Leon Uris (88 page)

Across the way, the Lebanese pawed at the Jewish settlements in the hills and at Metulla. The Lebanese, mostly Christian Arabs, had some leaders who were sympathetic to Zionism, and these people had little desire to fight. They entered the war mainly out of fear of reprisal from other Arab nations and to make a “show of unity.” The first time they ran into stiff resistance the Lebanese seemed to vanish as a fighting force.

Ari had successfully blocked a junction of Arab forces in the Huleh. When he received a new shipment of arms he moved quickly to the offensive. He evolved a “defense-offense” plan: those settlements not under direct pressure organized offenses and took objectives rather than sitting and waiting for an attack. By this method Ari was able to keep the Syrians completely off balance. He was able to shift arms and men to the hard-pressed places and ease their burden. He built up his communications and transportation so that the Huleh became one of the strongest Jewish areas in Israel. The only major objective left for him was Fort Esther.

The entire Syrian invasion sputtered. It had turned into a fiasco except for Mishmar Hayarden and one or two smaller victories. The Syrians chose to concentrate their efforts on a single
kibbutz
to make up for their losses. Ein Gev, on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, the home of the winter concerts, was the objective.

The Syrians dominated high hills on three sides of the
kibbutz
. The sea was the fourth side. The Syrians held the columnar mountain of Sussita—the Horse—the ancient Roman city which looked right down into the
kibbutz
. Ein Gev was completely cut off from contact except by boat at night from Tiberias across the lake.

As Syrian guns shelled the
kibbutz
without respite the Jews were forced to live underground. There they kept up their schools, a newspaper, and even their symphony orchestra practice. Each night they came out of the bunkers and tended their fields. The endurance of Ein Gev was matched only by the stand at Negba in the Negev Desert.

Every building in the
kibbutz
was blown to pieces. The Syrians burned the fields. The Jews did not have a weapon capable of firing back. They were subjected to brutal punishment.

After weeks of this pounding the Syrians made their assault, sweeping down from their high ground in numbers of thousands. Three hundred
kibbutzniks
of fighting age met the charge. They fired in disciplined volleys, and snipers picked off the Syrian officers. The Syrians rallied time and again and pressed the Jews back to the sea. But the defenders would not yield. There were twelve rounds of ammunition left to them when the back of the Syrian attack was broken.

Ein Gev had held and with it the Israeli claim to the Sea of Galilee.

SHARON, TEL AVIV, THE TRIANGLE

A large bulge of land in Samaria anchored by the all-Arab cities of Jenin, Tulkarm and Ramallah formed the “Triangle.” Nablus, the early base for Kawukji’s irregulars, became the chief base of the Iraqi Army. The Iraqis had made an ill-fated attempt to cross the Jordan River into the Beth Shean Valley but were badly beaten, then had settled down in Arab Samaria.

Opposite the Triangle on the west was the Sharon Valley. It was a vulnerable area—the Jews held only a narrow neck of land along the Tel Aviv-Haifa highway, ten miles inside from the Triangle front to the sea. If the Iraqis could make the break-through they could cut Israel in half.

The Iraqis, however, showed an aversion to combat. When the Jews made badly organized attempts on the Triangle city of Jenin, the Iraqi officers fled, and only the fact that their troops were chained in their positions kept them from running away. The thought of attacking the thickly settled Sharon Valley was distasteful; the Iraqis wanted no part of it.

Tel Aviv itself suffered several air raids from the Egyptians before antiaircraft equipment arrived to ward off further attacks. In the Arab press, however, there were at least a dozen reports of Tel Aviv being completely leveled by Egyptian bombers.

The Jews managed to get a few planes into operation and scored one big air victory by driving away an Egyptian cruiser which had come to shell Tel Aviv.

WESTERN GALILEE

After six months Kawukji’s irregulars were yet to take their first Jewish settlement. Kawukji moved his headquarters to the predominantly Arab area of central Galilee, around Nazareth. Here he waited for that junction with the Syrians, Lebanese, and Iraqis which never came. There were many Christian Arabs in the Nazareth area who wanted nothing to do with the war and repeatedly requested of Kawukji that he remove himself from the Nazareth Taggart fort.

