Exodus - Leon Uris [276]
He was met by two Yishuv agents. Barak had been called to take part in highly secret negotiations of a vital arms deal. The Yishuv calculated that with the turn of events at Flushing Meadow, arms were the most urgent immediate need, and Barak one of the most able men for such business. It was their friend, Jan Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, who provided the information on sources of weapons in a half dozen European countries.
After several weeks of confidential and ticklish parleying the deals were closed. The problem now became getting the arms into Palestine, still under British blockade.
The first step was to acquire an airplane large enough to haul the arms. In Vienna an Aliyah Bet agent found an obsolete, surplus American Liberator bomber, which was purchased under the name of Alpine Charter Flights, Inc.
Next they had to find a crew; six men, four South African Jews and two American Jews who had flown during the war, were picked and sworn to secrecy.
Finally, the most difficult task was to create a secret airfield in tiny Palestine undetected by the British. An abandoned British fighterplane base in the Jezreel Valley was selected. It lay in an all-Jewish area and offered the maximum chance of the Liberator’s being able to get in and out again.
Meanwhile the assembly of the arms inside Europe was carried out with the same secrecy that hid the true identity of the Alpine Charter Flights, Inc.
It was a race against time. Two weeks would be needed before the first load of arms could leave Europe. The question was whether or not it would be too late.
So far, miraculously, not a single settlement had fallen, but the Jewish convoys were being ripped to pieces. Water lines to the Negev Desert settlements had been cut. In some places the settlers were subsisting on potato peelings and olives.
The focal point of the struggle was Jerusalem, where the isolation-and-starvation tactics were beginning to pay off. The Bab el Wad from Tel Aviv was littered with the wreckage of burned-out trucks. Only occasional huge convoys, mounted at crippling cost of men and matériel, staved off disaster in Jerusalem.
For the first time in the history of Jerusalem, the city was violated by artillery fire, from Kawukji’s irregulars.
Kawukji, Safwat, and Kadar urgently needed a victory. The Palestine Arabs were becoming uneasy over the failure of Arab predictions of “great victories.”
It was Kawukji, the self-styled generalissimo of the Mufti’s “Forces of the Yarmuk,” who decided to grab off the honor of capturing the first Jewish settlement. He picked his target carefully, having no wish to try a nut too tough to crack the first time out.
Kawukji picked what he believed to be a soft spot: Tirat Tsvi—the Castle of the Rabbi Tsvi—was elected for the distinction of being the first Jewish settlement to fall. The kibbutz of Tirat Tsvi was made up of Orthodox Jews, many of whom were concentration camp “graduates.” The kibbutz stood in the southern section of the Beth Shean Valley, located there purposely to neutralize an otherwise completely Arab area. South of the kibbutz was the “Triangle,” the all-Arab area of Palestine. Within shooting distance stood the borders of Jordan. Slightly north, the hostile Arab city of Beth Shean completed the cut-off of the kibbutz.
Tirat Tsvi was one of the Jewish outposts that guarded the Jordan Valley farther to the north.
Kawukji was delighted with his choice of Tirat Tsvi. The religious Jews of the kibbutz would crumple before the first massed attack. The brigand assembled hundreds of Arabs at the Nablus base in the Triangle and marched up for the attack.
Kawukji announced his victory in advance; it was published even before he made an attack. When he did move his troops into position, the Arab women from Beth Shean came