Exodus - Leon Uris [306]
At dawn of the third day, David Ben Ami moved his column out of hiding at Gan Dafna and set up an ambush outside Abu Yesha where Kassi had another hundred men. With Ben Ami’s men in position to cut off reinforcements from Abu Yesha, Ari and Yarkoni’s forces moved to the rear of Fort Esther. When the Little David opened fire Kassi had only a hundred men in the fort. The rest were in Lebanon or Abu Yesha. Round after round of the buckets of dynamite swished and sputtered through the air and exploded against the concrete blockhouse. Each round came a little closer to the mark, the iron rear gate. By the twentieth round, the gate was blown off its hinges, and the next five rounds fell into the courtyard of the fort.
Ari Ben Canaan jumped off with the first wave of attackers, who crawled forward on their bellies beneath machine-gun fire and intermittent blasts of the Davidka.
The actual damage to Fort Esther was superficial, but the noise and the sudden swiftness of the attack was too much for Kassi and his dubious warriors. They made a feeble defense, waiting for reinforcements to come. The only reinforcements left moved out of Abu Yesha and walked right into David Ben Ami’s trap. Kassi saw it through his field glasses. He was cut off. The Jews were at the rear gate. The white flag of surrender went up over Fort Esther.
Yarkoni took twenty men into the fort, disarmed the Arabs and sent them packing to Lebanon. Kassi, now quite docile, and three of his officers were led to the jail as the Star of David was raised over the fort. Ari took the rest of the men down the road to where David had set the ambush. They were ready for the final phase of the end of Abu Yesha as an Arab base.
The people of Abu Yesha had seen and heard the fighting. They knew, surely, their village was next. Ari sent a truce team in to give those who were left twenty minutes to evacuate or face the consequences. From his vantage point he could see many of his lifelong friends trudging out of Abu Yesha toward the hills of Lebanon. Ari felt sick in his stomach as he saw them go.
A half hour passed and then an hour.
“We had better start,” David said to him.
“I ... I want to make sure they are all out.”
“No one has left for a half hour, Ari. Everyone is out who is coming out.”
Ari turned and walked away from his waiting troops. David followed him. “I’ll take command,” David said.
“All right,” Ari whispered.
Ari stood alone on the mountainside as David led the men down to the saddle in the hill where Abu Yesha nestled. He was pale as he heard the first sounds of gunfire. David deployed the men as they approached the outskirts. A clatter of machine-gun and small-arms fire went up. The Jews dropped and crawled forward in a squad-by-squad advance.
Inside Abu Yesha a hundred Arabs led by Taha had chosen to make a determined stand. The fight for the village was a rare situation for this war; the Jews had superior numbers of men and arms. A withering barrage of automatic fire was followed by a rain of grenades on the forward Arab positions. The first Arab machine gun was knocked out, and as the defenders fell back the Jews gained a foothold in the town itself.
David Ben Ami conducted the battle by sending out patrols to move street by street, house by house, to clean out pockets of resistance. The going was slow and bloody; these were houses built of stone, not mud, and those who remained fought it out hand to hand.
The day wore on. Ari Ben Canaan did not move from his position on the mountainside. The constant sound of gunfire and the bursts of grenades and even the screams of men reached his ears.
The Arabs of Abu Yesha fell back from position after position as the relentless attack cut off any co-ordination between groups or individuals. Finally all those left were squeezed into one street on the edge of town. More than seventy-five Arabs had been killed fighting to the end in the most dramatic defense