Most of the western Galilee had been cleaned out before the invasion of the Arab armies. Haifa had fallen to the Jews and the Hanita Brigade’s Iron Broom had done away with many hostile villages. With the fall of Arab Acre, the Jews held everything up to the Lebanese border. The Galilee was free of the enemy except for Kawukji in the center.

The advertised “master plan” of the Arabs had become a complete fiasco. The infant Jewish state had borne and blunted the first shock of invasion. Over the world military experts shook their heads in disbelief. The Jews had fought a civil war on a hundred fronts; they had won out over fantastic odds on a dozen more fronts against regular troops.

The Arab victories could be measured. The greatest success had been scored by the Legion which continued to hold Latrun, the key to the Jerusalem blockade. The rest of the Arab armies combined had captured but a handful of settlements and no cities or towns. They had managed to get to within striking distance of Tel Aviv.

Arms poured into Israel, and every day the Jewish military establishment improved. On the day the Israelis declared statehood six new settlements broke ground and throughout the invasion immigrants built more communities. Nation after nation recognized the State of Israel.

Ein Gev and Negba and the hundred other settlements which would not give up, the Palmachniks, who fought for days without food and water, the new immigrants who rushed to the battle lines, the ingenuity employed in place of guns, the raw courage which made extraordinary heroism a commonplace—all these stopped the Arabs.

There was more. Divine inspiration, the destiny foretold by the ancient prophets, the heritage of a people who had fought for their freedom before, the tradition of King David and Bar Giora and Bar Kochba, strength and faith from an unseen source—these, too, stopped the Arabs.

B
ARAK
B
EN
C
ANNAN
had concluded several arms negotiations as well as several diplomatic missions in Europe. He had been sick with anxiety and begged to be allowed to return to Israel. Now past his eightieth year, he had begun to slow up considerably, although he would not admit it.

He arrived in Naples to catch a ship home. There he was met by Israelis who had a headquarters in the city. Most of them were Aliyah Bet agents now working on dissolving the DP camps in Italy as fast as ships could be procured. The manpower of the DP camps was urgently needed in Israel. Those of military age were rushed to training centers as quickly as they landed. A great part of the rest was sent out to build defensive border settlements.

Barak’s arrival was the signal for a gathering, and the midnight oil burned in Israeli headquarters. Over many drinks of brandy everyone wanted to hear and rehear Barak’s story of the “Miracle of Lake Success” and of the secret arms deals which he had just concluded.

Then talk turned to the war. There was general dejection over the siege of Jerusalem; news had come through that another attempt to capture Latrun had failed. No one knew how much longer the hundred thousand civilians could hold out.

Around two o’clock in the morning the conversation turned to the private little war the Israelis were having right in Naples over a ship named the
Vesuvius
, a four-thousand-ton Italian motor ship. The
Vesuvius
had been chartered by the Syrians to carry arms to Tyre. The cargo, purchased all over Europe, included ten thousand rifles, a million rounds of ammunition, a thousand machine guns, a thousand mortars, and a variety of other weapons.

A month ago the
Vesuvius
was ready to sail from Naples. The Israelis learned of the ship and cargo from a friendly Italian customs official, and the night before her scheduled departure Israeli skin divers swam along the waterfront, dived beneath the ship, and fixed magnetic mines to her sides. The mines blew three nice holes in the
Vesuvius
’s sides but failed to set off the explosives as they had hoped. The ship did not fully sink, but partly submerged at her berth. From that point on the
Vesuvius
became the center of an involved cat-and-mouse game.

Syrian Colonel Fawdzi, in charge of the multimillion dollar cargo, had the ship raised, dry-docked, and the holes repaired. He brought fifty Arab students from Rome and Paris to guard the area and replaced the twelve-man crew with Arabs. Only the captain and his first and second officers were Italians from the chartering company. The captain, however, could not have disliked the pompous Colonel Fawdzi more and secretly agreed to help the Israelis, provided they promised not to damage his ship again. Again they got word that the
Vesuvius
was ready to sail.

