Exodus - Leon Uris [266]
In the meantime, the Jews remained arms-starved. The British continued to blockade the Palestine coast. They even refused to allow immigrants to come from the Cyprus detention camps, where Aliyah Bet agents were speeding military training.
Yishuv agents searched the world desperately for arms.
Then came the devastating announcement that the United States had declared a “plague on both houses” by an arms boycott of the Middle East. This boycott, reminiscent of the boycott of the Spanish people fighting Mussolini and Hitler, actually worked for the Arabs, who could obtain all the arms they wished.
As the battle lines were drawn, the Yishuv Central confronted the blunt fact that it had only the Palmach of some four thousand fighters fully armed and trained. The Maccabees could raise only another thousand men and could be counted upon only for limited co-operation.
Avidan did have a few things working in his favor. He had several thousand reserves in the Haganah who had been combat trained by the British in World War II. He had settlement defense which had been organized for twenty years, and he had a good intelligence system. On the other side, the Arabs had a staggering superiority of manpower and arms, daily augmented by the continual infiltration of Kawukji’s bloodthirsty irregulars. The Arabs had at least one excellent commander in Abdul Kadar, a cousin of the Mufti.
As if the Jews did not have enough to contend with, there was the additional factor of the British. Whitehall was hopeful that the Yishuv would send out a mercy call, dropping the partition idea and asking the British to remain. But the Jews would not ask for help on these terms.
In theory, as they withdrew the British were to give the Taggart forts to the side with the greatest population in each area. But as they pulled back from sector after sector the British comander often turned these key places over to the Arabs when they should have gone to the Jews.
Former Nazi soldiers began appearing in the ranks of the “Forces of the Yarmuk” and other “liberation volunteers.” For the first time in its existence, the Haganah took off its wraps as the Jews called for a general mobilization.
It was not long until the first shots were heard. In the Huleh Valley, Arab villagers, along with irregulars, fired on the communal settlements of Ein Zeitim, Biriya, and Ami Ad, but the attacks were little more than sniping actions and were repulsed.
Each day activity increased. There were constant ambushes on the roads so that soon Jewish transport, the lifeline of the Yishuv, was in danger any time it came near or passed through an Arab village.
In the cities the action was even more violent. In Jerusalem the air was filled with flying debris of bomb blasts. The Arabs fired from the sacred walls of the Old City, and the city was divided into battle zones with communications between sections made only on risk of death. In the streets between Tel Aviv and Jaffa sniper posts and barricades appeared.
In Haifa the worst so far of the fighting took place. In retaliation for Maccabee raids the Arabs rioted at the refinery where both Jews and Arabs worked and more than fifty Jews were killed.
Abdul Kadar was able to organize the Arabs in a manner that Kawukji and Safwat in the north could not do. Kadar, working around Jerusalem, formulated a master plan, based on the realization that neither the Palestine Arabs nor the irregulars were organized and skilled enough to carry out sustained attacks. Kadar also realized that the Jews would hang on desperately to every settlement and make the Arabs bleed. He needed easy victories to encourage his people. Kadar settled upon two tactics. First, he would isolate the Jewish settlements and starve them out. Second, he would step