The Haj - Leon Uris [106]
Other Haganah attempts failed. The attack on the high ground at the Prophet Samuel’s Tomb, which could have protected incoming convoys, was beaten back.
Another attack was made on the Victoria-Augusta complex to have a direct connection to Jewish establishments isolated on Mount Scopus. When this attack failed, Hebrew University, the National Library, and the Hadassah Hospital were cut off from West Jerusalem. To reach these institutions, convoys had to travel through a series of hostile Arab neighborhoods. To keep the institutions functioning and to save the buildings from being looted, the Yishuv reluctantly agreed to accept a demilitarized status for them.
In its first operation to break the blockade, Haganah units from Tel Aviv moved on Abdul Kadar’s hornet’s nest of Irregulars in the Lydda-Ramle area, blew up their headquarters, and cleared the road of sniper locations. But there was still a long, bloody way to go to get to Jerusalem.
Of late, Colonel Frederick Brompton had been meeting with Gideon Asch several times weekly at the Latrun Fort. Each acted in a liaison capacity to convey urgent business to the other’s command. Brompton had been selected for the job because he was a bureaucratic neutral, the epitome of British evenhandedness.
‘Very nasty business, this bomb you set off in Lydda,’ he said. ‘We have it that you are very quietly moving a Palmach force out of Shemesh Kibbutz and deploying it along the Bab el Wad. If I were a military man, I’d say you are going to take a crack at forcing the road open.’
Gideon threw open his arms in innocence.
‘It’s going to be damned costly, damned costly,’ Brompton said.
‘Perhaps if you made more than a token effort to patrol the highway ...’ Gideon said.
Brompton returned a gesture similar to the one Gideon had made.
‘All right, Colonel. Let’s get down to business. We have two priority questions. First, we continue to protest the Arabs arming the Temple Mount. We now count twenty machine guns and mortar emplacements and an observation post on the top of the Dome of the Rock. And if anyone lit a cigarette in the cellar of the Al Aksa Mosque, it would blow up the entire city.’
‘You know how it is, Gideon, old man. The Arabs have never had respect for anyone’s holy places, including their own.’
‘Like hell, Brompton. God forbid if the Jews were to put one well-placed shell into the Dome of Al Aksa. They’d have the world at our throats in a religious fever.’
Brompton gave the tiniest of laughs.
‘I was about to mention arms stashes in every hospital and school in East Jerusalem,’ Gideon continued.
‘You’re not going to teach the Arabs fair play or democracy at this date, Gideon. There are some things we would not do in order to keep the Mandate. God only knows, we may lose the Empire because even in war there are some boundaries to humanity. It’s a game with them, a dirty advantage. They’ll take it. You’ll just have to smile.’
Brompton suddenly showed nervousness, quite unlike himself. Gideon reckoned that there was some weighty business on the man’s mind he had not yet come to. ‘What else is on your agenda?’ Brompton asked.
‘The water line. We cannot rebuild or guard it without your help.’
Brompton was visibly irritated.
Gideon came to his feet. ‘Shit!’
‘Sit down, Gideon. Sit down, please,’ Brompton said, applying an oversized dollop of English calm. ‘I told you at the time of the partition vote that our position has changed from one of governing to one of neutrality. On the one hand, you believe we are decidedly pro-Arab. It may come as a surprise, but the entire Arab world accuses us of being blatantly pro-Zionist. In truth, the chaps in our command are divided down the middle.’
‘I didn’t ask you for a dissertation on British fairness. I asked you about water for a hundred thousand people.’
‘We cannot be involved in rebuilding the pipeline. We are withdrawing our forces at a very rapid rate. We have neither the manpower nor the desire to do so. It is clearly no longer our mission to keep either side from building up their forces