Leon Uris (82 page)

Kawukji summoned Mohammed Kassi, the Huleh commander of the irregulars, from Fort Esther to headquarters in Nablus.

Kawukji was frantic for a victory. For months he had been writing communiques boasting of triumph after triumph. As the “general” of the Mufti, Kawukji had nourished the dream of commanding an Arab army that spread from the borders of Turkey to the Rock of Gibraltar. He blamed “British intervention” as the reason he had been unable to win a Jewish settlement. When the British pulled out of the Huleh area he had no alibi left.

Kawukji kissed Mohammed Kassi on both cheeks in the accustomed style and they spoke at great lengths of their glorious victories. Kassi told of how he had “conquered” Fort Esther, and Kawukji described how he had weakened Tirat Tsvi and Mishmar Haemek with brilliant probing tactics.

“I have received a message from his Holiness, the Mufti in Damascus,” Kawukji said. “On May 15, the day after the British terminate the mandate, Haj Amin el Husseini will make a triumphant return to Palestine.”

“And what a magnificent day that shall be for all of Islam,” Mohammed Kassi nodded.

“His Holiness has selected Safed as his temporary capital until the Zionists are completely exterminated. Now that the dear friend of the Jews, Major Hawks, is gone from Safed, we will have it within a week.”

“I am delighted to hear such news!”

“However,” Kawukji continued, “Safed will not be truly safe and fit for the return of his Holiness so long as a single Jew remains in the Huleh Valley. They hold a dagger in our backs. We must erase them.”

Mohammed Kassi turned slightly pale.

“The Huleh, I believe, is in your command, my brother. I want you to capture Gan Dafna at once. As soon as Gan Dafna falls we will have the rest of the Huleh Zionists by the throat.

“Generalissimo, let me assure you that each and every one of my volunteers is a man filled with the courage of a lion and is dedicated to the noble cause of crushing Zionism. They have all vowed to fight to the last drop of blood.”

“Good. They are costing us almost a dollar a month in pay alone.”

Kassi stroked his beard and held up his forefinger with its large jeweled ring. “However! It is well known that Major Hawks left three thousand rifles, a hundred machine guns, and dozens of heavy mortars at Gan Dafna!”

Kawukji sprang to his feet.

“You cringe before children!”

“I swear by Allah’s beard that the Jews have sent in a thousand Palmach reinforcements. I have seen them with my own eyes.”

Kawukji slapped Mohammed Kassi twice across the face. “You will lay open Gan Dafna, you will level it to the ground, and you will wash your hands in their blood or I will set your carcass out for the vultures!”

M
OHAMMED
K
ASSI’S FIRST MOVE
was to send a hundred of his men into Abu Yesha. Immediately some of the villagers went down to
kibbutz
Ein Or to report the fact to Ari. Ari knew that the people of Abu Yesha were predominantly with the Jews. He waited for them to act.

The Arabs of Abu Yesha resented the presence of the irregulars. They had been neighbors of the people of Yad El for decades; their homes had been built by the Jews. They were not angry and had no desire to fight and they looked to Taha, their muktar, to rally them and eject Kassi’s men.

Taha kept a strange silence, speaking neither for nor against the coming of the irregulars. When the elders of Abu Yesha urged him to unite the people, Taha refused to discuss the matter. His silence sealed the fate of Abu Yesha, for the fellaheen were helpless without leadership. They quietly submitted to the occupation.

Kassi was quick to capitalize on Taha’s passive acquiescence. Day by day his men became bolder and more unruly as Taha continued his silence. The road to Gan Dafna was cut. There was anger in Abu Yesha but it was no more than grumbling on an individual level. Then four Abu Yesha Arabs were caught by the irregulars running food up to Gan Dafna. Kassi had them killed, decapitated, and their heads put on display in the village square as a warning. From that point on Abu Yesha was completely subdued.

Ari had guessed wrong. He had felt sure that the people of Abu Yesha would force Taha to take a stand, especially with the safety of Gan Dafna at stake. Their failure to act and the closing of the road put him in a terrible position.

The road shut, Kassi’s ponderous mountain guns began an around-the-clock shelling of Gan Dafna from Fort Esther.

