Exodus - Leon Uris [278]
On the third day, Kawukji mounted the attack.
Instead of walking into a frightened and cowering kibbutz, he ran into two battalions of eagerly waiting and trained men. Kawukji’s offense was smashed.
He rallied his men and tried a slow sustained move. It was equally unsuccessful. He mounted more attacks, but with each the irregulars showed less inclination to fight. They straggled forward halfheartedly and pulled back whenever resistance stiffened.
Toward the end of the day, Kawukji lost control of his troops. They began to walk out of the battle area.
Inside the kibbutz, the Jews witnessed the development and poured out after the Arabs. Here was a completely unexpected turn. The Arabs were so startled at the sight of Jews charging that they all fled, with the Haganah literally at their heels. The running fight surged back miles, to Megiddo, site of a hundred battles through the ages. Here, on the historic fighting ground of Armageddon, the Jews completely broke Kawukji’s forces. The carnage stopped only when the British stepped in and forced a truce.
The Jews had won their first real victory of the War of Liberation.
In the Jerusalem corridor the Hillmen Brigade of the Palmach performed titans’ work to keep the road open. This gang of teen-agers, with commanders in their twenties, patrolled the deep gorges and wilds of Judea, making fierce hit-and-run raids on Arab villages in conjunction with convoy runs. They frequently worked around the clock until they were numb with exhaustion, yet they could always be goaded on to one more patrol, one more raid, one more hike through the fierce country.
“In this wadi King David also lived as a guerrilla fighter!” The bloodshot eyes of the Palmach youngsters recorded fatigue as they roused to still another effort.
“Remember, you are fighting at the place where Samson was born!”
“In this valley David met Goliath!”
“Here Joshua made the sun stand still!”
At night the Bible was read to the exhausted warriors as a source of inspiration for the superhuman efforts the next day would call forth. Here, in Kadar’s territory, the fighting was hard and constant and the Arabs had confidence behind a strong leader.
An enormous convoy mustered in Tel Aviv for another all-out effort to save Jerusalem. The Hillmen Brigade’s job was to take the Arab village of Kastel, built on a Crusader fort dominating one of the main heights of the highway.
The storming of Kastel became the first Jewish offensive action in the War of Liberation. The brigade made a sheer-guts attack, crawling up the treacherous incline under cover of friendly darkness. They reached the peak of the Kastel bloodied and weary but threw themselves into hand-to-hand combat and threw the Arabs out.
Kastel lifted the flagging spirits of the Yishuv. Following the victory, the huge convoy from Tel Aviv battled every inch of the way through the Bab el Wad, slogged on through to New Jerusalem, and again brought vital relief to the beleaguered Jews.
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