The Haj - Leon Uris [104]
With the new weapons, the Haganah was able to move decisively in the cities with mixed populations, witnessing a strange collapse of Arab resolve and a panic devouring the Arab populations.
Haifa: The major port city of Palestine, Haifa rose from the Mediterranean up Mount Carmel, offering a San Francisco-like vista from the high hills. The Arab town was clustered around the port, with the Jewish town on the upper slopes of Carmel.
Because it was the country’s major supply depot, fighting and road sniping had been going on incessantly among all three sides. The Arabs were well organized and armed. The Jews had a unit of Haganah under the command of Moshe Carmel that came to be known as the Carmeli Brigade.
An Irgun bomb exploded in the Arab Quarter of the city, which led to an Arab riot at the nearby oil refinery in which forty Jews were massacred. The battle lines were drawn as outrage and counter-outrage ensued until any hope for a peaceful solution vanished.
The Arabs packed their section of the city with Irregulars and mercenaries, as well as units of their home militia, giving them a decided numerical superiority.
But the Carmeli Brigade was on the high ground. As the British began their withdrawal, the Haganah struck in Operation Siccors. After an all-night attack on the Arab quarter, the Arabs were split into four parts and the fight was out of them. The British stepped in and arranged a truce.
Carmel met with the Arab mayor and set out his demands. He required the Arabs to lay down their arms and turn over all non-Palestinians and foreign mercenaries. No demand was made for the Arabs to evacuate their civilian population.
Asking for time to consider the terms, the mayor rushed to confer with Kaukji’s top officer in Haifa.
That officer assured the mayor that Kaukji was about to open an offensive from Nablus to Haifa. He urged the mayor and other Arab civic officials to take the Arab population out of the city so they would not be caught’ in the middle of a major confrontation. As soon as the Jews were driven out, the Arabs could return and take over the Jewish part of Haifa as well.
For the most part, the Arabs and Jews of Haifa had gotten along well. There was a great deal of commerce between them and a smattering of neighborly relationships. A delegation of Haifa’s Jewish leaders met with the Arab leadership and tried to persuade them to remain, citing Ben-Gurion’s policy.
The Arabs chose to evacuate. The British continued the truce and in the next five days nearly a hundred thousand Arabs took to the roads and headed for Acre. A few thousand chose to remain and they were left unharmed.
The Arab population of Haifa ran without cause. Fears of annihilation were merely echoes and reflections of their own designs. They and their leaders had promised death to the Jews. The Arabs were consumed with fear that the Jews would do to them what they planned to do to the Jews. Their terror was played upon by their own leaders, who urged them to flee in order to clear the way for their armies. The Haifa exodus was repeated in Safed and Tiberias, where Arab populations bolted after short battles.
The Arabs had already witnessed a mass flight from Palestine of the leaders of their community after the partition vote. An unstoppable movement was forming. By the thousands, they took to the roads without a threat having been made and without so much as a shot being fired at them. The scattered movement exploded into a stampede.
Arab Palestine had all but lost the first round. In order to salvage their situation, the new strategy was to put every resource into the road battle to shut off Jerusalem from the rest of the Yishuv and starve out the Jewish population. If they could accomplish