The Jews had trained for this sort of thing at Gan Dafna from the day the place was opened. Everyone knew his job. They switched onto emergency footing quickly and quietly.

All children over the age of ten were assigned to an active part in the village defense. The water tank had been sandbagged and the power generators, medical supplies, arsenal, and food stores had been installed underground.

Life went on as usual in the dank bunkers. School classes, dining, games, and all routine functions continued below the ground. Sleeping quarters were shelf-like bunks in dormitories built inside sections of twelve-feet-diameter concrete water pipes which had been sunk deeply into the earth and covered with yards of dirt and sandbags.

Whenever the shelling outside stopped, the children and staff came out from the bunkers to play, stretch their cramped muscles, and to take care of the lawns and gardens.

Within a week the staff had made it seem that the whistling shells and explosions were merely another minor unpleasantness of daily living.

Down at Ein Or
kibbutz
, Ari faced the problem. All the settlements must depend on their own defense systems, but Gan Gafna held six hundred children and stood in the most vulnerable place, there beneath Fort Esther. There was enough food for a month, and the water supply would be ample if the tank was not hit. Fuel would become a problem. It was extremely cold during the nights in the mountains and Ari knew that Dr. Lieberman would rather freeze than cut down the precious trees for burning. Communications from Gan Dafna were maintained by blinker light to Yad El; the telephone line had been cut. The children’s village was so completely cut off that the only way it could be reached was by a dangerous and grueling climb up the west face of the mountain, more than two thousand feet, which had to be negotiated by night.

The communication and supply problem, however, was not Ari’s main worry. The fear of a massacre was. He could not guess how long it would be until the “armed might” myth of Gan Dafna would be exploded.

By shaking down his entire command, Ari was able to come up with a dozen Spanish rifles of late 1880 vintage, twenty-three homemade Sten guns, and an obsolete Hungarian antitank weapon with five rounds of ammunition.

Zev Gilboa and twenty Palmach reinforcements were ordered to deliver the new equipment. Zev’s patrol were to be human pack mules. The antitank gun had to be dismantled and carried in pieces. The patrol moved out under cover of dark, and through one entire night they climbed up the sheer west slope of the mountain.

At one critical point they passed within a few feet of Abu Yesha’s boundary, through a three-hundred-yard draw which had to be negotiated by crawling a few inches at a time. They could see, hear, and smell Kassi’s irregulars.

The sight of Gan Dafna was a saddening one. Many of the buildings showed artillery hits, and the lovely center green had been chopped to pieces. The statue of Dafna had been knocked from its pedestal. Yet the morale of the children was amazingly high, and the security system was completely effective. Zev was amused by the sight of little Dr. Lieberman coming out to greet the patrol with a pistol strapped to his waist. Sighs of relief greeted the coming of the twenty Palmach reinforcements.

Kassi continued the bombardment for ten more days. The mountain guns knocked down the buildings one by one. Gan Dafna drew its first casualties when a shell exploded near the entrance of a shelter and killed two children.

But Kawukji wanted action. Kassi tried two or three halfhearted probes. Each time his men were ambushed and killed, for Zev had extended Gan Dafna defenses to the very gates of Fort Esther. Palmach boys and girls hid out near both the fort and Abu Yesha to watch every Arab move.

Meanwhile, a courier came to Ari from Haganah headquarters in Tel Aviv. Ari called his settlement commanders together at once. A high decision had been made in Tel Aviv regarding the children in border settlements. It was recommended that all children be moved into the Sharon-Tel Aviv area close to the sea where the situation was not so critical and where every home,
kibbutz
and
moshav
was ready to receive them. One could read between the lines: the situation had become so bad that the Haganah was obviously thinking of eventual evacuation of the children by sea to save them from massacre if the Arabs broke through.

It was not an order; each
kibbutz
and
moshav
had to make the decision for itself. On the one hand, the farmers would fight more fiercely with their children close by. On the other hand, massacre was a horrible specter to contemplate.

The evacuation of the children was a doubly painful thing for these pioneers, for it became symbolic of further retreat. Most of them had fled from former horror to come to this place and their farms were the last line of retreat. Beyond Palestine there was no hope.

