Exodus - Leon Uris [300]
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