manara and start dispatching patrols along the border to cut down the flow of irregulars.

The big concrete blockhouse dominated the entire Huleh Valley. It would certainly be a relief to raise the Star of David over the fort.

The gang in the back began to sing as the truck spun around the sharp turns on the mountain road. Zev checked his watch. It was fifteen minutes until the appointed time. He turned the truck around the last turn. The huge square building appeared on the horizon a few miles away. Below him, Zev could see the white cluster of Abu Yesha in the saddle of the hill and the green plateau of Gan Dafna above it.

As he drove to within a few hundred yards of Fort Esther, he sensed something strange. He slowed down and looked out of the window. If the British were withdrawing it was odd that there was no activity about. Zev looked up to the concrete watch and gun tower. His eye caught the flag of Kawukji’s irregulars on the tower just as a burst of gunfire erupted from Fort Esther.

Zev slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the side of the road.

“Scatter!”

His troops dived for cover. The truck went up in flames. Zev quickly pulled his people back out of firing range, assembled, and began to double-time down the mountain toward Ein Or.

When Ari received the news that Fort Esther had been turned over to the Arabs he rushed to Safed immediately to the Taggart fort on Mount Canaan.

He went directly into the office of the British area commander, Major Hawks, a heavy-set man with dark features. Hawks was haggard from lack of sleep when the angry Ben Canaan entered.

“You Judas!” Ari snarled.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Hawks said in a half whine. “You’ve got to believe me.”

“No, I can’t believe it. Not from you.”

Hawks held his head in his hands. “Last night at ten o’clock I got a call from headquarters in Jerusalem. They ordered me to pull my men out of Fort Esther immediately.”

“You could have warned me!”

“I couldn’t,” Hawks mumbled. “I couldn’t. I’m still a soldier, Ben Canaan. I ... I didn’t sleep all night. This morning I called Jerusalem and begged them to let me go back to Fort Esther and take it back.”

Ari glared at the man in contempt.

“Whatever you think of me is probably right.”

Ari continued to stare.

“All right, have it your way ... there was no excuse.”

“It’s your life, Hawks. I guess you’re not the first soldier who swallowed his conscience.”

“What’s the use of talking? What’s done is done.”

“This may make you a good soldier, Hawks, but I feel sorry for you. You’re the one who has to live with the siege of Gan Dafna on his conscience, provided you’ve still got one.”

Hawks turned pale.

“You’re not going to leave those children on the mountain ... you’ve got to take them away!”

“You should have thought about that. Without Fort Esther we’ve got to hold Gan Dafna or lose the whole Huleh Valley.”

“Look, Ari ... I’ll convoy the children to safety.”

“They have no place to go.”

Ari watched Hawks beat his fists on the table and mumble under his breath. He had turned Gan Dafna into a suicide position. There was no use of berating him further. The man was obviously sick over what he had been forced to do.

On his way over, Ari’s brain had been busy on a scheme, risky at best, but a long gamble that might save the key position of Gan Dafna. He leaned over Hawks’s desk. “I’m going to give you a chance to undo part of the damage.”

“What can I do now, Ben Canaan?”

“As area commander it is completely within your rights to come up to Gan Dafna and advise us to evacuate.”

“Yes, but ...”

“Then do it. Go up to Gan Dafna tomorrow and take fifty trucks up with you. Put armor in front and behind you. If anyone asks you what you are doing, tell them you intend to evacuate the children.”

“I don’t understand. Are you going to evacuate?”

“No. But you leave the rest to me. You just come up with the convoy.”

Hawks did not press to know what Ari had in mind. He followed the instructions and took a fifty-lorry convoy to Gan Dafna, escorted by half tracks and armored cars. The half-mile-long procession moved from the Taggart fort through six Arab villages on the way to the Huleh. It drove up the mountain road, through Abu Yesha, in plain sight of the irregulars in Fort Esther. The convoy arrived around noon at Gan Dafna. Major Hawks went through the motions of advising Dr. Lieberman to quit the place; the latter, on Ari’s advice, officially refused. After lunch, the convoy left Gan Dafna and returned to its base in Safed.

In the meanwhile Ari “confided” to some of his Arab friends at Abu Yesha that Major Hawks had left tons of arms—from machine guns to mortars—at the village.

“After all,” Ari said in greatest confidence, “Hawks has been a known friend of the Jews and he was privately doing something to compensate for the Arab occupation of Fort Esther.”

The story was planted. Within hours the rumor had spread throughout the area that Gan Dafna was impregnable. The children were armed to the teeth. This story was lent weight by the fact that there was no evacuation of the children: the Arabs knew the Jews would get the children out if there were great danger.

Ari made a visit to Abu Yesha, once the “might” of Gan Dafna had been established and proved a checkmate.

He went to see his old friend Taha the muktar in the stone house by the stream. No matter how strained feelings were, a man must be made welcome in the house of an Arab. It was an age-old custom, but despite Taha’s going through the motions of hospitality Ari felt a coldness he had never known before from Taha.

The two men shared a meal and spoke small talk. When Ari felt that enough ceremony had been served he turned to the purpose of his visit.

“The time has come,” Ari said, “that I must know your feelings.”

“My feelings these days are of little concern.”

“I am afraid that I must talk now as the Haganah commander of the area, Taha.”

“I gave you my word that Abu Yesha would remain neutral.”

Ari stood up from the table and looked Taha directly in the eye and spoke words harsh to an Arab ear.

“You have given your word but you have broken it,” he said.

Taha looked at him with a flash of anger.

“We happen to know that Kawukji’s men have been passing through Abu Yesha in droves.”

“And what do you expect of me?” Taha snapped. “Shall I ask them to please stop coming? I didn’t invite them.”

“Neither did I. Look, my friend ... there was once a time when you and I didn’t speak to each other this way.”

“Times change, Ari.”

Ari walked to the window and looked out at the mosque by the opposite side of the stream. “I have always loved this spot. We knew many happy days in this room and by that stream. Do you remember the nights that you and I camped out there?”