Each settlement made its decision. Some of the older and longer-established places simply refused to let their children go. Others vowed they would all stand and die together: they did not want their children to know the meaning of retreat. Others in the mountains already isolated and undergoing hardships managed to bring children out for removal.

Gan Dafna was everyone’s responsibility.

Ari’s spies reported that Kawukji was bringing unbearable pressure on Mohammed Kassi to make an assault on Gan Dafna. Food was getting low in the village and fuel was all but gone. The water tank had sprung several leaks from near hits. The hardship of bunker life was wearing down the community, although there were no complaints.

The commanders in the Huleh Valley agreed that the younger children had to be taken out of Gan Dafna. The question was—how! A truce would involve a double danger: first, Kassi would never recognize it; second, it would be a costly show of weakness to the Arab commander. If Ari tried a convoy through the roads or an outright attack on Abu Yesha he would have to pull out and mass his entire Huleh strength—then he could be only half certain of success. It was not merely a matter of winning or losing a battle. To lose would lead to the death of the children.

As so many times before, Ari was called upon to evolve a desperation measure to counter crushing odds. And because there was no choice, again he conceived a fantastic plan, this one more daring than anything he had ever tried in his life.

After organizing the details of his scheme, Ari left David to mobilize a task force and he set out for Gan Dafna. The climb up the mountainside was painful every inch of the way. His leg throbbed constantly and collapsed several times during the night. He was able to compensate for the handicap by his intimate knowledge of the route, for he had climbed it a dozen times as a boy. He reached Gan Dafna at dawn and immediately called a meeting of the section heads at the command post bunker. Zev, Jordana, Dr. Lieberman, and Kitty Fremont were among them.

“There are two hundred and fifty children here under the age of twelve,” Ari said without introduction or preface. “They will be evacuated tomorrow night.”

He looked at the dozen surprised faces.

“A task force is now assembling at Yad El
moshav
,” he continued. “Tonight, four hundred men from every settlement in the Huleh will be led up the west face of the mountain by David Ben Ami. If everything goes according to plan and they are not discovered they should be here by daybreak tomorrow. Two hundred and fifty of the men will each carry a child down the mountain tomorrow night. The balance, a hundred and fifty men, will act as a guard force. I may add that the guard force will be carrying all the heavy automatic weapons in the Huleh Valley.”

Ari’s listeners in the bunker stared at him as though he were insane. There was no sound or movement for a full minute.

Finally Zev Gilboa stood up. “Ari, perhaps I did not understand you. You actually plan to carry two hundred and fifty children down the mountain at night?”

“That is correct.”

“It is a treacherous trip for man by himself in daylight,” Dr. Lieberman said. “Carrying a child down at night—some of them are certain to fall.”

“That is a risk that has to be taken.”

“But Ari,” Zev asked, “they must pass so close to Abu Yesha. It is certain that Kassi’s men will detect them.”

“We will take every precaution to see that they are not detected.”

Everyone began to protest at once.

“Quiet!” Ari snapped. “This is not a forum. You people here are not to speak of this to anyone. I want no panic. Now, get out of here, all of you. I have a lot of work to do.”

The shelling from Fort Esther was particularly heavy during the day. Ari worked with each section head in turn to complete the smallest details of the evacuation and to work out a minute-by-minute timetable.

Each of those dozen people who knew of the scheme went around with hearts heavy with apprehension. A thousand things could go wrong. Someone could slip and cause a panic ... the Arab dogs in Abu Yesha would hear them or smell them and bark ... Kassi would discover the move and attack all the settlements in the Huleh realizing they were without their heavy weapons ...

Yet they knew that there was little else that Ari could do. In a week or ten days Gan Dafna would reach a desperation level anyhow.

As evening approached, David Ben Ami, with the task force in Yad El, sent out a coded blinker message that he would be on the way with the darkness.

Throughout that second night, the four hundred volunteers pushed their way up the mountain and appeared on the outskirts of Gan Dafna before daybreak in a stage of exhaustion from the climb and the tension. Ari met them outside the village and hid them in the woods. He did not want them spotted by Kassi’s men, nor did he want any wild speculation inside Gan Dafna.