The Israelis could not allow the arms to reach Tyre—but how to stop the ship? They had promised both the Italian officials and the captain that they would not blow her up in the harbor. Once on the high seas the Israeli Navy, consisting of three corvettes, could never find the
Vesuvius
.

Barak Ben Canaan was impressed by the importance of the situation and intrigued by the kind of knotty problem he had faced and solved many times before. Once again he conceived the inconceivable. By dawn he had worked out the details of another of his fantastic plots.

Two days later the
Vesuvius
moved out of the Naples harbor and, as it did, the Italian second officer was relieved of radio duty as an extra precaution by Fawdzi. Radio contact, however, was not necessary to the plotters. The Israelis knew the exact instant the
Vesuvius
left. The ship had barely cleared the harbor area when an Italian customs cutter raced for her with its bull horn blasting.

Fawdzi, who knew no Italian, rushed up to the steering room and demanded to know from the captain what it all meant.

The captain shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Hello,
Vesuvius
,” the loud-speaker boomed. “Stand by to be baarded!”

A Jacab’s ladder was dropped and twenty men wearing uniforms of the Italian customs service quickly boarded from the cutter.

“I demand to know the meaning of this!” Colonel Fawdzi screamed.

The leader af the boarding party, a giant of a man with a great red and white beard, who bore a remarkable resemblance to Barak Ben Canaan, stepped farward and spoke to Fawdzi in Arabic: “We have information that one of your crew set a time bomb in one af the holds,” he said.

“Impossible,” Fawdzi shouted.

“We happen to know he was bought out by the Jews,” the leader asserted sincerely. “We must clear the harbor area before the ship explodes.”

Fawdzi became confused. He had no intention of being blown up with the
Vesuvius
, nor did he like the idea of going out at the harbor with this strange gang of Italian “customs officials” aboard. On the other hand, he could not show cowardice by demanding to be taken off the ship.

“You will line up your crew,” the man with the big beard said. “We will find the culprit and he will tell us where he has planted the bomb.”

The Arab crew was assembled and taken into the gallery for “questioning,” and while they were being questioned the
Vesuvius
passed outside of the three-mile limit and the customs’ cutter returned to Naples. The disguised Aliyah Bet agents then produced pistols and locked up Fawdzi and the Arab crew. Later that day, when they had made further distance, the crew was given a compass, a map, and a rowboat and set adrift. Colonel Fawdzi was kept aboard in his cabin. The Israelis took over as crew of the ship as it raced for open sea.

Thirty-six hours later, the
Vesuvius
was met by two corvettes flying skull and crossbones. The corvettes tied up on either side of the motor ship, removed the cargo and crew, and sped off after smashing the radio. The
Vesuvius
then returned to Naples.

Colonel Fawdzi foamed with rage and demanded a full investigation of the high-seas piracy. The Italian customs service, accused by the Arabs of lending the Jews a cutter and uniforms, said it knew nothing about the matter. All cutter movement was clearly logged for anyone to see. The Arab crew followed Arab practice of never admitting failure and twelve different stories came from the twelve men. Other officials of the Italian government assumed that if there was any piracy, they certainly were not aware of it, for the captain of the ship and the first and second officers swore that the Arab crew deserted because they found out the hold held explosives.

Soon a corps of lawyers had the affair so twisted up with contradictory stories that it was impossible to unscramble the facts. The Israelis in Naples added the final touch of confusion by planting the story that it was actually a Jewish ship stolen by the Arabs and that Fawdzi was a Jewish spy.

Colonel Fawdzi took the only course open. He faked an elaborate suicide and disappeared, never to be heard of again—apparently to the regret of nobody.

Two days after the transfer of arms, the corvettes, now flying the Star of David, brought Barak home in a triumphant entry to Israel.

A
RI
B
EN
C
ANAAN RECEIVED
orders to report to Tel Aviv. Headquarters was located in a pension in Ramat Gan. Ari was surprised at the sight of it. The Star of David flew atop the building and uniformed guards of the new army of Israel were everywhere. Identification passes were demanded by the security police before entry was permitted. Outside the headquarters were a hundred jeeps and motorcycles, and there was a military bustle and briskness all about.