The Haj - Leon Uris [33]
The Higher Committee’s first ‘communiqué’ was an announcement appointing the brigand Kaukji supreme commander of the Palestine rebellion. He was immediately commissioned to recruit an army outside the country to take up the sacred cause.
With the Waqf funds depleted by the Mufti’s excesses, Haj Amin looked now to the Germans for quick financial help. Herr Bockmann found his own budget overspent in the purchase of illegal arms. Money was needed at once for mercenaries to join Kaukji’s Irregulars. Haj Amin responded by dispatching special collection squads to visit wealthy Arab families to extort ‘donations’ for the ‘Strike Fund for Distressed Palestine.’ A prominent Haifa grain merchant was the first to refuse. He, his two sons, and his four guards were murdered during prayer in their family mosque.
In the countryside Mufti gangs pounced on the weaker and more isolated Arab villages. The Mufti’s terrorists took for themselves the far-fetched title Mojahedeen, the Warriors of God. Everything was looted for ‘the cause,’ from livestock to personal belongings. The Mufti demanded men from the villages to be impressed into his forces. Many were simply taken from the fields and handed weapons. They went out and sniped at British traffic, cut power lines, set up ambushes, blew bridges. After a half dozen muktars were murdered for refusing to provide ‘volunteers,’ village after village succumbed to the terror.
Although the British had beefed up their forces to some twenty thousand troops, they were quickly manipulated into a defensive battle by a ghostlike enemy. The principal British deployment consisted of a network of large police barracks, named Tegart forts after the designer, which interlaced the land. It was the same strategy used by the Crusaders with minicastles and the ancient Hebrews with fortified outposts on hills within sight of one another. During the day, the British were able to come out and patrol and launch raids, but by night they were forced to button up in the Tegarts and give the Mufti the freedom of the darkness.
As the rebellion increased in nocturnal savagery the British initiated massive but cumbersome assaults against lightly armed Arab gangs who would simply disappear into the scenery. The British assessed collective fines against known collaborators and even destroyed entire rebel villages, but they could not stem the Arab fury.
Within a few months Kaukji’s Irregulars had infiltrated into Palestine, increasing the havoc. He had recruited a malicious corps from religious fanatics, criminals, a variety of adventurers, and prisoners who were granted early release to join the ‘holy war.’ With freedom of movement throughout the night, the rebels were able to select their time and place of attack, then vanish. Rebel bands grew bolder by the week. When a Tegart fort was finally overrun, the British realized they were in deep trouble.
In one of those queer paradoxes that made the mandate take on unreal aspects, the British turned to the Jewish Agency and petitioned the Haganah for help. The Haganah had stopped the Mufti from taking a single Jewish town or kibbutz. Unwritten but understood areas of cooperation between the Haganah and the British increased, changing the status of the Jewish army from semiillegal to semilegal.
Even as the British and the Haganah assisted one another in fighting the Arabs, the two fought each other with equal bitterness on the matter of immigration. Desperation had increased among Europe’s Jews. The Haganah went heavily into the business of smuggling them into Palestine, circumventing the British quotas that had been imposed as a result of Arab pressures. Hundreds of Jews entered as tourists and pilgrims and disappeared into the kibbutzim. Hundreds more came over with false documents for a sham marriage or to join nonexistent relatives. Still others beached themselves in small boats near Jewish seaside settlements. Others walked the tortuous routes from Arab lands and made illegal entry over the borders.